Nuclear power

[RDoc]

My understanding is that with the lowered cost of Natural Gas, any issues with nuclear plants which San Onofre certainly has, makes them quite unattractive to the utilities. I suspect it will also affect construction of renewable power systems as well.

 

[Robert.Boston]

Interesting post on Bravenewclimate, letter sent to the Select Committee on the Port Augusta Power Stations, which is considering what to do about two Australian coal power plants. It's long, but does a good job of explaining (in no uncertain terms) why nuclear power is needed.

The Adelaide area is perfect for very high quality ocean hydrokinetic energy. Much cheaper than nuclear.

 

[eledille]

My understanding is that with the lowered cost of Natural Gas, any issues with nuclear plants which San Onofre certainly has, makes them quite unattractive to the utilities. I suspect it will also affect construction of renewable power systems as well.

Seems to me that Edison fought hard to keep the plant running. Once again, litigation from the anties succeeds in making continued operation unattractive.

The decision to close it down was due to several factors. The plant would likely need improvements to be allowed to continue operating beyond the current license expiring in 2022. Those improvements might have proved to be prohibitively expensive and a license renewal would certainly face litigation. Thus any repairs would have to pay off within that time. Edison requested permission to run the reactor whose steam generator wasn't leaking at 70 % of capacity while repairing the other. When this was denied, keeping the plant running might not pay off within 2022.

The worst case scenario would have been another harmless steam leakage, but the anties successfully argued that running at 70 % capacity would be an experiment, which would require a full safety review. That would take a long time, which would cost big money.

According to Wikipedia, Sierra Club Director Kathryn Phillips applauded the move, saying in a statement that "We hope, especially, that the utilities will take this opportunity to help get more locally generated renewable energy, such as rooftop solar, into their portfolios."

A Norwegian saying comes to mind: Every little helps, said the mouse as he peed in the ocean.

The Adelaide area is perfect for very high quality ocean hydrokinetic energy. Much cheaper than nuclear.

Why aren't they building that, then?

a) You need to store a large chunk of that hydrokinetic energy for future use when the ocean is calm, and they don't have any hydro resevoirs. Is it still cheaper when you include the cost of non-hydro energy storage? Do the wave collectors last as long as an NPP?

b) Wave power is overrated, because you can only collect it once, as the wind needs thousands of km of ocean to create good waves. So all you get is a single line along the coast, and there usually isn't enough coastline per citizen. I haven't done the calculations for Australia, but it doesn't work out for Britain, even though Britain is ideally positioned: Ch 12 Page 73: Sustainable Energy - without the hot air | David MacKay. The energy density is high, though, so it might be commercially attractive anyway, but don't think that it can replace fossil or nuclear.

 

[Robert.Boston]

Remember that all forms of generation require backup. Nuclear power plants are typically off-line about 10% of the time for planned refuelings, maintenance, and unplanned outages. Ideally the planned outages occur during low load periods, but forced outages can occur any time. Here in New England, the operating reserve requirement of 1,200 MW is set at that level to guard against the potential outage of Seabrook Nuclear Generating Station (and the plant's output is capped at 1,200 MW, even when conditions would otherwise permit some incremental generation). These very large, single-shaft generators create their own reliability issues, which is why some are pushing for small-scale reactors that can be distributed more broadly on the grid.

I'm really not against nuclear, btw, but it's not the perfect solution. (Neither is wave energy, but waves are much more stable as an energy source than wind or solar.) Unfortunately, with the price of natural gas so low here in the US, the impetus for nuclear development is basically dead here. The owner of a prime site for a new nuke, at Calvert Cliffs, Maryland, told the Energy Bar Association last week that a new nuke there would be $2bn NPV cash negative by their current forecast. And that's counting all the current subsidies available to nuclear here in the US. Needless to say, they're not planning on building the new Calvert Cliffs plant.

 

[eledille]

Remember that all forms of generation require backup. Nuclear power plants are typically off-line about 10% of the time for planned refuelings, maintenance, and unplanned outages. Ideally the planned outages occur during low load periods, but forced outages can occur any time. Here in New England, the operating reserve requirement of 1,200 MW is set at that level to guard against the potential outage of Seabrook Nuclear Generating Station (and the plant's output is capped at 1,200 MW, even when conditions would otherwise permit some incremental generation). These very large, single-shaft generators create their own reliability issues, which is why some are pushing for small-scale reactors that can be distributed more broadly on the grid.

With nuclear, fossil or hydro, you have to have maybe 15 to 20 % reserve capacity. That's completely different from wind, wave and solar.

