The IPCC's Shifting Position On Nuclear Energy 309
Lasrick writes Suzanne Waldman writes about the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and its stand on nuclear power over the course of its five well-known climate change assessment reports. The IPCC was formed in 1988 as an expert panel to guide the drafting of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, ratified in Rio de Janeiro in 1992. The treaty's objective is to stabilize greenhouse gases in the atmosphere at a safe level. Waldman writes: 'Over time, the organization has subtly adjusted its position on the role of nuclear power as a contributor to de-carbonization goals," and she provides a timeline of those adjustments.
About time. (Score:4, Insightful)
Solar's production curve does not match the peak user curve of electrical power. Wind is a good bit better but still needs natural gas peaking plants to back it.
For low carbon base load power you have only three choices.
1. Hydro
2. Nuclear
3. Geothermal.
1 and 3 are location limted.
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This is not my area - but surely some of the issues could be resolved with better storage solutions together with greater take up? It strikes me that an advantage solar has is that people can pop a solar panel anywhere, from watches to houses, meaning they can be integrated more fully into where energy is needed. Storing excess well means peaks are covered.
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At the in-home level, who knows, maybe a rack of batteries will become as commonplace as a water heater.
Re:About time. (Score:5, Interesting)
I had to build a small datacenter (about 25 1u servers and some routing/switching hardware) that the client needed 5 days of reserve power. The battery unit for this was surprisingly small. It was about 5 foot cube, and packed full of lead acid batteries. This was in early 2003. I imagine today's battery technology can make that even denser. Tesla's battery technology has been released in to the wild, and it is light years beyond lead acid technology.
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Since when do 25U make a datacenter?
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I was told that a single unicorn horn can store up to 10 GWh
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Sodium-sulphur batteries have MW capacity range. Not quite up to unicorn horn levels, but fairly useful, and there's no shortage of building materials.
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*Every* battery technology has MWh capacity range, even GWh if you build them large enough. The variable are the mass-, volume-, and cost-normalized capacity.
Well, and the mechanical constraints - Sodium-sulphur batteries have an operating temperature of 300-350*C, and use a highly corrosive chemistry, making them unsuitable for pretty much anything but industrial applications.
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Is that an African unicorn or a European unicorn?
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Solar is a useful supplement. But it can't replace a reliable form of base load generation like nuclear. That's true no matter how good batteries get.
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Surely, there comes a point where solar + batteries are good enough for base load generation ?
Re:About time. (Score:5, Insightful)
If you came up with some kind of Shipstone (Heinlein's super battery) then your idea would work.
But using current technology, electrical storage is:
1) heavy
2) Expensive
3) Leaky (slowly losing power, converting it to heat)
4) Relatively short term - see leaky.
5) Limited lifespan (each charge cycle decreases how much the next one can hold).
6) inefficient - it takes 200 units to store 100 units.
So while your idea works in principle, in practice it fails.
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Who said the only energy storage is the batteries you are talking about?
They've been storing power in various areas for 50+ years. The most common is to pump water up to a reservoir then use hydro power to draw out the stored potential energy when needed.
Storage isn't a difficult problem, it is just something we've never tried because carbon based power has always been so cheap. Once we put our minds to it I have no doubt storage will become easy to satisfy. In fact they're already doing it in Germany with
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All methods have similar, if not identical problems.
You pump water up a hill, may cost you 100 kilowatts. An hour later, when you run the turbine on the water coming out, you get 70 kilowatts, if you are lucky.
As I said before, storage is an extremely DIFFICULT problem, not a simple one. We have been workin
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Back track all you want, the only that fits the items 1-6 that you listed as applying to all electrical storage is batteries.
Apparently you believe the only "good" method is one where there is no cost and 100% recovery. You must also be under the assumption that power generation itself is 100% efficient and free of all negatives.
For storage to work it must only be able to displace power from base load pricing to peak pricing at a margin that exceeds costs. Regardless of how "poor" you think that method is t
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I question the value of moving energy sources close to where they're used. What's better, one million little energy-creating devices and one million large batteries, or just one nuclear reactor?
