That is not correct - Germany is typically a net importer from France. Also, you're wrong about the relative size of wind. Germany's electricity mix is something like this:
23% nuclear
23% lignite (brown coal, the worst type)
20% black coal
13% natgas
7% wind
14% other (hydro, biomass, waste, PV)
It is simply evil of them to prioritize a phase-out of nuclear power before a phase-out of fossils and biomass.
Secondary reactors? You mean CANDUs that can use the used fuel for a little while longer? That's a possibility, but it won't reduce the half-life of the waste at all. You probably mix them up with breeder designs that can fully burn all heavy isotopes. This will not offer "some" extra power, but a hundred times more power than the current LWR reactors! With breeder designs and a closed fuel cycle, you would actually not have to mine uranium for a thousand years - the current waste and depleted uranium would last us that long. (Well, ok, just a hundred years if you ramp nuclear tenfold.)
Actually, there probably are no better solutions than breeder reactors. Neither fusion nor renewables seems to have the economic potential of the gen4 nuclear breeder reactors such as the MSR/LFTR. My best guess is that a hundred years from now and a thousand years from now, nuclear breeders will dominate human power production.
France decided on nuclear in 1973, during oil crisis. In 1992, 19 years later, they were 75% nuclear. So, industrially speaking, nuclear power is very easily ramped for a country with that much heavy engineering skills such as France. Politically, it may be hard, though, and the Germans seem to prefer being dependent on Russian natural gas.
Actually, the breeding designs will not produce lead - that is the heavy final product of the spontaneous alpha/beta decay of the heavy transuranic isotopes but splitting atoms roughly in halves as done in reactors produce fission products in the ranges zirconium through to palladium and from xenon through to neodymium. Many of these fission products are rare, useful and much more valuable than lead, but there are some medium-to-long lived radioactive isotopes there, and you will need to either long-term store it all as radioactive waste or take the cost of separating them chemically and keep the valuable, stable stuff, throw away the stable waste and long-term-dispose of the rest.
I can't really fathom why GM thinks electric vehicles would make sense for America. In Europe, gasoline prices are typically doubled by taxes, and we are used to smaller cars, so we are going to get mass market adoption long before the Americans.
During this time of crisis, GM should focus on what it does best - providing Americans with ridiculously big and thirsty cars - and leave high tech and innovation to the Japanese and Europeans. GM neither has time nor money to enter new niche markets.
I've been waiting for this for some time - the first real step of many which will end in something like the Star Trek holodeck. And when the illusion is complete, we will all die - b/c who would want to leave a world that can fulfill all of our desires?:-)
As I've understood it, the Chevy Volt will have a 16 kWh battery pack and this is supposed to be a $8,000 component. If we scale this cost to the Tesla 53 kWh, that would be $26,500. So, electric consumer cars with the range of Tesla (393 km) clearly isn't economical at current battery costs, compared to gasoline.
But for my commute, a small fully electric car with 16 kWh would clearly suffice - we have another car for other purposes. I would save at least $2,000 per year in gasoline costs, so I would reach break-even in about 4 years. Less if you consider that a non-hybrid electric car should be much cheaper to produce and maintain.
Unfortunately, I guess batteries must be replaced after those four years, but as gasoline costs increase and battery costs decrease, there will be an increasing niche market for fully electric but range limited cars.
As I said, lots of families already have two or more cars, of which one could very well be range limited and electric.
Also, $50 in gas savings is a REALLY low estimate. I live in Europe, commute 1250 miles per month, actually do 47 MPG in my small diesel car, which is offset by me paying $9 per gallon. This sums up to $240/month, and then I haven't even included my non-work-related driving.
(Please note that the Chevy Volt range would suffice for my commuting needs.)
Nuclear power only looks cheap if you don't factor in the cost of waste storage and 'disposal.'
This is nonsense. Sweden is designing extremely safe (over-researched and over-dimensioned if you ask me) disposal and the cost for all decommissioning and disposal is covered by a 0.15 cent/KWh tax, which will suffice. You yanks have a hundred reactors where we have only ten, so you should have an economy of scale to reduce this cost even further.
