@einstein (aka a synonym for upset) - You have apparently recognized that there is some very large money behind the anti-nuclear FUD effort and have come to the conclusion that the fix is in and the game is over. I will not deny that the battle will be difficult, but it is my experience that the truth eventually wins as long as there are courageous advocates who are willing to go to the trouble of repeating it as loudly and often as necessary.

When the emperors have no clothes on it does not matter how many members of the inner circle keep agreeing that they look fine that way.

Nuclear fission releases 2 million times as much energy per unit mass as oil combustion, which is the next most energy dense available fuel. This means that fission has a technology asymptote limit of development that is FAR above any achievable by any other energy related technology. It is something that no amount of opposition can overcome as long as there are people who refuse to allow the imposition of gag rules or limitations on human ingenuity.

For some of us the opinions of rich people have no impact; we do not ask them for anything and have souls that are far too expensive to purchase.

When Hyperion, NuScale, Toshiba and others have their plants up and running, with power units available for purchase on short lead times, there is no doubt in my mind that the forces that oppose nuclear power will have a difficult time slowing down the orders.

One final thought for my fellow pro-nuclear activists and commenters - nuclear power is not limited to “baseload”; it is reliable, controllable power that can respond to the needs of the customer when the machinery is properly designed. It can meet the peaks and valleys with equal ease. It is the kind of power that can scale to the sizes needed to supply industrial cities and small villages and provide each with affordable, abundant, emission free power.

Rod Adams
Publisher, Atomic Insights
Host and producer, The Atomic Show Podcast
Founder, Adams Atomic Engines, Inc.

My comment on nuclear power is, it is a must in the grand scheme of many ways on producing
power, we have wind power, solar power& geo thermal power, that said, only one of these
are base load power and that is nuclear, wind only blows when you have the right conditions,
Solar only works at it`s maximum when daylight is sufficient .
People are blinded to the facts about nuclear power, I don`t want to bore you to tears, so I will
make this short.
Every person worries about the safety of nuclear power, the French , Canadians, americans
are no mugs when it comes to building Nuclear P/Ps, also the chinese showed the world Press
on Sixty Minutes about three to four years ago when they invited the press, they do not produce
rods. they produce round black balls, while the press was entertained with a nuclear scientist
on the Turbine floor, of the P/S, a half an hour went by, the Scientist informed the Media gathering
the P/S had been in meltdown for the last hour, everyone started to panic, he reassured the
World Press there was nothing to worry about, no meltdown will occur we have a new
technology, so all was fine.
My main reason for speaking for Uranium, I work & live in the Latrobe Valley in Victoria Australia
Where i live we produce power for this state and help service other states with their p ower needs and it is all coal fired Power, try and live in areas that produce CFP most children end up
respiratory problems, not taking into account Greenhouse Gases.
For all the people that are worried about Nuclear Waste, the problem is solved, I am not going
to detail it all.  Look up Fussion-FISION. This is the answer the world has been waiting for.
Re Simmo

NO NUKES!

I just never see anything scary enough in nuclear power to compare to coal or imported unfriendly oil. I do see something very scary in a non-diverse energy portfolio for our country. We are just too big to try and “narrow down” to one or two sources. We have made that mistake with oil…lets not do that again huh?

Lets keep working on everything and let it sort itself out. But coal and unfriendly oil must be eliminated from our energy portfolio.

Eric,

You can’t compare nuclear and solar, and even if you do, nuclear wins, at least today.  Solar can’t provide baseload power, so once you get rid of all the fossil-fuel powered plants, how are you going to turn on the lights?  Nuclear.  A smart grid with advanced energy storage may change the equation somewhat, but that is extremely far off.  Nuclear works today.

Nuclear waste disposal is a political problem, not a practical one.  The physical volumes are small.  As technologically advanced as we are, it should not be too much of a challenge stick waste in a foolproof, highly-moderated lead casing and dump it in a hole many miles deep.  Or in Yucca Mountain.  Problem solved.  If only the politicians would stop playing populist political football with this.

Using Three Mile Island as a basis for opposition to nuclear power is ludicrous.  The fact is that not a single member of the public was injured, much less died, and that plant designs, procedures and training have advanced exponentially since 1979.  It was a high-profile accident because it was nuclear plant.  If it had been a coal plant, or factory for that matter, and 5 people had died it wouldn’t have even warranted a mention on the evening news.

Maurice

Massive Nuclear Bailout Removed from Stimulus

Loan guarantees coveted by nuclear industry lobbyists removed in conference committee

Washington, D.C.—Legislative language authorizing up to $50 billion in loan guarantees for the nuclear industry was stripped from the economic stimulus package today.  Friends of the Earth President Brent Blackwelder had the following response:
“This is a huge win—for our planet and for taxpayers who want stimulus funds to be invested wisely. The bailout in question would have thrilled nuclear industry lobbyists but done virtually nothing to stimulate the economy. Taxpayers shouldn’t have to foot the bill for the nuclear industry’s failures. Congressional leaders did the right thing and prevented waste by removing this bailout.”

oh yeah - and finally - I take great offense at your position on FUD, which I interpret as:

the FUD around nuclear is so great that it will never get started.
wait, here’s more FUD!

if there is FUD around something, you *clear it up*. you set the record straight.  you give arguments, convince people.

Every single rational person I know when they have looked deep into nuclear power has come back convinced that this is damn important to embrace - the ones that haven’t are either:

  * unable to overcome their emotional bias against nuclear
  * have some vested interest in keeping it from getting implemented (either politicians catering to FUD or coal/renewable interest groups both determined to get rid of competition)

Right now, the arguments du jour amongst the anti nuclear folks seem to be aimed at economics and waste, which are both tied to FUD. We physically COULD construct nuclear cheaply because the *chinese* can construct it cheaply. We physically COULD recycle because the *french* can recycle.

But why *don’t* we do it cheaply, and/or recycle? Because of entrenched groups that are determined to MAKE it expensive, and to MAKE it impossible to recycle, and moreover to spread more FUD to perpetuate this. Useless windbags like Harvey Wasserman spew this crap out, and special interest groups like Greenpeace mount huge PR campaigns against it - they do more harm than they possibly could realize.

Here’s a hint - with only slide rules and engineering boards, the first nuclear commercial power plant in 1953 went up in 3 years time. The chinese are putting up them in an order of 2 years time, and this will come down to 1 with modularization (which all the gen 3 units are). There is no physical reason why this couldn’t be the case with nuclear units here.

So please, don’t bring up the FUD issue as a reason against nukes. You see FUD, you correct it. You don’t use it as an excuse.

look,

I realize on the part of lots of greens the appeal of solar, wind and localized energy. ‘hey’ - we use it *locally*. return back to localized management, localized food, localized everything. 

We *have* been doing that - for pretty much all of human history. 99.9% of our history we’ve eked out a living locally - and 99.9% of our history, our numbers were small (100 times less), and the living *sucked*. Famine and disease were the rule of the day, along with ignorance, pain, heartbreak, and just plain cruelty.

