Stewart Brand On Colbert (VIDEO): Is Nuclear Power Green 'Because That's The Color We'll Glow?'

Stewart Brand has been around since right around the inception of the environmental movement. He's best known for the Whole Earth Catalog, published between 1968 and 1972, which listed thousands of tips and products for leading a sustainable life, ushering in an alternative lifestyle that forgoes the "system" and emphasizes a DIY mentality.

Brand has since renounced some of his old idealism, trading it in for what he calls ecopragmatism. Brand appeared on The Colbert Report to discuss his new book, Whole Earth Discipline: An Ecopragmatist Manifesto, and why he thinks nuclear power is the way to get us off fossil fuels.

"Thirty years ago, the environmental movement sort of decided some things, and it hasn't changed much since, and the world's changed a lot," Brand said. "So I think now that cities are green, nuclear power is green, genetically-engineered crops are green..."

"Wait," Colbert cuts him off. "Nuclear power is green? Why, cause that's the color we'll eventually glow?"

Brand argues that nuclear doesn't put out as much greenhouse gases as coal, making it a good alternative.

"But, you used to be against nukes," Colbert points out.

What changed?

WATCH Brand make his argument on nuclear power, oil, and "clean" coal:

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Stewart Brand
www.colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor Fox News

Quick Poll

Is nuclear power green?

It can never be green, think of all the waste!

Yes, it's a good alternative to fossil fuels

Yes, because we'll all glow green

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Comments

[Michael Mann]

08:09 AM on 05/30/2010

When you analyze the total lifecycle emmissions of greenhouse gasses, the versatility, reliablity and safety, nuclear is the obvious choice to meet our future energy needs. Look at this independent study on lifecycle emmissions. http://www.p2pays.org/ref/37/36486.pdf

[research]

01:52 PM on 05/24/2010

It is amazing to me, that the defender of nuke power, want to point out how safe the nuclear submarines are as proof of how safe for profit reactor would be, a flawed concept from the start, because of greed.

Then They want to nitpick my statement about the several nukes sunk off our coast.

When the facts are: 8 nuclear submarines sit at the bottom of the oceans around the world.

Out of less than 500 total nuclear subs ever.

that's a worse record than the 500 power reactors.

[Cardhu1]

03:28 PM on 05/24/2010

It isn't "nitpicking" at all. It has nothing to do with any anti- or pro-anything agenda. It is presenting the facts that you constantly persist in distorting, misstating, and misrepresenting.

You first tried to vaguely claim that all of these "several submarines" were "off the US coasts." That claim was refuted by stating _where_ exactly all of these submarines actually sank.

You also tried - and are still trying - to falsely link these submarine sinkings to their nuclear reactors. It has been repeatedly presented - with references - that these submarines sank from the following causes:

- Two sank by hull penetration flooding;
- Two sank by onboard fire;
- One sank by missile liquid fuel explosion;
- One sank by torpedo liquid fuel explosion.

[research]

03:43 PM on 05/24/2010

you still want to skip the big point:

Nukes are not safe.

Not on land,

not in submarines.

You want to claim it's not the reactors fault, so what? it's still sitting on the bottom of the oceans.

You want to claim the Atlantic and pacific oceans aren't off our coasts?

take any disaster and add Nuclear power to it, and it becomes a super disaster.

Earthquakes bad, earthquakes that destroy reactors, or waste or reprocessing plants: Apocalyptic Disaster.

[research]

03:51 PM on 05/24/2010

Threashers nuclear reactor's long restart time, doomed the Threasher.

