In his state of the union address, President Obama said:
"But to create more of these clean energy jobs, we need more production, more eficiency, more incentives. And that means building a new generation of safe, clean nuclear power plants in this country."
Nuclear power plants can never be clean or safe as long as radioactive material is mined and processed and waste is generated. Even some members of Congress with good environmental records are jumping on the nuclear bandwagon under the rationale that it doesn't emit greenhouse gasses and we have to compromise somewhere. That's like saying plastic bullets won't give you lead poisoning. True as far as it goes, but misleading and beside the point.
Nuclear power generates CO2 emissions during mining, milling, conversion, enrichment and fuel fabrication stages. As concentration of uranium in the ores that are mined diminishes, the CO2 emisssions from nuclear power will continue to rise. Substituting nukes for coal plants as opposed to true clean energy sources, will greatly accelarte that process. People, corporations and even some environmental groups want to ignore the carbon emitted from nukes because to do otherwise makes the challenge of reducing carbon harder. Ignoring the facts, however, fixes nothing.
Water, water you need and use, is degraded and poisoned by the fuel cycle for a nuclear power plant. According to the Union of Concerned Scientists water is used to absorb wasted energy which is generated as heat. For every three units of energy produced by the reactor core of a U.S. nuclear power plant, two units are discharged to the environment as waste heat. The impacts on the bodies of water next which most plants are located is considerable. From UCS's excellent report "Got Water? Nuclear Power Plant Cooling Water Needs":
"Nuclear power plants, whether using once-through or closed-cycle cooling, withdraw large amounts of water from nearby lakes, rivers, and oceans. In doing so, aquatic life is adversely affected. A 2005 study, for example, of impacts from 11 coastal power plants in Southern California estimated that the San Onofre nuclear plant impinged nearly 3.5 million fish in 2003 alone - about 32 times more fish than the other 10 plants combined. Untold numbers of fish larvae and other life entrained in the water do not survive journeys through nuclear power plants. The more water the plants use, the more aquatic life we lose."
And by "large amounts" we mean 500,000 to more than 1,000,000 gallons of water per minute when the plant is in operation. That's a lot of water any way you look at it. But look at it in the context of drought, increasing demands for agriculture, development and drinking water and you start to see the scale of the problem.
Uranium mining makes extensive use of water to leach the uranium out of the ore through a chemical process. The water used in that process is discharged back into the environment. For those who do the work of mining, milling, converting and enriching the uranium, there is a greatly increased risk of lung cancer and other disease due to exposure in every step of the process.
Have I mentioned that nuclear power's highly toxic, carcinogenic, deadly radioactive waste, is generated by the megaton worldwide, needs to be stored in secure facilities protected from leakeage and terrorists for thousands of years and, that the technology for doing so does not exist? Not a minor consideration.
Finally, if the only thing you care about is the cost of energy, Nukes fail you there as well. The Nuclear industry could not exist, would not be cost efficient, without massive government subsidies and special protection from liability. According to Daniel J. Weiss of the Center For American Progress, speaking of the President's current budget proposal:
"The budget will seek at total of $54 billion in loan guarantees for nuclear power. This would require a $36 billion increase over the existing $18.5 billion for nuclear loan guarantees, a program created under the Energy Policy Act of 2005 - none of which has been issued yet."
And loan guarantees are just the beginning. The Nuclear industry is heavily subsidized by the Federal Government (i.e. you) for liability insurance. Some estimate the cost as approaching $100,000,000,000 (One Hundred Billion).
If Nukes were required to get their own financing at market rates, completely cover their liability and pay the full costs of protecting ecosystems and human health, the economics of nuclear power would become clear very quickly. Without those artificial price supports, this carbon-emmitting, water-poisoning, cancer-causing, toxic-waste producing technology wouldn't even be under consideration as a rational way to generate power.
Nuclear energy is not a reasonable, medium term, pragmatic compromise to reduce greenhouse gases. It's a dangerous, flawed technology propped up by subsidies and a distorted view of the costs and impacts. It cannot reasonably be considered as anyone's idea of clean and safe energy.
Follow John DeCock on Twitter: www.twitter.com/jdecock
Nukes are still insane.
1. +10 Population Drop (cheap front end, max. potential contrib. 70%),
2. +10 Conservation (cheap, 0 ramp up, max. potential contrib. 50%),
3. + 5 LFTRs (10 year lag, costly gin-up, max. potential contrib. 80%),
4. + 3 Wind (prime-time, pricey, max. potential contrib. 15%),
5. + 1 Solar (not quite prime, pricier, max. potentail contrib. 20%),
6. - 10 Clean Coal (1 more black hole, max. potential contrib. rotfl ).