The push for "decentralization" is much ideological with undertones of if something is decentralized then it's better, gives more freedom etc. But losses in the power grid are actually low. What's more : if you put the renewables on the grid, then you want power transmitted over thousands of kilometers to smooth out
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At a certain level you have grid stability issues with highly variable and unpredictable loads; this necessitates system designs that can be fast response-- effectively batteries at the generation level. The traditional approach to grid stability was called "Spinning Reserve;" the grid would have about 10% excess capacity online and running such that load pickup could be quick. With things like solid state voltage regulators and more precise engine control-- and due to economics-- spinning reserve today i
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Perhaps distributed storage IS the better solution. If each node has its own storage to contribute to that node's peak needs, there is no peak draw on the network.
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I'll see your 10kWh battery bank and raise you a 1 m3 fuel tank. Every house used to have one. 3 orders of magnitude more energy.
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Actually "cold" storage for cooling has been in usage for decades. In the simplest passive form it uses the same thermal mass as used for storing heat in the winter, but obviously that requires that nighttime temperatures get low enough to shed heat at night. A more advanced technique is that employed by "coolth cells", where radiant cooling panels are installed on the roof to radiate away heat at night - still works better if the air temperature drops, but really all you need is clear skies and low humid
Re:About time. (Score:4, Interesting)
Greens have already clubbed all the good pumped-storage facilities, like Storm King in upstate New York, to death with the same combination of NIMBYism and legal bullying they have used against every other energy project. Watch for a campaign against battery arrays because "chemicals."
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Solar's production curve does not match the peak user curve of electrical power.
Although I think in some places (e.g., Los Angeles) it does match fairly well, as air conditioners use a lot of juice. But I completely agree: nuclear is a terrible form of energy...but it's better than most alternatives.
Re:About time. (Score:4, Interesting)
Solar's production curve does not match the peak user curve of electrical power.
Where'd you get that idea? Most power is used in the middle of the day, when it's hot and everyone turns on their A/C. Solar produces the most power right in the middle of the day, when the sun is shining brightest. Solar is perfect for supplying peak loads in places where people use A/C.
1. Hydro
2. Nuclear
3. Geothermal.
1 and 3 are location limted.
2 is location limited too: you can't put nuclear close to a fault line, in a place where there's tornadoes or hurricanes, and you generally need to put it next to a river for cooling though you can also use giant cooling towers. And of course, you can't put it anywhere near a metro area.
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Where'd you get that idea? Most power is used in the middle of the day, when it's hot and everyone turns on their A/C. Solar produces the most power right in the middle of the day, when the sun is shining brightest. Solar is perfect for supplying peak loads in places where people use A/C.
1. Hydro
2. Nuclear
3. Geothermal.
1 and 3 are location limted.
2 is location limited too: you can't put nuclear close to a fault line, in a place where there's tornadoes or hurricanes, and you generally need to put it next to a river for cooling though you can also use giant cooling towers. And of course, you can't put it anywhere near a metro area.
A. You forgot about solar being affected by the highest total of those green house gasses (H2O).
B. Nuclear plants are designed to handle a F5 tornado
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"Where'd you get that idea? Most power is used in the middle of the day,"
Okay where'd you get the idea that most power is used in the middle of the day?
"http://www.mnn.com/your-home/at-home/stories/peak-energy-times"
Peak is 4PM to 8PM
And here it is in a chart https://www.pacificpower.net/y... [pacificpower.net]
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Most power is used by industry, not residences. People work during the day.
Also, I'm quite sure that your information is not correct for the southwest desert states.
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Most power is used in the middle of the day, when it's hot and everyone turns on their A/C.
You must not live too far north.
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you can't put nuclear close to a fault line, in a place where there's tornadoes or hurricanes, and you generally need to put it next to a river for cooling though you can also use giant cooling towers. And of course, you can't put it anywhere near a metro area.
Apparently you can...
They built San Onefre right near a fault line...
They built Wolf Creek right in tornado alley (ironically this was NOT one of the multiple plants that have been actually hit by tornados)...
12 east coast nuclear reactors were in the path of Hurricane Sandy...
They built Indian Point near New York City...
They built Palo Verde not near any natural body of water (they use treated sewage water from nearby Phoenix suburbs for cooling)
etc, etc, etc...
I'm not saying any of this was/is a good idea
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Good luck getting the NIMBYs to agree to it. No one wants to live next to a nuclear plant. Would you?