"At the time, reactor-plant operating procedures precluded a rapid reactor restart following a scram, or even the ability to use steam remaining in the secondary system to "drive" the ship to the surface. After a scram, standard procedure was to isolate the main steam system, cutting off the flow of steam to the turbines providing propulsion and electricity. This was done to prevent an over-rapid cool-down of the reactor. Thresher's Reactor Control Officer, Lt. Raymond McCoole, was not at his station in the maneuvering room, or indeed on the ship, during the fatal dive. McCoole was at home caring for his wife who had been injured in a freak household accident — he had been all but ordered ashore by a sympathetic Commander Harvey. McCoole's trainee Jim Henry, fresh from nuclear power school, probably followed standard operating procedures and gave the order to isolate the steam system after the scram, even though Thresher was at or slightly below her maximum depth and was taking on water. Once closed, the large steam system isolation valves could not be reopened quickly"

http://campaigncasuals.com/ssussthsupam.html

[Michael Mann]

07:33 PM on 05/25/2010

All of the people who signed the Declaration of Independence are dead today - therefore signing documents is 100% fatal! Can't you see the flaw in your argument? The truth is, only an extremely clean, reliable power source could power a submarine for months at a time with no physical harm to the crew. The US nuclear navy safety record is amazing, I am sorry you cannot understand that fact.

[research]

10:52 PM on 05/25/2010

8 sitting at the bottom of the ocean, leaking radiation..

that's your idea of safe?

[research]

12:48 PM on 05/10/2010

Sunken nuclear submarine off the US coast.

Threasher "causing the reactor to SCRAM." which caused it to sink and get crushed.

but somehow the pro nuke folks think the nuke had nothing to do with the sinking...

And they still want to claim that submarines show we can handle nuke safely.

[charles77]

04:44 PM on 05/10/2010

Research,

That's is really bad. The nuclear power plant did NOT cause that sub to sink. Subs go up and down by flooding ballast tanks to go down and then "blowing" that water out to rise.

The actual cause has been determined to be ice crystals blocking a valve that stoped them from blowing the ballast tanks, look it up.

Subs do not "sink" do to engine failing, nuclear or not.

[research]

02:01 PM on 05/11/2010

that sub failed because the nuke shut down in a crisis.

[research]

08:07 PM on 05/11/2010

I just read the reference below that says that some water shorted a DC bus and that scrammed the reactor. why don't you all agree on what story you are going to go with?

[Cardhu1]

08:44 PM on 05/10/2010

At first research tried to claim:

"What about the several nuclear sub [sic] whose reactors sent them to their graves just off the American coasts?" (02:10 PM on 5/09/2010 in this topic.)

History proves that no accidental nuclear submarine sinkings occured off _any_ American coast. The closest one - Thresher - is in international waters in the Atlantic Ocean. All the others but two occured in the Atlantic. The remaining two sinkings occured in the Barents Sea and the Norwegian Sea.

So there are no "several" accidental nuclear submarine sinkings "off the American coasts."

Now research is backing away from trying to claim "several" sinkings and just claim one - THRESHER (not "Threasher") - as proof his speculation.

The facts about THRESHER, again. Previously posted in Cardhu1 on 9 May 2010 at 20:45:55 and May 09, 2010 at 20:46:16 in this topic.

USS THRESHER 9 April 1963
Location: 220 miles east of Boston in 8,400 feet of water. That is 100 miles _beyond_ American coastal waters. THRESHER was on sea trials.

Cause: Joint failure in a salt water pipe on sea trials. It was a LEAK that flooded the engineering space.

(cont'd)

[research]

02:02 PM on 05/11/2010

oh, it ok because it's in international waters????

It's always something that causes the accident.

[Chase Price]

02:58 AM on 05/10/2010

What about the fossil fuels used to mine the uranium ore and process and refine the ore?

If you factored in this fossil fuel and then considered the limited energy potency of a given amount of uranium, does it then make sense that uranium is a good global warming energy alternative?

[fabco]

09:51 AM on 05/10/2010

Another pro for Thorium.

Let's compare uranium to thorium mining and waste streams:

http://photos1.blogger.com/x/blogger/4956/2802/1600/543356/wastegen1.png

http://photos1.blogger.com/x/blogger/4956/2802/1600/688088/wastegen2.png

[sethdayal]

10:27 AM on 05/10/2010

Real data from japan/sweden/finland has shown old nuclear technology to have the same lifetime CO2 emissions/gwh as wind and about 30% of solar - ignoring the enormous amount of GHG's burned to load balance wind and solar. Google it.