Yes, for renewables, we need a breakthrough in storage - probably multiple breakthroughs. Along with breakthroughs in materials, breakthroughs in manufacturing, breakthroughs in price, breakthroughs in infrastructure, breakthroughs in equipment (to handle dips in power), breakthroughs in scalability, and a *hell* of a lot of network and infrastructure. Furthermore, we need a reliable way to use renewables to provide process heat (temperatures above 1500 degrees celsius). And we need a breakthrough in cost - I’m sorry, but when you throw capacity factors and need for backup in, solar is an order of magnitude more expensive than coal. Possibly even two.

But even with all those breakthroughs (which may or may not ever happen), your localized deconstructing-get-everything-off the national grid is fantasy.

The average industry block uses in excess of 1000 W/m^2 - refineries and commodity mills use even more - and a lot of that is concentrated, always on power. Cities use an average of 200 W/m^2.

The average solar photovoltaics cell produces 20 W/m^2 - and that assumes perfect storage - which means that you’d need to surround each damn refinery with 50-100 times its area in solar cells - and even then, not be guaranteed power (what happens if it is a cloudy week?). Any renewable grid has to be national or even international.

And then there is the simple matter of ‘closing the loop’. How do you close the loop in producing solar (even thermal solar) when all the materials needed require high temperatures at sustained intervals to produce? How do you do this without coal, oil, or natural gas - which you would need to do in a ‘sustainable world’? Wind and solar has gotten as far as it has because of subsidies from huge amounts of steel and concrete production - which as of now, requires huge amount of burning both coal and gas. Nuclear could close this gap because it produces tons of high end process heat. How do you do that with renewables?

And above all, how do you do this within the next 30 years? How do you upend the entire grid and all our production processes in the face of massive demographic trends? The great thing about nuclear is it works with the grid *as is* without any changes - but above all, the great thing about nuclear is that it just plain *works*.

Again, einstein, I’m not arguing that we haven’t made progress in other technologies, just that what you are describing is hypothetical (if not pie in the sky). IT MAY NOT EVER HAPPEN. IT PROBABLY WON’T HAPPEN IN A SHORT TIME FRAME. We desperately need a plan B.

And we are deep sixing ourselves by ignoring it. We seem to think that we can run our economy on youtube, starbucks, and american idol,  and I’m afraid that we are past our peak, poisioning our atmosphere in the process, and on the deep slope headed down.

sigh - how damn depressing.

(
ps - just because solar PV is part of the semiconductor sector doesn’t mean that Moore’s law applies to it. Moore’s law isn’t even a law - it’s just a historical observation with regards to information processing speeds. Beware applying it to other fields, and extrapolating on the trend. Lest you look like those 50’s folks who assumed that we’d all have private jets and hovercraft by now, and cars would travel at 500 mph.
)

Ok ok if that’s want you want genius… The nuclear option. (pun intended)

You don’t know who the opponents are. You don’t understand the battle. You don’t understand the battle is over and the winners have already been chosen.  I’m sorry to say, your “plan B” of putting nuclear in sand tars is not ever going to happen. Your concept of nuclear being a savior is not going to happen either. Your “plan B” was in the boat. The boats have already been burned .

Let me explain the motivations and the players so perhaps you can move away from your middle managment spread sheet and see how things work from a macro perspective.

The Prize:
The prize is the ability to amass perhaps the largest fortune in the history of mankind. Greater than anything representing the Robber Barrons. Greater than Petro wealth. The final frontier of high finance. Ne Plus Ultra.

The Players:
These are people that live “North of Sunset” in LA beyond the two gates. They don’t attend meetings, they summon people. It’s amazing what a secret service detail in the neighborhood will do for a nights sleep. People that call their Hamptons bound Sikorsky the “Royal Barge”. People that wear Brioni and A.Lange & Sohne. People that chose their latest aircraft on it’s hot and high capabilities. Departing Aspen is dreadful with that fuel hop to Ft. Collins. People that won’t drive a Bentley Continental because it fly’s the flag of new money. However, Woody Creek is the exception and the all wheel drive is fantastic on long snowy driveways. People that attend the Bohemian Garden. People that have decamped from London City for sleepy backwaters such as Zurich and Luxembourg (Born to be mild) because of onerous decisions. Mr Brown, you have a serious problem. Notice the chronological and unceremonious shellacking the Pound Sterling has taken? Place the two against a calendar for a proper “Bloody Hell” moment. People that make global tastemaker decisions from the perch of magnificent roof top gardens with particular (very) Champs-Elysées Parisian addresses. People that entertain on their “boat” from “swimming pool” on the Monaco harbor on that most important day in May. Bring ear protection and wear red. Leave the wife. People that have both Oscars and Nobel Prizes. People that have past, present and most importantly future POTUS on speed dial.  People that are driven to the Ferry in Marin County to depart for San Francisco’s financial district simply to enjoy one of the worlds best commutes. It truly is.

I think you get the idea. The opponents to your idea of savior are hardly a group of ragtag hippies parading around with hand drawn signs…

What you are witnessing with the nuclear renaissance is tantamount to “being given rope” The idea is to propel buckets of interest and blind motivation out there for your ilk to trumpet and get some traction. Capital will flow and Voila’ at the last minute there is no longer any rug. It is the hallmark of a proper structured trade. Welcome to your future.

The Chinese are another story and march to their own drum. You are not wise to trumpet Frances love affair with nuclear to me. I know France very well and besides some rather sticky circumstances involving Areva, the French by and large are keen to move away from nuclear. Don’t sell that here because people know better.

Let me point out a few things.

*How much nuclear waste is being stored in Yucca Mountain? That would be zero. Is this the work of aforementioned hippies?

*A recent slip of the tongue by Dr. Yogi Goswami revealing where much French nuclear waste is being shipped. Was that accidental? Consider the timing.

*The hesitation from Wall St. to rush to financing of nuclear. It isn’t there other than lip service to promote trading opportunities as mentioned above.

*The House and Senate stripped a $50 billion loan guarantees for nuclear power plant projects out of the stimulus. Again, look at how and when it was done. The work of accidental participants or perhaps solar advocate groups? Again, see the list of players above.

*A very storied old money petro firm on in Westport Connecticut is quietly “recruiting” renewable experts (predominately solar) to advise the House of Saud and other Middle Eastern SWFs and royal families on renewable strategies. The high level plan is to cover vast areas with solar and ship the electricity to Europe. Of important note is that GE isn’t advising the Royals on building new nuclear plants for said duty. This secretive firm is the hand in the governments glove and they simply get things done. Things thought to be impossible.