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Yes, without reservation. Modern plants are safe. If there is a major issue, it does not matter if I am next door or 30 miles away.
Re:About time. (Score:5, Informative)
I'd have no problem at all with that. Nearest one is about 40 miles away now....
Note that I'm biased, of course. Having worked in the field back in the day, I know a lot more about the subject than most /.'ers....
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Yes. I live approximately 35 miles downstream from an active plant. Wouldn't mind them building a new (emphasis on new: modern design, preferably a MSR) plant nearby either.
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More interesting than that though, was this quote, which is fascinating. It illustrates the differences between the dire propaganda we hear, and the lack of urgency in the actual IPCC report:
The IPCC press office widely publicizes "the most optimistic scenario," in which nearly 80 percent of the global energy supply could be provided by renewable energy by 2150 “if backed by the right enabling public policies.”
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
The report is not moving in the direction you think. The trend over time has been to move away from recommending nuclear. In the first IPCC report, nuclear was considered the answer to AGW. Now it is considered something that should be minimized.
That's because the IPCC report is a political document, not a scientific one. Sure, they use scientific studies to justify their political position, but the purpose of the document is to drive a political agenda, one that calls for centralized authority.
Re:About time. (Score:5, Informative)
The IPCC doesn't write a single report. The have 3 different working groups, each writing their own report. The first group deals with the science, the second deals with the impacts, and the third deals with mitigation. Obviously, the 3rd one is the most politically influenced.
How do they exactly phrase their call for centralized authority ? What's the page number ?
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What do you think all the "cooperation across all governance scales" is all about, anyway?
International treaties and agreements, of course.
You have to read the entire policy Agenda [igc.org] to get a sense of vast scope of what they are proposing. It's huge. To get an idea of how the UN handles things when large sums of money are involved (carbon trading, support for sustainable development in 3rd world countries, and other policies require international transfers of large sums), you need only remember what happened with the Oil for Food Program [wikipedia.org].
You might also want to consider that the biggest embezzler from that program was Maurice Strong (he fled to
Re:About time. (Score:4, Insightful)
Solar's production curve does not match the peak user curve of electrical power.
Food production also does not match demand. Little food is produced in the winter, but people still need to eat. We solve this mismatch in two ways:
1. We store food.
2. We CHANGE THE PRICE. For instance, tomatoes are significantly more expensive in the winter.
The same solutions can be applied to electricity. We can improve storage, by using things like flow batteries. Where demand pricing has been implemented, it has been effective at shifting demand, especially with industrial users. Demand pricing should be much more effective with residential users as price aware appliances become more common. Most current energy infrastructure planning assumes the demand curve is fixed, but it is becoming apparent that it is not.
Re:About time. (Score:5, Interesting)
Once you factor in charging and discharging losses, batteries end up cutting solar's already-abysmal energy per $ ratio nearly in half. Pumped storage (pumping water uphill into a dam) is currently the best energy storage option, and even it sits at between 70%-80% efficiency.
Using the energy as it's produced (or in the case of fossil fuels and nuclear, producing the energy as it's needed) is always the best option. I mean hypothetically, if you're going to use PV solar to pump water uphill for storage, it's really no different from installing thousands of square km of cheap black-painted panels just underneath the ocean surface, raising the temperature of the top layer of ocean water, increasing the evaporation rate, resulting in more rainfall, giving you the same increase in water stored behind dams for probably a lot less cost. Why even bother with the intermediate lossy steps of converting solar to electricity, then electricity to mechanical motion?
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What do you mean with "about time"? They have been recommending Nuclear in every single report since 1990, with only one report being slightly more sceptic and the most recent grouping nuclear with renewables, just like the very first one.
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> Wind is a good bit better but still needs natural gas peaking plants to back it
So does nuclear for the opposite reason. Most nukes don't throttle well, and those that do only do so for lowered economic performance.
Everyone says we should add the cost of the gas plant to the wind plant, but never say the same for the nuclear plant. That is in spite of the fact that a large amount of peaking capacity was added for the reactors. Like Nanticoke.
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Solar's production curve does not match the peak user curve of electrical power.
For many areas, particularly sub-tropical regions solar power production matches with the air conditioning peak draw enough that it's well worth pursuing.