New nuclear tech uses much less carbon per gwh and is far more efficient in its uranium use.

[research]

12:50 PM on 05/10/2010

solar pv zero GHG.

Nukes have million years deadly waste, for which there is no known safe storage method.

goggle it.

[WarriorLemming]

09:39 PM on 05/09/2010

Hello? Where are the wind turbines and solar panels I heard so much about two years ago? My patience is wearing thin FAST! And I read that auto dealers aren't taking hybrids too seriously anymore, either. Where is the administration all of this isn't President Obama pushing for more green keeping feet to the fire, c'mon.

[research]

02:36 AM on 05/10/2010

http://www.ecobusinesslinks.com/solar_panels.htm

[direct democracy]

08:29 PM on 05/09/2010

Chernobyls here at home and cancer forever increasing, or BP type spills. Brand has lost it.

[terris]

08:58 PM on 05/09/2010

Doomsayer poppycock! Our power plants are too big to fail!

[sethdayal]

09:25 PM on 05/09/2010

You must be using the same scientists as the global warming deniers do.

With negative coefficients of reactivity in modern reactors a Chernobyl is scientifically impossible.

There is no link peer reviewed reputable journal published link between modern reactors and cancer.

[sethdayal]

02:11 PM on 05/09/2010

I was extremely disappointed in Steward Brand in this interview on two levels.

He just doesn't have the charm and speaking/debating ability to be an effective presenter.

Secondly it almost seems he's been bought off or given an offer he couldn't refuse from the nuclear denier team at Big Coal/Oil

First he claimed coal was cheaper than nuclear.

Here are recent coal,NG and US/Chinese nuclear builds with public power finance and excluding O$M

Longview Power Coal $4B/Gw or 6 cents a kwh
Salt River Coal $3.4B/Gw or 4.3 cents a kwh
Enmax NG $1.0B/Gw or 4.1 cents a kwh
Candu,Nuclear $2.0B/Gw, 1.5 cents a kwh.
AP1000 Nuclear $1.2B/Gw, 1.3 cents a kwh.

Near term expect costs to drop under $1B/Gw and ten years from now gen IV to $.3B/Gw.

Obviously coal and NG is far more expensive than nuclear when the onerous political, finance,legal and regulatory hurdles facing nuclear power in the US is removed.

Clean coal is nonsense as Brand well knows.

Coal kills several million people every year. With "cleaner" coal those emissions would be cleaned up quite a bit only a few hundred thousand dead people - nice!!. The deadly toxic radioactive coal ash would fill Lake Erie forty feet higher every year with coal ash from Canada and the US. Cleaner coal changes this not a wit.

[tekno2600]

04:10 PM on 05/09/2010

Those are absurdly low numbers cost estimates for old, full-depreciated nuclear plants, or hypothetical plants no one can build here for that price, much less pay the full cost of the risk of accidents, terrorism, waste disposal, and decommissioning. How about real cost numbers, like Florida Power and Light estimating that a new 2.2 GW nuclear reactor was going to cost it $12-18 billion? Quit living in nuclear fantasies of the past. It is the most expensive and dangerous form of power ever devised, bar none. The cost of nuclear has never gone down, like you dream about here. It has only gotten more and more expensive. It also depends on cheap supplies of fuel, which is often mined in environmentally unsafe ways and it getting more expensive all the time.

[sethdayal]

05:56 PM on 05/09/2010

These are real costs. You need to do some research before you post - I've given you some links to start. Even reading previous posts might help you learn.

"risk of accidents, terrorism, waste disposal, and decommissioning." are all covered in a small per kwh fee which is assessed by the NRC. Once again all covered in previous posts. Read and learn!!!