Wind fluctuates unpredictably between almost zero and 100 % with a period of multiple weeks. There is also a large day-to-day variation. To create a reliable power grid from this, you have to have 100 % reserve generation capacity (wattage), and the storage system supplying this energy must have sufficient capacity (watt-hours) to keep the generators running at almost full power for weeks. In addition to this, you also have to increase installed primary generation capacity to well beyond 100 % of the base requirement, because you also need to recharge the storage system when the wind is actually blowing (sun shining, waves crashing). Such a system would be insanely expensive.

Even just storing solar power from the daytime for use during the night is very expensive. Waves are linked to wind. If there's little wind, there will quickly be no waves either. There is a time lag of a couple of days, though.

Germany, and apparently Australia too, thinks that it can get a CO2 free power grid without nuclear. That is an illusion, it's simply not possible, because not even Germany has anywhere near enough money to pull it off.

I'm really not against nuclear, btw, but it's not the perfect solution. (Neither is wave energy, but waves are much more stable as an energy source than wind or solar.) Unfortunately, with the price of natural gas so low here in the US, the impetus for nuclear development is basically dead here. The owner of a prime site for a new nuke, at Calvert Cliffs, Maryland, told the Energy Bar Association last week that a new nuke there would be $2bn NPV cash negative by their current forecast. And that's counting all the current subsidies available to nuclear here in the US. Needless to say, they're not planning on building the new Calvert Cliffs plant.

And with Friends of the Earth sending in the lawyers at every opportunity, even just keeping an aging and somewhat rickety nuclear plant running becomes difficult. Foes of the Earth would be a more fitting name.

But if carbon was priced at USD 50 per ton, a 1 GW CCNG plant would be paying about 200 million per year, and the picture would be quite different.

World Nuclear News story on San Onofre.

 

[hj-45]

I hate to be such a 'Debbie Downer' on this thread..... but now there are 100. After winning their court battles, Vermont Yankee to close.

NEW ORLEANS, Aug. 27, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- Entergy Corporation (NYSE: ETR) today said it plans to close and decommission its Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power Station in Vernon, Vt. The station is expected to cease power production after its current fuel cycle and move to safe shutdown in the fourth quarter of 2014. The station will remain under the oversight of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission throughout the decommissioning process.

(Logo: ENTERGY CORPORATION LOGO - PR Newswire Photos)

"This was an agonizing decision and an extremely tough call for us," said Leo Denault, Entergy's chairman and chief executive officer. "Vermont Yankee has an immensely talented, dedicated and loyal workforce, and a solid base of support among many in the community. We recognize that closing the plant on this schedule was not the outcome they had hoped for, but we have reluctantly concluded that it is the appropriate action for us to take under the circumstances."

The decision to close Vermont Yankee in 2014 was based on a number of financial factors, including:

•A natural gas market that has undergone a transformational shift in supply due to the impacts of shale gas, resulting in sustained low natural gas prices and wholesale energy prices.
•A high cost structure for this single unit plant. Since 2002, the company has invested more than $400 million in the safe and reliable operation of the facility. In addition, the financial impact of cumulative regulation is especially challenging to a small plant in these market conditions.
•Wholesale market design flaws that continue to result in artificially low energy and capacity prices in the region, and do not provide adequate compensation to merchant nuclear plants for the fuel diversity benefits they provide.
Making the decision now and operating through the fourth quarter of 2014 allows time to duly and properly plan for a safe and orderly shutdown and prepare filings with the NRC regarding shutdown and decommissioning. Entergy will establish a decommissioning planning organization responsible for planning and executing the safe and efficient decommissioning of the facility. Once the plant is shut down, workers will de-fuel the reactor and place the plant into SAFSTOR, a process whereby a nuclear facility is placed and maintained in a condition that allows it to be safely secured, monitored and stored.

"We are committed to the safe and reliable operation of Vermont Yankee until shutdown, followed by a safe, orderly and environmentally responsible decommissioning process," Denault said.

Commenting on the future of nuclear power, Denault said: "Entergy remains committed to nuclear as an important long-term component of its generating portfolio. Nuclear energy is safe, reliable, carbon-free and contributes to supply diversity and energy security as part of a balanced energy portfolio."

Financial Implications

Entergy plans to recognize an after-tax impairment charge of approximately $181 million in the third quarter of 2013 related to the decision to shut down the plant at the end of this current operating cycle. In addition to this initial charge, Entergy expects to recognize charges totaling approximately $55 to $60 million associated with future severance and employee retention costs through the end of next year. These charges will be classified as special items, and therefore, excluded from operational results.

The company noted that the estimated operational earnings contribution from Vermont Yankee was expected to be around breakeven in 2013, and generally declining over the next few years. As a result of this decision and based on continuing operations into fourth quarter 2014, the estimated operational earnings change, excluding these special items, is expected to be modestly accretive within two years after shutdown, and cash flow is expected to increase approximately $150 to $200 million in total through 2017, compared to Vermont Yankee's continued operation.