So genius, you see that your FUD is not something to be “cleaned up” it is a tool that is used to great effect to accomplish a goal. And certainly you must admit that you and yours are at a very clear disadvantage when it comes to dispelling this supposed FUD.  One only needs to mutter Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, Forsmark and for a nice punch-up, throw in a Bin Laden reference. Again, good luck with that, particularly knowing your opponents…

Ask yourself, do the worlds financiers believe they can amass the greatest fortune in the history of mankind do that by financing a system of exorbitant cost and incredible government regulation? A system that exposes them to unthinkable litigation in the face of the unthinkable? Do you really think that properly aligned minds will contribute billions in capital while brilliant people all over the world are working 25 hour days for a way to instantaneously turn that investment into the equivalent of a boat anchor. That would be nuclear genius, and your answer with a ribbon around is a clear NO on all counts…

On the other hand, do the worlds financiers know that they can make untold fortunes by realigning the world largest market (energy) ? Of course they do and of course they are. Are you starting understand now how the technology you are proposing to bring to the fight is meaningless long term? It’s a foot note and will be a great trade. The battle is over. The winners have been chosen. And to make you feel better, coal and all it’s derivations have been marked with a big red X as well. Rest assured, your dream of nuclear powered convenience stores is just that—a bad dream. Never going to happen.

Quite frankly, you and yours are dog paddling in the deep end of the pool nowhere near the edge. As you try to present your “logical argument” you’re not in remote understanding of the game that dictates which constitutes what the logical argument is. Not even close.  I’ve said enough. Watch it play out as it already is.

BTW genius,  I would absolutely LOVE to know how you coordinate the CA energy efficiency program.  Do tell. Should be simple enough to find out with a few calls anyways.

”# Nukes are the most capital intensive generation sources to construct at $5,100/kW — compare that to expensive solar troughs at $4,600/kW.”
But nukes produce full power about 90% of the time, while solar has a capacity factor of only 20–30%. So triple the solar figure to compare them.

”# $73/MWh for Nuclear which doesn’t appear to include the cost to dispose of the nuclear waste”
All U.S. nuclear plants are paying charges for disposal and decommissioning on every kW-h they generate.

Eric,

A final piece of food for thought regarding Godzilla, the Incredible Shrinking Mat, et al.:  While the civilian nuclear industry has experienced operational close calls and a 30-year “dark age”, the U.S. Navy has been operating nuclear plants for over a half-century, quietly amassing an impressive, unblemished record of success.  During that time, aircraft carriers, submarines, and cruisers have safely steamed over 120,000,000 nautical miles on nuclear power without ever experiencing a single significant release of fission products to the environment.  That is quite a record considering that whereas civilian plants are run at 100% power all the time with few major transients, propulsion plants aboard ship are being constantly cycled for maneuvres, drills, startups/shutdowns, etc., making their operations inherently riskier.  I mention this simply to reinforce that with proper oversight, procedures and training, nuclear is no more dangerous than any other power source.

Maurice

Bingo. Got it.  Nice to know who is on the other side.

Interestingly, you and I aren’t far from each other. I’ve been a big fan of La Farine.  We should meet for coffee so you can call me Einstein and I can call you genius…

I refuse to use your vulgar moniker in addressing you (p*****) so sorry, einstein is going to have to do.

Anyways, answer me this - why are you precluding a second option? My argument is not that the technologies you mention have no possibility of succeeding. My argument is that it is foolish to BET THE FARM on one approach, especially when another approach is proven (and works to power much of the EU).

Case #1: you do get solar down to 1 dollar a watt and invert the entire energy infrastructure overnight (in 30 years). Great. We are saved. I however am skeptical.

Case #2: things don’t work out quite the way you want and we’ve deep sixed the only other viable approach. well hell, then. we are screwed.

I submit to you that case #2 is exactly what is happening in europe. France (btw which is the only EU country not in recession) makes a killing exporting nuclear electricity to germany, who under referendum is shutting down reactors (and planning more coal firing stations as a result). Denmark’s wind production has plateau’d (20%) and hence burns 80% coal.. Italy, who is revisiting their referendum, has massive budget shortfalls because they are purchasing said power from france.

The point is that each approach takes *time*, and you’ve got to keep all options open. Current polls in the US show 70% favoring nuclear power if it helps with global warming and cuts down on oil imports. I favor pretty much every single approach (including solar and wind); I just so happen to know basic physics and engineering so I have a pretty strong gut feel about which technologies are going to scale, for reasons I’ve given.

As for ‘the rest of us working 25 hour days to get it done’, I work in the energy efficiency program here in california (coordinating much of it), so I have a pretty good feel about the limitations there, too. The fact that I’m championing nuclear over energy efficiency should mean a great deal.

And finally, if you don’t accept a logical argument merely because your feelings get hurt, I suggest to you that you should recalibrate your brain.

(ps - here’s a couple of stats for you, just to think about:

    * average wind turbine: 460 metric tons of steel, 870 meters^3 / megawatt, 25% capacity factor
    * average 3rd gen nuclear plant: 40 metric tons of steel, 190 meters^3 / megawatt, 90% capacity
    * next generation passively safe reactor (5 metric tons of steel, 50 meters^3 / megawatt, 90+% capacity

  and if you throw in capacity factors, these discrepancies become even greater -  your average nuclear plant uses an order of magnitude less material. And since the primary ingredient in both steel and concrete production is process heat at high temperatures, nuclear is the *only* non-carbon source that could possibly provide it.

That is what I mean by closing the loop. Putting nuclear everywhere - in refineries, in tar sands, in concrete production, in steel production, in silicon chip production, making process heat.

Our only hope is that the rest of the world is on it - unlike us, they *haven’t* abandoned nuclear in these roles. Especially the chinese. Unfortunately, that could mean that 50 years down the pike the chinese basically own us, but I guess that’s better than burning up.
)

We need nukes.  We have proven that they are safe, reliable and efficient providers of energy.  I am sick of sitting in the sidelines while other countries go ahead and we take steps back.  We are not progressing the way we should, befoer long we will become some third world country, and why? because we dont want to listen to reason but, we will listen to liberal morons and political morons like Al Gore?  We need to get off our collective behinds and move forward, this is one of the reasons the USA is now in the shape it is in.  We have lost industry, technology, jobs, trade equalization, etc., face it we were once the leader in all areas, now we are behind the eight ball.  More Nukes!!!!

Well EDdie, grow up.  The reason nuclear was expensive for construction, was, the design was not based on a standard, interest rate explosion in the 1970-1980’s, regulatory mandates set after TMI, etc.  Look at the electric costs now that they have been in operation, it is very low.  We will in this country be able to sustain a program again, we will need to be smarter this time.