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Re:About time. (Score:5, Informative)
I live in a desert, we host a very large nuclear power plant
They purify and re-use ground water with many cooling ponds built into their cycle
There is no need for a continuously flowing river in this design
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That's fantastic, as an engineering solution but is very capital-intensive. Right now nuclear is being hobbled by huge up-front costs (and the cost of financing them over a large amortization schedule), so it's not the best business solution, even if it's right from a technical perspective.
Sad but true ...
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Right now, nuclear is being hobbled by a myriad of lawsuits trying to prevent any nuclear power plant from being built anywhere.
Hard to do the financing when you have 10-15 years of lawsuits to settle before you can pour the first yard of concrete....
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> Hard to do the financing when you have 10-15 years of lawsuits to settle before you can pour the first yard of concrete...
There is no such thing. Regulatory overhead was calculated to be 3.7% in recent builds.
Meanwhile, actual paid-for costs for new plants are around $8/W, about 7 to 8 times the CAPEX for wind.
You can pretend this isn't the problem and invent boogiemen all you want. But it *is* the problem.
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Is this better than letting the water run downstream and be utilized for other purposes? Is this really "water conservation" or "water cost minimization?"
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Nuclear reactors don't need water. You can build liquid metal cooled reactors. Metallic sodium is one such metal used.
Although some reactors have been built with liquid metal cooling, nearly all have been experimental reactors only. However, even in liquid metal cooled reactors, generally the turbine that actually generates the electricity is driven using a steam cycle (which uses water). So technically a nuclear reactor doesn't need water, but generally you want electricity out such a reactor (unless you are using it simply to generate transuranic elements)...
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Closed loop steam generators is old and common technology, boil water, drive turbine, condense steam into water, repeat. The trick is the condensing phase, simplest is to use flowing water but it can be done with evaporation coolers which is how it is done in many nuclear plants or it could be done like it is in a vehicle, one big bad ass radiator and perhaps a fan. Done right it would use next to no water besides the initial fill but will take a lot of land area for the radiator.
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That's great for SoCal in the summer.
Try applying that to Chicago in the middle of winter.
So... nuclear power is still supported? (Score:2)
How has their position changed? Nuclear was their primary focus as an energy source in 1990, and is still a part of the strategy to move away from fossil fuels, the only shift is that other renewable energy source have grown more viable.
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Re:So... nuclear power is still supported? (Score:5, Insightful)
Concerns about rising costs seem to have come and then faded away with new technology.
Concerns about rising costs have NOT faded away. Nuclear costs are higher than ever, and rising, as costs of other power sources continue to fall. Post-Fukushima safety measures will raise costs. Waste storage will raise costs. Reduced subsidies will raise costs. Fuel reprocessing actually raises costs rather than reducing them. New technologies, such as pebble beds, thorium fluoride, traveling wave reactors, are decades away, even if they work at all.
There may be good reasons to build new nukes, but cost is not one of them.
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Those are all political and social costs, not engineering. All it would take for nuclear to be a lot cheaper would be a change in the political and social attitudes toward nuclear power (so that plant construction didn't have to go through layers of NIMBY bullshit).
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Fuel reprocessing actually raises costs rather than reducing them.
Only if you accept externalizing costs on future generations as a $0 cost.
New technologies, such as pebble beds, thorium fluoride, traveling wave reactors, are decades away, even if they work at all.
Baloney - Integral Fast Reactors were ready for commercialization in the early 90's. Al Gore was the chief mover in the effort to cancel the program after the demonstration reactor ran for a couple years without problems. It's not like he had a
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How has their position changed? Nuclear was their primary focus as an energy source in 1990, and is still a part of the strategy to move away from fossil fuels, the only shift is that other renewable energy source have grown more viable.
Apparently it hasn't, but there was a single report being more sceptic about nuclear power, but it was only a single one, and not they are back to supporting it fully.
And then of couse their optimism in whether anyone are paying attention to their recommendations has changed, and is rather tragic if a bit funny reading.
No amount of nuclear energy is safe. (Score:2, Interesting)
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So, let me see if I understand what you are saying...