Regarding decommissioning, assuming end of operations in fourth quarter 2014, the amount required to meet the NRC minimum for decommissioning financial assurance for license termination is $566 million. The Vermont Yankee decommissioning trust had a balance of approximately $582 million as of July 31, 2013, excluding the $40 million guarantee by Entergy Corporation to satisfy NRC requirements following the 2009 review of financial assurance levels. Filings with the NRC for planned shutdown activities will determine whether any other financial assurance may be required and will specifically address funding for spent fuel management, which will be required until the federal government takes possession of the fuel and removes it from the site, per its current obligations.

Vermont Yankee, a single unit boiling water reactor, began commercial operation in 1972. Entergy acquired the plant from Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power Corporation in 2002. In March 2011, the NRC renewed the station's operating license for an additional 20 years, until 2032.

Additional information regarding today's announcement is available in the Frequently Asked Questions section of Entergy | The Power of People.

Entergy Corporation, which celebrates its 100th birthday this year, is an integrated energy company engaged primarily in electric power production and retail distribution operations. Entergy owns and operates power plants with approximately 30,000 megawatts of electric generating capacity, including more than 10,000 megawatts of nuclear power, making it one of the nation's leading nuclear generators. Entergy delivers electricity to 2.8 million utility customers in Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas.

Additional information can be accessed online at
Entergy | The Power of People.

 

[nwdiver]

I've worked around nuclear power my entire adult life. First the US Navy and now commercially. Four years ago I thought fission was the future. Even once fuel for "light water" U235 reactors was depleted we have thousands if not millions of years worth of "Fast" U238 reactor fuel sitting around the country already mined and refined, the depleted uranium by-product of the enrichment process. But... Nuclear is nearly dead. It's simply too expensive. The Balance of System cost of solar is expected to be ~$1 per watt by 2020. NOTHING can compete against that. The future is bright... just not for nuclear power.

 

[eledille]

Building a stable electricity system with wind and/or solar alone is not possible. You need to include either the cost of a massive backup system or a massive transmission system or both.

Wind and solar currently seem inexpensive because they're allowed to use existing generating capacity as a backup for free. Much like fossils seem cheap because they're not required to pay for the damage their CO2 emissions is causing.

See the exchange between VolkerP and me starting here: Nuclear power - Page 4

 

[Robert.Boston]

Nuclear is a poor choice to integrate wind and solar. These units are not designed to ramp up and down rapidly, as is needed to balance intermittent renewables. And because they have a huge fixed cost and relatively trivial marginal generation cost, it's uneconomic to ramp them below max capacity.

Hydro (pondage or pumped storage) is the best way to integrate renewables, followed by natural gas or petroleum units. Unfortunately we don't have good enough inter-area control systems to allow, say, Quebecois dams to provide inter-hour balancing for New England wind turbines. Fortunately, the western US is working on a regional balancing energy system, which should markedly help renewables integration there.

 

[eledille]

Traditional reactors have no trouble ramping if they have to, but running at partial load will over time result in uneven reactivity in the core, which means that you need a fresh core load sooner.

Prism and other fast reactors can ramp up and down extremely rapidly, however. They do so automatically - if you extract more heat, the core contracts when the temperature falls. Fewer neutrons escape and the reaction speeds up. This happens within minutes, so you can just control power to the turbine and the reactor adjusts itself.

Also, the French have been running their nukes in load-following mode for decades, using "grey" control rods in those reactors that have a relatively fresh core load at any given time.

Finally, if renewables had to pay for backup and carbon was taxed, then nukes would be competitive even if they had to run at partial power some of the time. Then CO2 free electricity would be achievable.

This is a question of politics, not technology.

 

[macpacheco]

Remember that all forms of generation require backup. Nuclear power plants are typically off-line about 10% of the time for planned refuelings, maintenance, and unplanned outages. Ideally the planned outages occur during low load periods, but forced outages can occur any time. Here in New England, the operating reserve requirement of 1,200 MW is set at that level to guard against the potential outage of Seabrook Nuclear Generating Station (and the plant's output is capped at 1,200 MW, even when conditions would otherwise permit some incremental generation). These very large, single-shaft generators create their own reliability issues, which is why some are pushing for small-scale reactors that can be distributed more broadly on the grid.

I'm really not against nuclear, btw, but it's not the perfect solution. (Neither is wave energy, but waves are much more stable as an energy source than wind or solar.) Unfortunately, with the price of natural gas so low here in the US, the impetus for nuclear development is basically dead here. The owner of a prime site for a new nuke, at Calvert Cliffs, Maryland, told the Energy Bar Association last week that a new nuke there would be $2bn NPV cash negative by their current forecast. And that's counting all the current subsidies available to nuclear here in the US. Needless to say, they're not planning on building the new Calvert Cliffs plant.