Funny, no one here seems to wanna talk about options 1 and 2.
Anybody wanna take a swing at tidal, geothermal, waves, photosynthetic nanotech, or rotfl - hydrogen generation or fusion power?
But I digress. The point is:
no matter what's claimed about various techno-options, they're all far more costly to implement than contraception and conservation. And w/o far-future tech, the planet cannot indefinitely sustain nor do we, in any way, need 6.8 billion people, let alone a coming 9 or 10 billion.
Check: http://www.withouthotair.com/download.htmlhttp://www.withouthotair.com/download.html
http://www.solar-estimate.org/index.php?page=rightforme&subpage=submitdata&type=electric&utilityid=215&updatecost=1&energypercent=50&perwatt=4
even at 4$ per Wp installed, it works out to less than 2 cents per KWH, and only 8k$ cash up front,
saving up to 4 k$ per year for a paypack of 2 years.
So running the calculator with a 3.2 kw array in phoenix, it came out with a 28K cost less 9K in government subsidies and 24 cents a kwh before subsidies.
Where do you get these absurd figure from. 2 cents a kwh, 2 years payback?
you won't separate out the subsides and insurance Nukes need, why should I for Solar?
No comparison on the co2 water use etc of solar versus nukes and fossil.
ThinFilm 2$ per watt panels us about 1 kg per meter water in their construction, and nothing after that.
Read the full environmental cycle costs for solar:
http://www.nrel.gov/pv/thin_film/docs/20theuropvscbarcelona4cv114_raugei.pdf
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/users/profile/research?action=profile
hydro 2, nuclear 2, wind 7, solar 13,biomass 15,
Now that we have that soccer stadium full of the world's nuclear waste, oddly it appears the only way to deal with it is to build a bunch of generation 4 nukes like the the IFR and LFTR that will burn it for fuel. IFR's at $1B/Gw could supply all the world's power for hundreds of years on existing nuclear waste - no more uranium mining. The tiny amount of low level waste ( a shower stall) from IFR's is safe enough to put back in the mine. Google Kirsch 221796 for details.
Also the money spent on US nuclear R&D has had ancilliary effects to our national economy such as nuclear medicine, material sciences, fabrication processes and billions of kilowatt-hrs of fossil-free electricity.
There is approximately 95% of the inherent energy remaining each "spent" fuel rod. This is not a typical definition of "spent". That material is waiting for recycling or reprocessing. IFR or similar technologies will do more to decrease any terrorist threat then leaving nuclear fuel bundles in the ground. Volume reduction is the key, not letting it sit for hundreds of years or for 10,000 years as was proposed for Yucca Mt which the UCS was advocating. Who knows what Las Vegas will look like 500 years from now let alone 10,000 years from now. We have solutions to proliferation issues now so lets use them instead of hiding our heads in the sand.
I would suggest you read a well written counterpoint by Dr. Ted Rockwell whose figures show that solar recieved approximately $24/MW while nuclear received approximately $1.50/MW based on 2006/2007 EIA data.
http://learningaboutenergy.com
If they aren't competitive without gov help after 50 and 100 years, they never will be.
99% of the nuke waste CANNOT be burned in other reactors, and burning it actually creates MORE curies and waste, but of a shorter lifetime.
Nuke's mess is going to cost us quadrillion's of dollars over a million years.
4 times longer than Homo Sapient, Modern Humans, have existed.
spend a trillion on green upgrade for all appropriate gov building.
rooftop pv solar in the best ares is 3 cents per kwh, the cheapest electricity the end user can invest in.
see my profile for proof and links.
By the way for anyone who is interested take a look at SMUD's website for the real cost of installed solar from a utility that has been doing it for years and is motivated to do it.
http://smud.cleanpowerestimator.com/default.aspx
Interesting calclulator and put together by people who make a living installing rooftop solar. Also indicates how much power will be offset by rooftop solar which means it shows how much will still need to be purchased as well.
Still does not show that rooftop solar will somehow save us from having to invest in new nonfossil fuel baseload generation plants. Large baseload will be required for 24/7/365 power, wind and solar will always be limited by time of day and weather conditions.
"99% of the nuke waste CANNOT be burned in other reactors, and burning it actually creates MORE curies and waste, but of a shorter lifetime."
This is of course bunk that you just made up. But make my day quote a source.