OK John - Plant security is not too big an issue.
OK Ed - Prices could be lower in the US.
That sort of addresses two of my points.
Is waste disposal an issue or am I engaging in ignorant scare-tactics there as well?
Eric

John,
In my opinion, your description of rag tag terrorists reeks of bit of arrogance. I think it is hard to disagree with the safe track record for nuclear power plants in France (and elsewhere), I believe it can be done safely in the US. Waste disposal is another issue. I also believe a nuclear power program can be used to advance the expertise of a developing country that *can* enable entry into the global nuclear weapons club. Yes, I agree nuclear power plants may not produce weapons grade material. Once a plant is in operation, what is to stop a country form building the capability to refine material into weapons grade, sanctions? I am trying to point out my fear of enabling these capabilities, a nuclear power plant in every country is a scary thought to me.

I agree with Mark R, we do need to diversify energy sources, nuclear is an option and risk assessment is speculation and opinion. However, I don’t think clean coal, ocean, solar cell, or wind production capabilities can “effectively” translate into weaponization capabilities akin to nuclear weapons.

Unfortunaetly, we are trailing countries such as Japan, France, China, Russia, and soon to be Sweden and England to name a few who have decided to build nukes for energy.  The understanding that nuclear power and proliferation go hand in hand really should read and study before hand, such thinking is not true but may be pushed as a scare tactic by anti-nuclear movements.  Actually, proliferation is usually obtaned by cold war nuclear weapons or reactors that breed such, most reactors do not create weapons grade materials for bombs.  There is quite a difference between nuclear for war and nuclear for peace.  Please educate yourself before making your decision based on this subject.  With the world of computers now days, it is quite easy to do this.  Our national security has nothing to do with any terrorism towards our operating units, that again, is an anti-nuclear scare tactic.  The US has way too many targets which would stifle our society besides a few rag tag terrorists trying to get through plants circled with “jersey ” barriers, razor wire fences, intrusion alerts, armed guards and locked security doors,

When I think of nuclear reactors I think of national security and the development of nuclear weapons. I am not an expert on nuclear power or weapons, that said, they seem to go hand in hand in the world today. From a national security perspective, if we roll out more nuclear reactors for power we give justification to the world for every country building their own reactors. Some may argue this could be a good thing. If it is the goal of this country (US and perhaps others) to stop the proliferation of nuclear weapons development around the world, we should be deterring the construction of nuclear plants—as they provide a veiled stepping stone to weapons development. Is it worth the risk? In my opinion, it is not worth the risk. Especially when there are clear alternatives that fall in line with a better national security strategy, even if they cost a little more.

NO RENEWABLES!!!!!  RENEWABLES ARE MONEY PITS!!!

@horos22

“let’s just make solar $1/KW and obliterate the nuclear industry”

“yeah right. this comment shows EXACTLY how out of touch with engineering reality some greens actually are”

Yeah right indeed. You presented a laundry list of reasons that solar (I’m not advocating wind) won’t be/get to $1 per installed watt. The funny thing is you don’t seem to understand how solar is priced and how it is subsidized. The FACT is that we could nearly get there today.

Let’s take a look at the dirty little secret.  At a high level.

Subsidy in form of tax and rebate generally end up covering approximately 50% of any solar PV system installation.

Ok.

1. XYZ solar manufacturer produces the panels and sells them at a profit. ABC company sells the inverters and ancillary equipment needed at a profit.

2. The manufacturers sell the products on to a third party distributor/dealer integrator.

3. Third party integrator now marks up the products approx 100% to insure a profit.

4. Third party integrator sells and installs system on end users facility/home.

So we have the hardware producers making a profit, and the integrators making a profit. Fair enough.

Break it down. A $20,000 application for simplicity.

$20,000 pricet quoted to end user from integrator.

$10,000 cost to purchase components from manufacturer.

$10,000 profit made by integrator.

50% subsidy of total cost ($20,000) = $10,000. This subsidy actually ends up paying for SG&A. This has nothing to do with a technology or implementation cost!

In other words, if we wanted, we could lower solar asset pricing right now today by nearly 50% simply by cutting out the the second tier in the solar sales and distribution channel. Solar companies that vertically integrate could do this. AGAIN, this has absolutely nothing to do with any new technology. It is simply done by creating capital efficiency in the channel. Done deal—today. The current subsidy system is not well understood by many people. Insiders don’t ever really want to tell where the money comes and goes to. A solar shell game if you will.

The majors are loathe to do this. They are damned if they do and damned if they don’t regarding the bifurcated system. The fear is this. If they were to go vertical integrated and bring all their sales and marketing in house, this would a) cost a lot of money and b) it would alienate the existing multi brand distributor dealer network they’ve been working with for years.  If they blow it, they can never go crawling back to these dealers that got jilted.

There is also speculation that the majors won’t do this because once this happens, the price per watt will collapse and everybody is afraid of a race to the bottom. Going from 40% gross margins to 4% gross margins… Yes that could easily happen if you follow the path of Moore’s Law (solars are part of the semicon sector) and were to apply to the economic side of the equation.

Regarding technology and all those “PHD’s” you mentioned. We can slice and dice it all day. A few things.

1) Look a the post regarding Nanosolar breaking ground. This is forward think to your “we never got anywhere in 100 years” commentary.

2) Because solar is localized, and because I can’t put a nuke plant or frigging football sized windmill on my house, the power is localized. We need a breakthrough in storage. A breakthrough in storage will allow us to remove this house/business from the grid completely. So we throw around numbers in the multi billions to trillions regarding modernizing the grid. When we get the storage technology why upgrade the grid? Produce it, store it and use it—individually.  Spend that money DE-CONSTRUCTING the grid! This provides national security and ultimately decentralizes the entire energy paradigm.

Of course the final part is a good piss in the wind. Way too many industries and power base erosion if we were to do it.

I’m not buying that “we don’t have the engineering or technology to do it” crap at all.

“let’s just make solar $1/KW and obliterate the nuclear industry”

yeah right. this comment shows EXACTLY how out of touch with engineering reality some greens actually are.

There are reasons why solar and wind is expensive as it is:

  * low power density, meaning more material used per kilowatt
  * use of rare materials and catalysts to manufacture chips, magnets, and to do conversions (indium/neodynium/platinum)
  * intermittent energy causing more infrastructure needed to actually use that power.

I’ll go so far as to agree with you: IF you get solar down to $1/watt and can consistently use it at that rate, and IF you can scale that technology up within 25 years time, then hell yeah, it’s a great idea. We’ve been working on it for 100 years now, and several PhDs even admit that we are going to need several breakthroughs that may or may not come to make it work at a larger scale..

Otherwise, Einstein, what’s your plan B if this doesn’t work and your magic energy source doesn’t materialize?