Most water cooled nuclear plants do require periodic shutdowns for fuel shuffling and replacement of old fuel with new ones. But those activities are scheduled, taking place in periods of lower grid demand.

Canadian CANDU reactors have robotic systems that perform those operations online. Fluid fuel reactors are fueled and have their fission products removed completely online (IFR and LFTR reactors).

Still reactors do require some periodic maintenance that requires them to be shutdown (even CANDUs) but it's like less than 2 weeks every 3 years.

But all of that is old school nuclear, the stuff that was developed for nuclear submarines and improved upon very little. Canada only designed heavy water CANDU because the USA refused to give them all the tech.
The problem isn't nuclear fission technology in general it's high pressure reactors (water or gas cooled). Your typical water cooled reactor operates under 150 atmospheres of pressure, it's a huge pressure cooker.
There are much better options, namely the LFTR (Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor) that operates under ambient pressure, is refueled and has its fuel reprocessed for fission products, all online. And is designed to be installed in smaller reactor modules (typical water cooled reactors at 1000MWe or more, while LFTRs are planned to use 250MWe modules), so to have a 1000MWe plant there would be 4 smaller reactors, meaning that only one would be shutdown for maintenance at a time (which should be even less frequent than every 3 years).

I disagree with most of the anti-nuclear rethoric, the one factor anti-nuclear guys got right is nuclear is like GPS. We don't have GPS because the US government wanted a civilian positioning system, they wanted a military system, and decided it was good military public relations to make it available for civilian usage. 99% of nuclear research was for military usage, the remaining 1% for civilian usage was all cancelled (exactly the Thorium LFTR research). Even IFR reactor research was driven by it's capacity to turn lots of U-238 into plutonium.

Unplanned shutdowns can still happen, but they are very rare, mostly due to natural disasters (actual or predicted).

Nuclear produces power when we want it to produce. Solar and Wind produces when it has sunlight and wind, regardless of civilization needs. Coal and Natural gas plants also have maintenance shutdowns.

It's a pity we don't have a grown up conversation about nuclear. Pandora's Promise is a movie everybody needs to watch, even if you hate it and don't change your mind one bit. It has flipped millions of people from anti nuclear / on the fence to pro nuclear.

- - - Updated - - -

Nuclear is a poor choice to integrate wind and solar. These units are not designed to ramp up and down rapidly, as is needed to balance intermittent renewables. And because they have a huge fixed cost and relatively trivial marginal generation cost, it's uneconomic to ramp them below max capacity.

Hydro (pondage or pumped storage) is the best way to integrate renewables, followed by natural gas or petroleum units. Unfortunately we don't have good enough inter-area control systems to allow, say, Quebecois dams to provide inter-hour balancing for New England wind turbines. Fortunately, the western US is working on a regional balancing energy system, which should markedly help renewables integration there.

Germany's plan to go green is a one trillion euro plan. That's 16 billion EURO per GWe. New nuclear plants are being built anywhere from 1 billion USD per GWe to 4 billion USD per GWe (outside the crazy NRC nuclear over regulation). Nuclear isn't cheap, but it can be cheaper even than coal, the real problem is an egg-chicken problem. The anti nuclear lobby (the greens plus big oil) caused the NRC to stop being only a safety organization and made into an anti-nuclear monkey wrench. The Anti Nuclear folks viciously attack the Vogtle-GA reactor costs, and ignore the running count of construction interruptions due to the political decisions and NRC stupidity. How much do you think it costs of keep paying the workers to do nothing ?

First we need to clear up the safety concerns, cost is easy to solve it we start building hundreds of reactors per year, otherwise without scale and with the NRC current anti-nuclear attitude, there's just no point in building more nuclear power.

- - - Updated - - -

Actually, even if you consider the current worst case prediction for Vogtle, it's still one third per GWe than the German plan !

- - - Updated - - -

The biggest barrier to building new nukes is the uncertainty about regulation -- what standards will be applied for design and construction? where can the waste go? how many times will my application be held up and reevaluated? DOE tried valiantly to streamline the regulations, but it's not clear that you can pin down something that opponents want to make a constantly moving target.

(This is from my perspective as someone whose team is working/has worked on regulatory approvals for Vogtle, Indian Point, Calvert Cliffs, and South Texas.)

