This essay below from Ralph Ellis was posted in comments a couple of days ago, and I decided to promote it to a full post.
For the record, let me say that I support some of the renewable energy ideas, even putting money where my mouth is, putting solar on my own home and a local school. However, neither project would have been possible without state subsidies. For renewable energy to work in our economy, it must move past the government subsidy stage and become more efficient. It took over a hundred years t create our current energy infrastructure, anyone who believes we can completely rebuild it with the current crop of renewable energy technologies is not realistic. – Anthony
Renewable energy – our downfall? By Ralph Ellis
The government, under pressure from a disparate confederation of environmentalists and greens, have agreed to press ahead with a host of renewable energy sources, including wind, tidal and wave power. Yet, despite the vast sums of public money that will be allocated to these projects and the fundamental enormity of the decisions that have been made, there has been very little in the way of open debate on the subject. Like many aspects of today’s governmental system, the powers that be appear to have made a decision about future energy production based upon image, spin and the number of votes the policy will capture, while ignoring the basic truths and science that should be the foundation-stone of any policy. Nobody has even debated the absolutely fundamental question of whether any of these energy generation systems actually work. The media’s reaction to this steamrollered, image-based decision-making process has been muted to the point of being inaudible, and I can only assume that either very few in the media have any grasp of the calamitous implications of the government’s policy, or they are cowering behind their desks for fear of losing their jobs.
So why, then, do I consider renewable energy to be a danger to the entire nation, both economically and socially? This is, after all, ‘free energy’, and what can be the problem with a free resource? Well, as readers will probably be fully aware, no resource is free even if it appears to be so, and this is the first of the many lies about renewable energy that have been peddled by industry spokesmen and government ministers. Oil is not free, despite it just sitting in the ground; water is not free, despite it falling from the sky; nuclear power is not free, despite the raw materials being ridiculously cheap, and neither is any renewable energy resource ‘free’. In fact, the conversion process from ‘free’ renewable energy to usable grid electricity is remarkably expensive and its enormous costs are being subsidised by the consumer. In the UK, this subsidy is achieved through Renewables Obligation Certificates, the cost of which are eventually passed onto the consumer. In 2006 the cost to consumers was £600 million, and this is predicted to rise to £3 billion in 2020. 1 That is about £200 per household per annum, on top of current energy bills, for the privilege of using of ‘free’ energy.
Now one might argue that that is not very much money to demand from the public, given the advertised prospect of clean, renewable energy that will fuel our homes and our economy for the next few generations. Power at the press of a button, and not a drop of noxious emissions of any nature in sight – just an array of perfectly silent, gently rotating wind-turbines stretching towards the horizon – it is dream-world picture direct from the cover issue of an environmentalist magazine, and the answer to a politician’s prayers. In one master-stroke the environment is magically healed, and votes are captured by the million – roll on the next election.
However, it is my belief that this sublime day-dream actually holds the seeds for our economic decline and for social disorder on an unprecedented scale. Why? Because no technical and industrial society can maintain itself on unreliable and intermittent power supplies. In 2003 there were six major electrical blackouts across the world, and the American Northeast blackout of August 14th was typical of these. The outage started in Ohio, when some power lines touched some trees and took out the Eastlake power station, but the subsequent cascade failure took out 256 power stations within one hour.
The entire Northeast was down onto emergency electrical supplies, and the result was social and economic chaos. Nothing, in our integrated and automated world, works without electricity. Transport came to a grinding halt. Aircraft were grounded, trains halted and road traffic was at a standstill, due to a lack of traffic lights and fuel. Water supplies were severely disrupted, as were telecommunications, while buildings had to be evacuated due to a lack of fire detection and suppression systems. Without any available transport, many commuters were forced to sleep in offices or in Central Park, and while the summer temperatures made this an office-adventure to remember, had this been winter the results of this electrical failure could have been catastrophic.
This is what happens to a major technical civilisation when its life-blood, its electrical supply, is turned off. Chaos looms, people die, production ceases, life is put on hold. Yet this was just a once-in-a-decade event, a memorable occasion to laugh about over dinner-parties for many years to come, but just imagine what would happen to a society where this happened every week, or if the power was cut for a whole fortnight or more. Now things are getting serious. Without transport, refrigeration, computers and key workers, food production and distribution would cease. Sleeping in Central Park on a balmy summer’s night is a memorable inconvenience, whereas fifty million empty bellies is getting very serious indeed. In fact, it is a recipe for violence and civil unrest.
But what has all this doom and gloom got to do with the government’s drive for renewable energy, you might ask? Well, the entire problem with renewables – almost all renewables – is that they are dangerously intermittent power sources.
Perhaps the first renewable source we should discuss is tidal power. Unfortunately, while tidal power initially looks like a dream power source of cheap, renewable energy, it suffers from massive variability in supply. The energy that it produces is tidal, and the tides are, of course, linked to the orbit of the Moon, with there being about two tides every day. This sinusoidal tidal pattern produces four slack periods during each day when the tide is turning, either at high tide or at low tide, and during these slack periods the tidal power system will not generate any electricity at all. Unfortunately, the energy that is produced is therefore delivered at set periods of the day which are connected to the orbit of the Moon, rather than our daily lives, and so the electricity produced is in no way synchronised with the electrical demand cycle. If these slack periods coincide with the 7-am and 7-pm peak demands for electricity, as they will several times a month, then the whole generating system is next to useless.
Since the energy produced earlier in the day cannot be stored, as will be explained later, extra generating capacity will have to be brought on-line to cover the deficiency. This means that for every tidal system installed, a conventional power station will have to be either built or retained to ensure continuity of energy supply. But this power station will have to be up and running all the time, what is known in the industry as ’spinning-reserve’, as it takes up to 12 hours to bring a power station on-line from a cold start-up. Thus if we are to maintain continuity of supply, this wonderful ‘free-energy’ tidal source actually results in twice the cost and saves very little in the way of hydrocarbon fuels. So, unless we are prepared to accept rolling power cuts across the country, which would result in the same chaos as the Northeast blackout, it is unlikely that we could ever successfully integrate large tidal power systems into the National Grid.
While tidal power may be predictably intermittent, wind power is even more problematical. Recent EU directives have stipulated that some 40% of electricity should be powered from renewable resources by 2020. If this were to be predominantly produced from wind turbines, as is likely, then we would need some 30 gigawatts (gw) of wind generating capacity. To put that figure in perspective, the UK currently has about 0.5 gw of wind capacity. However, that is not the full story, for UK wind turbines are only currently delivering about 25% of installed capacity, due to wind fluctuations and maintenance issues. That means we actually need some 120 gw of installed wind generation capacity to cover just 40% of total UK electrical demand. If the turbines being constructed average 2 mw rated capacity, then we shall need some 60,000 wind turbines to be installed over the next twelve years. And where shall we erect all those? – Certainly Not In My Back Yard.
But building thousands of wind turbines still does not resolve the fundamental problem, for the real problem here is the enormous scale of wind variability. I saw a wind-power spokesman the other week on the flagship BBC Hardtalk series, who claimed that the number of days without wind power in the UK were as rare as hen’s teeth – a comment that went totally unchallenged. Well all I can say, is that the hens in the UK must look like a Tyrannosaurus Rex.