Florida Power is corruption, regulation, financially, and legally crippled. Its cost structure is many times higher than efficient public financed operators like Bonneville

Bonneville and TVA with low borrowing cost can build close to Chinese prices. We do compete with them on airplanes.

You seem to be in favour of killing three million folks a year with your coal plants because of your nuclear fears.

Nuclear fuel is just a tiny part of the cost of nukes, it can be replaced with thorium,. and by Greenpeace standards everything is mined in environmentally unsafe ways - like the hugh amounts of steel and concrete required for wind.

The new Westinghouse AP1000 is begin built in China for $1.2/Gw which is around 1.5 cents a kwh. Both AECL and Westinghouse are claiming 3 year builds at under $1B/Gw once orders get into the scores and factory production begins.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601080&refer=asia&sid=aJPyNB5Q_Fr0

SCANA and Vogtle AP1000 new units are under $4.5/Gw and these are for first of a kind.

[research]

07:15 PM on 05/09/2010

no, nukes are infinite per KWH, since they increase the risk of proliferation and nuclear war.

Nukes are the most environmentally damaging technology ever created, with million year waste for which there is no known solution.

solar wind and waste bio fuels can supply several times the worlds energy needs forever. 3-6 cents bussbar.

MIT and pretty much every serious study of the cost of nuke power comes in over 25 cents per KWH, and10$ per watt. you keep listing government subsidized foreign costs, without construction, waste, insurance and decommissioning costs, just fuel and maintenance.

But I guess that's your job....

[sethdayal]

09:18 PM on 05/09/2010

Since nuclear power has nothing to do with nuclear weapons your statement is a canard but you keep making it over and over again ad nauseum..

Coal is the most damaging technology killing millions each year. Apparently they are paying your salary. Your wind and solar are next as they keep the coal burning forever and require the burning of copious quantities of GHG and radon spewing natural gas.

Again you missed the decimal point on your wind solar as I have proven with actual build costs over and over again. See my earlier post. Latest Cape Wind feed in tariff 21 cents a kwh going to 33 over 15 years. Biomass is a joke. Might supply enough power to heat a few cities before permanently damaging the soil.

Does this incessant repeating of nonsense make it true for you?

MIT used old nuclear builds from the seventies and added inflation cost. There are dozens of cost of new builds now available proving them dead wrong.

Why would the Chinese government subsidize a foreign company? Did you hit your head on something?

The $B/gw are construction costs and are similar to the cost of US builds in 2010 dollars before the NRC reared it's ugly head.Waste, insurance and decom costs are small compared to fuel and O&M.

[Cardhu1]

07:27 PM on 05/11/2010

Re: "... nukes are infinite per KWH, since they increase the risk of proliferation and nuclear war."

It was solidly established in the "Human Cost of Nuclear Power" topic with reputable references, quotations, and solid facts that:

- Commercial nuclear power is not a prerequisite for nuclear weapons. In actual fact, all five of the nuclear states developed atomic weapons 4-15 years before developing commercial nuclear power.

- Commercial nuclear power does not support nuclear weapons programs. To the contrary, Uranium-235 is collected using separation methods. Plutonium-238 was mostly produced in special purpose breeder reactors because long-term exposure pf Plutonium-238 in commercial reactors produces undesired Plutonium-239. The point is moot now because most weapons-grade material comes from recycled warheads.

[rf-hawaii]

08:03 AM on 05/09/2010

All energy is subsidized.

Among other things, nuclear energy is insured by the federal government. When an accident happens the government responds and pays the bulk of the bill. How much would response to a bad nuclear accident cost? How many billions?

How much would response to a bad wind farm accident cost? How many thousands?

Wind, solar and other renewables are already way way way cheaper than nuclear or oil.