DOE tried valiantly to streamline the regulations ?
Even if one builds a new reactor that have another 10 exactly the same in full operation, you still need to repeat most of the process that applied to the first one.
I'm a pilot, and I'm appalled by the FAA certification requirements on new aircraft designs, until I found out that's small potatoes compared to new nuclear certification.
The real problem is those folks habits are rooted in US Navy nuclear stuff, which you all know, nothing in the military is done efficiently, specially when it comes to paperwork.
The NRC refuses to fully certify a nuclear reactor design, and then only inspect that the work was done within the specs.
It's like very new reactor installation is like a one of a kind reactor is all respects. And they will bill the nuclear operator at US$ 300/hr for their tens of thousands of hours of studies and inspections.

- - - Updated - - -

Uh, no. That would use orders of magnitude more energy than could ever be extracted from the fuel. Never mind that it would be unsafe.



I'm all for solar power, but it's not clear that it can ever amount to a sizable fraction of generating capacity. Certainly without grid storage it cannot.

Standard light water cooled nuclear reactors only use 0,7% of total nuclear power in the nuclear fuel (and that's not counting even for the U-238 that was removed during enrichment).
So the old school nuclear industry proposes the IFR reactors (GE S-PRISM). But there are a few things we need to know about IFR reactors.
First they require at least 10 times the nuclear material inventory inside the reactor. Lots of that is cheap fertile U-238, but at startup it requires many times the fissile U-235/Plutonium/Americium/Curium (than a light water reactor). GE literature says if we startup S-PRISM only with LWR SNF (light water reactor spent nuclear fuel) then all SNF is the world is only enough to startup 20 or 30 reactors. Starting up a PRISM with new nuclear fuel requires way more uranium than a LWR.
Second, IFR reactors are cooled by molten metallic sodium. Sodium burns in contact with air, and explodes in contact with water. Of course this doesn't happen in the course of normal operations, but it makes a rupture in the reactor a significant safety concern. I agree with GE that the anti nuclear pundits overblow this, but still it's a very undersirable characteristic.
Finally, IFR reactors are still low temperature reactors. Which means they are only about 33% efficient in thermal to electricity conversion (with the remaining 66% of the heat going into a large body of water), and it's low temperature makes it unsuitable for providing industrial process heat (that burns quite a bit of natural gas otherwise).

There's just one proposed solution that combines IFR 99% fuel burnup, that is high temperature, low pressure, uses a coolant that is as stable as possible (a salt), and uses nuclear fuel that is 4 times more common than U-238 (2000 times more common than U-235), and is essentially free. Thorium Molten Salt Reactors, specifically the LFTR reactor (Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor). Finally, a LFTR reactor can use as little as 700Kg of fissile material (actually much less than a similarly powerful LWR), so there less nuclear stuff inside the reactor.

Why is the fuel essentially free ? Like IFR, there is no enrichment process and solid fuel fabrication costs (LWR solid fuel costs 3x the price of uranium ore today). IFR takes in Uranium/Plutonium dioxide directly. LFTR takes Thorium Fluoride directly. Finally, Thorium is currently a very undesirable byproduct of rare earth mining, it's literally preventing rare earth mining due to insane EPA regulation on Thorium handling. Obama blames the Chinese on monopolizing rare earth production, when the reality is we stopped mining it here due to the Thorium insanity. Once we have a use for the Thorium, mining can restart, storing the Thorium becomes a problem of the LFTR operators (they will gladly take Thorium Phosphate for free and deal with it).

 

[macpacheco]

reprocessing is illegal

Reprocessing was banned for a while, but it has been legal in the US for since sometime in the Reagan administration.
As everything in energy, it's about cost. It's cheaper to mine new uranium and enrich it (than reprocess old fuel), in the end you need to make the fuel in both cases.
It's the same problem with getting rid of coal. Nuclear needs to be much cheaper than coal, so that even if 2/3 of the world coal mines where shutdown, the remaining cheapest 1/3 would still make coal more expensive than ultra cheap nuclear.

- - - Updated - - -

I suppose I should have written "the only other option available outside of Greenpeace's fantasy world".

Of course it's physically possible to store wind energy for use when the wind isn't blowing. The problem is that it would cost at the very least twice as much as the windmills alone. That's if you can build the required pumped hydro storage capacity. Please try the calculations for any other sort of storage and see what happens, I've done one example of that earlier in this thread, with storage based on electrolytically produced hydrogen converted to methane. Before thinking about batteries you should know that there isn't enough lead in the entire world to store a couple of weeks of US demand using lead-acid batteries. Please also try to do a realistic calculation of what kind of hydro reservoirs would be required to supply 90 % the US electricity demand for two weeks, which is the absolute minimum of what would be required, then start thinking about getting permission to start building the dams.