Reduce human population to that which can be sustained without modern power generation
Um, yeah I can't see any issue with billions of people clamoring for limited resources, they will probably all just quietly 'go away' and leave you to a peaceful existence
good luck with that
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Reduce human population to that which can be sustained without modern power generation
Any population reduction effort begins with education, unless the state of your education system is so abysmal that you have to start punishing people for having too many children.
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Reduce human population to that which can be sustained without modern power generation
Any population reduction effort begins with education, unless the state of your education system is so abysmal that you have to start punishing people for having too many children.
Unfortunately, you still can't fix stupid. Even with education.
And stupid people will continue to breed like rabbits.
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Any population reduction effort begins with education
History teaches us they usually begin with genocide.
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In addition to the well known nuclear waste issue and well proven dangers of plant meltdowns, you also have proliferation issues with rogue states claiming peaceful use, liberation of waist heat dumped to the environment
Rogue states are an issue (worst case they don't get any), but environmental concerns exist with renewables as well. Hydro can be very destructive, and the high cost of wind and solar implies that there's a lot of effort involved in manufacturing, deployment, and maintenance, that effort is unlikely to be carbon neutral.
and even after that, the more nuclear power you create, the more you get people used to unlimited power and the more their thirst for cheap fossil fuel power. The answer is conservation and population control, not escalation of generation.
If that's the answer than we might as well give up because it's not going to happen. Rewriting human nature is a fool's errand, if you want to make a positive difference find a way to work w
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> the high cost of wind and solar implies
Wind and solar are far, far cheaper than nuclear. Between four and eight times cheaper. Here, read some up-to-date numbers...
http://www.lazard.com/PDF/Levelized%20Cost%20of%20Energy%20-%20Version%208.0.pdf
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Interesting argument but go live in fully electric housing and use bicycles for transportation, then you won't miss fossil fuels much even though your use of everything is "unlimited". Of course, indirect uses of fossil fuels are inescapable such as the trucks that supply where you buy food at the very least.
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Most of the nuclear waste disposal issues are myths. The problems have been exaggerated and the solutions undersold.
1 example The US does not reprocess fuel rods because leaving the fuel rods intact keeps the waste products permanently entrained in the ceramic fuel pellets. There is no known mechanism where plutonium can leach out of a fuel pellet into ground water.
Proliferation could be solved by changing fuel types. Moving from uranium to thorium, for example.
Opportunity cost (Score:5, Insightful)
to reverse the carbon in the atmosphere (Score:2)
You would need a large power source that could result in there being some surplus electricity. This electricity could be used for one of the many very inefficient processes of reclaiming carbon from the atmosphere (de-carbonization).
Maybe the hydro, wind, and solar can be enough on their own for that. But a modern nuclear power plant can produce an amazing amount of electricity.
Leaked Internal memo from the IPCC (Score:2)
"You guys, I have to sit in a roomful of hippies (and ex-hippies now in $1000 suits) to produce these Climate Change reports. Seriously, if you are going to tell me I have to advocate Nuclear Power in that setting, I'm going to start expensing the rental of a goddamn shark cage.
-Bill"
The shaping of a Worldview (Score:3)
One of the things to remember is that whilst Human Beings have a vested interest in their survival and will do anything to survive, the same can be held true for the Nuclear Industry. The Nuclear Industry has a vested interest in shaping people's worldview to influence the industries' survival and utilizes enormous resources to convince people of their case.
This leads me to the IPCC. In reading the 2007 report I noticed that one of their sources of information to assess the viability of Nuclear energy on climate change is a document produced by an organization with a vested interest in promoting Nuclear power, Vattenfall. I read it back in 2005 (sorry I can't find a link). Rather than a study it's called a "Environmental Product Declaration" which was written to comply with Swedish regulations in 2004, it has not been peer reviewed and was "certified" until 2007. For example, it paints an optimistic picture of the Nuclear Industry's energetic return from mining and Uranium availability through to reactor decommissioning. So it appears this commercial document has been used to deceive the IPCC.
However, a formal, peer reviewed energy analysis from Nuclear Industry Scientists is available to the IPCC in a study called Nuclear Power Insights [stormsmith.nl] that uses established scientific methods to arrive at their conclusions. It is a comprehensive and fascinating read, which is in line with the scope and size of the nuclear industry and dispels many of the assumptions surrounding the nuclear industry. In, short the formal analysis assesses the ability of the Nuclear Industry to provide a "net energy return" based on energetic inputs and finds that roughly two thirds of its output is consumed by industrial processes external to the actual production of nuclear power. The carbon intensity of the nuclear industry is also examined.
