This is in the UK Daily mail today, and it’s like sacrilege to the greens to have one of ther own say this:
This sums it up, he writes:
Our environment and energy problems are solvable — but can be tackled effectively only with pragmatism, rather than ideological wishful thinking. And the litmus test for that may well be the issue of nuclear power.
h/t to Barry Woods
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Roger Sowell says:
July 4, 2011 at 8:10 am
Nuclear is nuts.
***************************
Alongside all the other statements here, some reasonable, some balderdash, this is the worst. However, I see no point in arguing about what most people see as unproven technology. It’s kinda like arguing about global warming. Time will tell.
The real problem is that we live in a glorious country that is not working as we were taught it was supposed to, ie a representative democracy where the people’s representatives hire the best experts, debate, and ,make the best choices. Ethanol for fuel in a country the pays sugar cane subsidies to keep the price up? Wind power where the transmission access rights are impossibly costly? Obama said (before he was elected) that he would drive the cost up so high that no more coal-fired power plants would ever be build – when most of our cheap power comes from coal? Wait ’til Congress starts arguing about shale gas and contaminated aquifers, and whether or not people have always had drinking water that caught fire.
No, we really live in a kleptocracy where purchased representatives put out sound bytes to avoid losing their sinecures. Totally unable to define the word “entropy” and unaware of the total cost of “green” and “renewable. Sites like WUWT are our only hope, if we can maintain a decent dialog and educate the bulk of the minority that actually goes to vote.
And yes, nuclear is nuts. I can see clearly now that we are precisely where the wandering bands of Neanderthals were when they carried those glowing coals around in a fire pot. Come back in 5 years, when we REALLY invent “nuclear” energy. It’s gonna be beautiful!
When the UK government commenced supporting renewables with tens of billions, he was a campaigner for renewable energy and against nuclear.
Now that the UK government is putting even more tens of billions into nuclear, he is suddenly a convert.
@Mashiki
I was speaking of what is credible in the USA today. I agree completely that the biggest tragedy may be our unwillingness to develop this technology fully because we are afraid of the word nuclear.
At 7:56 PM on 4 July, Doug Badgero had written:
Damned good perception. Recall how the diagnostic modality properly called “Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Imaging” (NMR) became “Magnetic Resonance Imaging” (MRI) for no reason other than the fact that the average American patient has an insensate, idiotic, uneducated phobia of anything to do with “nuclear.”
NASA flew a fleet of space shuttles for 30 years, built with 40+ year old technology, based on a concept first envisioned about 50 years ago. It’s a similar mess with nuclear power plants. The technology to design and build far better, less expensive and safer spacecraft and nuclear power plants has existed for a long time and is still being improved right now, but governments and anti-everything idiots keep getting in the way.
The control rooms of the Fukushima plant look like they’re 40 years old because they are 40 years old. Who is responsible for keeping any modernization from being done? With updated control and monitoring systems (which would be technology from ~25 years ago to current) a nuclear plant would have computers and monitor screens displaying everything right in front of the operators, with any problems instantly put in front of human eyes.
But instead of modernity many power plants are operating with walls full of mechanical gauges, switches and blinking lights spread all over the place, unchanged from the day they were installed. That’s one reason why the worst of the problem with reactor #2 happened at Three Mile Island – the warning lamp indicating the pressure vessel vent was stuck open was on the opposite side of the room from where all the techs had gathered, watching other indicators, trying to figure out WTF was going on. Eventually somebody noticed the light and manually closed the valve. With updated systems the warning would’ve been slapped on screens in such a way nobody could have missed it, and very likely a backup system would’ve closed the valve on its own.
These older nuclear plants *could* be run for many more years, if updates in the monitoring and control systems are allowed to be done. Most of the hardware doesn’t need changed, only how it’s controlled.
The Fukushima lesson is that updates need to be made to make the nuclear plants able to run fully self contained, even when all outside power and other services are cut off. An electricity generating plant should not need electricity from *somewhere else* in order to stay fully functional!