Norway and Iceland are the only countries in the world to have almost 100 % renewable electricity supply. Norway's water reservoirs are so enormous as to be able to deal with three consecutive dry years - and yet we still get in trouble from time to time! Then we have to rely on imported fossil and nuclear energy and high electricity prices to make supply match demand. And our problems are simple compared to those of wind, because our storage capacity makes a steady trickle of imported energy help a lot, but wind can vanish entirely and all of a sudden throughout a whole continent.

Replacing nukes and fossil at the same time using wind and solar without either at least 90 % nuclear or fossil backup or truly massive storage systems is actually physically impossible, unless you're prepared to accept blackouts lasting many days to weeks on a regular basis. Politically that would be totally impossible. People die when power is gone for more than a few days.

My Brazil could run on 100% renewables, even with 100GWe of peak demand. Heck we already run 70% Hydro, 10% natural gas, 10% coal+oil, 10% nuclear+wind+solar+biomass.
If we had just 20% of German's tenacity, we could move to 70% hydro, 10% nuclear, 10% wind, 10% solar in a decade, instead of having pumped hydro, just uprate some of our dams, so we can produce more electricity when it's raining a lot (and the wind is tiny), or in the night when the sun isn't shining. It would actually mean our hydro generators must be able to peak at 90% of our total electricity consumption worst case.

We're particularly gifted that our hydro and wind complement each other perfectly. When it's raining a lot wind is dead, when it's dry, wind is humming.

But Brazil is known for it's contrast of a few very bright people and a vast majority of bovine people that only care about carnival, soccer, sunbathing and working every now and then. 2/3 of our population 20-25 doesn't have a high school diploma.

The serious side of Brazil joke that god gave us amazing natural resources, but balanced it out with our people.

 

[Johan]

Macpacheo: great analysis and I agree with you on almost all points. However I see a role for 4th gen. IFRs too: all the current nuclear nations should build a few of these and take care of their current nuclear waste (from old 1st and 2nd gen. reactors) in these IFRs. After running life is up (30-50 years?) you just use the deep hole you dug when building the reactor/breeder facility and put your end products there, cover with concrete. As you know the waste from say 30 years of running a 4th gen IFR would ammount to maximum a few tonnes and best of all is that all though the isotopes are quite radioactive their half-life is short (on average a lot less than 100 years).

 

[nwdiver]

The problem with Nuclear Power is cost; ~$0.07/kWh and rising. Solar PV is ~0.04/kWh and falling.

 

[macpacheco]

The problem with Nuclear Power is cost; ~$0.07/kWh and rising. Solar PV is ~0.04/kWh and falling.

That's a big fallacy. You need to compare Nuclear with the cost of providing electricity around the clock.
Add the battery storage costs to run 24x7 on Solar (including the winter months), and that price shots around five fold in lattitudes like Germany, Boston, NYC, Seattle. In order to have 5kW worth of peak consumption, you would need 25kW of panels and 50kWh worth of storage.
Solar with battery storage is far more viable in equatorial areas, that essentially are always on summertime.
The only reason Solar PV is viable today is they have natural gas and coal as its backup.
One country that did huge investment and have the stats to show for it is Germany.
Solar PV in Germany produces about 25% of nameplate capacity in it's best days, but in the winter drops to less than 2%.
That would be the same case in NYC, Boston, Chicago, Seattle.
But for the southern most states of USA it's not so bad, but it would still go from 25% summer to less than 10% winter.
The only thing shutting down coal right now is natural gas and energy efficiency.
In a way, energy efficiency is the only argument that hard core green people use that is really economical (with EVs being part of energy efficiency).
Even Elon admits the USA should be building more nuclear, with billions of reasons (Solar City) to be against nuclear.
If the hard core greens believed their plan to be viable, they would migrate all of Hawaii electricity to solar, wind and biomass (they use low efficiency oil themal for baseload, essentially the least efficient way possible for baseload).

And wind turbines have power output cubic to wind speed until about 45Km/h winds (where it levels off). 20Km/h winds is 10% output, 35Km/h winds is 50% output. So a simple drop from 45Km/h (100%) to 35Km/h (50%) halfs power output. Consistent winds above 35Km/h are very difficult to find, resulting in about 20% year round efficiency for wind farms.

The Germany clean energy plan is one trillion euro, for a 60GWe peak demand. And 20GWe was already hydro or biomass to begin with. So they are going to replace 40GWe worth of coal, natural gas and old nuclear at 16 billion euro per GWe. Even at the costliest nukes in USA, it can still be done at 1/3rd this cost with new nuclear. If we just had a referendum to go nuclear and sanitize all the NRC over regulation, nuclear can be built at US$ 2 billion per GWe, or the Germany plan for US$ 80 billion (initial investment), then another US$ 80 billion to operate for 40 years then shutdown, still US$ 160 billion. The South Koreans built state of the art Westinghouse AP1000 for less than 40% of this price.

