Nuclear power

[ItsNotAboutTheMoney]

I wish Germany hadn't put the brakes on their feed-in tariff. It'd be nice to see what happens when a large country hits 140% solar at mid-day. We'll find out eventually I guess and the adjustments will be made from there. As far as nuclear is concerned....nothing and I mean NOTHING is goign to be happening outside of maybe China for the next while. Renewables are going to systematically destroy all Western utility schemes(Germany's is already dying), so there won't be a company with money(or demand) to build a new nuke plant. In the medium term, there will be way too may better renewable options to turn into a economic bubble. Yay!

Germany's FIT is still generous. The lower it can go the better. "Renewables are very expensive" is damaging PR, while "renewables cost f(t)/kWh more" is much better because you can see progress with t.

What we really needed was Fukushima not to happen, but unfortunately it did and now it's going to take longer to rebuild confidence in nuclear fission. In the meantime just keep hoping battery prices fall, renewable generation prices fall and Germany's methanation research bears fruit (or other countries take methanation seriously and do more research).

I'd love to see one of these thorium plants built. Everyone keeps yapping abut them, but I don't see China or anyone else rushing to build them. Is that because they want the bomb material or something?

You don't see them because everybody was talking about them as if all the work had been done, when it hadn't. In addition, it's a myth that thorium reactors can't produce weapons-grade uranium. You can build one that can't but it makes operation harder, and you can you build one that can but it's not as good as traditional fission reactors. So whether you do or don't want proliferation risks they're not perfect.

 

[nwdiver]

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What's your source for that claim? The video you linked to suggests (~minute 50) the opposite, as does the fact that Chu is a board member of a company that is trying to develop an affordable (~$15 ton to capture + ~$20 ton to compress and store) carbon capture system.

Let's suppose that the claim of '80% self sufficient for a cost of 10k-12k' for current residential electricity use turns out to be true. Does that solve our worldwide carbon emissions problem, no other actions required?
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Well... intent being the hardest thing to prove I'm reading between the lines on Chus reason for supporting CCS. It is obvious that he wants to be "friends" with the the fossil fuel interests. He states this several times and at 1:25:00 during Q&A he is very blunt in his opposition to any divestment campaign. "...I don't want to shut them off because then you create a WE / THEY and then... money talks..." - Steven Chu

It certainly seems like the top three reasons to support CCS is 1) Politics 2) Politics and 3) Politics....

Coal with CCS is just as expensive as nuclear and a Natural Gas Plant with CCS is still more costly then solar PV. The EIA lists the cost of solar PV at ~$4/w... I would be interested to see what went into that number since I just installed a 10kW system for $1.8/w ($1.3/w after subsidies)
http://www.eia.gov/forecasts/capitalcost/pdf/updated_capcost.pdf

80% self-sufficiency would largely solve our carbon problem; existing nuclear power plants will probably linger for a few decades and wind is cheaper than solar so the remaining 20% will probably be filled by nuclear/wind/hydro. I'm not sure if Chu meant self-sufficient on energy or storage. Large scale solutions like pumped storage are orders of magnitude cheaper than batteries.

 

[Robert.Boston]

I have yet to see any thoughtful evidence that CCS can be cost-effective, compared to other ways of reducing carbon. The McKinsey "carbon supply curve" shows CCS as an extreme solution, which lines up with the studies I've seen.

 

[TheTalkingMule]

Germany's FIT is still generous. The lower it can go the better. "Renewables are very expensive" is damaging PR, while "renewables cost f(t)/kWh more" is much better because you can see progress with t.

That's all well and good, but I believe the FiT is now paying out around $.17/Watt pushed to the grid via rooftop solar and people are paying $.35/W for juice from the grid, so there's not much incentive to install more other than self-consumption and storage. Plus it's being lowered at 1-1.4% per MONTH.

They're not at the point where a drastic lowering of the FiT is needed to "save the grid", so to me this is just a purposeful undermining of the industry spurred on by the traditional energy providers who are hemorrhaging billions in debt. Maybe they're just slowing things down to allow the traditional energy economy a period of adjustment. That's unwarranted IMO. They had a good run, let them be swallowed up by the market.

 

[Reykjavik]

Two things to take into account when considering traditional fission reactors: Chernobyl and Fukushima.

You can say that they are flukes, or failures of regulation, or not that bad, and I'll grant all of that. Nuclear is safer than coal, but accidents happen, regulatory failures happen, and if we increase the number of reactors, the number of failures is likely to increase as well. And with nuclear failures, the consequences are long term.

