This is a parody gone mad. Green advocates howl about the issues of nuclear waste storage, arguing that nuclear energy becomes impractical due to the need for long term safe storage, in some cases tens of thousands to millions of years, or as the EPA puts it “25,000 generations”. The Yucca Mountain project was shut down in April 2010 because nobody seems to have the will to actually store nuclear waste below ground. Meanwhile, the nuclear industry stockpiles used fuel rods near major cities in holding pools, and they are running out of room. Are we safer this way? I think not. Thanks Obama.
It seems that ‘Carbon storage’ faces the same dilemma. Can it be safely stored for thousands of years? Or will it turn into a tree killing zone like this one below?
Tree Kill Zone, near Mammoth Mountain CA
More here from USGS on the Mammoth Lakes CO2 leak.
CO2 sequestration illustrated below, relies upon putting CO2 directly into underground storage. Ironically, using salt domes, just like Yucca mountain, and even less secure coal mines.
‘Carbon storage’ faces leak dilemma: Study
CCS supporters say the sequestered carbon would slow the pace of man-made warming. It would buy time for politicians to forge an effective treaty on greenhouse gases and wean the global economy off cheap but dirty fossil fuels.
Critics say CCS could be dangerous if the stored gas returns to the atmosphere. They also argue that its financial cost, still unknown, could be far greater than tackling the source of the problem itself.
The new research, published by the journal Nature Geoscience, wades into the debate with an estimate of capturing enough carbon to help limit warming to two degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit), the figure set in last December’s Copenhagen Accord.
…
The gas will have to be stored for tens of thousands of years to avoid becoming a threat to future generations, a scenario similar to that for nuclear waste, it says.
This means less than one percent of the stored volume can be allowed to leak from the chamber per 1,000 years.
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Gee, where have we heard this before?
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Killing Yucca Mountain was a simple way of killing current nuclear power generation in the US. When the online plants run out of room to store the spent fuel rods, their permits will not be renewed.
Consequences?
We’ll just leave those for our children to sort out.
I work at a nuclear plant in Michigan, capacity 2200 MWe (two units). They were built for just over 1 billion dollars completed in the late 1970s (1975 and 1978). The “nuclear death spiral”, to the extent that it ever occurred, was caused by the politics of an ignorant enviro movement delaying start-up and raising costs. These plants are now the cheapest to operate baseload generation on the grid, save hydro.
“Green advocates howl about the issues of nuclear waste storage, arguing that nuclear energy becomes impractical due to the need for long term safe storage, in some cases tens of thousands to millions of years, or as the EPA puts it “25,000 generations”.”
Many years ago, before it was taken over by our social engineering “betters”, Scientific American had an article by Glenn Seaborg about nuclear waste. The simple point was we should compare the radioactivity of nuclear waste to the uranium that was dug out of the ground. The time for the waste to be less radioactive than the original ore should be used for planning a nuclear waste site. This turned out to be about 25,000 years. Geologists can easily find sites that will be stable for much longer than this. More efficient reactors and fuel reprocessing will achieve a better burn-up of the nuclear fuel and reduce this time considerably.
Roger Sowell says:
June 28, 2010 at 11:49 am
Roger, parlais-vous francais?
There’s a whole country, real-time demonstration in France that completely demolishes your selective argument.
Your argument is observationally correct elsewhere only in the sense that higher costs have resulted – but they arise from hurdle after hurdle placed in the path of progess by greens who do not understand nuclear matters and do their best to destroy nuclear power generation.
The real problem with carbon sequestration is some place to put it. The diagram, for example, is assuming that a depleted oil or gas field is available to inject it into at an economic distance (less that 10 miles) from the source. There are a lot of areas in the US where no place to put the CO2 is available near existing sources.
The folks on this blog recognise that CO2 is not a pollutant so it makes no sense to waste money on sequestration.
On the other hand, nuclear waste needs to be burned in Gen IV reactors to generate wealth in the form of electric power and valuable isotopes.
“Nuclear death spiral” indeed! That’s hilarious, Roger. So what is it about the irrational anti nukes and their lawsuits that causes increased costs of nuclear that you don’t understand? I suspect you know this all too well and are being deliberately obtuse.
Why isn’t so called “green, renewable energy”(subsidized by holding a gun to people’s heads – aka taxation) a death spiral? It is of course and not just financially but also in energy break even terms where most of these technologies aren’t even nett energy producers. Now that’s a death spiral I can believe in.
Geoff Sherrington: re France’s nuclear, and greens in the USA.