It was quite confronting to have my worldview of Nuclear Power challenged and I had to take bites out of reading it to avoid being overloaded, however it was worth the effort in dispelling many of the long held assumptions and replacing them with good information and fact.
Re:Ask Japan... (Score:4, Insightful)
Exactly how many nuclear disasters does it take before we figure out we should be using newer, safer, cleaner nuclear technology?
FTFY.
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But nobody wants to dismantle old nuclear plants that are still running fine.
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> But nobody wants to dismantle old nuclear plants that are still running fine.
Quebec did. New Brunswick wished it did. Ontario is about to.
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Nuclear power was never an important part of Quebec's power network (roughly around 0.2% of total); it's network is almost entirely made up of hydro dams.
Due to political intervention, Ontario has one of the worst managed power systems in the world but no matter how hard the Liberal government of Ontario keeps trying to shutdown down nuclear there is no way for them to do it. Even with them paying an above market price premium for 'green' energy they can't simply can't replace the 58% of the system that com
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What evidence do you have that the newer technology is going to be significantly safer and cleaner? So far most of the accidents have been due to things like not investing enough money in maintenance and general incompetence. You can have a wonderful Rube Goldberg safety system but if left to rust it isn't going to be much help.
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Sadly those countries phasing out nuclear power are responding to an emotionally driven political movement
The net outcome is a continued (or increased) reliance on fossil fuels and the CO2 and Uranium that they spread
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How much uranium and thorium do US coal power plants release a year compared to the kilograms of fuel that have been lost from the malfunctioning reactor?
answer: 1210 tons of uranium and 2980 tons of thorium ash each year in the US
http://skeptics.stackexchange.... [stackexchange.com]
US coal
"The actual average generated power from coal in 2006 was 227.1 GW" (WP)
"In 2006, the U.S. consumed 1,026,636,000 short tons (931,349,000 metric tons)" of coal (WP)
"Using these data, the releases of radioactive materials per typical plant ca
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Now think about how much is going up smokestacks throughout Asia, without all the "stringent" environmental controls that the US plants have to comply with.
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How long did it take for the death toll from Bangqiao dam to get tallied, or the devastated landscape to recover?
Im not sure exactly what the aftermath of a dam that size breaking is, but Im quite certain its more concrete than some hypothetical cancer risk statistics like we have for Fukushima, Have we even passed 100 predicted deaths for that accident, compared to the ~25,000 dead from the tsunami?
The fearmongering here is insane. Nuclear has one of the lowest deaths-to-GWh produced with the possible ex
Re:Ask Japan... (Score:5, Informative)
1 with a modern reactor?
So far we've had a partial meltdown that hurt nobody, an "accident" so cartoonishly stupid that it should more accurately be called insider sabotage, and an outdated reactor that was hit with multiple extreme natural disasters simultaneously.
These emotional knee-jerk reactions from Japan, Germany and others are counterproductive and could hurt financially if any kind of global carbon-trading scheme is put in place. Besides, I prefer my nuclear waste nice and contained rather than flowing continuously from the smokestack of a coal power plant.
Re:Ask Japan... (Score:4, Interesting)
Exactly how many nuclear disasters does it take before we figure out how to do what these other countries are already doing?
Nuclear energy is just about the safest form of energy: http://www.forbes.com/sites/ja... [forbes.com]
Energy is really, really dangerous, end of story. Nuclear is somehow the "scariest," but not because it's statistically more dangerous.
Re:Ask Japan... (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Ask Japan... (Score:4, Insightful)
> the single energy technology that has already offset huge amounts of carbon generation
Hydro. Longer and more. By far.
> Nobody seems to want to give nuclear credit for what its already done.
Says the guy that forgets about hydro.
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> Good point, but options for more hydro are very limited
They are far less limited than nuclear. Nuclear power has cost, infrastructure, quality and proliferation issues. Hydro costs a fraction as much, is easy to build (we were doing it over a century ago), presents no proliferation issues, and tends to threaten people only around the site. Would you be OK building a hydro dam in North Korea? What about a nuclear plant?