The truth of the matter is that there are numerous days without significant winds across the UK, and when those conditions occur it doesn’t matter how much installed generating capacity we have, for it all goes off-line. A report from Denmark 2 indicates that the Danish ‘wind carpet’, which is the largest array of wind turbines in Europe, generated less than 1% of installed power on 54 days during 2002. That is more than one day every week of the year without electrical power. However, if we broaden the definition of ‘without power’ slightly, the same Danish ‘wind carpet’ generated less than 10% of installed capacity for some 16 weeks during 2003. Yet Denmark has the same kind of northerly, maritime weather systems as does the UK. Thus the wind-generation industry is lying to us, once more, for a ‘wind carpet’ that generates less than 10% of installed capacity it next to useless, for the national electrical grid will never cope with such a massive reduction in power supply. In fact, wind generation is so useless, that Denmark, Europe’s largest wind generating nation by far, has never used any of its wind-generated electricity – because it is too variable. It is almost impossible to integrate wind power into a normal generating grid, and so Denmark has merely exported its variable wind supplies to Norway and Sweden. 3 These nations can cope with these electrical fluctuations because of their abundance of hydro-electric power, which can be turned on and off quite rapidly, unlike most other generating systems.
This revelation, that wind power is totally unusable, brings us onto the other great lie of renewable energy proponents – the lie that renewable power can somehow be stored to cope with power outages. The first of these miraculous energy storage facilities, that is said to come to the aid of the thousands of wind-turbines that lie motionless across the entire nation, is the pumped water storage system. However, this claim is utter nonsense, and for the following reasons:
a. Our present pumped storage systems are already fully utilized in overcoming variability in electrical DEMAND, and so they have absolutely no extra capacity for overcoming variability in SUPPLY due to the unreliable wind and tidal generation systems.
b. Pumped storage systems currently only supply a very small percentage of the grid (about 5%) for just a few hours, while wind generation systems can go off-line for days or weeks at a time, as the Danish generation report clearly demonstrates. To put this argument into figures, the Dinorwig power storage system, the largest in the UK, can provide 5% of the UK’s power generation requirements (2.9 gw) for up to 5 hours before it runs out of water. (Thus the total capacity of Dinorwig is 14.5 gwh). If the UK was entirely dependent on wind power, a wind outage lasting just two days would require 140 storage stations with the same generating capacity as Dinorwig to maintain normal power supplies (assuming average UK demand of 1,000 gwh/day). As the Danish report confirms, power outages lasting a week or more are the norm, rather than the exception, and so if the UK generated a significant proportion of our electrical capacity from wind-turbines, as the EU has argued, the lights and heating systems would be going out, the computers going down and transport systems failing all over the country.
c. Pumped storage systems are not only hugely expensive to construct, the topography of Britain ensures that very few sites are available, and so we will never be able to store significant amounts of our energy requirements. These storage systems also tend to be situated in areas of outstanding natural beauty, and so – you have guessed it – the Greens oppose the very storage system they are promoting.
The same kind of argument can be sustained for flywheel energy storage, compressed air storage, battery storage and hydrogen storage – for each and every one of these systems is highly complex, very expensive, hugely inefficient and limited in capacity. The much hyped ‘Hydrogen Economy’ is one of these technological cul-de-sacs. It should be stated from the outset that hydrogen is not an energy source, but an energy storage system – a ‘battery’. The hydrogen has to be created before it is used, and it merely stores the energy that is flowing through the normal electrical grid. Unfortunately for the proponents of this clean ‘energy system’, hydrogen powered vehicles and generators are only about 5% efficient. A huge amount of energy is wasted in the production, liquification and storage of the hydrogen, and so hydrogen will not be propelling our cars, nor will it be storing energy for when the wind stops blowing. In addition, hydrogen storage vessels are highly flammable and potentially explosive, and I for one would rather have a nuclear power station on my doorstep than a hydrogen facility. However, the final unsayable truth about hydrogen powered vehicles (and electric vehicles) is that we would have to double or treble the number of power stations to cope with this electrical demand. The fact that many cars would recharge overnight would be useful in evening out electrical demand, but the number of power stations in the UK would at least double. Now what would the Greens have to say about that?
In short, it would appear that some of the proponents of these storage systems simply have no concept of the huge amounts of energy that a nation like Britain uses within a normal week. There is no energy system available that can remotely be expected to replace renewable energy resources, while they lie dormant for weeks on end. These and other delusions that are being being peddled by renewables proponents are downright dangerous, as they give ignorant ministers in government the impression that we can maintain this nation on renewable energy supplies. But nothing could be further from the truth, and the 2003 blackouts demonstrate the seriousness of the consequences if we do run out of electrical power.
Nuclear
But if the large-scale use of renewable energy systems is utterly impractical, there has to be a solution to our energy supply problems; because even in the short term our dependance on foreign oil and gas places us at the mercy of oil and gas owning despots, who will seek to gain every leverage possible over us. Look at the current situation in the Middle East and Russia and multiply that by ten, and you have some idea of our future political situation if we become solely dependent on foreign energy supplies.
In addition to this – for every year we delay in getting reliable and internally sourced energy supplies, millions of tonnes of a valuable mineral resources are literally going up in smoke. Nearly everything we need in our modern world needs oil as a raw material to make it – no oil supplies not only means no energy, but also no raw materials too. When the last barrel of oil comes out of the ground – and if alternate energy provisions are not already in place – human civilization as we know it will cease to exist. That is neither an exaggeration nor a joke, for absolutely nothing in our modern world will work without adequate energy supplies and petrochemical raw materials to make the things we so often take for granted.
What ever you may think about the technology, the ONLY reliable answer to our energy supply and global warming problems for the foreseeable future is going to be nuclear power (either fission or fusion). Ok, so nuclear power has got a bad name through Chernobyl and a few other incidents, but the Chernobyl plant in particular should never have been allowed in the first place. The RBMK design was (and still is) a rudimentary graphite moderated steam cooled plant with no containment vessel – indeed, it was no better that the original ‘graphite pile’ in the Manhattan Project (circa 1943). Remember that graphite and steam are an explosive combination if they get hot enough, and that’s exactly what happened at Chernobyl (this was NOT a ‘nuclear’ explosion). This arrangement should never have been allowed at the design stage, which is why the British AGRs (Advanced Gas Reactors) used an inert gas coolant. In addition, both the AGR and the the USAs PWRs (Pressurized Water Reactors) are naturally fission-stable, and their very nature will resist and counter a runaway thermic event like that which occurred at Chernobyl.
While the early designs of nuclear power stations have highlighted the problems that poor design or construction can pose, our design and technological capability has moved on in great strides. The Russian RBMKs are the equivalent of a model T Ford, the British AGRs represent Morris Minor technology from the ’60s, but we are now capable of producing Bugattis and Ferraris – which provide a quantum leap in terms of safety and efficiency. The point is that there are methods of reducing nuclear risks if we put our minds to it, and the latest design from Westinghouse – the AP1000 – will be able to deliver ten times the efficiency of the reactors in current use. (Which makes it odd that the UK government have just sold Westinghouse to Toshiba of Japan, just as orders for new power stations are about to be signed.)
Therefore, we could supply Britain’s entire current and future energy requirements with nuclear power, while only using the same amount of nuclear material that is in circulation today (and which produces just 20% of our needs). Remember also that nuclear power is non-polluting in terms of greenhouse gasses, acid rain and other noxious emissions, and thus all of the reductions that we aspire to make in these pollutants could be achieved in a stroke if we turned to nuclear power.