Rooftop solar is 25 cents a kwh in Phoenix using Research's own fire sale prices.and it just doesn't get any better. If every household in America had a 10 Kw array mounted it would meet 3% of America's energy needs.
Based on the following BPA website, which shows the 7-day rolling real time wind generation from the Columbia River Basin, there will be many days gas turbines are running. That means millions of gallons of water for natural gas fired steam generators will be needed in areas where the Ogalla aquifer is losing ground assuming a large increase of wind farms in the Midwest.
http://www.transmission.bpa.gov/Business/Operations/Wind/baltwg.aspx
There are 19 large scale power plants that use once through cooling in California based on one article I read. There are only two operating nuclear power plants in CA. That makes 17 non-nuclear steam fired plants requiring millions of gallons of water. Yet somehow UCS is only focused on the nuclear plants when it comes to waste heat discharges. I find that a politically oriented, not an environmentally oriented position.
More combined cycle natural gas turbines will be needed to back up renewables if we do not use nuclear so I see no net change in water usage in the long run.
And I haven’t even discussed hydrofracking of the Marcellus natural gas field or the distinct possibility that nuclear power can be used to distill water as is commonplace on US Navy ships. What is the UCS position on those issues?
The key lies in decentralization and diversification via a "smart grid",
If we spread out the wind production in select areas around the country where the wind is most reliable, add in solar in spot locations (deserts obviously), put geothermal power plants along the ring of fire, add tidal along the coast, and we can signficantly decrease the need for backup. Throw in electric cars, along with "filling stations" where you swap the batteries out, all of the them plugged into the grid when not in use for storage and backup, and all of a sudden we've got an energy solution. http://www.betterplace.com/
On the other hand, we can build nukes and plan (i.e. pay) for risks and consequences, including groundwater contamination from mining, thousands of years worth of waste continually stockpiling, thermal issues and pollution, security and safety threats. And mitigating these risks won't stand without being propped up on the back of taxpayers. No utility in their right mind would shoulder the burden on their own. Warren Buffet (Hathaway) spent $30 million to study nukes a few years back, and rejected them because they weren't worth it.
Decentralization of what? You need something to decentralize. Are you proposing to decentralize wind? That won't work and has been hashed out many times. Besides I really do not want to experiment on a global scale. And didn't we discuss geothermal and tidal in another post?
Baseload power generation will always be required despite what Amory Lovins believes.
If you are talking about the latest "green" plan from Europe take a look at the fine print:
A. They HOPE to have it functional next decade
B. They are looking at the grid for only 20% for the first phase of their power not 100%. 100% hopefully happens in 2050 based the publicly reported plan.
C. The price tag starts at $40 billion. Greenpeace believes lower but then they really do not have project management or construction experience do they.
AND
D. The entire report I saw on the CNN website was from EWEA. EWEA is the pro-wind association for Europe. That would be just like a report from the NEI or some other pro-nuclear organization saying we can be 100% on nuclear by 2050.
The water for coal, solar boiler,biomass,nuclear and gas plant heats a few degrees in a cooling tower and returns to the source. The damage is of course tiny compared to the bird kills and concrete and metal leaching from offshore wind.
Now that we have that soccer stadium full of the world's nuclear waste, oddly it appears the only way to deal with it is to build a bunch of generation 4 nukes like the the IFR and LFTR that will burn it for fuel. IFR's at $1B/Gw could supply all the world's power for hundreds of years on existing nuclear waste - no more uranium mining. The tiny amount of low level waste ( a shower stall) from IFR's is safe enough to put back in the mine. Google Kirsch 221796 for details.
Loan guarantees are paid for by the industry at rate set by the GAO based on cost. After Shoreham where a Greenpeace sponsored village selectman was able to cancel the license for a just built nuke plant, no investor will trust the Nuclear Rejection Commission.
There is the same very limited liability on American dams, rocket launches, and military ship reactors. Without legislation American attorneys would be suing nuclear plants if an employee spilled his coffee -a low level nuclear spill. And with American juries they' d win.
Do you think windmills and solar cells magically appear. Get serious.
Solar cells are made of and require the mining of some very toxic materials.
Solar and wind can only be 20-25% percent of the grid so where do you think the rest comes from, clean coal?
Do some research before you post such silly thinks.
This link from MIT is about Thorium nuclear reactors, which Senate Leader Harry Reid supports.
Thorium reactors offer no possibility of a meltdown, generated its power inexpensively, create no weapons-grade by-products, and burnt up existing high-level waste as well as old nuclear weapon stockpiles. Thorium fuel can be modified to be used in current nuclear reactors
http://www.technologyreview.com/energy/19758