Maurice,
The logical part of me agrees with your reasoning 100%.  I also realize that a coal fired plant produces a host of toxins that rivals the nastiness of a nuclear power plant.  I’ll work to get my head around your sound argument.
Eric

Noticing the harsh conflict of opinions here, let’s stick very closeley to some “basic data” presented in Rosa Yang’s talk underpinning her opinion, and examine these carefully:

Yang presented a graph [1], that she calls a “projection” of the added power generation capability, until 2030; proably in the US. As a very thin, yellow band, it shows solar power, which is “projected” to constitue 20..30 Billion kWh/year in 2030, when reading from the graph. Since each installed W (peak) over an average year (see NREL) easily generates 1kWh (real) of electricity, this would translate to an installed base of a mere 20..30 Billion W, which is 20..30 GW solar by 2030.
Is EPRI aware of the fact, that there is at least 7GW of solar already installed today in 2009, and currently nearly doubling every year? Ok, these 7GW are worlwide, but with the US being the next in line for massive buildout of solar energy and having excellent solar ressources? Should I mention, that Europe plans for 400 GW solar by 2020?

Maybe, EPRI “projects” so conservatively, because they think progress and scaling is always as slow as in the old, large, monolithic energy systems (of their “customers”). To exemplify that, the talk included a piece [2] on how long it takes EPRI to scale up a Carbon Capture and Sequestratoin (CCS) plant from lab scale to production scale : 20 years. No wonder, since it is a monolithic chemical/mechanical/electrical challenge, closeley entangled with existing (coal plant) constraints. Such a system inherently requires major re-engineering at every step during scale up, which takes time and ressources.
However, scaling up PV is very different, because it involves scaling by numbers, not by complexity/size: When a company figures out how to efficiently manufacture one PV panel on a production-lab scale, ramping up means just making more of the same panels. Faster, more lines in parallel, etc. The panels stay the same. Hardly any new technical challenges pop up when scaling. On the contrary: economies of scale start to boost market penetration.

Back to Yang’s talk: The capital cost comparison [3] of nuclear (5.10$/W) and solar (4.6$/W) was quite striking for me: Not even her utility-financed spin-doctors could make look nuclear competitive here. And spinning the cost of solar even higher than this (already outrageously high) estimate, would have looked far too unprofessional, isn’t it…?
Even more so, this comparison totally ignores technology trajectories, and their effect on cost over time. We can’t expect classic nuclear to become much cheaper over time—probably rather more costly for materials and safety reasons. In contrast, the installed price for a Watt of PV is racing downwards; Venture Capitalist even have concerns, that their CleanTech investments might face competing PV technologies installing below 1$/W in 2015.

Before risking the audience realizing that, spinning the next slide out of the deck [4] covers and “corrects” that upwelling notion: Title: “Levelized Cost of Energy” or LCoE. Basically the net present value of cost, divided by the net present value of energy produced. This is a great tool, for comparing, but also for spinning comparisons, since it has quite a few “hidden” parameters with drastic influence on the results. Namely: the interest/discount rate and the assumed (or defined) lifetime of the plants. Where the latter is nearly standardized to be 20 years for PV, nuclear reactors were designed for 40 years and Yang is proposing to prolong their lifetime [5] to 60 or even 80 years. Needless to say, that Yang didn’t give the parameters used to allow nuclear outcompete solar in the presented LCoE “data” for 2015. Let’s hope that at least this “projection” took into account cost trends…

Summarizing all the above, I leave it to the fellow commenters in this blog, to form an opinion about Yang’s “data”: Whether this can still be considered a result of biased “projecting”, or needs to be termed professional “misleading”.

References:
(timestamps refer to recorded video of the talk
http://www.parc.com/cms/get_article.php?id=818)

[3] 23:40 Capital Cost Comparison (Slide 16)
[4] 25:50 Levelized Cost of Energy Comparison (Slide 17)
[2] 39:40 Scale up of a Plant for “Carbon Capture and Sequestration”
[1] 42:00 Chart showing added Generation Capacity (“Growth”), in Billion kWh/year.
          The sloppy annotation forces the reader to make assumptions, e.g. that this “growth”
          is shown accumulative and that the scope is US, not worldwide.
[5] 52:00 Talks about Nuclear Plant lifetime (40, 40+20 or 40+40 years?)

Well I will somewhat respectfully disagree with nearly your entire premise. I’m doing my best to entertain your decidedly defeatist “aw shucks cars should go 500 mph and crap we won’t ever get it done. I have a calculator that says so” attitude.

Regarding Moore’s Law. You are purposely (I’m guessing) leaving out the economic part of the equation which in my opinion may be the most important. Price drives everything. In case you didn’t get it—PRICE drives everything. A reduction in price will drive adoption. Apparently your argument suggests we can’t drive the price to a mass market threshold. Here’s what you do. Get on the horn and call all the venture capitalists that have been putting money into Miasole’ Nanosolar, Sol Focus et al that believe they can drive the price to $1 per watt. Apparently they didn’t get your memo explaining how it is painfully impossible. Maybe the those dummy’s over at Google behind RE<C should also get a call. Maybe the $billions spent were rat holed and you could have saved them the time, effort and money with a single call into you. The interesting thing about your position is that it seems to be counter to the entire multi billion dollar investment cycle that has gone into solar in the last five years. Apparently your “IT MAY NOT EVER HAPPEN” (nice hedge BTW)  is counter to the massive investment and thousands of people doing tens of thousands of hours of due diligence.

Regarding closing the loop. Preposterous. Of course you need all the materials and resources are needed to produce and maintain solar (even solar thermal) but your position is distorted. You are assuming that these other supposed savior technologies won’t need these same resources to save us. In fact, we all know they will require far more of these same resources over time. This isn’t a binary position.

Regarding recycling waste heat. Yes this is quite interesting. I’m in agreement. A lot of people are following Recycled Energy Development (RED) with great interest. This may be a big component to our needs.

Wind. Wind is not going to make it. There are some serious issues about to released regarding wind that I will not disclose at present. The proper university researchers will be responsible for their research and the bombshell.  I’ll say this, wind will prove to be a massive mistake. and the speed in which it is dismantled will be breathtaking.

Look, you keep blathering on about how we are near doomed and we need a “Plan B”. So what is your plan B again? Please don’t say we need new nuclear technology and supposed clean coal bla bla bla. You want to chase impossibilities, yea well keep on with that stuff. Wake up, even IF (which is by no means the case) those technologies were fully vetted you will NEVER overcome the public screaming against. Now THAT is chasing a pipe dream. You don’t think that forces are massing to squash that crap like a bug? Lol… I will tell you with full authority the antagonists are already doing financial analysis on the suppliers to the developers of those supposed “savior” technologies to start taking them apart at the toe level. Toast.

You know, if you weren’t so cavalier with your feeble attempt to sound so authoritative by constantly calling me Einstein, I might take you just a wee bit more seriously. At the present, your opinion and your personal constraints you are projecting as real world macro constraints are positioning you to the margin. Good luck with that. Meanwhile, the rest of us work 25 hour days to get it done.

wow. I hit a nerve..

My job is with the energy efficiency program at PG&E, where I work in the IT department that coordinates the distribution of rebates (and other measures) both directly to consumers and to companies that are used to install those measures. A large part of my job is the distributed energy programs as well, including solar rebates (all under the heading ‘distributed energy’.