WUWT has hosted the nuclear argument several times before, and France is always trotted out by someone as “these guys are doing it, and they are FRENCH!” The proper response is, and remains, that the French nationalized their nuclear industry so their capital costs are not comparable. When viewed entirely on a variable cost-to-produce basis, nuclear is one of the cheapest electrical energy sources. On that same basis, though, hydroelectric is cheaper still. Wind and solar are also cheaper, as is geothermal, wave, tidal, and ocean current. Rain is free. Wind is free. Sunshine is free. Waves are free. Ocean tide is free. Ocean currents are free. The only proper cost comparison is full costs, including design, permitting, construction, operation, maintenance, and decommissioning. On that basis, nuclear power fails miserably. No one can dispute those facts.
Here is my challenge, actually two challenges, for those who are gung-ho on nuclear power.
Challenge One: tell me why none of the approximately 15 islands (state or nation) with a population roughly sufficient to support the electrical output of one nuclear reactor, (1000 MWe), such as Oahu in Hawaii, elects to generate electricity via oil or diesel instead of the “ultra-cheap” power from a nuclear power plant – as nuclear advocates insist that it is so cheap. When I looked at the numbers in May of 2009, Oahuans could cut their power price by a factor of 4 if they would only build a nuclear power plant. see
http://energyguysmusings.blogspot.com/2009/05/nuclear-weapon-complacency.html
Challenge Two: if nuclear advocates are correct, please do this experiment and report back to me here or on my blog. Contact a lender with lots of money, tell them you will build a nuclear power plant of 2200 MWe output using two modern reactors, and you will borrow their money to build it. You will only need – and you name a figure. I have heard $5,000 per kW. For the 2200 MWe plant, you will then require $11 billion. Tell them you will not produce saleable electricity for four years for the first reactor, and six years for the second – or whatever time frame you believe is realistic. Tell them your on-line factor is very high, in the high 90-percent range. Then tell them, and this is crucial, that you will sell the nuclear-generated power for 2 or 3 cents per kWh, as nuclear power is the cheapest form of power there is. Point to the South Texas Nuclear Project for proof of a low-cost of production. Tell them you have long-term contracts for 40 years, and you will pay back the money loaned to you only from the sale of electricity from your new plant. Then point to the French nuclear industry as your example of how this works out great for them. Then, let me know what the lenders’ response is. Since nuclear power is so advantageous, according to the nuclear advocates, this should be easily done and we should see thousands of nuclear power plants springing up all across the globe.
I have had both of these challenges “out there” for more than a year now. The silence is deafening. Chirp….chirp….crickets…crickets….
The fact is that nuclear power is far too expensive to compete. Stating that “it has the lowest cost of production” is a bit like a person who owns a very, very expensive automobile, we could say costing $1 million with a huge monthly bank note, disregarding his monthly payment to the bank. Instead, the car owner brags about his very low operating cost-per-mile due to the ultra-efficient engine with hybrid technology, but most importantly he has his own oil wells and oil refinery to produce diesel fuel at 5 cents per gallon.
By the way, regarding the French nuclear technology? Areva’s fourth-generation plant that is under construction in Finland is having a heck of a time – the price is now double the initial estimate, and completion date is estimated as two or three years beyond the initial date. The cost will increase much more during the next few years, and the startup date will be pushed back ever farther. It’s a bit tough to blame this one on the greenies in the USA. Even with hundreds of nuclear power plants already built around the world, the nuclear construction industry cannot learn from its past mistakes. see
http://sowellslawblog.blogspot.com/2009/07/new-refinery-on-schedule-and-budget.html
Mike Borgelt,
Most of the lawsuits were over shoddy construction, not obstructionism. For a real-life view of how nuclear power plants were built with falsified x-rays on welds, see the South Texas Nuclear Project. For the nuclear death spiral case, see Louisiana. For inability to estimate costs and construction schedules, see any of the present planned projects – South Texas Nuclear Expansion, and the Vogtle plant in Georgia. City of Austin (TX) refused to sign on to the STNP Expansion – they learned a very good lesson the first time. City of San Antonio had a brief exploratory relationship, but then withdrew also. What if they offered to build a nuclear plant, and nobody signed on as a co-owner? Seems that is the situation today, so the reactor vendor from Japan stepped up as a co-owner. Pretty sad, that.
The NRC has design and construction standards for a reason. Nuclear power is not like a firecracker, where oops we get a puff of smoke and a sharp bang if something goes wrong. Everybody can laugh. Nuclear nuts tend to forget this, it seems. If the industry could and would design them properly, build them to code the first time and verify to the inspectors’ satisfaction that they meet code, then there would be little reason to bring a lawsuit. But perhaps that is too obvious and unprofitable, and nuclear construction companies make far more money from change orders, ripping out inferior work and doing it over and over again. I’m just guessing on that one.