Note the damage control:
And are having to actually pay some neighbours to take much of it off their hands when it comes online at inconvenient times. The whole enterprise is massively loss-making.
So for every MWh they produce, their economy takes another hit. Soon, Stein’s Law will show its teeth:
“If something cannot go on forever, it will stop.”
Tucci78 says:
July 4, 2011 at 12:59 pm
Bystander needs to read Power Hungry: The “Myths” of Green Energy and the Real Fuels of the Future, by Robert Bryce. Specifically he needs to read Chapter 10 of that book, which is a well-researched analysis about Denmark and its own wind power. Denmark is primarily an exporter of their wind power, and sneakily tries to claim offsets from its carbon emission statistics because of its export of wind power to countries like Norway, Sweden, and Germany, all of whose CO2 emissions have remained unaffected by the process. Denmark itself consumes a fraction, expressed as barrels of oil equivalent, of their total energy consumption as wind power compared to the hydrocarbons they consume and produce. Denmark is a very poor example to use to try to answer those of us who support nuclear power, and who see wind power as nothing but an illusion posing as a real solution.
One ton of thorium will produce nearly 1 GW of electricity for a year in an efficient thorium cycle reactor. India beaches are full of thorium, it can be scooped up by the railcar load. The path is already laid. Seems France has the only viable ability to create the first commercial thorium cycle reactor. (USA, shame! You had one running decades ago and blew it.)
Check LPPhysics.com .
One pound of boron will produce one MW of electricity for a year. No steam, no waste, no radioactive byproducts.
If all continues on track, commercial licenses for mfr. of small 5MW generators will be available world-wide in about 5 yrs. Less, if its starvation-level private financing is boosted a touch.
This is a sneaky tactic, I’ve heard of other activists getting behind the same idea, these environmentalists are hard core anti nuclear, how this will go down is like this, first they’ll say that nuclear energy is a cleaner, safer energy source than coal, gas and oil, then they will put nuclear energy on the table get legislation passed and begin to shut down coal, gas and oil fired power stations to build nuclear power stations, when coal, gas and oil fired power stations are shut down they will take nuclear energy off the table and campaign against it in favor of wind, solar and tidal energy.
In the UK during the 80s nuclear was on the table the coal mining industry was shut down and just as quick nuclear was off the table again. People here need to remember that a cheap reliable source of electricity (energy security) is not part of these peoples agenda it’s enemy No.1 as they see it, why do you think any rational person holds to a hypothesis that Anthropogenic co2 drives the earths climate, they are extremely misanthropically minded, they believe in destroying a countrys energy supply to reduce the size of human civilization so that it will have less of an impact on the planet.
If any of you believe a word coming from the propaganda wing of eco-extremists, Marxists and Malthusian types maybe you should go sit in the corner and think again about what they are up to, they have done nothing but lie for the past 30 years about man made global warming and more recently about all manner of Anthropogenic influences claiming to be driving the earths climate so that they in-turn can influence government policies that effect each and every one of us. Why would anyone believe a word that came from these people?
Oh that’s right they have never lied or been negligently wrong and deceitful in the past have they?
Mark Lunas: Natural Bjorn Killer – on the rise and fall of Bjorn Lomborg
http://www.public.iastate.edu/~sws/materials/materials/critiques%20of%20environmentalism/Bjorn%20Lomborg%20Debate/Lomberg%20Ecologist.pdf
Ah, Yes! I have read extensively about the Molten Salt Reactor, Thorium, PBNR, Capacitance Discharge Reactors, and saw major potentials in many. I argued strongly with my Congressman against the down-blending of the U-233 at Oak Ridge. But all along I wished for a practical fusion system. I think it is here.
http://peswiki.com/index.php/Directory:Andrea_Rossi's_Cold_Fusion_Energy_Catalyzer_(E-Cat):_Frequently_Asked_Questions
“despite the fact that it is a bigger impact on the atmosphere than a Yellowstone super-volcanic eruption each month when it comes to CO2.”
That’s an insane assertion.