Maybe someone will figure out a way to do fusion more safely than we do fission. Maybe LFTR systems will be put together in a way that is competitive and safe. But until those things come into play, we need to be working with wind and solar, and working on distributed and grid storage.

I think distributed storage is going to be a huge part of the solution, having batteries in the home means having backup for when the grid goes down, it is also more efficient to create, store and use energy locally than to transmit it somewhere, store it, transmit it back, and then use it.

Ultimately I'm not convinced that nuclear is necessary, and the only argument that made any sense was that it was necessary.

 

[techMology]

Two things to take into account when considering traditional fission reactors: Chernobyl and Fukushima.

You can say that they are flukes, or failures of regulation, or not that bad, and I'll grant all of that. Nuclear is safer than coal, but accidents happen, regulatory failures happen, and if we increase the number of reactors, the number of failures is likely to increase as well. And with nuclear failures, the consequences are long term.

Maybe someone will figure out a way to do fusion more safely than we do fission. Maybe LFTR systems will be put together in a way that is competitive and safe. But until those things come into play, we need to be working with wind and solar, and working on distributed and grid storage.

I think distributed storage is going to be a huge part of the solution, having batteries in the home means having backup for when the grid goes down, it is also more efficient to create, store and use energy locally than to transmit it somewhere, store it, transmit it back, and then use it.

Ultimately I'm not convinced that nuclear is necessary, and the only argument that made any sense was that it was necessary.

What do you propose we use for base load power while we wait for battery and other storage technologies to mature to the point you suggest?

 

[Jeff Miller]

I have yet to see any thoughtful evidence that CCS can be cost-effective, compared to other ways of reducing carbon. The McKinsey "carbon supply curve" shows CCS as an extreme solution, which lines up with the studies I've seen.

I'm not familiar with the McKinsey curve, but I haven't seen any strong reason to rule out CCS because of cost. Chu's company is hoping to do it at $40 per ton. Presumably as the technology develops, costs will come down. The fact that Chu thinks CCS is necessary makes me think it's not a priori a bad option.

This article makes the believable point that we will basically do nothing (we'll have lots of reports and conferences though) to reduce carbon emissions until it is very very late in the game at which time we will have built so many coal plants around the world that we will have no choice but to try CCS:

Carbon Capture and Storage Basics | The Energy Collective

 

[jerry33]

Two things to take into account when considering traditional fission reactors: Chernobyl and Fukushima.

The harm done at Fukushima was done by the non-nuclear earthquake which killed 15,000. So far the nuclear harm is zero (except politically, the situation was handled badly the the government and the utility.). Basically using Chernobyl and Fukushima as examples is similar to saying "Cars weren't safe fifty years ago, so no cars should be made today".

 

[RichardC]

I'm not familiar with the McKinsey curve, but I haven't seen any strong reason to rule out CCS because of cost.

General information on marginal abatement cost curves can be found on Wikipedia at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marginal_abatement_cost

Various McKinsey reports (including greenhouse gas abatement cost curves) can be found at: http://www.mckinsey.com/client_serv...thinking/greenhouse_gas_abatement_cost_curves

As reflected in those curves, much of the abatement can be achieved at a negative cost (i.e., will result in savings), and all forms of renewable energy were, at the time of the writing in 2010 of the McKinsey 2.1 report, cheaper than CCS. As the costs of renewables and energy storage continue to fall (for example, solar has fallen by at least 50% since 2010) and the production capacity continues to grow, it seems very unlikely that CCS could be economic either as new build or on a retrofit basis.

 

[Doug_G]

The harm done at Fukushima was done by the non-nuclear earthquake which killed 15,000. So far the nuclear harm is zero (except politically, the situation was handled badly the the government and the utility.). Basically using Chernobyl and Fukushima as examples is similar to saying "Cars weren't safe fifty years ago, so no cars should be made today".

Untold billions in costs associated with cleaning up Fukushima, though. The tsunami was certainly the trigger, but the problems that led to the disaster were really man-made.

 

[techMology]

Untold billions in costs associated with cleaning up Fukushima, though. The tsunami was certainly the trigger, but the problems that led to the disaster were really man-made.

How much of those costs can be directly attributed to nuclear "fallout" vs. plant repair/tear down/replacement? Anyone have any idea?

 

[Reykjavik]

What do you propose we use for base load power while we wait for battery and other storage technologies to mature to the point you suggest?

Natural gas. Which we need to cover the gap between now and when nuclear power can be implemented anyway. Keep in mind that with nuclear, we have a major safety concern, and I don't think anybody in their right mind wants to put nuclear power plants in Iran, or Egypt, or Saudi Arabia, where proliferation risk is very real. Instead of wasting time and effort on traditional nuclear power, we should be putting that effort towards solutions that make sense in the long term, which may actually be realizable just as quickly as a nuclear based energy system.

