Britain, Kyoto, Renewables and Nuclear Power: Reality intrudes.

[NNadir]

"LONDON (AFP) - Britain may need one more generation of nuclear power stations to help meet a target to reduce carbon dioxide emissions in the fight against global warming, the government's top science advisor has said.

The comments by Sir David King in an interview with The Independent will anger green campaigners and raise concerns about a greater potential for nuclear accidents...

...But he said the question of climate change and its impacts on human society -- "the most serious problem we're faced with globally this century" -- was so important that the nuclear option had to be re-examined, and that public perception of nuclear's dangers did not necessarily accord with reality.

Fewer people had been killed in nuclear power generation than in other forms of energy production, and modern nuclear stations were much safer than those of the past, noted King, one of Prime Minister Tony Blair's most trusted advisors...

...King, a professor of chemistry at Cambridge University, stressed that going nuclear once more would not mean that Britain's commitment to renewable energy sources such as wind or solar power would be in any way weakened..."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/environmentnuclearbritain


Reality.

[jpak]

1. More realities

The UK's aging creaking (largely) government-owned nuclear power program is a money loser.

http://www.foe-scotland.org.uk/press/pr20020509.html

http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/mscp/ene/2002/00000013/00000002/art00006

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/544796.stm

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/4532051.stm

Nuclear power is the MOST expensive option to reduce greenhouse gas emissions...

http://www.nirs.org/factsheets/kyotonuc.htm

The UK has no domestic uranium reserves.

http://www.bgr.de/index.html?/b123/e_esuran.html

Any uranium it possesses from reprocessing is, for all practical purposes, unusable. Reprocessed uranium is contaminated with 232-U (a gamma emitter making it difficult to handle) and 236-U (a neutron absorber that poisons the fission chain reaction). It has to be further enriched at exorbitant cost to be usable at all.

No nation with reprocessing capability uses reprocessed uranium - none.

http://www.antenna.nl/wise/uranium/epfr.html

...and, the Windscale/Sellafield/Thorp reprocessing plant currently has a "little problem"...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/nuclear/article/0,2763,1479527,00.html

Reality Bites...

[NNadir]

2. Not one scientific reference.

Not one. Just a whole collection of articles by illiterate journalists referring to the arguments of illiterate anti-nuclear activists. This is rather like illiterate journalists referring to the arguments of the internationally known liar Colin Powell to prove that Iraq was building "weapons of mass destruction." People believe what they hear repeated endlessly, whether or not what they hear stands up to examination.

This is a good reason why our planet is facing irretrievable catastrophe, because people are too lazy to think critically.

In fact, you can prove anything by linking articles from illiterate journalists, a fact that is readily clear to any liberal thinker.

The person is speaking who is advocating nuclear power in the article beginning this thread is a scientist, not an illiterate journalist or web master of a site put together by illiterate radiation paranoids.

Of course, even the illiterate journalists and webmasters sometimes let the truth get through. For instance, consider this illiterate site, linked above, http://www.antenna.nl/wise/uranium/epfr.html

"...Of the 1050 t of spent uranium oxide fuel annually generated in France, 850 t are being reprocessed at La Hague, at present. (In addition, 100 t of spent MOX fuel arise, which are not reprocessed at all.) From reprocessing of uranium oxide fuel, approx. 816 t of uranium and 8.5 t of plutonium are recovered. Of the uranium recovered, approx. 650 t are converted to the more stable oxide form for long-term storage, awaiting future uses..."

There are perfectly good reasons to not use the 816 tons of recycled Uranium, which is of course the presence of U-236. Now you would have to know something about physics to understand the neutron economy implications, but clearly an effort to discuss physics is useless here.

The main reason for not bothering with these physics issues in fuel manufacture, would be that it would require some modified handling of spent fuel. Because virgin uranium is so cheap, there is little economic reason to screw with this issue. As long as it is so cheap, there are no reasons to make changes to fuel loading procedures for instance, no reason to deal with the inevitable neptunium or the extra difficulties of Pu-238.

Unlike all sorts of other fuels, with the exception of solar energy, nuclear fuel is essentially inexhaustible, at least for the next several millenia. However, it is probably true, with the worlds nuclear capacity now expanding by 15% with 60 new gigawatts of capacity under construction being added to 360 gigawatts now producing power, that unrecycled uranium will ultimately become more valuable than it is right now. In this case probably simple stratagems will be employed such as using spent PWR fuel directly in Candu's to extract the extra energy. The result will be denatured plutonium, and some neptunium.