Everyone, let us not forget that CO2 being a problem is a scientific conclusion. While the majority here believe it to be meritless, there are rational schools of thought that say CO2 reduction is warranted as a precaution. If people propose rational action to precautionarily reduce CO2, then they should not be derided for it. Remember, it is not the conclusion that excessive CO2 is problematic that is dangerous, but the idea that we must undertake actions that harm humanity.
Therefore, please do not slip into the litmus test of Warmist/Skeptic, but review each proposal. If we work with the rational warmists on actions that will benefit society whether or not CO2 is a problem, then we can prevent the irrational warmists from achieving too much sway and taking actions that will harm humanity.
Politics makes strange bedfellows. I am surprised it took Lynas so long to realize that not all “enemies of your enemies are your friends”. But it is good he finally woke up to the fact.
@ur momisugly steven mosher,
“It’s about the necessity of diversifying your supply. If for example you had a middling size island where one nuke could supply 100% of the supply, guess what? you would need two. It can also be about available space to build.. take hong kong for example.
I suppose if you get to residential sized nuke then you’d see uptake. The only people who want to rely 100% on one nuke for ALL their power are people who are ordered to. guys in subs.”
Precisely. That is certainly one of the reasons. But then, most grid-scale power supply systems use multiple generating plants to provide reliability. All plants must eventually be brought down for maintenance and repairs, or in the case of nuclear, for refueling. Some means of supplying power must be provided during those times.
My point, though, was more related to the cost of a new nuclear power plant, and the price that the utility on such an island would charge its customers to pay for the plant, the operating costs, and make a small profit.
A further point is that nuclear plants are notoriously difficult to control when called upon to provide load-following power rather than base-load power. Thus, a nuclear power plant on an island would face great difficulty in ramping up to meet the maximum load each day, then cutting back to meet the low load each night. One could, it is true, build an energy-storage system that would charge and discharge to meet the changing load while the nuclear power plant would operate a a steady rate. This would, however, add still more to the cost of the power that the customers would pay.
Such an energy storage system has just been ordered for Catalina Island offshore California. The capacity is 1 MW, and the technology is a sodium-sulfur battery made by S&C Electric of Chicago, IL. Catalina has power produced from diesel-fueled generators.
The high cost of new nuclear power plants prevents them from being built unless a government builds them or subsidizes them. Even a modern reactor design, the GE-Hitachi ABWR is far too costly to build, as the South Texas Nuclear Project Expansion was recently stopped when the costs were unveiled.
@george (Jim) Hebbard PE on July 4, 2011 at 5:43 pm
Re my comment that ” “Nuclear is nuts.”
***************************
Alongside all the other statements here, some reasonable, some balderdash, this is the worst. However, I see no point in arguing about what most people see as unproven technology. It’s kinda like arguing about global warming. Time will tell.”
I maintain that nuclear power is nuts because it is far too expensive, too dangerous and getting more dangerous with each passing day and month, it produces toxic radioactive byproducts, and it uses a disproportionate quantity of water for cooling compared to the power produced. I’ve written about these issues on my blog.
see e.g. http://sowellslawblog.blogspot.com/2011/03/reconsider-nuclear-power-is-it-ever.html
I would support a different type of nuclear fission power, if one should ever exist, that 1) is cost-competitive with coal and natural gas, 2) does not produce toxic radioactive byproducts, especially those that can and are used for nuclear weapons, and 3) has a high thermal efficiency so that vast quantities of water are not evaporated due the plant’s operations.
It may very well be that, someday, nuclear fission will be developed that will make benign byproducts, perhaps even useful byproducts. Apparently there is a shortage of phosphorus in the world, thus it would be a great idea to operate a nuclear fission reactor that produces phosphorus. We don’t know how to do that, to the best of my knowledge.
It may also be possible, someday, to build a nuclear fusion reactor that produces energy at a price competitive with coal or natural gas, produces more energy than it consumes, does not melt its materials of construction, and has a means for introducing fresh fuel without disrupting the reaction. We can’t do that today, either.