I have no doubt that the FUD arrayed against nuclear is great in the US; institutions tend to behave that way - they stick to an old record, and keep playing it over and over. But the groupthink on the renewable side is so great that they can’t possibly see what could go wrong with their grandiose plans.

It reminds me of the whole subprime, CDO, default swap mess, where very smart people with phds in physics and financial engineering couldn’t see the forest for the trees.

LIkewise, otherwise very smart people here make grandiose suppositions which may or may not come true - which probably *won’t* come true given the appropriate time frame - and we are supposed to take their word for it even though human civilization hangs in the balance.

Let me see if I get your argument: you see that the FUD against nuclear is hyped up and false. But you think that it is OK because it serves a ‘greater cause’ behind renewables, even though as detailed above renewables probably won’t cut it in solving climate change, even with multiple breakthroughs.

Man, you are fucked up. Consider some more numbers:

- 10% of the carbon emissions in this world are due to concrete production.
- another 10% of the carbon emissions are due to steel production

So - what happens when the rest of the world demands steel, like china and india, when the approximately 5 billion people migrate to cities, or get roads or what have you? Multiply the steel and concrete output by 5 and you’ve got the same carbon emissions we have today, JUST IN THESE TWO SECTORS ALONE. Is wind and solar going to make steel and concrete? Or any other modern, high-temperature forged material? I don’t think so.  Even the most optimistic thermal solar process heat arguments see max temperatures of 250 degrees Celsius, which a) isn’t that hot, and b) requires refineries and/or what-not to be built in deserts.

In short, I don’t buy it. Wind and solar is the game du jour right now in the US, but the logistics are hitting a wall. I’ve seen it first hand at my job. All the arguments you give above are political arguments; arguments of people that are sticking their collective heads in the sand and hoping it will work, the same way that the majority of economists could convince themselves that the US economy was ‘just fine’ as we hit record negative balances in pretty much every stat that mattered.

So, if we cannot overcome these prejudices we may just fall over a cliff. Chances are that there is enough coal to subsidize this ‘renewable dream’/ probable fantasy for the next 20 years, and chances are that people’s blinders can be kept on by special interest groups that long until we realize it’s too late and we drive off the climate cliff.

And you want to help keep the blinders on so that you don’t have true competition.

got it. you call that moral?

good god.

the one progressive thing about the stimulus package, and they removed it. We are truly screwed now.

This is the ‘all in one basket’ strategy; hoping that mothballing nuclear revival will bring on renewable success. I sincerely hope it works. In all likelihood, it will mean that coal will see its biggest expansion in the US as it did in Denmark.

Every single step that this new administration has taken has been false, more of the same. Obama *should* have treated the stimulus bill like a large venture capital project, ie: the bill should have been wide ranging and given to a think-tank whose staff was engineers, not politicians, and who accepted bids from individuals and corporations with other goals besides ROI; it should have been based on science, not politics, and it should have operated under independent oversight and insulated from lobbying. Treat it as seed money for bold new plans, new ideas, funding new breakthroughs no matter what the political stripe.

The problem with the stimulus package isn’t that centrally distributed money is bad; it’s that it is a-priori, top down not bottom up, and as structured is *political*. As a result it is unfocused.  Where are the bold, new ideas that he promised? Where is the common sense? I just don’t see it, and I have a feeling we are going to waste the next 4 years on this crap, and worse yet he will fail, along with it the hopes of our nation.

I think I’m going to be sick now..

I’d be willing to reconsider nuclear plants if I could trust that all the costs are disclosed and included in cost comparisons; this would need to include security costs for the plants over their lifetime and for ongoing security needed at waste disposal sites for…what, a thousand years, most likely much longer. What’s the half-life of some of the daughter isotopes? about 77,000 years, right?

I would need to see the true costs of insuring plants and waste for lifetime plus decay time.

I would need to see any and all costs that are now externalized, and socialized, paid by you and I, including research, liability and insurance.

One example might be the West Valley Site in New York State; This site has vitrified waste and left-over slurry in decaying steel tanks. It has a plume containing Strontium and other isotopes headed for a couple nearby streams, then on to Lake Erie.
I saw a price tag of multiple-tens of billions to get this decommissioned and cleaned to a standard. The DOE has been trying to sieze control over these types of sites so the States cannot require cleanup by the Feds.
These types of costs are not currently included in cost-projections for new plants. It’s as if , magically, we’ll not have incidents, leaks or human error ever again; magical thinking.

Let’s look at the supply-side; How about those Uranium mines in the Four Corners area of the US. What’s the cost of lung and other cancers for the neighbors and workers of these mines? What’s the cost of water-table contamination with radioactive elements? priceless.

“This (mining tailings) debris contains hazardous substances like the uranium decay product thorium-230 with a half-life of 77,000 years and its daughter products radium and the gaseous radon.
For every ton of reactor fuel, thousands to tens of thousands of tons of ore have to be mined. In the mining sites in New Mexico (USA)  more than 100 millions of tons of radioactive waste are deposited on the surface.”

How do the Navajo feel about this?

What’s the carbon footprint of these mining operations?
What’s the carbon footprint of waste disposal and deep burial?
Why are these costs being socialized, while the profits are being privatized?
Why can’t plant builders get insurance, financing and liabilty waivers from the private sector?
How can we compare costs with China when China has little regard for safe, long-term nuclear waste disposal.
Democratic process is expensive.

Weapons-Grade materials are not the only issue; remember dirty bombs? They can be assembled from lower-grade materials.

Did you hear about the plant breach where a guy smashed his vehicle through two gates, then into the generation building and was roaming freely through the plant for over four hours?

“February 1993: At Three Mile Island NPP (Pennsylvania), a man crashed his station wagon through the security gate and rammed the vehicle under a partly opened door in the turbine building. Security guards found him hiding in that building four hours later.”

and, an incident you may not have heard about:

“Holes in security at Bruce Reactor Facility(great lakes) were highlighted when, two weeks after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 a man whose boat had capsized on Lake Huron was able to squeeze through a gate, enter a building, and use the telephone to call for help without being detected.”

All I ask is for a true accounting, not wishful thinking.

oh jesus…

grow up guy, the reason why nukes are expensive in america is because we make them expensive. The chinese are producing plants at about $1500 / kW construction cost on a regular basis. We hem and haw, hem and haw until the price itself is blown up out of proportion.

Look at hyperion. They are ready to produce a 27MWe nuclear reactor at $1000 / kW, and make them factory producable. They have no moving parts and are passively safe.  We could mothball coal in 10 years if we really wanted to - we’d only need about 12000 - compare to the 100,000 bombers we produced in world war II.

Do you think that that technology will ever see the light of day here because of biases like yours?

Ed

How many of you would live next to a nuclear plant? Let’s see you do it. Talk is cheap.

Lol Ed…

“The chinese are producing plants at about $1500 / kW construction cost on a regular basis.”