[fabco]

09:51 AM on 05/09/2010

LFTR is not under pressure, can't meltdown, can't release radiation into the air even if core breached. Potential for bad accident avoided. Anybody else find this increase in safety level impressive?

http://energyfromthorium.com/2006/04/22/a-brief-history-of-the-liquid-fluoride-reactor-2/
"Response to accidents or sabotage. A properly-designed LFR can withstand accidents of tremendous magnitude such as a breach of vessel and containment, whether intentional or accidental. If the fuel salt were inadvertently exposed to the outside environment through a combined breach of containment and vessel, the salt would freeze and occlude fission products in the salt as stable fluorides... Thus reactor operators could conceivably turn off all power and walk away from a full-power reactor and it would passively “safe” itself without incident."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molten_salt_reactor

"MSRs can be safer. Molten salts trap fission products chemically, and react slowly or not at all in air. Also, the fuel salt does not burn in air or water. The core and primary cooling loop is operated at near atmospheric pressure, and has no steam, so a pressure explosion is impossible. Even in the unlikely case of an accident, most radioactive fission products would stay in the salt instead of dispersing into the atmosphere. A molten core is meltdown-proof, so the worst possible accident would be a leak."

[research]

07:18 PM on 05/09/2010

on paper...They don't exist. And they won't for 10-30 years, and still 1000 times more radioactive than today's LWR, still and great teaching tool for budding bomber makers, and still a terrorist target

Solar wind and waste bio fuels can replace fossils and nukes in 12 years for 3-6 cents per kwh: clean safe, and forever.

[TheDodoBird]

11:44 PM on 05/08/2010

The amount of energy that is put into building a nuclear reactor is enormous. This alone, should be incentive to find alternatives. Oh yeah, and they also have a lifespan, that most plants exceed, endangering the lives of every one living around them. I come from an area that is in the middle of a Triangle of dormant death. We have 3 nuclear reactors surrounding the area, and at least one of them is MANY years past its lifespan. It is not an easy task to shut down a reactor and/or repair one so that it is back to code.

[sethdayal]

01:24 AM on 05/09/2010

A nuclear plant recovers its net energy input in a few weeks of operation.

Old plants will shortly be replaced with new more efficient units but until then they have an zero death unparalled safety record. Contrast that with the Connecticut gas plant that just blew up killing 6.

[research]

01:27 PM on 05/09/2010

Prove "A nuclear plant recovers its net energy input in a few weeks of operation."

Let's see the link proving it.

[sethdayal]

02:30 PM on 05/09/2010

None of this will make no difference to Research as he never varies his schick.

http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf11.html

"input is thus 1.35% of output" over forty years 24 weeks for a old generation 2 reactor. Half that or 12 weeks for a more efficient Gen 3 unit.

The LFTR units require no pressure domes or expensive tubing and pumps and are many times as efficient in fuel use bringing energy recover times into the one or two weeks area

[Michael Mann]

03:30 AM on 05/09/2010

A reactor is very easy to shutdown, control rods insert in around 2 seconds and the reactor is shutdown. The "lifespan" of 40 years was an artificial number politically motivated, it was the legal system which came up with that number, not technical. There are NRC inspectors which reside at each site, ensuring they never are "outside of code". They are continually maintained and upgraded.
How many people have died in your "triangle of death"??? I didn't think so.

[research]

01:31 PM on 05/09/2010

TMI almost blew up. Old reactors have leaking and corroded pipes ready to burst where they cannot be inspected, that has been proven by the decommissioning of a few reactors.

"How many people have died in your "triangle of death"???"

You just make that NRC inspector lie up.

YET!!!!!!!! Yet, you just are blind to the systemic giant risks.

[ConcordiaStudent]

11:03 PM on 05/08/2010

THORIUM

While not technically radioactive enough to produce fuel, reactors can be built to convert it into Uranium. The good news is that during this process, the Uranium is liquefied and unable to be used for nuclear weapons. Thorium is much more abundant and the US is sitting on heaps of it! We've known about this process since the 60's, but the technology wasn't there. Today is different, and India is already committed to building dozens of these.
did I mention NO DANGEROUS MELTDOWNS
This is the Holy Grail and it's just PR firm away

[research]

07:26 PM on 05/09/2010

did you mention that the waste from Thorium cycle

is 1000 times as intense as current day reactors?????

did you mention that the LFTR can't be ready for 10-30 years???