Shutting down coal and nuclear would be one of the best financial decisions our nation could ever make.
On the contrary, such a move would leave your economy in ruins. Build more nuclear and shut down coal instead. Forget about wind - it is twice as expensive.
I do not think you realize the proportions here. 400 KWh per month multiplied by fifty million cars and 12 months gives 240 TWh per year.
This is only 6% of the current United States electricity consumption of about 3800 TWh/year! The increase in demand would come over perhaps two decades, making the year-on-year increase about 0.3%. But the average yearly US consumption growth during the last decade has been 2.2%!
You will cope easily. And 50 million cars driving 300*4*12 = 14400 miles at 25 MPG, the United States would save 29 billion gallons a year. Imagine sending $100 billion less to the Middle East every year and instead running about 25 nuclear power plants (you already have a hundred) for an up-front investment cost of only $200 billion and then peanuts for some canadian uranium and operation&maintenance.
The Tesla Roadster electric sports car is supposed to get 3.12 miles per KWh. Let's say a full tank of ordinary gas gives you 312 miles, then we'd need 100 KWh electricity to match this. I don't know about U.S electricity prices, but I'd guess you might pay around 10 bucks for 100 KWh?
Also, a Tesla going 15,000 miles per year will use 4800 KWh per year. Thus, a single 1250 MW nuclear reactor would power 2 million such cars. I understand the U.S. currently has plans for twelve such reactors.
I don't believe auto makers' statements about hybrids and EVs needing the same range as ordinary cars to be able to sell. Why not design purely electric vehicles where the amount of battery cells can be tailored for each customers commute (an amount reasonably simple to increase when needs change or batteries lose capacity)? Millions of families already have two or more cars, and could easily live with one of them being severely range restricted. I commute 45 kilometers (one way) so a 55 kilometer range would suffice for me.
Also, EV/hybrid car makers should forget the US as a market and focus on the EU. EU countries typically have more than twice as high gas prices, so EVs will probably make sense a decade earlier here.
Slashdot Mirror
That is not correct - Germany is typically a net importer from France. Also, you're wrong about the relative size of wind. Germany's electricity mix is something like this: 23% nuclear 23% lignite (brown coal, the worst type) 20% black coal 13% natgas 7% wind 14% other (hydro, biomass, waste, PV) It is simply evil of them to prioritize a phase-out of nuclear power before a phase-out of fossils and biomass.
Secondary reactors? You mean CANDUs that can use the used fuel for a little while longer? That's a possibility, but it won't reduce the half-life of the waste at all. You probably mix them up with breeder designs that can fully burn all heavy isotopes. This will not offer "some" extra power, but a hundred times more power than the current LWR reactors! With breeder designs and a closed fuel cycle, you would actually not have to mine uranium for a thousand years - the current waste and depleted uranium would last us that long. (Well, ok, just a hundred years if you ramp nuclear tenfold.) Actually, there probably are no better solutions than breeder reactors. Neither fusion nor renewables seems to have the economic potential of the gen4 nuclear breeder reactors such as the MSR/LFTR. My best guess is that a hundred years from now and a thousand years from now, nuclear breeders will dominate human power production.
France decided on nuclear in 1973, during oil crisis. In 1992, 19 years later, they were 75% nuclear. So, industrially speaking, nuclear power is very easily ramped for a country with that much heavy engineering skills such as France. Politically, it may be hard, though, and the Germans seem to prefer being dependent on Russian natural gas.
Actually, the breeding designs will not produce lead - that is the heavy final product of the spontaneous alpha/beta decay of the heavy transuranic isotopes but splitting atoms roughly in halves as done in reactors produce fission products in the ranges zirconium through to palladium and from xenon through to neodymium. Many of these fission products are rare, useful and much more valuable than lead, but there are some medium-to-long lived radioactive isotopes there, and you will need to either long-term store it all as radioactive waste or take the cost of separating them chemically and keep the valuable, stable stuff, throw away the stable waste and long-term-dispose of the rest.