Which one was it that never received an operating license due to inferior and dangerous construction, and was converted to fossil fuel? Shoreham, perhaps? Which one had the containment dome dropped and bent out of shape? The list of nuclear construction screw-ups is never-ending. Like a well-known battery-powered rabbit, the screw-ups just go on and on …. and on….. and on….
Those who advocate nuclear power for electricity in the USA have a long way to go to convince me that it is safe, it is economically attractive, and it should be done. I’m actually hoping one of these modern projects does get built. If and when it does, many billions over budget and many years behind schedule, the nuclear death spiral will begin again, and this time there will be several alternatives to expensive nuclear power. Distributed generation based on natural gas micro-turbines will easily beat nuclear power’s exorbitant prices. Banks will scramble to loan the money to install these things. Nobody in their right mind will remain on the grid, and the utilities that are dumb enough to build a nuke will see their customer base evaporate. And I will be laughing and laughing.
Re LarryD says: June 28, 2010 at 12:48 pm
@Atomic Hairdryer, how much detail on GenIV reactors using “spent fuel” do you want?
—
Thanks for those, particularly the Fischer paper. It does seem like much of the current nuclear waste is being wasted. I also heard a side effect of nuclear FUD is some reactors producing medical isotopes for treatment and diagnostics are closing, leading it increased costs and supply shortages.
As for Mr Sowell, don’t forget another big factor in increasing costs and delays, endless planning enquiries and objections from ‘green’ who prefer to little the landscape with thousands or tens of thousands of windmills, rather than more effective, efficient and low CO2 alternatives like nuclear.
Roger Sowell says:
June 28, 2010 at 11:31 pm
Challenge One. Build a medium capacity nuke facility in a remote place. We have this problem in Australia, pop 20 million, area about the same as USA. The deterrent is that for the last 30 years, nuclear scientists have been diverted from recator physics to using isoptopes to find why frogs are dying – that sort of switch from hard physics/engineering to soft bio stuff. As a result, we lack a learned middle-aged group that could be proficient in the assemby of a unit such as you describe. This is the main technical reason. The answer to your challenge is within the words above, goodbye crickets. The political complication is that greens hold the balance of power here and there and are as obstructionist as usual.
Challenge Two. Raise venture capital and build privately. The capital exists when the need exists, even if Government. Witness China, Peoples’ Republic of. They are currently building at least 20 1 GW plants. The cost is in the ball park you mention, but as we who have calculated nuclear costs for decades know, it is very hard to arrive at an agreed and workable costing basis. e.g. Did the Govt of PRC pay for the land in Guandong where these are 6 being built? Did it have to lodge advance insurance risk deposits?
“In November 2009, work began on a six-reactor nuclear power plant in the eastern coastal province of Fujian. The first two reactors (each 1,080 MW) of the $14.6 billion facility will become operational in 2013 and 2014. In mid-December, the China Guandong Nuclear Power Group started construction on the $10.1 billion Yangjiang nuclear power plant (Figure 3) in Dongping Town, Yangjiang City. The first of six domestically engineered CPR-1000 pressurized water reactors (each 1,080 MW) is expected to come online by 2013, with all units being completed by 2017.”
Remember, the cost of a FOAK is much higher than successives.
I’ve been down south in this part of China, a few tens of km from this site. The main activity I saw on the way south from nanning was coal trucks in endless procession from 400 km south in VietNam and a bit of tea growing and subsistence farming. So I guess you are opposed to modernization by the peasant class. (Except that as a group, the Chinese are rather intelligent and hard-working, with little time for philosophies about angels on the heads of pins).
In short, even with the Gorges Dam for hydro, the expansion of nuclear is huge – possibly 150 new plants by year 2050. My common sense tells me that this would not proceed it if was a dud financially. I guess that answers Challenge 2.
I have not vetted this reference closely, but it is rather similar to many now appearing – http://www.powermag.com/issues/departments/global_monitor/China%E2%80%99s-Nuke-Power-Boom_1696.html
In 1993 when I went to Yunnan from Hong Kong, the Government had just funded an airline with about a dozen B737. By 1995, the operation was privatised and named Dragon Air. I suspect the same will happen with Guandong Nuclear Power Group.
Was there anything of consequence that I missed in this answer to your belief-driven post?
Geoff Sherrington: that is not an answer to either challenge, that is an interesting dodge.
Islands, sir, islands are the topic. Last time I checked, Australia is not an island. But you do seize upon a valid point: if nuclear plants were so very, very safe and economical, why then is there so very, very much opposition? These should be as easy to design, permit, and construct as a local grocery store!