And when it comes to nuclear safety issues, let us not forget that thousands of people in ships and submarines live in close proximity to nuclear plants with no ill-effects. Also remember that while nuclear power has acquired a bad name, courtesy of some sections of the media, far more ecological damage has been done and many more people have died though oil and coal extraction, over the past decades, than in nuclear power incidents. Remember Piper Alpha, Aberfan, Torry Canyon, Exxon Valdes, etc: etc:? The list is almost endless, especially if one includes all the coal-pit disasters in Russia and China, from which much of our energy, in terms of finished products, is now sourced. If a nuclear power station had killed a whole school full of children the environmentalists would never let us forget it, but because it was the result of the coal industry they let the memory fade. If 6,000 workers were killed every year in the nuclear industry Greenpeace would go ballistic, but because these are coal mining deaths in China they are ignored. Why do some people exhibit these double standards? What is it about technical progress that they so despise? In some respects, some of these anti-nuclear demonstrators appear to be portraying themselves as the world’s very own technological Taliban, and in this guise they must be vigorously opposed.
However, it should be borne in mind that fission power is only a temporary stop-gap that will maintain our economy and civilisation over the next century until something better comes along. Nuclear fusion may well be that brighter future, but for all the reasons already given we need a solution now, not in 30 year’s time. Nuclear fission will provide a stop-gap for that vital century, but fission power on its own is a non-renewable energy resource. The way forward has to be fast-breeder fission, where the nuclear core creates its own fuel supply, a technique that has already been demonstrated and perfected. This energy source would provide the world with 1,000 years of energy, a large enough stop-gap to allow all kinds of new exotic energy sources to be discovered and exploited.
We have about 30 or so years before the shortage of oil becomes acute and our economies and societies begin to falter, and that is not very much time in which to alter our entire energy production industry. It is like relying on the Victorians to plan ahead and ensure that we still had a viable civilisation in the 1930s. And while the Victorians were both successful and resourceful, history demonstrates that new sources of raw materials were never actively planned until the old sources were in desperately short supply or worked-out completely. However, the introduction of a new, nationwide power generating system is an extremely long-term investment, and if we are to make this change without a dramatic interruption to our energy supplies (and our society) we need foresight, vision and a quick decision. What we need is a tough, educated, talented, rational leader to take a difficult but responsible decision to dramatically increase our nuclear energy production capability. However, what we have in the UK is Gordon Brown!
Ralph Ellis
June 2004
1. David Derbyshire, Daily Mail 5th Feb 2008.
2 & 3 Hugh Sharman, Why wind power works in Denmark.
A lot of the talk about nuclear being subsidized, or uncompetitive, is based on comparing it to fossil fuel plants, as they are currently regulated (which is to say, hardly at all). Look, everyone understands that fossil fuels (particularly coal) are and will be somewhat cheaper than nuclear, given that their (massive) external costs are not counted, and they continue to be allowed to pollute the air for free.
Most studies on the external (i.e., public health and environmental) costs of various energy sources (such as the ExternE project at http://www.externe.info/) agree that fossil fuels’ external costs are enormous, and that they would be more expensive than nuclear or renewables if they were counted. Coal’s costs would more than double. Such studies show that nuclear’s, as well as renewables, external costs are negligible (a fraction of a cent/kW-hr).
All waste management/disposal and plant decommissioning costs are already fully included in nuclear’s power cost. The govt. pays nothing (no subsidy). Any suggestion that the cleanup of old nuclear weapons sites (which were contaminated before the first commercial power plant started) constitutes any kind of nuclear power subsidy is outrageous. We’ve already decommissioned several plants in the US, and we have a very good idea of what it costs.
The ideal energy policy would be to simply cap or tax CO2 emissions, and let the market decide how to respond, i.e., determine the most effective, least expensive way to reduce emissions. I personally think we should do the same thing for oil and gas imports (from the Middle East and Russia) because the geopolitical costs of these sources are significant. A healthy tax on all of coal’s other pollutants (which kill 25,000 Americans every single year) are also in order, but CO2 limits may take care of this problem anyway. Any subsidies, such as tax credits or loan guarantees would be given out equally to all non-emitting sources (including nuclear and most renewables).
Such an approach would automatically answer all of the economics questions most folks here are talking about. Let the market decide. Let’s see what happens. I would think that Mr. Sowell would agree to such a policy.
It should be noted, however, that renewables are far more subsidised than nuclear, and have been for some time. For years now, conservation and renewables have been getting a larger amount of federal R&D money than nuclear:
http://www.aaas.org/spp/rd/09ptbii11.pdf
Also, in terms of overall subsidies, including direct operating subsidies, renewables like solar and wind have been getting over 20 times the level of support that nuclear does. See Table 35 on page 106 in Chapter 5 of the following link:
http://www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/servicerpt/subsidy2/index.html
And the tilt in the playing field among non-emitting sources (towards renewables and away from nuclear) is becoming far more extreme, with the new US administration and congress. The policies in the stimulus bill, the budget, and the proposed climate change bill amount to a massive, unprecedented govt. intervention into the clean energy market, that dramatically favors renewables, and basically doesn’t give nuclear a chance to compete.
The renewables industry, which is one tenth the size of nuclear (2% of generation, vs. 20%), gets $100 billion in loan guarantees as well as ~$60 billion in overall direct financial aid. On top of this (in case even those subsidies are not enough), there is an outright mandate to generate 15% of electricity with renewables by 2020, along with a 5% mandate for conservation. In other words, an infinite subsidy. By contrast, there is no nuclear mandate (of course), and the (much larger) nuclear industry only gets $18.5 billion in loan guarantees from a previous 2005 bill passed in the Bush years (it gets absolutely nothing from the recent bills).
Renewables are generally significantly more expensive than nuclear, and in any event are limited by intermittentcy. None of the biased policies listed above would be necessary if they weren’t. (Even with the cost overruns, the Finnish plant remains cheaper than the other non-emitting alternatives; and by the way, the Fins are ordering another new reactor, despite how everything’s going.)
As for fossil fuels, the fact that they are less expensive than nuclear is irrelevant, given that their free emissions into the environment will no longer be allowed. The real cost comparison would be between nuclear and coal or gas with full sequestration. I am confident nuclear could compete with that. I’d like the posters who question nuclear’s viability (vs. fossil fuels) to provide a comparison based on full CO2 sequestration for the fossil side.
Of course, with the ideal, even-handed policy I describe above, none of us should have to prove anything. We all have the right to our own opinion, as long as we agree to abide by the result of the market test. I personally don’t share Mr. Jones’ optimistic view on future natural gas supplies, but hey, he has the right to his own opinion. We should still be able to agree on a policy that allows even-handed competition on a level playing field. Then let’s just see where the market goes.
@ur momisugly Roger Sowell (15:40:41) :
You mentioned natural gas, hydro and geothermal as alternatives, but do you really believe that any of them can scale to replace coal?
In the US, it has been longer since the last major hydro installation than since the last major nuclear power plant completion. We have essentially built about as many dams and associated lakes as possible from an economic and environmental standpoint. Even the ones that we have are only as reliable as the long term weather patterns allow them to be – there are some reservoirs in the US today that are at historically low levels due to drought. I also bring my perspective as a native Floridian to this discussion: hydro requires not only water, which we had in massive quantities, but also elevation variations, which were non existent for the entire state!