The harm done at Fukushima was done by the non-nuclear earthquake which killed 15,000. So far the nuclear harm is zero (except politically, the situation was handled badly the the government and the utility.). Basically using Chernobyl and Fukushima as examples is similar to saying "Cars weren't safe fifty years ago, so no cars should be made today".

No, it is like saying that the cars on the road today have the potential to kill a lot of people and make significant tracts of land unusable for long periods of time, and that we shouldn't keep making cars like that. If you read my post you would realize that I am open to safer alternatives, but what we have now is unacceptable. The fact that there was an earthquake doesn't make a difference, with the reactor there, we had a nuclear disaster (provisionally rated as a 7 on the INES scale, the same rating as Chernobyl), AND an earthquake. Without the reactor, we would have just had an earthquake. And Fukushima wasn't fifty years ago, it was three years ago. Further, the number of deaths due to the nuclear accident is not yet known, and won't be known for quite some time.

 

[techMology]

Natural gas. Which we need to cover the gap between now and when nuclear power can be implemented anyway. Keep in mind that with nuclear, we have a major safety concern, and I don't think anybody in their right mind wants to put nuclear power plants in Iran, or Egypt, or Saudi Arabia, where proliferation risk is very real. Instead of wasting time and effort on traditional nuclear power, we should be putting that effort towards solutions that make sense in the long term, which may actually be realizable just as quickly as a nuclear based energy system.



No, it is like saying that the cars on the road today have the potential to kill a lot of people and make significant tracts of land unusable for long periods of time, and that we shouldn't keep making cars like that. If you read my post you would realize that I am open to safer alternatives, but what we have now is unacceptable. The fact that there was an earthquake doesn't make a difference, with the reactor there, we had a nuclear disaster (provisionally rated as a 7 on the INES scale, the same rating as Chernobyl), AND an earthquake. Without the reactor, we would have just had an earthquake. And Fukushima wasn't fifty years ago, it was three years ago. Further, the number of deaths due to the nuclear accident is not yet known, and won't be known for quite some time.

I guess I take issue with your assertion that nuclear carries a "major safety concern", when if you actually quantify nuclear's safety record over the last 50 years in terms of lives directly lost as a result of radiation caused by nuclear incidents, it's exemplary. Are there drawbacks to nuclear? Sure, but in my opinion, significantly less than the available alternatives from a greenhouse gas perspective and climate change perspective. Natural gas isn't clean - it's cleaner - and would get expensive quickly if we replaced all dirtier fossil sources and nuclear generated power with it.

I think a concerted effort to continue to make nuclear safer is what's prudent. Be it via foolproof failover systems during power loss preventing overheating/meltdown to fuel enrichment.

Other than Pripyat, what other significant tracts of land have even been threatened to be made uninhabitable as a result of nuclear accidents? Fukushima doesn't qualify. The exclusion zone isn't permanent; folks are allowed to move back inside the zone as of April 1st.

It's like saying jet propulsion for aircraft is unsafe because of the potential risk of being lost somewhere in the middle of the Indian Ocean.

 

[Reykjavik]

Nuclear is safer than coal, probably safer than natural gas, but I don't think it is safer than solar, wind, or hydro. I don't think nuclear is going to be part of the long term solution, at least not the type of reactors we have in operation today. And nuclear only makes sense on a long term timeframe, it takes a lot to build a reactor that is safe enough to be tolerable, it takes a lot to mine and refine the fuel. Instead of investing a lot of money in a solution that should be replaced by renewables before it starts to pay for itself isn't a good idea when we can be investing in renewables.

Nuclear power is worse at handling power fluctuations than renewable sources, so all the problems with peak loads still exist with nuclear. Nuclear isn't any more ready to supply all of our needs than renewables are.

 

[jerry33]

Nuclear is safer than coal, probably safer than natural gas, but I don't think it is safer than solar, wind, or hydro.

Problem is that with solar and wind you either need expensive storage solutions or some kind of base load generation to supplement the renewables. Hydro is available only in limited places and has it's own ecological problems. Renewables are a good thing but neither they nor nuclear are 100% of the solution. They need to both work together.

Here's a site with some thoughtful articles on nuclear energy.

 

[techMology]

Problem is that with solar and wind you either need expensive storage solutions or some kind of base load generation to supplement the renewables. Hydro is available only in limited places and has it's own ecological problems. Renewables are a good thing but neither they nor nuclear are 100% of the solution. They need to both work together.