Until either or both of those types of nuclear reactors are proven, nuclear is nuts.
Roger Sowell: “All plants must eventually be brought down for maintenance and repairs, or in the case of nuclear, for refueling.”
No they don’t. CANDUs refuel on line.
“A further point is that nuclear plants are notoriously difficult to control when called upon to provide load-following power rather than base-load power. ”
Not so. France has considerable experience in using reactors for load following.
“One could, it is true, build an energy-storage system that would charge and discharge to meet the changing load while the nuclear power plant would operate a a steady rate.”
More to the point, every utility in the world tries to reduce peak demand. To the degree they succeed in moving peak to off-peak load, they make the grid more favourable to base load sources by increasing base load and decreasing peak.
“One could, it is true, build an energy-storage system…”
That’s one way. There’s lots of uses for off-peak power. Hydrogen production is just one. Pumped storage is another.
“…as the South Texas Nuclear Project Expansion was recently stopped when the costs were unveiled.”
You like to quote South Texas all the time. Naturally you don’t want to mention Georgia Power and FPL with Vogtle and Turkey point expansions.
Finally, you keep claiming that nuclear is dangerous. Amusing really, since per unit of energy produced and based on the historical record to date, nuclear is by far the safest of all methods to date of producing electricity.
@Colin: “safest of all methods to date….”
Stick around…the record is not yet written for all the nuclear harm, disasters, deaths, radiation sicknesses, farmland destroyed, etc. due to nuclear power plants and the long-lasting radioactive products. The nuclear power plants in the US are aging, rusting, creaking, and falling apart. see the AP’s recent expose on this, or my blog entry at http://sowellslawblog.blogspot.com/2011/06/nuclear-nightmare-approaching-fast.html
I’m actually hoping that a new nuclear power plant does get built in the US. It will serve as a grim reminder to all utilities to never do that again. It’s a long game, but eventually facts and realities will prevail. The long construction time, startup years later than scheduled, and the cost over-runs mounting into the billions of dollars will certainly happen again, just as they did in the 70s and 80s. Nuclear power is completely inappropriate when so many better alternatives exist. I’ve heard it said that “Building and starting a new nuclear power plant in the US will provide a prime opportunity for the utility involved to CUT their power prices, since “of course” nuclear power is “cheaper than any other form of power.” We can all wait breathlessly for the power prices to drop.” [sarcasm off now]
We will also see the Nuclear Death Spiral occur – again – as power prices increase, and customers install their own generating systems and remove demand from the grid.
And even the CANDU nuclear power plants must eventually be brought down for maintenance, even if refueling is not required. Steam generators require routine inspection and repair. So do turbines, condensers, and other equipment that has no installed spare.
Moving peak load to base load is a grand theory, but the reality is that the sun shines during the peak hours – and that is when air conditioning is required. Also, manufacturing occurs during the day, as does office work. There are indeed alternatives to time-shift part of that load, but most are not economic. One could, for example, install a chilled water system to use off-peak power to produce chilled water (or ice) then use the chilled water the next day for the cooling load. This has been installed in a few places. Where 40 percent of the electric load is residential, as is the case in many utility grids, chilled water systems are simply not economic.
Energy storage systems come in many forms. None are economic, other than pumped storage hydroelectric. There is a rather good one, tied into nuclear power, in Michigan on Lake Michigan at Ludington with about 1800 MW capacity. The reservoir covers more than 800 acres. If any of the others were economic, they would already be installed. We have had the technology for many years, it is only the economics that are lacking.
Re France and their nuclear load-following, I have different information on that. France sells power at night to other countries because the nuclear plants won’t turn down far enough. Ever wonder why France doesn’t have 100 percent nuclear power? If 70 percent is so good, why not 100 percent? Load following is at least a part of the reason. If the USA were to follow France’s lead and build nuclear plants so that we, too have 70 or 80 percent from nuclear, what will we do with our excess power each night? Our options are to sell to Canada and Mexico. Canada doesn’t need our power, rather, Canada exports hydroelectric power to the US. We could, presumably, build underwater cables and sell power to Cuba, but it’s unlikely.