Natural gas appears to be relatively cheap and plentiful today, but were you sleeping during the last 10 years as gas prices reached the equivalent of 8-15 cents per kilowatt hour (just for fuel) for sustained periods of time? By electrical generating CAPACITY, natural gas is more than 2 times as large as nuclear power in the US, but the plant owners choose to limit the amount of electricity they produce each day. By PRODUCTION, nuclear and gas are neck and neck at 20% of the total. Even at today’s prices, the fuel is still quite a bit more costly than coal or commercial uranium fuel on a per BTU basis. Because of the tight balance between supply and demand, gas prices tend to shoot up if there is an increased demand – supply lags way behind the price increase.
If you want to replace coal combustion, there are several options. Natural uranium fission, low enriched uranium fission, recycled uranium fission, plutonium fission, and thorium fission (indirectly – it actually gets converted to U-233 before fissioning). All of those alternatives can be enabled with little government money, but all may require at least enough government support/protection to allow progress to continue without too much interference from people that LIKE high natural gas prices because selling natural gas is how they make their money.
According to the utility industry leaders that I have talked to, the MAIN reason they want government loan guarantees is to put some public “skin” in the game. They do not want a repeat of some of the industry’s early experiences with nuclear fission where they made good faith investments in major projects for both power production and fuel recycling facilities only to have the government referees join the opposition team for short term political gains.
Rod Adams
Publisher, Atomic Insights
(Oh yeah, I forgot to address geothermal. I guess that is because it is such a small scale contributor that it is easy to keep it as an afterthought.)
Jim above – are you talking US or UK when you say all nuclear decomissiong costs are already fully covered in current nuclear operating costs? That is not my understanding of the UK situation where I believe the £70bn plus is to be met from the public purse. I think it was only on this condition that a buyer was found for the UK gov. stake in BE.
Re: subsidy of renewables – one element in the UK has been to provide a stimulus to establish the industry through paying a premium to non fossil fuel sources. My understanding is that this has also been paid to nuclear. Also – agree the need for proper total cost accounting and higher energy prices – if the cost per kWh was increased by 4 this is approx the same as decreasing build by the same factor. However you are putting high emphasis on the anthropogenic CO2 argument – it could be its significance in climate and its role have been overestimated. Certainly there are significant “anomolies” in some of the evidence.
Please read the work I referenced above from Poyry (“Securing Power”) for the potential of industrial CHP as electricity generation source. This is proven tech in the UK on industrial scale (1.2GWe at one location I believe) and should be IMO getting serious attention cf. nuclear and new CCGT. I share your concerns re: gas supply security for the UK – again the National Grid proposal referenced above looks worthy and workable. And both of these would also score well on the CO2 reduction front….
@slowtofollow – A major portion of the reported decommissioning costs for UK nuclear plants is related to their dual use nature. Extracting the weapons usable material from production reactor plant fuel has historically been a bit of a messy process that results in contaminating a large amount of machinery.
In the States, our commercial plant decommissioning processes have been quite a bit less involved than some people expect because the amount of contamination and the volume of contaminated equipment is much smaller than in the case of the MAGNOX plants.
Contrary to popular belief, we have experience with the complete decommissioning process for at least two and perhaps more former commercial plants that are now essentially greenfields. (Shippingport and Yankee Rowe are the two I am thinking about.)
Rod Adams
Publisher, Atomic Insights
Rod above – thanks – do you have any links/references re: the dual use and decommissiong issues? Are you saying this decommissioning method is a choice and that things could be done for (significantly?) less?
@slowtofollow – Here is a link to a good summary of the UK’s atomic energy program and the impact of the particular technology employed with regard to decommissioning costs.
http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf84.html
Much of the difficulty is not due to the method chosen for decommissioning, but to the use of magnesium oxide coated fuels in CO2 cooled, graphite moderate gas reactors. Another large portion of the quoted costs are related to the clean up of nuclear weapons production facilities that are not related to power generation.
Neither of these major cost drivers are relevant to discussions about future reactors and their eventual decommissioning costs.
Rod Adams
Publisher, Atomic Insights
@Rod Adams,
“. . . natural gas, hydro and geothermal as alternatives, but do you really believe that any of them can scale to replace coal?”
Yes, of course these can replace coal. One must examine the resource availability. On a grand scale, most resources are equally available to all points of the earth, with the only difference the cost of transportation. I do not refer here to solar radiation, nor wind, wave, geothermal, or tidal. But for physical goods, such as coal, natural gas, oil, or uranium, transportation cost is a key factor.
Another commenter made the point earlier that perhaps China builds nuclear power plants because their coal requires transportation. Perhaps the cost to build railroads and transport the coal is prohibitive. That could be the case, and it is certainly a consideration in Southern California, for example. Even if
California state law did not forbid new coal-fired plants, the rail infrastructure here has no additional capacity for the traffic. One is then faced with the prospect of mine-mouth coal-fired power plants, and transmission lines to bring the power to the user. This is much the same problem as exists for solar, wave, and wind power.
You mentioned natural gas price earlier, and I assure you I am quite aware of energy prices, and the various factors that affect them. The fact is that LNG prices, and by extension, natural gas prices, will be very low for the foreseeable future due to intelligent investments made years ago that are just now coming on-line. Supply presently exceeds demand, and much more supply is coming to the market in the next few months. Transportation costs for LNG are now very low thanks to ExxonMobil’s new generation of large ships.
http://energyguysmusings.blogspot.com/2009/04/lng-cheaper-than-ever.html
see this reference for natural gas prices:
http://www.wtrg.com/daily/gasprice.html
Hydroelectric in developed countries is exploited to a certain extent, but there is more power available in river-run systems. There are also plenty of sites in less-developed countries that should be built. Wind power can also be used to pump excess river water into existing lakes behind hydroelectric dams. see:
http://energyguysmusings.blogspot.com/2009/02/wind-water-farms-and-power-generation.html
Geothermal is also competitive, and getting more so as the drilling companies continue to reduce their costs per 1000 feet drilled.
But my firm belief is that natural gas and the oceans will provide the energy beyond any ability for nuclear to compete, unless nuclear continues to be subsidized. Natural gas is already far cheaper than nuclear, and will remain so for many decades. The world is awash in cheap natural gas. Regarding the oceans, off-shore wind, wave, and ocean current power plants have zero fuel costs, zero decommissioning costs other than dismantling for recycle, and very good availability factors. World population tends to cluster on coastlines, so there is a natural fit between off-shore power generation and consumption.
Natural gas, hydroelectric, geothermal, and off-shore renewables also share a characteristic that nuclear power will never have: they are not ultra-hazardous, but nuclear power is by legal definition. One shudders to think of the ramifications of a terrorist crashing a large aircraft into any of the 400-plus nuclear power plants around the world. In contrast, a wayward tanker taking out an off-shore wind-turbine would hardly make the news.
1 – Well, nuclear plants have been sized against full-sized plane impacts since the beginning – and their inherent design (reinforced concrete round and spherical shells backed by pressure-vessel-sized steel-lined circular shapes) resists impact damage. (The Trade Towers, for example, were sized only against small plane impacts. Were rectangular shapes of glass-walled open beams and tie-rod concrete slabs 1000 feet high.)
2 – Geothermal is ONLY valid in a few localized highly volcanic areas and earthquake-active areas, every area of which is already emitting sulfur and CO2 and noxious gasses in near-lethal, very irritating quantities. Plus highly corrosive (and lethal!) contaminated ground water The steam is low-quality, only modest pressure, and must be carefully used at rates to keep from “cooling” the heat exchange area too fast. In other words, take too much power from the ground – faster than it gets exchanged underground, faster than the ground water seeps through the seams and cracks to the steam source, or faster than the steam source exchanges heat to the conducting water-steam heat exchangers, and your production goes down. Did I mention your steam generators and heat exchangers rapidly corrode out and get blocked up by erosion and contamination?