From my perspective, which has to do more with the layering of yet another difficulty in the way of the already low weapons proliferation risk than it does with pure economics, spent uranium is slightly preferable than virgin uranium, since, again, it changes the isotopic profile of any plutonium produced. This, of course, goes right over the heads of anti-nuclear anti-environmental twits, since they actually know very, very, very, very little about the process that so terrifies them. That's hardly surprising.

Note that 816 tons of uranium, in any case, fits in a cube 3.5 meters on a side. http://www.webelements.com/webelements/elements/text/U/phys.html

This is hardly a storage concern when compared with billions of tons of gas released hapazardly with almost no regulation to the atmosphere. Now, we know that people who are irrationally afraid of the word "radiation," don't take this waste (carbon dioxide) seriously although they'll spring to vast paroxysm of twisted logic when the word "radioactive" is spoken. This is because they put their own irrational fears above the future of humanity. Fuck those people. They are immoral and they are self serving. They obstruct the future. They doom us all, men, women and children alike, with their poor educations.

In fact, it would be useless to discuss the word "economy" with anyone with a poor understanding of even the integers, never mind higher mathematical forms.

Here's something amusing and very, very, very, very illustrative, however: If someone says "future use" in a sentence with "nuclear" in it, the solar hype crowd screams "impossible!" "impossible!" This is the same crowd who crows "could! would! may!" for every daydream about a trivial solar installation, towers of power, Schwarzenegger window dressing tax break bills, wind farms that worldwide cannot match the power output of even a single nuclear plant, etc, etc, etc. I am still waiting to hear of just one much hyped solar gigawatt that exists and produces continually. Just one.

But I won't hear of it. If you ask solar hype types, "where is the capacity that is even on order that is comparable to 1/10th of nuclear capacity under construction?" they change the subject.

If you ask them, "is carbon dioxide a waste that nobody knows what do about?" they change the subject.

If you ask them, "if so called nuclear waste is dangerous, where are the people killed by it?" they change the subject.

However they are quite confident saying "reality bites." Indeed. I'm sure you think reality does bite if you are irrational.

Those who embrace reality - that would be those who give a shit - know that no country anywhere at any time will meet the Kyoto goals, never mind what is really necessary beyond the Kyoto goals, without nuclear power.

Anyone who is serious about saving the planet's atmosphere, anyone who knows - and this would generally exclude the scientifically illiterate solar hype type twits - that the most serious energy waste on the planet is carbon dioxide.

Of course, we cannot expect too much from solar hype types, our anti-environmental anti-nuclear Rovian spinmeisters. Intellectual consistency clearly doesn't matter to them. In fact, it is almost oxymoronic to use the word "intellectual" in any fashion in a sentence that refers to them in anyway. Religion and intellect don't mix well.

[jpak]

3. "nuclear fuel is essentially inexhaustible, at least for the next several

millenia"

Bullshit

Global uranium reserves would last ~40-70 years at current consumption and only 12 years if global nuclear capacity were to expand six-fold.

From the current issue of Oxford Energy Forum (Oxford Institute of Energy Studies)..

http://www.fraw.org.uk/mobbsey/papers/oies_article.html

<snip>

A very few portray a wholly unrealistic scenario, that forecasts hundreds or thousands of years of nuclear energy (Price 2002). This is because they do not take into account the need for the nuclear industry to grow massively in order to displace fossil fuel use, or that a significant part of the globe's entire theoretical supply of uranium may be unusable (because its extraction and use would take more energy than it would provide).

<snip>

From the conclusion of the report....

<snip>

It would be unwise to advocate adopting the nuclear option when we have no realistic idea of how long the uranium resource will last. Clearly the 'once through' cycle has no future – if the world were to adopt the 'once through' option the world's uranium resources would be exhausted in a few decades. We would very quickly shift from shortages of oil and coal to shortages of uranium . The principle solution to the problem of the 'once through' cycle, adopting a more 'closed' cycle using fast breeder reactors, is itself fraught with dangers. There is no tried and tested fast breeder technology. In addition the scale of the increase in nuclear capacity required to displace fossil fuel is such that the lifetime of the resource would still be a matter of decades, not centuries. For this reason it may be that the longevity of the uranium resource, quite apart from the issues of waste or radioactivity, could be more significant to the future viability of the nuclear industry.

<more>

What about US uranium reserves?