As to China, yes, I’ve heard similar stories. I’ve also worked in China and am very familiar. You won’t find me anywhere near a Chinese nuclear plant, judging from the condition of the other manufacturing facilities I have seen. As to their reported costs, they adopted the French subterfuge of government-run subsidies – thus are not credible. Try building such a plant in the USA, in say, South Texas for example. Without government subsidy. The last price estimate I saw was for $17 billion, but the Japanese vendor said it would be higher but would not say how much higher. Now, why would that be? Why not just be honest and admit that the finished power plant will cost $25 to $30 billion?
Challenges still open. Nice try, though!
There’s no such thing as “green” as the proponents see it. There’s no such thing as “clean energy.” There never will be. The longer we use any given power source, the greater its contribution to (list your pollution of choice here) will be, but never will they not pollute. Movement and transduction of energy just doesn’t work that way.
Solar panels create a deficit in outgoing radiation -> The net thermodynamic result is an increase in terrestrial energy (IE heat waste.) They must be manufactured. They must also be disposed of. None of these things are “green.” They all change the environment.
Windmills withdraw energy from the circulatory system of the earth. Assuming the circulatory system’s energy gradients come from external sources (to the system itself) then the energy input to the circulatory system is somewhat pre-decided. Withdraw energy from that system and there’s no telling if/when it will be replaced. The energy withdrawn from the system is pretty small compared to the total amount, I’m sure.. But so too is [CO2], and that certainly is construed as a long term problem. We’re talking about long-term plans to upset potentially delicate energy gradients on an ever-increasing scale.
Nuclear fuel and fossil fuel liberate stored potential energy as the heat byproduct of a reaction, that is, converting Pe to Ke and various byproduct specie.
Electric and hydrogen sources are not primary, that is, they must be derived from a driving source, so, they can be safely excluded from discussion.
Even hydroelectric power is nothing more than a complicated solar panel from which terrestrial free energy is increased.
No power source escapes thermodynamics. All produce waste. All produce heat. If you include heat waste as pollution, no power source is “green” or “clean.” If you don’t, you’re taking an idealistic view and picking your poison subjectively. No technology in and or around the movement or generation of energy will ever escape this.
Long ago, some university suggested that two policies that are often strange bedfellows (PEI (political energy independance) and AGW) should divorce. There is in fact three: The future loss of terrestrial energy sources (using up the fuel,) PEI and AGW. The first is a foregone conclusion which requires long-term plans, clear direction and realizable goals. The second requires short-term planning, transparent motivation and global communication. The third is a manufactured scientific anomaly, no more than an example of Blondlot’s N-rays leveraged by the propensity toward guilt or profit into a global hysteria.
The skeptic badge pinned on those arguing with AGW may be the most important badges ever pinned: Science as a religious weapon of politics vs. the discipline most likely to advance mankind is an ever-ongoing war, and this is one of the first ever fully recognized global battles over the quality of thought and information.
/jumps off soapbox
Recent nuclear power cost estimates – separating fact from myth (bravenewclimate 2009-08-23)
Sustainable Nuclear (bravenewclimate)
Molten Salt Reactor (Wikipedia)
A chloride salt MSR would be able to use U-238 for fuel, which increases the usable Uranium supply by x100, the fluoride MSR can use Thorium, which is three times as plentiful in Earth’s crust as Uranium.
Another commentary on the silliness of nuclear power as “the cheapest form of power.”
http://energyguysmusings.blogspot.com/2009/09/zero-cost-lng.html
Don’t forget the toxic chemical byproducts of solar cell production (any semiconductor production) that must be disposed of.
Yes Roger Sowell,
Power is expensive. You use a lot of words but I don’t see any point.
The Finn’s can either burn coal, gas, or uranium. That’s why Areva’s plant is so expensive, because it can be.
There is zero competition for coal, gas, and nuclear because whatever alternative source you name is either not plentiful enough to be significant or has the added cost of having to be backed up by coal, gas, or nuclear. Don’t forget to factor that into the cost of your windmills. Also, the cost of running a windmill includes the cost of the backup source sitting idle.
I was rather rabidly anti-nuke due to the 25,000 year storage requirement… then I found out that was based on a ‘decay to background’ measurement. If you change the requirement to ‘decay to original ore’ it’s more nearly 250 years. Very doable.
And we can assure the waste will be at least as well stored as the original ore. Just stick it in a hole in the ground.
At that point I realized I’d been ‘had’ by the green movement… The start of the birth of a skeptic…
Wow, Australia is not an island. It is two actually but if we just consider the mainland (the big island for you Taswegians) I can fly my airplane until I run into sea in any direction and still be in Australia.