I can't really fathom why GM thinks electric vehicles would make sense for America. In Europe, gasoline prices are typically doubled by taxes, and we are used to smaller cars, so we are going to get mass market adoption long before the Americans. During this time of crisis, GM should focus on what it does best - providing Americans with ridiculously big and thirsty cars - and leave high tech and innovation to the Japanese and Europeans. GM neither has time nor money to enter new niche markets.
I've been waiting for this for some time - the first real step of many which will end in something like the Star Trek holodeck. And when the illusion is complete, we will all die - b/c who would want to leave a world that can fulfill all of our desires? :-)
As I've understood it, the Chevy Volt will have a 16 kWh battery pack and this is supposed to be a $8,000 component. If we scale this cost to the Tesla 53 kWh, that would be $26,500. So, electric consumer cars with the range of Tesla (393 km) clearly isn't economical at current battery costs, compared to gasoline. But for my commute, a small fully electric car with 16 kWh would clearly suffice - we have another car for other purposes. I would save at least $2,000 per year in gasoline costs, so I would reach break-even in about 4 years. Less if you consider that a non-hybrid electric car should be much cheaper to produce and maintain. Unfortunately, I guess batteries must be replaced after those four years, but as gasoline costs increase and battery costs decrease, there will be an increasing niche market for fully electric but range limited cars.
As I said, lots of families already have two or more cars, of which one could very well be range limited and electric. Also, $50 in gas savings is a REALLY low estimate. I live in Europe, commute 1250 miles per month, actually do 47 MPG in my small diesel car, which is offset by me paying $9 per gallon. This sums up to $240/month, and then I haven't even included my non-work-related driving. (Please note that the Chevy Volt range would suffice for my commuting needs.)
Nuclear power only looks cheap if you don't factor in the cost of waste storage and 'disposal.'
This is nonsense. Sweden is designing extremely safe (over-researched and over-dimensioned if you ask me) disposal and the cost for all decommissioning and disposal is covered by a 0.15 cent/KWh tax, which will suffice. You yanks have a hundred reactors where we have only ten, so you should have an economy of scale to reduce this cost even further.
Shutting down coal and nuclear would be one of the best financial decisions our nation could ever make.
On the contrary, such a move would leave your economy in ruins. Build more nuclear and shut down coal instead. Forget about wind - it is twice as expensive.
I do not think you realize the proportions here. 400 KWh per month multiplied by fifty million cars and 12 months gives 240 TWh per year. This is only 6% of the current United States electricity consumption of about 3800 TWh/year! The increase in demand would come over perhaps two decades, making the year-on-year increase about 0.3%. But the average yearly US consumption growth during the last decade has been 2.2%! You will cope easily. And 50 million cars driving 300*4*12 = 14400 miles at 25 MPG, the United States would save 29 billion gallons a year. Imagine sending $100 billion less to the Middle East every year and instead running about 25 nuclear power plants (you already have a hundred) for an up-front investment cost of only $200 billion and then peanuts for some canadian uranium and operation&maintenance.
The Tesla Roadster electric sports car is supposed to get 3.12 miles per KWh. Let's say a full tank of ordinary gas gives you 312 miles, then we'd need 100 KWh electricity to match this. I don't know about U.S electricity prices, but I'd guess you might pay around 10 bucks for 100 KWh? Also, a Tesla going 15,000 miles per year will use 4800 KWh per year. Thus, a single 1250 MW nuclear reactor would power 2 million such cars. I understand the U.S. currently has plans for twelve such reactors.
I don't believe auto makers' statements about hybrids and EVs needing the same range as ordinary cars to be able to sell. Why not design purely electric vehicles where the amount of battery cells can be tailored for each customers commute (an amount reasonably simple to increase when needs change or batteries lose capacity)? Millions of families already have two or more cars, and could easily live with one of them being severely range restricted. I commute 45 kilometers (one way) so a 55 kilometer range would suffice for me. Also, EV/hybrid car makers should forget the US as a market and focus on the EU. EU countries typically have more than twice as high gas prices, so EVs will probably make sense a decade earlier here.