There are plenty of ways to reduce the power produced from a nuclear power plant, without changing the reactor output. One such way is to bypass part of the steam around the turbine and send it directly to the condenser. Of course, that requires far more cooling water and a much more expensive condenser. But, it could be done. One could also use part of the electricity produced for other purposes rather than sales into the grid. Hydrogen production from water electrolysis, and high-pressure reverse osmosis desalination are two such purposes. If either of those were economic, it is curious that they are not being done.
“Stick around…the record is not yet written..” So in short, I’m right, and all you have is prophecy.
“…even the CANDU nuclear power plants must eventually be brought down for maintenance..” You claimed in your original text that reactors had to be shut down for refueling.
“Moving peak load to base load is a grand theory, but the reality is that the sun shines during the peak hours – and that is when air conditioning is required.”
Fact is, distribution utilities have been moving load into base for years.
For the rest of your piece, your comments on France and US are simply your meaningless strawmen about 100%. The economics of power generation is entirely geographic and situational, never universal. Your claim about load following was refuted, and all of your blathering was simply swerving around the fact that you were caught out. As for “Nuclear Death Spiral”, that’s just another cute phrase invented by you or some other antinuke, devoid of any substance.
As for condenser bypass, CANDUs do this.
“I’m actually hoping that a new nuclear power plant does get built in the US.” Of course you don’t. You’re vigorously campaigning to make sure it never happens.
Fact is, Roger, your just another ideologue. You’re not interested in analysis. You’re only interested in facts when they happen to suit your pre-determined conclusions.
Please understand a few things. Nuclear fission is a TRANSITIONAL energy source, necessary for perhaps another plant lifetime of nuclear fission plants or 60 years at most. Then clean and inexaustible controlled Fusion power produced in Fusion power plants, with little radioactivity or long term wastes can, should, and will eventualy replace both fission and other sources, such as coal and oil, as a power source for all mankind.
Any idea to use an advanced nuclear cycle such as thorium or new fission reactor designs would take 30 years minimum and tens of billions of dollars to design; and obtain governmental approval for beginning to build them. Note that the advanced and improved LWRs of either the PWR or BWR variety, so called GEN III+ reactors, have been in design and seeking approval for about 15-20 years; and are only a year or two away from final “standard design” approval.
So any new design from scratch, won’t be available for 25-40 years at the earliest. Existing proposals are nothing but suggestions, for which no detailed engineering has been performed. By that time, some 30-40 years from now, the window for Nuclear fission will have closed, by then. Such development funds would be better spent on creating Fusion based, follow on designs. Other wise we are creating a battle for the new Fusion plants against the newer Fission designs. Somethng we should not want to encourage, as it will delay the ultimate adoption of Fusion.
Fusion is a scienitfic technology whose Physics R&D is nearing an end; and whose plant design and engineering time is drawing near. The ITER Fusion experiment in France is both the LAST Physics experiment and the FIRST engineering design for a Fusion power plant. We have controlled Fusion, in our laboratories, and already generated tens of megawatts of power from experiments around the World. ITER will scale our R&D to larger sizes and longer durations, suitable for commercial power plants. It has been building for half a decade, and when completed, it will rapidly confirm the R&D objectives set for it. We know that because we have proved all the things that ITER was meant to accomplish, at various laboratories around the World, a liitle bit here, and a little bit there. ITER merely brings it all together, in one place,as a fiinal confirmation.
As a charter founder of the Union of Concerned Scientists who worked in the power industry, I was criticizing some of the poorly designed or haphazardly constructed nuclear plants, long before the Leftists adopted it as a cause celebre to push their ideology.
They threw the baby out with the bathwater, and prevented the completion of all nuclear reactors both the good and bad. The people concerned with real issues were easily displaced by leftist politicians, who spent all their time politicing, and nothing on the issues; and were only seeking a handsome ricebowl as managers of tthe enviro organizations, ranging from my UCS, which I quit in disgust, to Patrick Moore’s Greenpeace, from which he did likewise.
