IPCC WGIII: throwing the greens under the bus

@ur momisugly Col Mosby on April 14, 2014 at 5:23 pm
“After hearing preposterous claims from the anti-nuke jerkheads over the years, I would advise not believing anything they claim”
Wow. Name-calling. I too have heard nothing but impossible claims from nuclear proponents over the many decades I’ve been practicing, and none of it has come true. Nuclear power is not cheap, it costs far too much to build, and costs too much to operate today. It is a fact that US nuclear plants are closing because they simply cannot compete. They are not safe, either, even though the industry tells everyone lie after lie that the plants are safe. Each radiation release (Chernobyl, Three Mile Island, Fukushima) is waved away as “a fluke, other plants are safe” yet another one melts down a few years later.
Imagine the world as you paint it, with 1600 nuclear plants in earthquake-prone China, built to Chinese standards of high-speed rail with walls that crumble. How many radioactive dead zones will there be in the next century?

8 April: Bloomberg: Tara Patel: French Energy Law to Lower Atomic Power Reliance, PM Valls Says
Valls reiterated President Francois Hollande’s plan to cut dependence on atomic power to half of all output by 2025 from about three-quarters now. State-run Electricite de France SAoperates the country’s 58 nuclear reactors.
The law to shift toward renewables and away from nuclear is already about a year behind schedule…
The nuclear meltdown in Fukushima, Japan, in 2011 prompted France’s neighbors Germany and Italy to turn their backs on atomic energy and raised questions at home about the energy source. The atomic regulator ordered EDF to carry out safety measures costing an estimated 10 billion euros ($14 billion) to make reactors safer and Hollande planned to close EDF’s oldest plant at Fessenheim by the end of 2016.
Ministry officials estimated last month in testimony to a parliamentary commission that as many as 20 reactors may have to be halted by 2025 to meet Hollande’s pledge to reduce dependence on nuclear power and boost renewables…
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-04-08/french-energy-law-to-lower-atomic-power-reliance-pm-valls-says.html
25 March: Guardian: Peter Wynn Kirby: Europe’s new nuclear experience casts a shadow over Hinkley
Those planning the UK’s first nuclear reactors in decades cannot ignore the costs and delays to plants in Finland and France
With two new UK reactors planned at Hinkley Point C in Somerset and three years after the meltdowns at Fukushima in Japan, it is worth considering whether the design, procurement, construction, and management of nuclear power plants is sufficiently reliable to allay public concern over radiation and value for money.
In the case of the reactor design chosen for Hinkley C, the French-designed European Pressurised Reactor (EPR), there is not yet a finished power plant to judge by.
The two plants closest to completion, in Finland and France, have been plagued by astonishing cost overruns and construction delays, along with a litany of complaints over design flaws, poor quality control, and construction lapses…
The EPR’s automatic control system and safety system, by Siemens, also proved insufficiently robust. In 2009, nuclear safety regulators in Britain, Finland, and France jointly released a report judging the safety system to be insufficiently independent from the automatic control system, sending Areva back to the drawing board. This means that the EPR design selected for Hinkley C is not actually a finished product – one key component remains in development…
Originally commissioned at €3bn, the cost of the Olkiluoto 3 in Finland has ballooned to an estimated €8.5bn. Amid the finger-pointing between Areva and Finnish electricity provider Teollisuuden Voima Oy (TVO), with each suing the other for losses as a result of the delays and other problems (€2.7 and €1.8bn, respectively), Areva has apparently not submitted a revised schedule and did not renew contracts for 50 work foremen at the site in February, when work all but stopped for most of the month.
With all the mounting setbacks, no one involved in the project dares to predict when the plant will actually come online, but Finnish media sources estimate its completion date will have slipped from 2009 to 2018, or perhaps even as late as 2020…
France is perhaps one of the most pro-nuclear places in the world to build a reactor, with about 75% of the country’s electricity already generated from the atom. But Flamanville is also years behind schedule and far over budget.
Work started in 2007, yet similar problems with questionable quality control and design issues have dragged the completion date into 2016 (this for a project originally intended to last 4.5 years). The final bill for Flamanville is estimated to reach €8.5bn – exactly the same as the upwardly revised cost of Olkiluoto…
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/mar/25/europes-new-nuclear-experience-casts-a-shadow-over-hinkley

I have said since 1979 that I will finish my career as an engineering geologist with a final stint in siting studies for nuclear power. That will be after I began that career at the end if the previous bout of nuke construction, went successively into water resources, some environmental geology, then engineering and geologic hazards, then mining now oil&gas and next back to nuclear. What a fun cycle (except for the environmental consulting. I’ll post something some day on my blog and alert everyone about it. That was more or less a waste of time-actually more, not less)