Geothermal has limited use. In limited areas. Sometimes. If nobody tries to live near the steam vents and sulfur emissions. And other dissolved leachates like arsenic, copper, and iron, uranium, radium/radon, etc.
ALL ocean-sources systems are very low density, and can ONLY be used near the coasts. NONE are now economically feasible. What precise “new” designs do you know of that will suddenly make them competitive? I cannot NOW even stop draining freshwater lakes in the US southeast when they are emptying due to Enviromentalist REQUIREMENTS that mussels in saltwater (brackish) mudflats 600 miles downstream “might” be harmed if freshwater flows are reduced. (Neer mind that previous droughts (before the 1940-1950-1960-era dams were built!) might have stopped freshwater flow completely. Since these lakes are the ONLY source of drinking water to inland cities with rela people, but cannot stop the draining, how do you propose getting ANY permission to use or build ANY tidal or ocean power systems?
That is, now, enviro’s don’t care about thirsty cities (or 50 million innocents killed by denying them DDT in Africa and Asia) compared to the “possible” harm done to mosquitoes and mussels. What makes you think they will change their tactics for “power production”?
3 – In contrast, a wayward tanker taking out an off-shore wind-turbine would hardly make the news.
BS. Tankers (commercial ships of any size) can’t get into the shallow water where wind farms need to be located – but it doesn’t matter. Kennedy and the east coast liberals DON’T ALLOW them to be built offshore. The extemism and hype about oil tankers means any story about a collision means instant comment. Unless teh tanker is rescuing foolish enviro’s trying to sail into the north pole – and getting into trouble. Or sailing into antarctic seas and sinking THEIR ocean-going ship with thousands of tons of oil.
4 – “Regarding the oceans, off-shore wind, wave, and ocean current power plants have zero fuel costs, zero decommissioning costs other than dismantling for recycle, and very good availability factors.”
BS Tides START by only a 50% availability factors – half the time of every lunar “day”, the tidal forces are either zero or near-zero since the CHANGE in tidal motion (usually only 6 to 12″ inches in 90 percent of the world!) stops every half cycle. Worst, tidal forces come at cyclic times regardless of what electric demand is – so you can’t use them to meet peak demand. You must keep cycling on and off (extremely hard and expensive on power plants’ long-term lives!) regular power plants to catch up to the weak tidal forces. And NO tidal mechanism actually owrks. In the two or three spots in the whole world where tidal forces actually DO move enough water to make it seem economical, enviro’s won’t let you build a Zieder Zee-area of dams to trap the water. (The dams would damdage the mud-flats and trap fish.)
5 – “Hydroelectric in developed countries is exploited to a certain extent, but there is more power available in river-run systems. There are also plenty of sites in less-developed countries that should be built. Wind power can also be used to pump excess river water into existing lakes behind hydroelectric dams. ”
BS. “Wind power” does NOT exist in enough quantity ANYWHERE (nor can it be built in enough quantity t “pump” back uphill from below a dam to behind a dam to refill the lake behind a power plant./ Have you heard of this thing called “friction”? The second law of thermodynamics? Gravity? Pump efficiency curves? Pump energy requirements? Water CANNOT flow “uphill” from below miles of the river below a dam to the pump suctions at a dam to go back uphill and over the dam to refill a lake.
Robert A Cook, PE (09:52:15) :
Excellent rant. I LOL’ed a couple of times. By the way, I respect your PE credential, and I do not have one. But I do have some knowledge of the things you wrote about, friction (I presume you refer to Reynold’s numbers), Second Law of Thermo, gravity, pump efficiency curves, and pump energy requirements. All those things were elementary subjects where I took my degree in Chemical Engineering, and I used them regularly in my engineering career. I still do. So yes, I believe I know of what I speak.
By the way, water certainly does flow uphill (after being suitably pumped) into a lake. You might be interested in a pumped storage hydroelectric plant (PSHP) near Los Angeles, which uses Pyramid Lake and Castaic Lake for the two reservoirs. Power generation is around 1,500 MW. There are others, this is not an isolated case. I have read about a Chinese PSHP one where river water is pumped to a lake on a plateau above, reportedly more than 1000 feet above the river.
You might also be surprised at the wind power in the U.S. Great Plains area…plenty of power to pump water anywhere. The U.S. DOE completed a wind energy survey of the U.S., at 50 meters above ground. It is pretty easy to find by doing a search on DOE and Wind Energy Map. Along the same lines, the U.S. MMS (Minerals and Mining Service) included wind, wave, and ocean current in their latest 5-Year Plan. They are preparing leases in the appropriate areas off-shore, and have companies lined up to bid.
As to renewable energy designs, you might be interested in what the EERE website has to offer. http://www.eere.energy.gov/
NREL has information also at http://www.nrel.gov/
Regarding geothermal, you might be surprised on this, too. I recently attended a meeting of chemical engineers (Los Angeles chapter of AIChE) where we were treated to a presentation by one of the world’s most experienced experts in geothermal power plants, Mr. Art Krugler, PE. Art has had PE registrations in chemical and mechanical engineering for more than 50 years. Geothermal power has come a long way from the scenario you described above. see:
http://www.geothermal.org/databases.html
I encourage you to look into these matters. None of what I wrote is BS, rather it is TS, where T stands for True.
To continue looking at your exaggerated (and falsifiable) claims for alt energy.
1. “Hydroelectric in developed countries is exploited to a certain extent, but there is more power available in river-run systems. There are also plenty of sites in less-developed countries that should be built.”
BS. NO (economically feasible) hydropower locations in ANY developed country remains “undeveloped.” NO economically viable “pumped storage” location is available for (legal) development in ANY developed country.
NO hydropower location ANYWHERE remains “unopposed” either in any undeveloped country either, but that is YOUR problem as an enviro extremist to change. “I” am not ALLOWED to build additional hydro-power sites anywhere without [b] extreme [/b] international environmental opposition. (See Three Gorges Dam, for example – even in a Communist-dominated socialist state, the UN opposes protecting lives against flood damage.)
2. “On a grand scale, most resources are equally available to all points of the earth, with the only difference the cost of transportation. I do not refer here to solar radiation, nor wind, wave, geothermal, or tidal. But for physical goods, such as coal, natural gas, oil, or uranium, transportation cost is a key factor.”
Absolutely false. NO resource is available uniformly distributed around the world – LEAST of all the physically-limited fixed-location “resources” of solar power, water-power, tidal power, geothermal power, wave power!
EVERY (uneconomical and extremely expensive!) “resource” ONLY exists in limited areas, within limited timeframes at those limited locations, and requires immense “areas” of environmental DESTRUCTION to begin to harvest even limited amounts of power inefficiently! For example, NOTHING can grow under, in front of, or behind a solar panel. To cover 1 km x 1 km of ground for a solar area kills every living thing under the panels. (Well, cockroaches could survive in the newly shaded area of asphalt and rock. Until they starve to death.)