The US nuclear power industry currently consumes ~62 million pounds of yellowcake per year - most of that from imported sources.

http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/aer/nuclear.html

The US currently produces only 2 million pounds per year of yellowcake...

http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/nuclear/dupr/qupd1fig.html

US uranium (yellowcake: U308) reserves at $100 per pound (ten times the current world market price) are 1414 million pounds.

http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/nuclear/page/reserves/urescost.html

or 22 years at the CURRENT RATE of consumption.

Double US uranium demand and that would last only 11 years.

Over 50 years of (expensive, unhappy) experience has shown that Liquid Metal Fast Breeder reactors just do not work.

http://www.ieer.org/reports/transm/annie.html

Moreover, reprocessing of spent fuel to recover uranium or plutonium is uneconomic. The break-even cost of reprocessed plutonium is 20-fold greater than the current price of uranium ore.

Frank Von Hippel (1999) Getting Back to Basics: Controlling Fissile Materials

http://www.npec-web.org/projects/summary6.htm

Reprocessed uranium is - or all practical purposes - unusable due to contamination by undesirable uranium isotopes.

One can only conclude that nuclear power is - and always will be - an unworkable, uneconomical and unsustainable scam.

Please, no more fairy tales...






.

[Coastie for Truth]

4. No one size fits all.

I just a to David Kammen's article, "Lack of vision on policy clouds energy future", San Francisco Chronicle, Friday, May 13, 2005.

Kammen says, "The real issue, in fact, is that today our energy economy lacks the diversity it needs to respond to the inevitable economic, political and environmental shocks that history has demonstrated occur frequently. By contrast, the initiatives presented by the president signal to American industry that investment in truly innovative technologies and economic leadership is not a national priority."

That's the issue - diversity - as we will soon be forced to learn, via Hard Knocks State University, one size does not fit all.

The will be niches where nuclear is best, and other niches where petroleum even at $150/bbl is still optimal, and still other niches where geothermal is optimal, and still other niches where photovoltaic is best, and still more niches where wind is best. Just because solution A is not a solution for problem B, does not mean that it is not a near-perfect fit for problem A,

Now, with personal transportation. Hopefully, walking shoes, running shoes, bicycles, and transit will be near optimal for most situations.

But, what about where the above modes are not optimal. Well, I am biased and bigoted as all heck (too many years in electrochemistry -- batteries and fuel cells; too much of myself invested in the prematurely dead GM EV) - my mind is made up - don't confuse me with facts.

ELECTRIC CARS AND TRANSIT VEHICLES AND TRAINS

1. What is a hybrid - except (in one mode, not all or even most hybrids, but originally and in one concept) an electric car that drags around its own generator.

2. Why drag around the generator - it's just extra weight, as is the gasoline or diesel or LNG to feed it? Why not just plug it into the wall outlet at night when the rates are low.

3. And (RANTING FLAME ON) why did the Big Three stigmatize all electrics as being golf carts for the Viagra set, and not fit for the public highways, called them "golf carts." (RANTING FLAME OFF).

4. Remember how I started this post --"One size does not fit all."

5. Remember what Professor Karmen's said - ""The real issue, in fact, is that today our energy economy lacks the diversity it needs to respond to the inevitable economic, political and environmental shocks that history has demonstrated occur frequently."

[jpak]

5. I think that diversity is important

but so is sustainability and accessibility.

Renewables are both diverse, sustainable and accessible.

A wind turbine, solar hot water heater or PV panel can provide energy services in third world villages as well as exclusive American gated communities (the same goes for biomass and biogas as well).

There are only a few countries that lack the technical expertise or industrial infrastructure to manufacture these technologies.

Their primary components are composed of the most abundant elements in the Earth's crust (silicon, aluminum and iron). Their minor components (carbon, copper and the "Rare Earth" neodymium) are not really really that "rare" at all...

http://www.metall.com.cn/re/intro/facts.htm

...and they can be easily recycled.

Anyone can use them without the need of a technical background (how much smarts does it really take to plumb a solar hot water system, or install PV panel or wind turbine???).

They empower the average person - a well insulated energy efficient home with a solar hot water heater, PV array and/or turbine is truly a Castle - Enron/Exxon/Exelon has little leverage to fuck with anyone that owns these "toys".

A farmer with an industrial-scale wind turbine or PV array on his fence rows can harvest electrons as well as food and fiber - they would stabilize and secure his/her farm income in a way no other energy technology can.