[fabco]

10:18 AM on 05/10/2010

Are you ever going to list any technical reasons the LFTR can't be ready for 10-30yrs?

[Falconaut]

06:36 PM on 05/08/2010

Yeah like it doesn't generate green house gasses building these things at tax payers expense. Oh yeah lets just drill holes in the ground and pour cement on it, in 10,000 years or so it should be sort of safe... Great idea if you've lost touch with reality.

[sethdayal]

06:59 PM on 05/08/2010

Wind power with its erratic power flows, enormous land area, concrete and steel requirements has been shown to be almost useless. It would take wind farms taking up 300 square miles of land to replace a one acre 1 Gigawatt nuclear plant. Wind Power requires 60 times the steel and green house producing concrete of a nuke. It can be shown that wind power actually produces more CO2 than gas power plants alone because of the fast spooling low efficiency gas plants required to load balance the things.

[fabco]

09:21 AM on 05/09/2010

Wind power requires 10 times the steel, and 4 times the concrete for the same unit of power as compared to nuclear. This level of resource use, is definitely a limiting factor for thousands of Gigawatts of wind energy.

http://nextbigfuture.com/2008/03/deaths-per-twh-for-all-energy-sources.html

"The construction of existing 1970-vintage U.S. nuclear power plants required 40 metric tons (MT) of steel and 190 cubic meters (m3) of concrete per average megawatt of electricity (MW(e)) generating capacity. For comparison, a typical wind energy system operating with 6.5 meters-per-second average wind speed requires construction inputs of 460 MT of steel and 870 m**3 of concrete per average MW(e). Coal uses 98 MT of steel and 160 m**3 of concrete per average MW(e); & natural-gas combined cycle plants use 3.3 MT steel and 27 m**3 concrete."

[research]

01:35 PM on 05/09/2010

bs, you forgot the waste disposal and mining and refining and decommissioning.

and you can't use the concrete and street again for hundreds of years from a nuke.

off shore wind takes zero land, and creates great aquatic habitats.

[sethdayal]

07:28 PM on 05/08/2010

The nuclear waste gets burned up as fuel in gen IV reactors. The waste from these is so low level you could shove it back in the mine.

[research]

01:33 PM on 05/09/2010

they don't exists, and won't for 10-30 years even if we are stupid enough to pursue them.
The paper reactors are 1000 times are radioactive.

[sethdayal]

02:40 PM on 05/09/2010

Same old now matter how many time you get shutdown.

One of many new and operating gen iv reactors

http://www.business-standard.com/india/news/india%5Cs-first-fast-breeder-reactor-to-be-delayed/385625/

Can you give us a link to the greenwash where you get that absurd 1000 times. Or like most stuff did you just make it up?

[jmoneymiff]

03:46 PM on 05/08/2010

What happens when we have another George Bush elected president? A sizable percentage of Americans support the tea party, and the Congressional Budget Office estimates that nuclear companies will default on loans for new reactors 50 percent of the time:

"CBO considers the risk of default on such a loan guarantee to be very high—well above 50 percent. The key factor accounting for this risk is that we expect that the plant would be uneconomic to operate because of its high construction costs, relative to other electricity generation sources."

Nobody will want to dish out the big bucks, so the government will do it. And when the next George Bush is in office, with his VERY incompetent high-office bureaucrats, will we be safe from a terrorist attack?

[fabco]

06:20 PM on 05/08/2010

What is it that is going to cause defaults? NIMBY? Runaway construction costs?

Certainly it can't be the cost of producing electricity once the plant is online. At approximately a billion dollars per Gigawatt on the wholesale dispatchable power market, even a 10 billion dollar plant comes in with a pretty good ROI and becomes a money printing machine thereafter. Recent plant completions worldwide were closer to 2 billion. Less than 5 year ROI seems pretty good for a money printing machine.