You can’t live under nor near (several km distance) wind turbines – too much low frequency noise. Put them offshore, and Ted Kennedy sues to remove them – and you need km after km of expensive undersea power cables to connect them to shore-side transformers and power lines – also forbidden by enviro’s by the way. (And a complete WASTE of men, material, and resources needed elsewhere.) Worse,as discussed above, wind farms are no more than 18-22 percent effective: You need to build FIVE turbines to average rated power from ONE, and that ONE equivilent is itself only 38% efficient! But you need to maintain all five to get the (supposed) power from ONE – AND still have a 100% conventional power spinning in reserve for that ONE. SO you’ve built 6 plants (5 wind and one regular) to get the power from ONE. Since the regular plant is (usually) ten to twenty times larger than the one wind mill, the actual number is much less. So why build and waste money maintaining ANY wind mill?
Solar radiation is EXTREMELY limited by latitude, weather average conditions, snow and storm loading, clouds, humidity, and ground slope. NO solar installation can pay for itself outside of southern AZ, CA, and NM. Even there, they need 50% of their price subsidized.
You “could” claim that the power created from your non-existent, non-profitable, hard-to-locate alt energy sites could be “shipped” – but ONE150 mile transmission line across WV recently 14 YEARS to get permits and building OK’s. Just HOW am I going to cover 1/2 of south AZ to power areas for 6 hours a day – when you won’t let me build power lines (VERY EXPENSIVE POWER LINES!) anywhere?
Worse, I lose 1/2 of the power created trying to transmit electric power firther than 800-1200 miles. THAT is wasted heat load itself. And a waste of resources. Your mythical “smart transmission grid” CANNOT change the I^2R losses – only tell where the I^2R losses have occurred. Your mythical “smart grid” is no more “smart” than claiming I can pump water uphill from a drying riverbed to refill an emptying lake ….
Coal trains can economically move energy from the western and northern (shale oil) states into CA – despite your claims otehrwise. Crush, powder and fluidize-bed react the coal into gas, burn the gas in a CT and recover the hot exhaust in HRSG’s then turn a steam turbine with the resulting steam. 360 MegWatt at 67 to 72 percent thermal efficiency on 5-7 acres of land. Natural gas? Yes – even cheaper.
No mythical creatures and no delays and no miracles. Simple, economical power. Delivered in two years.
“Transportation” (of the irregular power produced) and “limited availability” (of the primary alt energy source) of your mythical alt energy sources ARE only half of their problems. The rest of the problems are in the very low efficiency of their basic conversion: Too much area needed, too much connection costs, too much losses, too many tens of thousand of acres needed to gather the energy in the first place. Too much interference with other, more valuable things.
And, worst of all, NO NEED for the alt energy – sicne we are now in a decade-long GLOBAL COOLING cycle that shows no sign of abating. Since 1935-40 timeframe, we have MROE time cooling than warming – so what is your hysteria about a temporary 2/10 of ONE degree increase in temperature?
@roger
Supply presently exceeds demand, and much more supply is coming to the market in the next few months. Transportation costs for LNG are now very low thanks to ExxonMobil’s new generation of large ships.
Perhaps there is an excess in gas supply right now. But where do the ships unload in North America? What is the current capacity of all of the constructed and operating reception ports?
Regarding the oceans, off-shore wind, wave, and ocean current power plants have zero fuel costs, zero decommissioning costs other than dismantling for recycle, and very good availability factors. World population tends to cluster on coastlines, so there is a natural fit between off-shore power generation and consumption.
Just out of curiosity, Roger, have you ever spent any time off shore? Are you remotely familiar with weather patterns like the Bermuda High?
I have had the wonderful experience of spending quite a few weeks on sailboats off of the Atlantic coast of the US. I can recall a number of days when we traveled less than 10 nautical miles during a full 24 hour period and where the oceans were calm enough for water skiing. When the Bermuda High gets entrenched that pattern can last for a week or more over a broad swath of the ocean.
Only landlubbers believe that the wind always blows off shore. The trade wind patterns that governed travel during the age of sail have not been altered by technology.
Rod Adams
Publisher, Atomic Insights
Robert A Cook, PE
Re nuclear plants and airplane impacts.
The existing U.S. plants were designed to survive impacts from planes that are now considered small. The NRC recently added a design requirement for new reactors (but not to retrofit existing plants), to withstand an impact from a large commercial aircraft, as described here:
http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/news/2009/09-030.html
Thanks above for all the food for thought.
In the UK (and EEC) the big issue is that of replacing aging generation stock. And possibly on top of that limiting CO2 output. There is a lack of clarity over the exact nature of the future demand curve and how this can be moderated by means other than more production using the BAU technologies. This is complicated by the fact that the people who have the much of the info. (generators and supply companies) have strong vested interests. For example some plant will have to come off line due to non compliance with the EEC Large Combustion Plant Directive. This is in fact an opt in or out decision by generators according to whether they fit the necessary flue gas treatment. Once a plant is opted out there is then an artificial forecast capacity drop which is used to promote the idea of an energy gap and hence drive a requirement for new plant. IMO the role for a strong national policy including realistic and viable demand reduction through workable technologies is very clear but unfortunately we do not appear to have the mechanisms to deliver it.
The comments above haven’t clarified what the drivers are in the US? – its enjoyable stuff but it seems to go back and forth between “mine is better than yours” and “no its not!” 🙂 ! I get the impression each state controls its own destiny? What is the role of federal gov.? How can the US benefit best from its widespread, varied and abundant resource base?
Rod Adams,
Well, at least you and I have one thing in common: sailing. I’ve been sailing for more than 40 years in all sizes of boats, on lakes, rivers, bays, gulfs, and oceans, in all sorts of weather. I’ve done a fair amount of power boating too, and at one time was an expert water skier. I have lived near the ocean shore for more than 35 years. So yes, I know just a bit about offshore weather.
I fully understand and embrace the concept of intermittency as it relates to reliable renewable power. I also write on numerous technologies for grid-scale, and small-scale, energy storage.
slowtofollow (13:23:04) :
The US still has the enviable legacy of for-profit utilities that made the decisions on what was the cheapest way to generate power. The state regulatory commissions, that set rates based on cost of service, forced utilities to justify their decisions and severely punished them if things went wrong (but never rewarded them if the decisions turned out better than expected). Of course, state governments could not resist directing the huge investments in large power plants, so the process has been gradually corrupted.
This freedom within individual states is under severe pressure from power hungry Congressman who would love to have another source of graft. There is tremendous lobbying to force the rest of us to follow CA with renewable mandates, carbon taxes, and more regulatory burdens on disfavored (the ones that don’t donate to your campaign) sources.
This is my sole, but overwhelming disagreement with Roger. The policies he supports has destroyed least cost planning in CA and has burdened the lower class with boutique and obsolete electricity sources. CA has passed law after law practically banning the most economical sources of power. They bungled “generation deregulation” so badly that they bankrupted their utilities. On top of that, they have forced all ratepayers to buy more expensive favored sources of power.
Fortunately until now, the federal role has been limited in power generation to matters of national security and interstate impacts like air pollution. Most of the federal energy research money has been a total waste, make-work for universities and institutes that do little more than indoctrinate. The only thing worse than federal research would be international research. The fact is that energy conversion is very straightforward for competent engineers, we don’t need to reinvent thermodynamics and no amount of research is going to discover significant breakthroughs in efficiency.
The tremendous improvements in turbine efficiency have come from closely managed material improvements and incremental design improvements and are almost entirely the intellectual property of the turbine manufacturers.