Roger’s other comments are about as accurate as his comment about Australia. He’s a raving loonie anti-nuke.
Mr Sowell,
You are correct nuclear is expensive to build. It is also cheap to operate. Those who do not like nuclear simply assume a high cost of capitol to make nuclear appear too expensive. For instance, one anti-nuclear site I visited assumed a 15% cost of capitol for most of the capitol. No one would build a nuke plant given this cost of capitol, nor would they build a coal plant, auto factory, or steel mill given that cost of capitol.
According to the US EIA nuclear is competitive with other thermal sources and considerably cheaper than renewables. The below link contains EIAs estimate for the total cost of production for various technologies, a snapshot of cost in 2016. It includes the cost of subsidies, which can make a big difference for wind and solar. Rest assured that these estimates are not perfect, but the assumptions are relatively easy to find (e.g. nat gas prices, cost of capitol, etc.) and they are the same across technologies, i.e. they don’t assume nuke capitol cost at 15% and wind capitol cost at 6%. A nuke plant once built also provides some protection against the machinations of the commodity markets since fuel costs are a smaller portion of total production costs for nuke. Nuke plants operating today are providing this protection now as energy commodity prices have gone up considerably in the last ten years or so.
http://www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/aeo/electricity_generation.html
E.M.Smith says:
June 29, 2010 at 3:59 pm
…At that point I realized I’d been ‘had’ by the green movement… The start of the birth of a skeptic…
Unfortunately, the regulators and the politicians have been had by the greenie movement; but, are too stupid to realize it.
Duncan says:
June 27, 2010 at 8:51 pm
… I would think it inadvisable to sequester CO2 in a manner which would make it inaccessible for our future transportation needs anyway.
Ahh. Monitored Retrieveable Storage for CO2.
Citing an environmentalist web site, like the one that is referenced for the Yucca Mountain Project being shut down, is like citing RealClimate for impartial information on climate change. What is stated at the environmentalist web site is not correct.
The Senate did not shut down the Yucca Mountain Project. Obama’s budget request for fiscal year 2011 suggested de-funding the project (what Congress will do about this when they finally get around to establishing a 2011 budget is up to Congress, which has the power to allocate funding). The Secretary of Energy, Steven Chu, has ordered the shutdown of the Department of Energy Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management and re-allocated FY 2010 funding for shut down.
Chu also submitted a request that the pending License Application for the Yucca Mountain repository be withdrawn with prejudice (i.e., so that it cannot be resubmitted). The Nuclear Regulatory Commission Atomic Safety and Licensing Board considered this request and ruled today (6/29/2010) that the DOE cannot withdraw its application as this would violate the Nuclear Waste Policy Act. This ruling will probably be appealed. In the mean time, The Nuclear Regulatory Commission will continue to evaluate the License Application and write its Site Evaluation Report based on the License Application.
In addition, there has been a lawsuit filed in the District of Columbia Circuit Court of Appeals that challenges the ability of Obama and Chu to take these actions claiming that these actions violate the Nuclear Waste Policy Act, the National Environmental Protection Act, and the Administrative Procedure Act. This case is scheduled to be heard in September. It basically boils down to whether the president and Secretary of Energy can refuse to implement the law of the land. This will probably be fought out in the courts for quite a while. However, the ruling today by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission Atomic Safety and Licensing Board will have set a precedent.
In the mean time, spent nuclear fuel is being stored on site at multiple nuclear reactor sites all around the country and the government is paying millions of dollars to utilities for breach of contract for failing to have a repository to accept this spent nuclear fuel. The Nuclear Waste Fund is still collecting money from utilities and their customers to build a repository in addition to the billions of dollars that have already been collected.
Reprocessing could allow reuse of spent nuclear fuel but there would still be nuclear waste from reprocessing that would need to be disposed. There is also defense nuclear waste from 65 years of building nuclear bombs and developing reactors. Thus, there still is need for a repository and Yucca Mountain remains a safe, viable option as demonstrated by more than 25 years of studies documented in the Yucca Mountain License Application. But don’t believe me, you can read the License Application at http://www.nrc.gov/waste/hlw-disposal/yucca-lic-app.html and make up your own mind.
@Taphonomic
Shhh (until that moron Harry Reed is sent packing from the senate)…
Mike Borgelt, wow, that was an impressive rant. You might want to investigate the technical definition of “island” as opposed to “continent.” Pay close attention when you get to the part about “continents are on their own tectonic plate, such as Australia.” (You are welcome.)
I do note that, as usual in argument or debate, the loser resorted to name-calling. That is a certain sign that you are out of ammunition. Thanks for playing, that was fun!