Before you claim it's all gone, hydro is less than 50% developed worldwide. That is a
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And, while they are still debating all this, nuclear has been and continues to be the single energy technology that has already offset huge amounts of carbon generation. Nobody seems to want to give nuclear credit for what its already done.
Of course not!
Noo-kyoo-luhr = BOMBZ!
BOMZ! = EVIL!
Good people don't like EVIL!
Therefore, the unthinking masses have turned power generation from a science and a business into a popularity contest.
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How many people have died so far from nuclear incidents, in the last 50 years?
Now look at Bangqiao Dam, ~200,000 deaths from that one accident, trumping all past and predicted future deaths from all incidents (including Chernobyl) by a factor of 3 or more. Heres the million dollar question: why does noone EVER mention safety when a renewable like hydro is brought up? Why does it get a pass, and nuclear is the bogey man?
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Nuclear power didn't destroy Fukishima. Mother Nature did.
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Exactly how many nuclear disasters does it take before we figure out how to do what these other countries are already doing?
It took zero. We stopped building Nuclear plants before Chernobyl (29 deaths) or Fukushima (1 death) happened. Now that we had one due to old tech and misuse and one due to neglect and a huge earthquake, it's still the wrong thing to do.
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> Today, wind can augment hydro, and to lesser degree, other power sources.
Food for thought...
Six months worth of Canada's total power use is currently backed up behind dams on the east side of James Bay.
One of the best wind resources in north america is the east side of James Bay.
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Uranium is (AFAIK) pretty common, and it doesnt take much of the stuff to generate a very large amount of power.
Meanwhile, solar uses some pretty exotic materials itself which requires mining, and the manufacturing isnt super clean either from what I've heard.
All energy forms have their problems. Nuclears is that everyone has an irrational phobia around it.
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> On the upside, nuclear fusion research is promising here at the UW
No, it's not.
Fusion plants are fission plants with a different nuclear island. Their version of the nuclear island is far, far more expensive than the fission version. It will never not be so. At a minimum the energy is so diffuse, the construction costs alone are much more. But then when you add in huge amounts of lithium and superconducting, it's gets pear shaped very quickly.
Right now, a fission plant costs enough more than wind that
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so if your heart is set on nuclear, maybe fusion will pencil out.
If your heart is set on nuclear, fission is panning out now.
Asia is building reactors fast. Very fast. Fukushima caused some investigation and siting changes, but the plants are still going up in China, India and S. Korea. Thirty three new reactors will enter commercial operation in those countries in the next three years by my count; see www.world-nuclear.org [world-nuclear.org]. The drought has even ended here in the last few years; there are now five new reactors under construction in the US with more applications in
Nuclear power is not 'low carbon' (Score:2)
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But Barnham does not really scrutinize the issue at all. For all his discussion of "rigor" and error bars in the collection of estimates, it does not consider the various components of the CO2 estimates except for one, which is apparently where most of the high CO2 release estimate comes: the assumption that uranium will be extracted from rock with a uranium content of 0.005% or less. This is the "yellow coal" scenario - at this concentration, using once-through U-235 burning only (boosted by in situ produc
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Construction "costs" are probably similar to building a coal or natural gas plant of similar capacity.
No, nuclear plants cost a lot more up-front to build, even if you figure per GWh. It really only pays-off in the long term.
Quick cheesy reference: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C... [wikipedia.org]
Capital costs (including waste disposal and decommissioning costs for nuclear energy) - tend to be low for fossil fuel power stations; high for wind turbines, solar PV; very high for waste to energy, wave and tidal, solar thermal, and nuclear.
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If you are concerned about carbon in the environment and do not support fission for electrical generation, You Are Not Really Concerned About Carbon.
No, that is complete bollocks.
No. Actually it's not.
If you purport to be concerned about carbon in the environment, and you don't support modern fission for electrical generation?
You, quite simply, have NOT thought through the equation well enough.
While some of the renewables COULD be built to a point that you could use them, in conjunction, for base load, the main problem is that the power STORAGE technology for such an undertaking just doesn't exist.
Without that, the build-out for a complete system is several orders of magnitude LARG