The US is blessed (yes, I even believe in some American exceptionalism and a benevolent Creator) with coal, natural gas, and uranium and I think we should use them without imposing significant costs on our neighbors until something cheaper comes along.
Peter Moliterno M. Eng Cornell ’81, P. E.
Fuelmaker (17:25:21) :
“This is my sole, but overwhelming disagreement with Roger. The policies he supports has destroyed least cost planning in CA and has burdened the lower class with boutique and obsolete electricity sources. CA has passed law after law practically banning the most economical sources of power. They bungled “generation deregulation” so badly that they bankrupted their utilities. On top of that, they have forced all ratepayers to buy more expensive favored sources of power.”
Peter, I appreciate the points you made. Policies in California are almost always screwy. However, the bottom line is that electric power prices in California are not that bad, compared to the other 49 states. Our power prices are around 20 to 30 percent above the national average, yet our per-capita consumption of power is about the same percentage less than average. I believe I gave a citation for these facts earlier in this thread. California does not have the highest prices in the U.S.; it is about 11th out of 50.
Now, could the power prices be lower, with different policies? Perhaps. As I stated earlier, I work diligently to repeal AB 32, our Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006, because I am convinced the law is detrimental, and will kill the economy. I have only so much energy and time with which to wage my battles, as do we all.
The policies I support re power production are, of necessity, consistent with the avenues that remain open to Californians. Without major legislative changes, those avenues are all we have. The electorate in California, sadly in my view, is not disposed to either A) elect representatives to change those policies, or B) vote via Propositions to change those polices. Only when those policies hit the electorate in the pocketbook, and even then it must be a hard hit, will the electorate rouse themselves and vote. A good power crisis does the trick in Sacramento, too.
The recent cool “weather” (or should I say, cooling climate?) during the past 2 or 3 years has not created a heat-wave-related power emergency, and meanwhile we have built some new gas-fired power plants for a margin of safety. But, if we were to have a prolonged heat wave, coincident with a drought so there is little water available for hydroelectric generation, this place is in serious trouble. If the climate realists are correct, we are due for around 20 years of continued cooling, so an electricity shortage is not likely. If Hansen et al are correct, we should have a block-buster shortage and perhaps things will be changed on the legal front.
The avenues that are presently available to us in this state are few, but include natural gas, and renewables of all types. Natural gas plants meet with fierce opposition due to the NOx emissions, which are capped-and-traded out here, also NIMBY-ism, and charges of Environmental Justice (lower income neighborhoods tend to be where power plants are sited).
Therefore, it makes little sense to argue for coal-fired power in California, nor for nuclear power, nor for oil-burning power plants. Our few windy locations are about built-out, and there are only three of them. Our hydroelectric sites are known, and built up, plus there is horrendous opposition to any more dams out here.
So, where does that leave us? With solar in the desert. With wind offshore. With wave, also off-shore. With bio-gas and solid waste burning plants. With geothermal. Offshore power plants require unbelievable environmental scrutiny, and to reach the really good waves/winds, one must go through the U.S. MMS, who has only just now begun to think about issuing leases for these areas. Also, the ocean here is too cold for an OTEC system.
Meanwhile, the population increases, and (at least until recently) so does the economy. Our electrical demand grows with both of those factors.
We are in a tight race out here, to do what we can to provide electric power, given the constraints we face. My associates and clients are working non-stop to develop, invent, devise, improve, or otherwise cobble together something that generates power where and when it is needed.
In all seriousness, if any WUWT readers see a solution to the situation I have outlined, I would love to hear it!
(I know, I know, we could all turn off our jacuzzis and save 20 percent right there…we could shut down all the floodlights and tv cameras at the Oscars and save another 20 percent…but wait, we already use 20 percent less per capita than the U.S. average!)
Roger Sowell (12:22:08) :
Re nuclear plants and airplane impacts.
The existing U.S. plants were designed to survive impacts from planes that are now considered small. The NRC recently added a design requirement for new reactors (but not to retrofit existing plants), to withstand an impact from a large commercial aircraft, as described here:
—
Thank you for the update. Only one nuclear plant site is under (serious) design progress – South Texas 3 and 4, near Corpus Christi TX.
Roger Sowell wrote:
None of what I wrote is BS, rather it is TS, where T stands for True.
The facts don’t support your case though:
Despite the subsidies and Production Tax Credits, the percent of our electricity from Renewable energy peaked in 1997.
Since then its gone pretty much steadily downhill both as a percent of generation and also in absolute quantity.
1997 12.4%
1998 11.1%
1999 10.8%
2000 9.4%
2001 7.7%
2002 8.9%
2003 9.1%
2004 8.8%
2005 8.8%
2006 9.5%
2007 8.4%
1997 Renewable 433,636 Million kW hours
2007 Renewable 351,300 Million kW hours
In contrast, over the same time frame, Fossil Fuel use grew by 23% and Nuclear grew by 28%
http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/aer/txt/stb0802a.xls
Arthur
Since then the percent of Renewable
Slowtofollow,
Just to add to what Rod said about decommissioning. Not only are the UK’s plants more expensive to decommission, but my understanding is that the UK also made the mistake of not requiring the plants to put a small per-kW-hr fee into a trust fund for plant decommissioning.
Due to the magical power of long-term compounding interest, over a 40-60 year plant life, US plants have only had to put in ~0.25 cents per kW-hr generated, to fully cover the $0.5-1.0 billion cost of decommissioning a plant. As a result, not only does the taxpayer pay nothing, but there is no question as to what plant decommissioning really costs, on a per kW-hr basis. This allows and easy, informed decision to be made concerning nuclear’s relative economics when deciding whether to build a new plant, with all decommissioning costs fully considered.
In the UK, on the other hand, because they put this expense off, the utilities, public, and govt. are getting a sticker shock at the end. The absolute numbers look very large, and it gives everyone the impression of a large subsidy/cost, that makes nuclear appear uncompetitive. The problem is that people don’t appreciate the long-term compounding interest effect, and tend to just add the final decommissioning cost directly, and arrive at a much higher, and false, per kW-hr cost.
As for new plants in Britain, not only will they be cheaper to decommission, as Rod points out, but the US policy will be applied, and these plants will have to set aside sufficient contributions to a trust fund to cover all future decommissioning costs. Given this, there is no future liability for the British public. If the power companies decide to build new nuclear plants, it will be with the decommissioning costs fully included. Any new British plants will be LWRs, and we’ve decommissioned several of those in the US already, so we have a very good idea of what it costs.
As for the global warming issue, I’ll just say that if we decide to do nothing, and not limit (or put a cost on) CO2 emissions, I agree that coal and gas (coal anyway) will likely remain at least somewhat less expensive than nuclear. As a result, it may be that few nukes would be built. On the other hand, if hard limits are placed on CO2, nuclear will be a large fraction of our future energy supplies, unless there is massive govt. intervention to force us to use all renewables instead (something that we may be beginning to see, unfortunately).
As for subsidies in the UK, my understanding is that renewables get a guaranteed price for power that is well above the market price. Nuclear does not get this benefit. In fact, the companies proposing to build new nukes in the UK have all been promising that they would do it with no public subdidy. The only thing they’re relying on is whatever price is placed on CO2 emissions by the EU’s cap-and-trade market. I also believe that the UK govt. looked at the subsidies required to meet their CO2 targets by various means and they concluded that several times the overall subsidy would be required to use wind, vs. using nuclear.
@adoucette (21:16:54) :
“The facts don’t support your case though:
Despite the subsidies and Production Tax Credits, the percent of our electricity from Renewable energy peaked in 1997.”