The real problem with nuclear is they get attacked from both sides of the isle. Democrats are against it to please Green Peace, Republicans say they don't care, but behind the scenes they conflate with big oil/gas/coal to make nuclear life's as hard as possible.

I could go on for hours. Nuclear plus electric vehicles is the only real solution to climate change.

 

[VolkerP]

The problem with Nuclear Power is cost; ~$0.07/kWh and rising. Solar PV is ~0.04/kWh and falling.

That's a big fallacy. You need to compare Nuclear with the cost of providing electricity around the clock.

Correct. But using the cost of building a nuclear power plant is a fallacy, too. Insurance of nuclear power plants today is no where near what it would require to cover the cost of a 300 miles diameter circle piece taken out of a densely populated & industrialized region. Plus nuclear waste disposal and plant decommissioning costs missing, too.
I concede that LFTR might greatly reduce costs for handling and disposing nuclear fuel, while greatly reducing the risk of operation, too.

BTW throwing around large figures based on a nation's scale help little in the discussion. I think $ per kWh is a much more meaningful way.

 

[macpacheco]

I don't need the trillion dollar figure to make my point.
The pro nuclear folks say that even with one trillion euro, the plan will fail (without huge nuclear electricity imports from France, and other nuclear neighbors). I think they are biased, as I refuse to accept their statement that the Germans are stupid (I have a lot of respect for German quality and competence). But time will tell.
If my argument was wrong, you could correct the solar and wind efficiency argument, and the fact that Germany don't have enough pumped hydro capacity potential to offset short periods of windless nights (no matter how rare).
Let me tell you about nuclear insurance. Every USA Nuke is required to carry it. The Price Andersen act simply shifts the cost of ensuring against nuclear accidents to the nuclear operators instead of the residential and industrial entities around it. The only time this type of insurance was used in the USA was on Three Mile Island, and there's a large pot of reserve insurance money put aside (in the billions) that just sits there.
The huge decommissioning costs you alude are a sole consequence of nuclear over regulation due to the adoption of no linear threshold models.
That's another big falacy too.
If no linear models had a shred of logic, there would be lots of cancer deaths from three mile island, fukushima radiation deaths, a order of magnitude more cancers from Chernobyl.
Just starting up 20 IFR nuclear reactors would suck in all nuclear spent fuel in the world. I'm not a big fan of Sodium cooled fast reactors, but they should be a little safer than water cooled thermal ones. GE S-PRISM literature tries to sell the idea that we need lots more light water reactors so that we can start lots of IFR reactors in the future without mining uranium. Their argument is we need more spent nuclear fuel (I don't like it BTW).
I was exposed to more yearly alpha radiation from decay of Thorium from age 9 to 19 than a nuclear employee is allowed to, like 10 times more, every year. My mom has been exposed to that much for 25 years of her life. My family owns a condo in Guarapari-ES-Brazil, that reads as much as 50uSv/s of radiation, higher than the guys from Pandora's Promise were able to find walking around the Fukushima Daichi plant. And we're not one bit scared, because the residents there get even more radiation, and there's no elevated pattern of cancers. Matter of fact Guarapari is called "Cidade Saude" or "City of Heath". People go there because the radiation helps relieve chronic health conditions.
Studies show that sailors working close to nuclear sub reactors have less cancer than the sailors farther away (eating the same food, breathing the same air).
Studies show that mice shielded from background levels of radiation life shorter lives than mice subject to natural levels of radiation (and mice exposed to higher radiation from higher elevations live even longer).
Studies show that there's less cancer levels in Salt Lake City and Denver than at sea level USA cities with similar air pollution levels.
If radiation were that bad, we would have to ground the airlines, since they get outrageous levels of cosmic rays in their typical flight levels.
Every smoke detector in the US uses Americium, one of the nastiest transuranics produced in nuclear reactors. Get a Geiger counter close to a smoke detector and it goes up like crazy.
Every glowing exit sign and watches that glow naturally at night use tritium (ultra heavy hydrogen, used in thermonuclear weapons). People literally walk around while getting tritium radiation.
Coal plants even with the best filtration systems output about two orders of magnitude more radiation from uranium and thorium on the coal than a nuclear plant will ever be allowed.
The problem with Nuclear cost is a direct result of USA, Germany and other nuclear regulatory agencies being infiltrated with people that have a fundamental anti nuclear position, with total disregards to scientific facts.
One interesting statement that even if we could redirect 100% of all electrical batteries in the world, it wouldn't be enough to store 10 minutes of the world electrical production capacity. We need days worth.