It's also hard to kill your neighbor with a PV module or wind turbine - not impossible, but you have to be pretty creative.

And unlike oil wells (that can provide income to the lucky few landowners that have mineral rights in the Oil Patch), these technologies can be used practically anywhere.

Can nuclear power make the same claim????

Nope.

Nuclear power is the homeboy of the industrial nations - it simply is too costly for the billions of people in developing countries that currently lack access to electricity.

Ownership of nuclear reactors is restricted to the relative few (who can game the political process and influence politicians) - everybody else has to pay them what the market will bear or regulatory powers-that-be decree - no one has a real choice.

It's elitist - oppose nuclear power and the Nuclear Priesthood will call you names.

Nuclear power is entirely dependent on some of the rarest elements in the Earth's crust. Recycling spent fuel is uneconomic, and recycling radioactive reactor components is not practical or advisable.

And, nuclear waste is the gift that keeps on Giving It To generations yet unborn.

It's not a real option for the Civilized World...

[NNadir]

6. The fuel cost of uranium is trivial; it is too cheap to meter.

I note that the exact same criteria applied to the solar hype scam as solar hype apply to nuclear energy completely invalidates any use of solar energy, cost, subsidies, waste, etc.

Solar hype types are routinely subject to almost Bushian doublespeak and hypocrisy. This is because like Bushies, they are involved in religion and not in thinking. They are afraid and terrorized by nuclear energy because they don't understand any science whatsoever.

Take for instance, the argument about the cost of uranium an any alleged effect that fuel prices will have on nuclear sustainability. I note 60 Gigawatts of nuclear capacity are now under construction world wide, representing an investment of hundreds of billions of dollars and millions of hours on the part of highly educated men and women with advanced technical degrees. So my inspection, any one with a shred of a modicum of a nit of intellectual self respect could recognize whether or not nuclear power is a "scam." Further I note that this capacity is being built after many decades of international experience with nuclear power.

Now I know that mathematics and physics are often denigrated by the religious when it interferes with their dogma, but let's look at the cost of nuclear fuel. I have done this before on this website, but some heads are very thick and nonetheless repeat the same mindless pablum over and over and over, as if repeating dunderhead nonsense could somehow make it something other than dunderhead nonsense.

A typical reactor contains 100 metric tons of uranium. Let's say that the price of uranium rises to $100/kg. The cost of this uranium is thus 10 million dollars. It will run the reactor for over two years without requiring refueling, since a typical fuel burn-up is 30,000 MW-day/metric ton. The reactor is putting out 1000 MWe. Since there are 31.6 million seconds per year, the reactor will put out thus put out in a single fuel loading 31.5 X 10^19 Joules of electricity. Dividing this by 3,600,000 joules per kilowatt hour, we see that the cost of the fuel is less than 1 six millionth of a dollar per kilowatt hour.

Note: I have not included enrichment and fuel fabrication costs here, which does in fact lead to a higher fuel loading cost, though not really appreciably so. The main point is the same: Almost all of the cost of nuclear energy, as in the case of solar energy, lies not in the fuel, but it the device to make the conversion. The big difference is of course that the devices to make solar energy only work part of the day and they are not competitive to build.

Thus the world is building nuclear capacity at a rate several hundred times greater than it is building solar capacity. If solar power were competitive, it would be being built and no one would be building nuclear capacity. Under these circumstances we will quickly recognize that the environmental costs of solar energy are not trivial and cannot and should not be ignored.

Thus solar energy is very much in the place that nuclear energy was in the 1950's, when only a few nuclear pilot plants existed. As was the case in the 1950's for nuclear energy general public perception seems to think solar energy will someday be cheap and risk free, but everyone is relying more on twit media driven dreams and suppositions than than actual experience. This was when the "too cheap to meter" promise was made by a government syndic. Although no other form of energy is too cheap to meter, certainly not the very expensive solar cells that work for a part of the day in good weather, somehow people think nuclear power is a failure because this hype didn't pan out.

It is amazing how poorly some people think.

Unlike solar capacity, nuclear capacity was actually built on a huge scale in the 30 years after it was first proposed on a large scale and experience was obtained. I personally have been hearing solar claptrap for well over thirty years - in fact I used to believe it. With the exception of wind power, though, no capacity to speak of is actually installed anywhere in that time. Thus the solar industry is very much just more and more fairy tales from people who can't distinguish reality from such tales very well.