I’m not sure what point you are trying to make, as to which part of my “case” you believe is unsupported. The link you provided is to U.S. figures, where the “Renewables” category includes large hydroelectric. The large hydro amount overwhelms all the others, wood, wind, solar, bio-gas, geothermal, etc. Furthermore, large hydro peaked in 1997, with the subsequent decline due to persistent drought and water management decisions.
In stark contrast, the other renewables (excluding large hydro) have either remained fairly stable or grown dramatically. Wind generation in that data shows tremendous growth.
As often said about the sun on this site – we live in interesting times. We’ve had the Industrial Revolution. We live during a technological revolution. We’re only just starting on the energy revolution.
Regardless of peak oil myth or reality, our production and use of energy in the future will and must change (and not for the sake of the climate). Saying it need or should not is a bit like looking at 30 years of weather and calling it climate change.
We have cheap and plentiful, centralised sources of power, but we’ve built ‘more of the same’ until we have problems thinking any differently. Energy in the future will be produced and supplied differently, although this change will hopefully be invisible to the consumer. Grid issues (access, control), storage, load balancing, distributed generation – these are all huge research topics at present for all concerned.
You guys have cheap energy and you are complaining. As a domestic user I pay ~$0.22/kWh; industry in my region struggles with energy cost as we import >97% of our energy. Investing now in renewables is costly, but is seen as a way to insulate against external control of cost and supply. I hate subsidies and market incentives, but perhaps for some of us they are a necessary evil…..?
Roger,
You’ve posted again and again about how you believe that renewables can/will be a large part of our energy future, yet the energy industry doesn’t seem to agree with you.
You blaim the decline on the drought as if that excuse matters.
That’s at the heart of the problem with renewables.
You say that water can be pumped uphill but the figures show that pumped storage consumed an insignifant 0.17% of our electricity last year and thus produced far less.
Remaining stable means no growth.
In contrast though, over the period from 1997 to 2007, electricity production grew by 19%
Yes, Wind has grown by a large percentage, but in absolute terms it is still just a minor player:
Percent of electric generation from Wind:
1997 0.09%
1998 0.08%
1999 0.12%
2000 0.15%
2001 0.18%
2002 0.27%
2003 0.29%
2004 0.36%
2005 0.44%
2006 0.65%
2007 0.77%
To put it all in perspective, wind power is such a small amount of our generation that the overall drop in renewables in this period is almost 3 times the amount of wind power we generated last year.
Arthur
@Peter Moliterno and Robert Cook (the two PE’s in the discussion) – If you read Roger Sowell’s comments carefully, you will recognize that he is a strong supporter of natural gas, including imported LNG.
He dismisses the value of atomic fission – ostensibly because it is politically unacceptable, or because it takes too long to build a plant, or because the plants MIGHT be damaged if someone flies a large, commercial aircraft full of fuel directly into the containment building. (That begs an interesting question – what would the effect be of a similar planned collision between a commercial airplane and an LNG tanker or reception terminal near a population center like Boston?)
I suspect Roger’s advocacy is based on the fact that he and his clients do not like the competition that uranium fission provides. If fission was allowed to compete on anything close to a level playing field, the supply of energy would be virtually unlimited. The shift in the balance between supply and demand would move more in favor of the consumer and reduce the selling price of natural gas. (In fact, one of the big reasons that utilities stopped building nuclear plants in the 1970s was a fear of “overcapacity”. That should never concern consumers; over capacity leads to lower prices!)
Base on my analysis of the market, the reduction in natural gas prices (and those of competitive fossil fuels) would be dramatic, especially if there is any cost associated with atmospheric waste dumping of products like NOx, SOx, particles, or CO2. (Have you ever noticed how fossil prices were low for 15 years after the fission plant construction completions of the 1970s and early 1980s?)
If understand Roger’s vested economic interests, you need to look no further than his own web site. Here is a quote:
“He advises, represents, and defends operating companies in civil matters related to process safety, environmental and other regulatory matters. As an attorney who understands engineers, he also works with other attorneys on matters where expert witnesses and technical lay witnesses are involved, such as deposing and cross-examining expert witnesses.
Before opening his law office, he worked for 20 years in more than 75 refineries and petrochemical plants in a dozen countries on four continents. His engineering work covered a wide array, including design, process and project engineering, consulting studies for profit improvement, construction supervision and startup, maintenance, advanced process control, refinery process simulation and optimization, environmental compliance, and hazardous operations analysis and response, to name but a few.”
My understanding of the situation is that Roger, like many people who argue for and even “embrace” (his word, not mine) intermittent power generation sources, is really in the business of selling fossil fuel.
They KNOW that the diffuse, intermittent, politically popular “renewable” sources are expensive and that people cannot afford to pay what it would cost to enable those sources to expand very much. They also know that if their efforts helps to successfully delay construction of atomic fission power plants, they will retain their existing 85-95% market share until such time as the fission plant construction gets completed and the plants start operating.
That puts big bucks into their pockets; the market for fossil fuels in the US is a roughly $1.5-2.0 trillion dollar per year enterprise. As the man in the movie said: “Follow the money.”
As Roger has indicated above, his lifestyle is pretty pleasant:
“Well, at least you and I have one thing in common: sailing. I’ve been sailing for more than 40 years in all sizes of boats, on lakes, rivers, bays, gulfs, and oceans, in all sorts of weather. I’ve done a fair amount of power boating too, and at one time was an expert water skier. I have lived near the ocean shore for more than 35 years. So yes, I know just a bit about offshore weather.”
I, too, have had some extensive sailing experience, it has mostly been on boats owned by the US taxpayers. I was assigned on several occasions during my career to teach midshipmen how to be competent mariners. I am not poverty stricken, but I have always considered that boats are holes in the water into which you pour money. As a professional naval officer and part time entrepreneur trying to implement a valuable, but politically unpopular energy solution, I have never had much disposable cash.
Rod Adams
Publisher, Atomic Insights
Host and producer, The Atomic Show Podcast
The question of airplane impacts on nuclear power containment structures was answered definitively at Sandia National Laboratories in 1988. The lab tested the impact of an F-4 on a piece of steel-reinforced concrete meeting nuclear specifications. The live test was commissioned by Japan, I believe Tepco. There are photos and videos of the test that can be found on the net.
This was a more serious test than that of an air liner. The only structures with any penetrating power are the engine blocks, and that’s essentially what a military fighter is, a flying engine block.
At the moment of impact, the F-4 was just under Mach 1.
Result: the aircraft was in very tiny pieces, and achieved less than one inch of penetration.
adoucette (06:00:19) :
Well, you are very good at nay-saying and sniping from the sidelines.
There was a time in the U.S. when power was provided by animals, and coal-burning to produce steam, and water-wheels on small dams. If any statistics were kept (and I doubt that), one could look it up.
Then coal-fired electric power plants were begun. Then hydroelectric dams were begun. The small statistics grew over time.
You do not have to agree with me, and I suspect you never will. I do invite you to keep monitoring the energy situation, though. Keep track of the solar generation in California, Arizona, and other sunny states. Keep track of the wind generation in the Great Plains and off-shore. You say electric power growth in the U.S. is around 1.5 percent per year. Wind growth has been doubling (or better) every year for the past few years and will continue at an even greater pace. When wind is at 1 percent of U.S. generation, and doubles the year after that, what will you have to say?