[jmoneymiff]

08:20 PM on 05/08/2010

As said in the quote, construction costs.

[fabco]

06:24 PM on 05/08/2010

Zero co2 emissions entitles a nuke plant to how many co2 credits? Throw in some carbon credits or taxes, and see how fast LWR's get built over coal plants.

[research]

01:37 PM on 05/09/2010

wrong. mining, decommissioning. not zero, not clean, not cheap, not safe.

we need to tax curies created. a dollar per curie?

[sethdayal]

02:49 PM on 05/09/2010

Research just can't get anything right
Real data from japan/sweden/finland has shown old nuclear technology to have the same lifetime CO2 emissions/gwh as wind and about 30% of solar. This ignores the enormous amount of GHG's burned to load balance wind and solar. New nuclear tech uses much less carbon per gwh and is far more efficient in its uranium use.

Google it.

[research]

03:19 PM on 05/08/2010

end fossil and nukes.

Green energy solar wind and waste bio fuels can supply all the world energy needs clean, safe, cheaper in the long run 3-6 cents, within 12 years, and forever.

nukes: not clean, not safe, not cheap, not ready,

nukes = proliferation = deadly million year intractable waste, = 12 years just to site and build 1 reactor, 50% default rates, doubling of the world background radiation, 25 cents electricity,

The nuclear
power option will only be exercised, however, if
the technology demonstrates better economics,
improved safety, successful waste management,
and low proliferation risk, and if public policies
place a significant value on electricity production
that does not produce CO2. Our study identifies
the issues facing nuclear power and what
might be done to overcome them."

http://web.mit.edu/nuclearpower/pdf/nuclearpower-full.pdf

MIT study concludes.

Nuclear power is not ready.

[sethdayal]

06:48 PM on 05/08/2010

Ya slipped a decimal point on your not so green technology that are really just a sales plan for more GHG and radon spewing natural gas plant. Latest Cape Wind contract proposal is 33 cent a kwh!!

The rest of your spew is answered and debunked in other posts.

Oddly the rest of the world has concluded the opposite with hundreds of nukes at costs under $1B/Gw under construction or planned. They should pull the tenure from those professors at MIT for incompetence.

[research]

01:48 PM on 05/09/2010

25 cent per kwh nukes 9$ per W average. http://energyeconomyonline.com/uploads/Is_New_Nuclear_Competitive_July_10_2009_FNS_Event.pdf

25 cents per KWH for new Nuclear.

http://climateprogress.org/2009/01/05/study-cost-risks-new-nuclear-power-plants/

10$ per W nuclear minimum.

http://climateprogress.org/2009/07/15/nuclear-power-plant-cost-bombshell-ontario/

but you may be correct about the cape offshore project, it looks to be no cheaper than nukes.

[rf-hawaii]

08:10 AM on 05/09/2010

Nuclear can't stand without subsidies.

[sethdayal]

03:11 PM on 05/09/2010

No subsidies at all at present. Compare that to the hundreds of billions on fossils and wind solar.

[research]

07:46 PM on 05/09/2010

yup, but the nuke pr folks will continue to list incremental operating costs: fuels and maintenance, as if they were levelized total cost.

[maslin]

11:38 AM on 05/08/2010

Ecopragmatist: YES. YES. YES.

If it is used in accord with its meaning, I am one, and will support anyone else who is.

It's good to shoot for the moon - and it's important to believe that you can - but you first might need to build a launch platform on top of the muck you are standing in.

A plus gold star.

[fabco]

11:12 AM on 05/08/2010

Everyone here is completely stuck thinking inside the box when it comes to nuclear power. The assumption is that the dangerous, meltdown prone, inefficient, water wasting, uranium burners we build today are the only kind we can ever possibly build. This is simply not the case.