Here's a site with some thoughtful articles on nuclear energy.

+1000.

 

[Jeff Miller]

General information on marginal abatement cost curves can be found on Wikipedia at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marginal_abatement_cost

Various McKinsey reports (including greenhouse gas abatement cost curves) can be found at: http://www.mckinsey.com/client_serv...thinking/greenhouse_gas_abatement_cost_curves

As reflected in those curves, much of the abatement can be achieved at a negative cost (i.e., will result in savings), and all forms of renewable energy were, at the time of the writing in 2010 of the McKinsey 2.1 report, cheaper than CCS. As the costs of renewables and energy storage continue to fall (for example, solar has fallen by at least 50% since 2010) and the production capacity continues to grow, it seems very unlikely that CCS could be economic either as new build or on a retrofit basis.

Thanks for the links. Assuming these cost abatement curves are right, it looks like a layup for nuclear on the generation side. That said, there are now thousands of large coal plants around the world, many of which are brand new and many more are being built. Presumably we will be living with them for quite some time. Given that, and given the resistance that nuclear faces in many place, it would seem prudent to investigate the possibilities for CCS.

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Nuclear is safer than coal, probably safer than natural gas, but I don't think it is safer than solar, wind, or hydro. I don't think nuclear is going to be part of the long term solution, at least not the type of reactors we have in operation today. And nuclear only makes sense on a long term timeframe, it takes a lot to build a reactor that is safe enough to be tolerable, it takes a lot to mine and refine the fuel. Instead of investing a lot of money in a solution that should be replaced by renewables before it starts to pay for itself isn't a good idea when we can be investing in renewables.

Nuclear power is worse at handling power fluctuations than renewable sources, so all the problems with peak loads still exist with nuclear. Nuclear isn't any more ready to supply all of our needs than renewables are.

I think that's too strong a statement. France's electricity is about 80% nuclear. No country is remotely close to that on renewables and without first solving the storage problem (not yet solved economically in places that don't have ready access to suitable sites for water pumping), I don't see how they ever will be.

 

[Robert.Boston]

No country is remotely close to that on renewables and without first solving the storage problem (not yet solved economically in places that don't have ready access to suitable sites for water pumping), I don't see how they ever will be.

Iceland's grid power is >99% renewable; it's blessed with both hydro and geothermal resources, so no additional storage is needed.

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Many more people have died or been made grievously ill/disabled mining coal than as a consequence of mining uranium.

The health impacts of coal-fired power plant emissions globally are far more dire than the health impacts of emissions from nuclear stations, even including those catastrophes from early generation reactors like Chernobyl and Fukushima.

The point of this post is not to say that nuclear is absolutely the best alternative for producing power, but it's clearly better than coal, both ecologically and from a human impact.

 

[Skotty]

Nuclear power is worse at handling power fluctuations than renewable sources, so all the problems with peak loads still exist with nuclear. Nuclear isn't any more ready to supply all of our needs than renewables are.

This to me appears to be a completely false statement. Nothing is worse than renewables at handling power fluctuations. Without grid storage, renewables can't load follow at all, other than by eliminating excess supply. What happens when you need more supply? You can't turn the wind or the sun up at will. To supply a majority of power, renewables will be completely dependent on very large scale grid storage. Nuclear can load follow to a degree. If it can't follow fast enough, it could be managed with grid storage of a much smaller degree than would be required for renewables.

Someone else questioned whether or not we can do fusion safer than fission. We can do fission safer than fission. Remember, the reactors that have had problems are old technology. The newer reactor designs carry far less risk. We don't measure the safety of modern cars like a Model S by looking at the track record of Ford Pintos. Fusion has potential to be even better, so long as research for it is funded properly.

 

[Jeff Miller]

Iceland's grid power is >99% renewable; it's blessed with both hydro and geothermal resources, so no additional storage is needed.

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Many more people have died or been made grievously ill/disabled mining coal than as a consequence of mining uranium.

The health impacts of coal-fired power plant emissions globally are far more dire than the health impacts of emissions from nuclear stations, even including those catastrophes from early generation reactors like Chernobyl and Fukushima.

The point of this post is not to say that nuclear is absolutely the best alternative for producing power, but it's clearly better than coal, both ecologically and from a human impact.

Good points. I should have written "No country is remotely close to that using solar and/or wind and without first solving the storage problem (not yet solved economically in places that don't have ready access to suitable sites for water pumping), I don't see how they ever will be." Unfortunately, very few places have Iceland's excellent hydro and geothermal resources. I agree with your comments about coal.