Now personally I think that solar energy should be encouraged and subsidized, even though most of the mythology surrounding it is pushed by people who understand almost zero about energy and reality. Just because solar energy is an economic failure despite decades and decades of media driven hype and illusion, I have no doubt that it will make an important contribution in the future, assuming that humanity survives the use of fossil fuels.

However, to repeat, I have zero respect of any kind for anyone who believes that the global climate crisis which is occurring NOW can be addressed without the rapid expansion of nuclear energy. The recitations of the peculiar anti-nuclear rosaries by the paranoid solar hype types, rosaries that demonstrate their energy illiteracy, are both dangerous and immoral. The lives of every living thing on the planet are involved. The global climate change crisis is real.

[PaulaFarrell]

7. probably a bit stupid of me

but I'm going to bite.

Nowhere do you mention the fact that nuclear waste has to be disposed of in a safe way. This is the main problem people have with nuclear - also the possibility (well, inevitability really) of nuclear accidents. Wind and solar may need subsidies as they are still in their infancy ( as I believe nuclear power was subsidized), but there are no waste disposal costs - a malfunctioning wind turbine means no energy, not hundreds of miles of contaminated land. Chernobyl is still uninhabitable - and there are still farms in Wales where animals can't be grazed by dairy cows due to potential contamination. Have you factored in those costs? Have you factored in the (proposed) costs of Yucca mountain? Have you factored in the costs of leukemia for children of nuclear plant workers , and those living in the vicinity of power plants? What about security - how are ypou going to protect thjese plants from terrorists? Nuclear is not and never will be 'too cheap to meter' - that lie was exposed years ago. The fact that renewables aren't up to snuff yet is due to lack of investment and research. Fifteen-twenty years ago mobiles phones and PCs were practically unheard of - now nearly everyone uses them, and the capabilities are amazing compared to the first gen. There is no reason the same type of quantum advance couldn't be made in renewables if the money and the interest was there.

[NNadir]

8. Sigh...

Maybe you would like to demonstrate a form of energy that has no waste problem.

Last time I looked, the fuel waste called "carbon dioxide" was destroying the earth's atmosphere. Maybe you think that this problem can be put off for 15 or 20 years while people do the same damn solar research they've been doing for the last 20 years with the same trivial and useless result. I don't agree.

If solar power were realistic, one would not need to complain about the lack of money and interest. As was the case with the other inventions you mentioned, mobile phones and PC's, the investment would naturally flow to these sources.

I am really tired of having to demolish for every person with a poor understanding of energy, risk, physics, chemistry and most other scientific disciplines the repeated crap about Chernobyl, terrorists etc. If you must be aware of my opinion on these matters, I suggest you read through a few thousand of my posts here on the subject.

I cannot avoid, however, in parting moral disgust, to note that the largest terrorist attack in recent times involved oil, not that anyone seems to give a shit. Nothing nuclear was actually involved in any way. There has not one case of a nuclear terrorist attack anywhere on the planet, unless you count American activities sixty years ago in Japan, although to hear the hub-bub from every intellectually unarmed American from George W. Bush right down to people on this website, you would think nuclear terrorism was a daily occurrence. It is not. The fact that commander codpiece, George W. Bush, was able to provoke Americans to engage in ritual murder on a grand scale in Iraq by merely using the words "nuclear" and "terrorism" in the same sentence, is - let's not pull any punches - an appalling demonstration of American mass ignorance.

[PaulaFarrell]

9. Sigh...

maybe you would like to demonstrate that nuclear waste and solar waste are equivalent. As I understand it (with my puny and irrelevant knoweledge of all things scientific) there have been advances in solar in the last twenty years. The fact that they have been trivial is down to lack of interest due to lack of incentive. As long as there has been cheap and easy energy, why go down the renewable path? There's no money in it, hence no research. Nuclear got lots of subsidies and Bush has proposed more - so why not level the playing field? If nuclear could stand on its own two feet it would have done so long ago, but it can't.

What's this "crap about Chernobyl"? It did happen, and the land around it is still uninhabitable - if you think it's somehow not still a real problem check out www.chernobyl.info.

I agree that the terrorist threat is overplayed, but there's still a real threat from the waste, and also what about decommissioned plants? For example, near where I live (England) there's a nuclear plant which is built on a shingle beach which has to continually be replenished to stop it eroding. The plant will be decommissioned soon but it will still have to be protected. There is just no comparison between the waste created by nuclear and renewables. But I admit renewables and conservation aren't sexy.