The problem with nukes and cooling water is twofold. First, today's reactors cannot stand a loss of cooling water for even 10 minutes without melting down. Second, steam turbines used by all power plants, whether they are nuclear or not, must dump their heat somewhere.

A newer reactor design solves both issues. First, a newer safer reactor like the LFTR cannot meltdown, and requires no cooling water to prevent it. Second, Brayton cycle turbines that use helium gas instead of steam, can dump their turbine heat directly into the ambient air, instead of the river.

http://energyfromthorium.com/2007/07/19/nuclear-power-plants-in-utah/

http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2005AIPC..746..437L

[sethdayal]

11:16 AM on 05/08/2010

But for maximum thermal efficiency I expect they might need cooling water. The CCGT natural gas plant does anyway.

[fabco]

06:12 PM on 05/08/2010

Depends on how high your output temp is.

From the link above:

"Because if you have a large difference in temperature between heat addition and heat rejection, the Brayton can actually outperform the Rankine. This is because any working fluid you might choose for the Rankine cycle, be it water, mercury, potassium, etc, has basic thermodynamic limitations in its temperature range. The gases used in the Brayton cycle (typically helium or carbon dioxide) have far fewer, if any, such temperature limitations."

"But reactors that can achieve much higher coolant temperatures, such as the gas-cooled pebble-bed reactor or the liquid-fluoride reactor, can utilize Brayton cycles to their advantage, and they incur far less penalty when they raise their heat rejection temperatures to the point where they can use air-cooling for the reactor instead of water cooling."

[Krzysztof Kosiski]

12:18 PM on 05/08/2010

"The assumption is that the dangerous, meltdown prone, inefficient, water wasting, uranium burners we build today are the only kind we can ever possibly build."

Dangerous? Zero civilian fatalities from nuclear power in the US. I estimate less than 5000 total fatalities since the inception of nuclear power. Compare that to coal: 20 000 deaths annually in the US, 1 million deaths annually worldwide.
Meltdown prone? TMI was the only complete meltdown in history and had no off-site impact.
Inefficient? So is every other power source - you can't beat the Second Law of Thermodynamics.
Water wasting? So is coal, gas and solar thermal.

I agree that the next generations of reactors will be orders of magnitude better than current ones, but even the current ones are a very compelling proposition.

[fabco]

05:56 PM on 05/08/2010

I agree. I have previously posted this link in another topic showing Light Water Reactors have the best safety record of any electrical generation source currently in use.
http://nextbigfuture.com/2008/03/deaths-per-twh-for-all-energy-sources.html

However, we will soon need to increase the total number of nuclear power plants from hundreds to thousands. Doesn't it make sense to increase safety margins even further if we can?

The public has every right to feel concern if Mr. Burns and Homer were running a LWR nuclear plant with the same profit over safety motives sometimes seen with coal mines or offshore drilling. One mishap destroys a great safety record. Fear of catastrophic meltdown, and what to do with ever increasing amounts of waste, are the two objections most often heard about nuclear power. Even if those risks are low, they will increase over time with the number in use.

A fully operational LFTR, can solve both issues. Higher safety levels, less waste, zero emissions. So, isn't it time to try and develop it? I would certainly prefer living near a LWR nuke plant over a coal plant any day. However, I would prefer live next to a LFTR over a LWR, or IFR even more. How about you?

The only problem is we can't build LFTR's until there is a DoE approved design. Yet, that seems more of a reason to start working on it asap, than reason not to work on it.

[rf-hawaii]

08:18 AM on 05/09/2010

Interesting lies.

One of the worst aspects of nuclear power is secrecy. In America anything that happens at a nuclear plant can be deemed a National Security issue and made secret. This is what is done every time there is an accident. As soon as queries are made the veil of secrecy descends. Thus, no deaths in any of the nasty accidents.

There is no level of exposure to nuclear materials that is safe. Low levels surface much later as cancers and other maladies. Those cause deaths too, but don't get counted at all.