Yea I sleep well at night knowing the Chinese are operating nuclear plants at all. These are the guys responsible for spontaneous river combustion and every horrific environmental disaster you can imagine. The FACT of the matter is that the Chinese have no business operating nuclear plants at all, predicated on their history. Nuclear proliferation and proper waste handling? No worries the Chinese have got it handled…

You want to scare yourself silly? Do a cursory look into the Chinese biotech industry and their “moon shot” efforts in genetic engineering. You’l probaly need to be medicated after you do even basic research. It’s that crazy.

This isn’t about the Chinese. Don’t turn it into that. It’s about what these people are doing and it just so happens that they are Chinese.

Nuclear at large is a joke. Let’s quit toying with this mess. The best way is for the solar industry to obliterate any sense of their business model by reducing the installed price per watt down to $1. Voila’—nuclear industry is toast. The nuke guys know that so don’t be surprised about odd obfuscation showing up to solar.

And finally, understand the dynamic between Obama and the nuclear industry. He’s taken more money from them and their lobby than any other politician in US history and it just so happens Illinois produces more nuclear energy than any other state. Who’d a thunk eh…

From horos22
Eric,

yes, waste disposal is an issue, but not nearly as much of an issue as you think.

First of all, there is a measure of *quantity*. Over 50 years, 50,000 tons of the stuff has accumulated in the US - which sounds like a lot, until you realize that it can fit in your average soccer field, compared to the 1.2 billion tons of CO2 and 6 billion tons of coal ash we produce yearly. And we have secure solutions for both guarding this waste and making it safe (you can put it under 3 feet of water and walk right by it). Hence, we have a good interim policy for storing it, under the same plant security that you realize is fairly solid.

Second, waste *itself* contains about 95%-97% of the original energy in it, which is why it begs to be recycled. France does this, so does England and Japan and Russia. The US itself is wasteful.

Hence, there are ways to use this waste effectively - to turn 100,000 year storages into 300. There are also better fuel cycles (Scientific American profiled one in Dec. 2005 -  involving fast neutron reactors.

But even barring fast neutron reactors, we can still burn nuclear waste via fusion which trasmutes 99% of the stuff. Which means there are TECHNICAL SOLUTIONS TO THE PROBLEM that almost everyone who is anti-nuclear and yet still fashion themselves ‘green’ ignores.

So yes, this is an ignorant scare tactic as well. And yes I realize I’m being harsh, but stop using mealy mouthed words like ’sort of’ and do some research into the issue. I’ve seen just way too much ignorance here, and I hear the same old mistruths over and over again - and given anthropomorphic climate change, it may just do us in.

Final comment - look at the denmark wind power figures. For some reason - although fueled by politics and subsidies and lots of hype, wind power has stagnated at 20% of the power supply there for 5 years running. Why? Because a modern electric grid is simply not able to cope with more than 20% INTERMITTENT POWER. Brownouts happen, as the variable current swings from place to place, and it just generally plays havoc on the 345 KW power lines that are used to swing power from place to place. You need backup as is - and that backup in the case of denmark (since they are anti nuclear) takes the form of 80% electricity being produced by COAL.

Green nuclear power is the only practical solution to simultaneously (1) avoid dependence on foreign oil and gas, (2) overcome future oil and gas depletion, and (3) ameliorate global warming. Only two prime energy sources, coal and uranium, can affordably deliver terawatts of “mother” electricity to: (a) feed heavy industry, i.e. manufacture of automobiles, ships, airplanes, bridges, etc; (b) power vast fleets of future electric plug-in autos; and (c) produce enormous quantities of portable synfuels (hydrogen and ammonia) and biofuels to replace oil. However coal worsens global warming and should be preserved as raw material to make plastics and other organics when oil and gas are gone. In spite of many millions of dollars spent by hungry researchers, underground sequestration of gaseous carbon dioxide produced by coal-burning power plants is not economical or practical for thousands of generating stations worldwide. This leaves uranium as the only “big-mama” green energy source, an “inconvenient truth”. That is, there is only one economic engineers-certified solution to overcome impending worldwide energy shortages. This is introduction of fast-breeder power reactors that burn up all available uranium and thorium to give the whole world 3000 years of all the electricity and heat it needs. It can be done most prudently by developing multinational nuclear fuel (re-)processing operations such as the proposed Global Nuclear Energy Partnership (GNEP) program monitored by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which processes/provides fuels for fast breeder reactors that are useless (poisoned) for weaponry. 

Popular solar and wind energy are useful for small-quantity power generation in select locations. In future energy mixes they may contribute as much as 15% of all electricity generation. But at terawatt levels, immense areas of land or sea would be needed, requiring enormous maintenance operations, spoiling scenic land- or sea-scapes, and destroying local ecosystems - an absolute nightmare for naturalists. As scientifically documented in “The Nuclear Imperative - A Critical Look at the Approaching Energy Crisis” (ISBN 1-4020-4930-7), by the year 2050 when petroleum fuels are basically exhausted, only uranium and thorium can affordably sustain global energy needs for some 3000 years, using proven fuel reprocessing and advanced fast reactor technology. A serious in-depth analysis of our future energy shortage by accredited professional engineers (not by anti-nuclear self-inflated philosophers) reveals that nuclear power will be essential to rescue our children from a future economic catastrophe. For the USA, 500 additional nuclear reactors are required, built on 9000 acres (@ $1.5 trillion), compared to 1,500,000 windmills with storage batteries on 6,000,000 windy acres (@ $4.5 trillion). Ten times these numbers are needed for the entire world. (Costs are in 2005 dollars; for later years, all costs must be multiplied by the dollar inflation factor).

Because it takes a decade to design, license, and build a reactor, action must be taken immediately to prevent a worldwide depression by 2030 when oil begins to run out. Contrary to false propaganda by anti-nuclear groups, the cost of electricity at terawatt levels is three times less expensive with nuclear than for wind or solar. Solar and wind power generation requires expensive energy storage systems (batteries, etc) when there is no sunshine or wind. Also many miles of access roads for maintenance and repair are needed to keep blades or solar panels clean from bird droppings, dead birds, sand erosion, and storm damage, and to periodically replace electrodes on storage batteries. Aficionados of renewables usually quote peak windmill or solar station capacities, neglecting to multiply their numbers by a factor of four to account for a year-averaged availability of only 25% of peak wind or sunshine. Reactors run continuously all year at 90% capacity. Should a country limit itself to solar and wind energy, it is guaranteed to become impoverished and dependent on portable synfuels imported from other countries (future OPECs ->OSECs), who expanded their nuclear power generation before oil fields were depleted.