As a consequence many of the ancient obsolescent and most polluting coal power plants were forced to continue in operation from the 1970s and are still operating and polluting today, since there simply was no alternative. In a sense the gentleman is correct. Much of the worst of the coal plants running today, would have been shut down 20 or 30 years ago, if the marxist watermelons, who don’t give a damn about true environmentalism except as it feeds theiir wallets, didn’t fight to stop all fission plants. Both good and bad, indiscriminately.
Their favorite tactic was the misuse of the Law, with their terroristic lawsuits and financial delaying warfare. Thankfully, those weapons are now ruled illegal except for a limited time, largely expired, in the USA. When construction eventually begins it will proceed to operation with little deviation, unlike the situation of interminable and purposely planned, costly delay.
Recycling used reactor fuel would eliminate over 96% of the radioactive waste in the USA; and would consume it in the incinerators we call present day LWRs. There are now processes and procedures that transmute transuranic waste. That is the remaining 1% of the waste, and the only long lived waste is transuranic, long lived raidioactive, “waste”. The balance is few percent is irradiated elements made temporarily radioactive in the reactors, that will decay rapidly over at mosta few decades.
The processes to destroy these long lived transuranic elements, all members of the actinides elemental series, such as Putonium, Curium, Americium falls under the rubric of “Actinide Burning”. If adopted as a course of waste remediation action, there would be NO long lived waste, dangerous for more than several decades, at all. Storing hazardous materials for a few decades is entirely possible and routine; and does not create anywhere near the issues with storage for thousands of years. The issue of long lived radioactive waste is “Red Hering” trotted out by anti-nuclear, anti-technology enviros, to scare the uninformed. I should note that the “actinide burners” range from present day LWRs, to even future Fusion powerplants that can “crack” the tiny bit that is untransmutable by “lazy neutrons” of the LWRs.
Wow, a textbook sample of a classic disinformation rant from a “founding member” of the storied UCS! Such an honour to be on the receiving end of a massive nightsoil dump from a master.
ITER is a non-commercializable boondoggle of historic proportions, of course, and if it continues to triple in estimated costs every 10 yrs, then Stein’s Law will soon show its teeth: “If something cannot go on forever, it will stop.” I doubt it will make it to 2020, even assuming the EU and Euro don’t implode before then.
Fusion may well displace fission, but it won’t be a magnetic confinement monstrosity that does it.
Correction: after the ITER noise, much of what the (now repentant) UCS founder is saying is accurate. It is possible to deal with fission wastes as described, and various fission designs are reasonably competent at doing this. However, the ability of the left to throw up and exploit regulatory roadblocks and to inflate and misrepresent nuclear accidents is not to be underestimated.
Economically, the major challenge in the near term is frak gas, which is the target of a full-on demonization assault. Hyping and mis-attribution of pollution and even seismic events near drilling sites is the current focus, with the all-pervasive anti-carbon meme ready to resume the starring role when needed. But its ubiquity and low cost per kW capacity are facts of life and nature, and globally beyond the reach of EU or US watermelons. LNG is even more fungible than oil.
@Colin, you certainly don’t want to discuss the facts, that much is obvious.
Each of your points is in error.
The Nuclear Death spiral, for your information, is absolutely a fact. I lived and worked through that period in history along the US Gulf Coast in the 70s and 80s. But then, facts apparently are not something of which you take much notice. The good folks in Louisiana, and Texas, certainly did take notice when their power prices went up and up due to nuclear power plants starting up. They built cogeneration plants to supply their own power as quickly as they could, but then facts such as this will be ignored or denied by you. Each MW of self-generated power removed an equal amount of load from the utility’s grid, and from their revenue stream. They raised their electric rates as a result. More cogeneration was built as the electric prices went up. Nuclear Death Spiral. Your calling it false does not make it false.
So, go ahead! Encourage your local utility to build a nuke, or two, or a dozen! Then don’t go complaining when your electric bills skyrocket, as they surely will.