For those who prefer a summary of the first eleven articles in The Truth About Nuclear Power, it has been shown (one) that modern nuclear power plants are uneconomic to operate compared to natural gas and wind energy, (two) they produce preposterous pricing if they are the sole power source for a grid, (three) cost far too much to construct, (four) use far more water for cooling than better alternatives, (five) nuclear fuel makes them difficult to shut down and requires very costly safeguards, (six) are built to huge scale of 1,000 to 1,600 MWe or greater to attempt to reduce costs via economy of scale, (seven) an all-nuclear grid will lose customers to self-generation, (eight) smaller and modular nuclear plants have no benefits, (nine) large-scale plants have very long construction schedules even without lawsuits that delay construction, (ten) nuclear plants require costly upgrades after 20 to 30 years that do not always perform as designed, and (eleven) after the worldwide increases in crude oil price in the 1970s, France chose nuclear power rather than high-priced imported oil or relying on other countries for natural gas. France has, in the intervening years, subsidized its power prices, reluctantly privatized only a portion of the electric industry, developed nuclear technology that it desperately subsidizes to sell to other countries, exports low-balled subsidized power to neighboring countries in an attempt to maintain high nuclear plant operating rates, and recently was the object of an investigation for anti-trust by the EU related to power prices. Clearly, following France in nuclear is not the way to go.

@ur momisugly davidmhoffer on April 14, 2014 at 7:22 pm
Why choose a technology that is proven to be dangerous? We drive cars that have expensive, heavy, and mandatory safety features. We could, instead, all ride motorcycles at 150 miles per hour without helmets. Which would you say is safer, cars with seatbelts and crash safety designed in with reasonable speed limits, or 150 mph motorcycles and no helmets? Nuclear power has far more economic and safer alternatives. These alternatives are called coal and natural gas, wind, solar, geothermal, and hydroelectric.
I invite you to read Article Two in the Series. See what nuclear power ultimately leads to.

@ur momisugly davidmhoffer on April 14, 2014 at 7:52 pm
“When your claims are examined in detail, they fall apart.”
That tells us all we need to know about your analytical skills. I stated that San Onofre (SONGS) in California was shut down due to faulty steam generator design. Do you deny this?
I state that nuclear plants in the New York and Mid West are closing due to being unable to compete with wind and gas-derived power. Do you deny this?
I state that Georgia’s Vogtle plant was only green-lighted by its financial backers after obtaining state government law change to allow the utility to pre-charge the customers for the cost of building the plant. Do you deny this? I could go on, but my fingers get tired.
Many actual nuclear power engineers and technicians agree with me. They know what type of plants they design and run.
There is a reason that nuclear power has achieved only 11 percent of the world’s electricity generation (as of 2011 per IEA), after 50 years of desperately trying to increase their market share. Too dangerous, and too expensive.

Ohhhh, the irony! It should be a ‘flower power and peace sign’ painted school bus the greens are being thrown under and the ‘green’ characters comment bubble should say No Fracking Way Dude!
In the comments queue above is another bit of irony:
Felix says:
April 14, 2014 at 2:39 pm
The irony is that too many conservatives are in denial about the science of climate change while too many liberals are in denial about the solutions.
This is followed immediately by:
MattS says:
April 14, 2014 at 2:39 pm
I am in southern Wisconsin. It is currently half past April and I have 34 degrees F and it’s snowing. Forecast for tonight is a low of 20 degrees F. Where is all that global warming I was promised? I want my global warming back!
Felix thinks ‘conservatives’ are in denial about AGW while every day folks like MattS all across the whole damn state of Wisconsin and all of Canada are still experiencing winter weather in the middle of April! Now, we all know that Wisconsin has folks from every persuasion of economic, political, religious, philosophical, gender, and sexual orientation but they all need do no more than look at the outdoor thermometer and out the window to know spring is late this year. In many areas across the state, the frost was 4 feet deep and more and still has not thawed completely, a result of a deep and difficult winter. Felix thinks the entire population of Wisconsin and their thermometers andtheir still frozen ground are conservatives in denial.
Now, THAT is truly ironic, Felix!
Are the thermometers, the family budget breaking winter fuel bills, and the frozen tundra remaining in Wisconsin this April just imaginary artifacts of ‘conservative denial’, Felix? Is CO2 causing colder and longer winter weather? Please provide your independently verifiable evidence substantiating this cold ‘climate change’!
If that proves too daunting, then perhaps you would like to elaborate about the ‘climate change solutions’ that liberals are in denial of? MattS really wants lower cost energy and milder winters because high energy costs and extremely cold winters impoverish Wisconsin citizens. Enlighten MattS about how liberals can mitigate the cold winters and high energy costs, please Felix. Please, enlighten us all……