Energy consumption for transportation is between 35% and 40% of all energy usage in the world. On the assumption we stop drilling when it costs a gallon of oil to retrieve a gallon, one finds we will run out by 2040/2050, even with exploitation of all the tar-sand fields in the world. There is only so much volume in the 10 km deep surface shell that circumscribes our earth where decayed plants and animals (mixed with lots of sand and river run-off mud) were compressed into oil over a period of 300 million years. We are burning all that up in two centuries. With an increasing world population and with Asia and Africa wanting more of the oil, optimistic estimates show it will all be gone by 2050. While in the next fifteen years, oil and gas may remain major sources of portable chemical energy for aircraft and transport vehicles, beyond 2030 the world can only survive if synthetic fuels are produced on an enormous scale.

Of course nuclear energy extracted from uranium or thorium can not be used directly as a portable fuel to move long-haul transport vehicles (airplanes, trucks, etc). But its heat or turbine-generated electricity can be converted into portable bio-fuels and other synfuels (synthetic fuels) with reasonable efficiency. In bio-fuel production, nuclear electricity can empower farms and the extraction/distillation operations to obtain alcohols or bio-diesels from vegetation. Without input of (nuclear) electricity, bio-fuel farming would be unsustainable since energy needed for cultivation, harvesting, and extraction exceeds the energy stored in combustible plant chemicals. Nuclear-assisted farmed bio-fuels have other limitations however. They can at most replace about 20% of today’s petroleum fuels because biofuel farming is limited by available arable land; man also needs to grow food to survive. The other 80% of oil-replacement must come from hydrogen and ammonia synfuels which can empower combustion engines as well as (future) fuel-cells. Hydrogen can be affordably produced by electrolysis (or chemical dissociation) of water into hydrogen and oxygen. But hydrogen has the fundamental problem of being very difficult to compact into a reasonably-sized fuel tank. So ammonia (called “second” hydrogen by some) is now favored, because it can be stored at very moderate pressure in normal-size fuel tanks used today for a comparable driving range. Ammonia is produced by compression of hydrogen with nitrogen (from the air) via the well-developed Haber-Bosch process. This is a less expensive way of storing hydrogen than liquifying it. Ammonia can fuel combustion engines (already commercially available) and solid-oxide fuel-cells (future), and is less dangerous than gasoline in vehicle collisions. Engine exhausts are water vapor and nitrogen (air) again from which ammonia was synthesized with nuclear “mother” energy. 

Modern nuclear power plants are absolutely safe. Because of the negative “coefficient of reactivity”, reactor fuel elements only melt (an explosion is not possible) during a maximum credible accident in which the emergency core cooling system totally fails. This was “experimentally” proven in the Three-Mile-Island (TMI) accident. A negative coefficient of reactivity means that neutron multiplication is automatically stopped when the temperature in the reactor gets too high. The Russian Chernobyl reactor, which took the lives of 57 people, had a positive coefficient of reactivity because it used graphite as moderator. Such a design for nuclear power plants is now prohibited in all countries. Furthermore the Chernobyl reactor had no containment vessel, as is the law in all Western countries and now worldwide. The assertion that perhaps thousands of people could still die from radioactive fallout around Chernobyl is nonsense. Of the 60,000 inhabitants of Pripyat who had been exposed to fallout, about 9,000 will die at an advanced age of cancer because worldwide 15% of all people ultimately die from cancer. To ascribe those 9,000 deaths to Chernobyl’s fallout is equally ridiculous as claiming that such a death toll is due to drinking coffee because 15% of all people drink coffee. Security precautions and containment measures for today’s nuclear power plants do reckon with the possibility that terrorists might crash a large airplane or bomb on a reactor. Even if aerial obstructions (e.g. balloons) or underground construction can not prevent penetration of the large dome-shaped containment vessel, the reactor core vessel is designed to remain mostly intact. It can further be inundated with neutron-absorbing borated water which instantly suppresses all uranium fission in case of an accident.

A worn-out anti-nuclear lament is “what do we do with all the long-lived radioactive nuclear waste”. The volume of waste amounts to one aspirin tablet per year per person using nuclear electricity, compared to tons of air pollutants and globe-warming gaseous CO2 emitted by coal or fossil-fuel combustion. Nuclear waste can be easily stored and safely transported, as the US nuclear navy has done for half a century. Contrary to allegations that uranium and plutonium in spent fuel elements pose a problem because of million-year half-lives, they are separated from fission products by reprocessing and burnt as fuel in future fast-breeder reactors. They will not be dumped. This reduces 50 tons of spent fuel per reactor per year to 0.5 tons of fission products (with shorter decay lives), taking centuries instead of decades to fill the Yucca Mountain repository in Nevada. The notion that long radioactive lifetimes are undesirable is also erroneous. The longer the decay lifetime, the less the radiation emitted per gram of radio-isotope. Most elements that make up our bodies (hydrogen, carbon, oxygen, nitrogen, etc) have infinitely long decay lifetimes. All humans are “hot” because everyone has radioactive potassium-40 (K-40; 0.012% abundance) in his body, which continuously emits beta particles with a half-life of one billion years! Man successfully evolved in this environment, and there are even indications that low levels of radiation benefit health (called hormesis). The hue and cry about possible terrorism and “dirty bombs” is also highly exaggerated. By reasoning of anti-nuclear activists, we should stop flying 707 jets because they can be used as weapons to kill thousands of people.

Energy is man’s third most important need after water and food. Those who hinder expansion of nuclear power will be viewed as irresponsible neo-luddites by future generations and must be held accountable. Any further delay of a committed worldwide nuclear energy program will cause certain impoverishment and deaths of many people by 2050. Without large-scale synfuel production by greatly expanded nuclear power, desert cities like Las Vegas and Phoenix will become ghost-towns. Originally the US had planned to have 200 to 300 reactors (@ 1 GWe each) by the year 2000, but instead there are only 104 today. After the Three-Mile-Island (TMI) reactor meltdown in 1979 in the US (with 0 casualties) and Russia’s Chernobyl accident in 1986 (with 57 fatalities), public hysteria fanned by fear-mongering antinuclear activists caused cancellations and moratoria on construction of new nuclear plants. While the USA was once the leader, most US businesses with reactor manufacturing know-how closed. Instead France, Russia, Japan, South-Korea, India, and China are now in charge. Zealous anti-nuclear lobbyists and a mal-informed government have created the pending energy crisis. We are entering a war-like energy-deprivation period as serious as WW-II or Al-Qaida. Strong Manhattan-project-like leadership is now needed to reverse the short-sightedness and follies of prior administrations.

Jeff W. Eerkens, PhD
Adjunct Research Professor,
Nuclear Science and Engineering Institute
University of Missouri, Columbia

Mr. Antypas,

I would love to live next to a nuclear power plant - fearing a disaster there is sort of like a fear of flying; totally irrational. And fearing the radiation is sort of like fearing having the sun shine on your face (ie: you get much more radiation from it than you ever get from a nuclear plant).And as it stands, we all live near coal plants - and 30,000 - 50,000 of us americans die yearly because of it.

And hell - I’m like James Lovelock - they could pay *me* and give *me* the nuclear waste. I’d put it to good use heating my home.