 

[Robert.Boston]

Nuclear plus electric vehicles is the only real solution to climate change.

I think you underestimate the pace of improvement in non-nuclear renewable technologies. My view, FWIW, is that we will be taking an "all of the above" strategy, combining nuclear with various renewables (solar, wind, hydro, ocean wave/tide, geothermal), plus storage and smart demand-side controls.

There's a real challenge created by the fact that we don't use electricity perfectly smoothly across the day/year. While we can ramp nuclear and other high-capital/low-operating cost resources up and down to match demand, it's not how we've normally done so. It's just not efficient, and in many cases it's rough on the equipment.

One cannot underestimate the importance of choosing a technology that is socially accepted. There is no way, no waythat you could permit a nuclear facility in California or New England today. Perhaps after other places deploy new, safer nuclear technology, but not in this decade. Renewables can begin to address the carbon issue today.

 

[macpacheco]

I'm not saying no to solar and wind.
I'm saying the German plan of "no nuclear, period" is ultra expensive, and not a smart one. It's actually bad for the environment.
Nuclear takes a long time to be executed, so wind and solar is a far more immediate solution to reduce coal emissions. But this needs to be admitted and adopted (start planning new nuclear now, while we install what we can of solar and wind, but without the illusion that we don't need nuclear, we do).
The German plan was to first shutdown nuclear, then do something about coal and natural gas, because all of their nuclear reactors don't load follow.
They're using their pumped hydro to take advantage of wind and solar overproduction, yet pumped hydro is a much more useful for nuclear, since nuclear shutdowns are largely planned, with nuclear, hydro pumped can be drained throughout the day/early evening and reloaded in the night, with solar and wind, you need to keep a large reserve for whenever the wind dies and its night, and even then you end up with large overproduction because there isn't enough pumped hydro to take all the extra production in.
Plus solar is smart for Italy, Spain, California, Florida, but it's stupid for Germany, Boston, NYC, Chicago, Seattle. North of 40N and South of 40S lattitudes, there's too little sun in the winter.
Also, light water nuclear isn't very good for load following. The French do it, but it's only doable on freshly loaded reactors, it causes nuclear fuel to be used unevenly, and it requires design changes to reactors, which are always complicated to do just from a documentation/certification perspective.

Yet, how many nuclear reactors are in construction in North America. There's a single one in construction in Brazil. Only China, India and South Korea are really investing on Nuclear. French and Brazil essentially already have a green electricity grid, with around 80% clean sources. Where are the new nuclear in the USA, Canada and the UK ?

Many keep saying they are ok with nuclear, but let a few large nuclear plants be shutdown for political pressure. We need to fight those radical anti nuke guys.

> There is no way, no way that you could permit a nuclear facility in California or New England today.
So, the USA is ANTI NUCLEAR. You're just pretending to be ok, because you're just slowing killing it off.
The real problem is we those people don't think with their heads, they think with their emotions. There are many other serious problems, which are the result of that.
If you are afraid of nuclear safety, then never, ever fly in an airliner again, take the train or a ship. There's a risk flying with the airlines (less than driving) yet we accept it (even though like nuclear, we don't really control it).
That's why I investigated a lot about new nuclear, radiation and nuclear safety before I took a pro nuclear position. My conclusion is I have zero problem with a nuke two miles from my home. I don't want to live like two blocks from one (I believe every nuke must buy like a half a mile radius of land as a buffer zone, and invite all the anti-nuke guys to go there with geiger counters and challenge them to show where is the radiation). Nuclear is safe. You should worry about chemical plants, fertilizer plants, oil refineries, gas pipelines, and many other things way more than living near a nuke. The whole reason I want a 2 mile distance is in case of a real accident, day to day, I would live two blocks from a nuke, no problem.

 

[Robert.Boston]

> There is no way, no way that you could permit a nuclear facility in California or New England today.
So, the USA is ANTI NUCLEAR. You're just pretending to be ok, because you're just slowing killing it off.
The real problem is we those people don't think with their heads, they think with their emotions. There are many other serious problems, which are the result of that.
If you are afraid of nuclear safety, then never, ever fly in an airliner again, take the train or a ship. There's a risk flying with the airlines (less than driving) yet we accept it (even though like nuclear, we don't really control it).

It's really helpful to realize that the US is one country but several nations -- attitudes about some pretty fundamental things vary sharply by region. Some parts of the US are fine with nuclear, some are not.

Nuclear risk has a hold on the popular imagination that is irrational but real. The very, very low risk of killing millions and rendering state-sized areas of the country uninhabitable for decades or centuries weighs heavily in public debate. See, e.g. the debate about the Indian Point nuclear station, conveniently located 40 miles from New York City and upwind of most of New England.