Roger Sowell
(one) that modern nuclear power plants are uneconomic to operate compared to natural gas and wind energy,
If they were uneconomical, companies wouldn’t be trying to build them. Dictatorships like China who couldn’t give a flying fart about anything EXCEPT economics wouldn’t be building them. As for wind, you really blow your credibility with that one, it is intermittent and economical only in very specialized cases.
(two) they produce preposterous pricing if they are the sole power source for a grid,
Which is why their primary use case is base load. You may as well argue that a semi-trailer cannot economically transport a single case of beer and so they are useless.
(three) cost far too much to construct,
That’s just a statement, not evidence or reasoned debate. If they cost too much, countries and companies wouldn’t be building them.
(four) use far more water for cooling than better alternatives,
Does the water wear out? Nor is “far more” a reason to not use nuclear. I could say your precious wind mills use far more land area than other alternatives, or far more rare earths. The only questions are a matter of economics and resource availability. So of course you don’t build a nuclear power plant somewhere with an insufficient supply of water, anymore than you would build a wind mill somewhere that there’s an insufficient supply of wind.
(five) nuclear fuel makes them difficult to shut down and requires very costly safeguards,
They’re easy to shut down, just slower because they are base load designs. ANY base load design is slow ramping up and slow ramping down. As for those costly safeguards, well DUH! Do you know of ANY industry that shouldn’t be required to put in safeguards commensurate with the issues?
(six) are built to huge scale of 1,000 to 1,600 MWe or greater to attempt to reduce costs via economy of scale,
Uh, yeah. Since they are built for base load, they need to be big. For peak loads you want smaller faster ramp up ramp down technologies. You are once again beating on nuclear by claiming it is uneconomical to do things it wasn’t designed to do.
(seven) an all-nuclear grid will lose customers to self-generation,
Which has what to do with anything? Do you imagine that hydro or coal or solar or gas will not lose customers to self generation?
(eight) smaller and modular nuclear plants have no benefits,
Once again then, why are they being built? Why are companies and entire countries buying them? Do you suppose they look at their options and say, hey! This one is really expensive and doesn’t work very well, let’s buy that one! Seriously?
(nine) large-scale plants have very long construction schedules even without lawsuits that delay construction,
Again, and so? You think the Boulder Dam just appeared over night? That wind farms appear over night? Everything at the scale of the power grid takes a long time to design, build, and deploy. That however is immaterial. The only things that are material are the amount of power required, the time frame it is required in, and the cost of provisioning it over the lifetime of the plant.
(ten) nuclear plants require costly upgrades after 20 to 30 years that do not always perform as designed, and
Uh huh. Like that NEVER happens with solar. Ooops, all those solar companies went bankrupt or cannot survive without subsidies. Same for wind farms. Do you think that gas and coal plants don’t need upgrades and maintenance over the course of their lifetimes? Seriously?
(eleven) after the worldwide increases in crude oil price in the 1970s, France chose nuclear power rather than high-priced imported oil or relying on other countries for natural gas. France has, in the intervening years, subsidized its power prices, reluctantly privatized only a portion of the electric industry, developed nuclear technology that it desperately subsidizes to sell to other countries, exports low-balled subsidized power to neighboring countries in an attempt to maintain high nuclear plant operating rates, and recently was the object of an investigation for anti-trust by the EU related to power prices.
Yeah, and what was the RESULT of that investigation?
I invite you, if you are able, to refute any argument or fact given in that series.
Done. I’m pretty sure I nailed more than one.

(seven) an all-nuclear grid will lose customers to self-generation,
Sorry Roger, forgot one important point. Since nuclear plants are good at base load and terrible at variable load, OF COURSE and “all-nuclear grid” would be expensive. But no one is proposing an “all nuclear grid”. You’re constructing a straw man argument that is completely immaterial to the use case for which nuclear is proposed. I could as easily argue that an all ocean liner transportation system would lose customers to self transport. It is just a silly argument to make, and underscores my complain earlier that your arguments are laced with misdirection and misinformation, convincing me further that you have no valid arguments to bring to the table.

@ur momisugly Mario Lento at April 14, 2014 at 9:21 pm
Wind does exactly what it is designed to do (at this time): produces power when and as the wind blows. As more grid-scale energy storage is brought online, wind energy will not require backup. MIT recently applied for a patent on their ocean-floor grid-scale energy storage systems. These will allow off-shore wind energy to be stored and released as needed.
My views on wind energy are published here:
http://sowellslawblog.blogspot.com/2014/03/gone-with-wind-nuclear-bye-bye.html
You want to know my motives? Here it is, copied directly from the Gone With The Wind article just above:
“In my considered, engineering-based opinion, nuclear power is a danger and a threat to the economic well-being of electricity consumers. I have a special place in my heart for the poor, the elderly, those on fixed incomes, and those who barely scrape by month to month or even week to week. High electricity prices causes those vulnerable groups to choose between food, rent, and paying the electric bill. That is simply wrong, in my view. Nuclear power increases electricity prices by outrageous amounts, as I witnessed only too personally in the 1970s along the US gulf coast. It is simply wrong to run them, or to build them, when there are so many better, cheaper, and less deadly alternatives available. Today, the power plant of choice is a combined cycle natural gas-fired gas turbine plant, with low construction costs, high thermal efficiency of approximately 60 percent, low operating costs with low-cost natural gas at around $4 per million Btu, and very low water consumption for cooling.
Since wind energy also forces nuclear power plants out of business, that alone justifies the subsidies.”

See the 5 minute readings here:
http://transmission.bpa.gov/Business/Operations/Wind/baltwg.aspx
The green line near the bottom with its ups and downs is wind power. Red is load.
For this region the base load power is hydro.
Note on Monday morning (April 14) as the load went steeply up the wind power went . . .
Oh, there wasn’t any wind. We turned of machines, lights, heaters, stop lights and – well, we did not actually turn them off. Hydro kept society humming right along.
Good thing – our house is 100% electric including the well. Cheers.