Nuclear energy polarizes people. There are two camps: Those who actually think of nuclear energy as a form of renewable energy that makes clean fuel fast (most of us would call this group France), and those who think the first camp is spouting evil propaganda for the Man and that nuclear power is a frightening, dirty, nasty tidbit of Cold War leftovers.
Doesn't seem to be a lot of gray area on the nuclear front.
Yesterday, U.S. Secretary of Energy Steven Chu blogged---yes, blogged---on Facebook about the need for a newly announced nuclear power loan guarantee program. He made all the rational arguments for the program: that no one single power source can be the solution, that renewables are not feasible enough to be a large power footprint right now, that nuclear energy does help reduce carbon and, therefore, would positively impact climate change. His arguments were reasonable and practical---just what you'd expect from a scientist who is also the Secretary of Energy.
The outsider comments on his blog entry were not so reasonable, nor so rational. There were a lot of angry diatribes from a lot of angry Facebookers about how to make renewables more feasible instead. Interestingly enough, they wanted the money being guaranteed for nukes to be promised, instead, to renewables. A lot of those discussions claimed that nukes wouldn't be feasible without this government financial assistance (which may be true, but, right now, there's a very solid similar argument for solar and wind, so it seems these guys are shooting themselves in the foot in order to take pot shots at the enemy).
I've always found it fascinating---all the walls built between renewable energy camps and traditional energy camps. The renewable peeps find traditional energy old, outdated and dangerous. The traditional energy peeps fine renewable energy a tad silly, ridiculously expensive and impractical. The hippies versus the squares, to put it all into 1960s war metaphor terminology.
But, there are good arguments on both sides. Renewables have great potential, but there are still issues (storage, intermittence, cost, maintenance, investment). Traditional energy is currently practical, but offers a future with severe imperfections (climate change, global warming, loss of fuel source, reliance on unstable economies for fuel). But, in the end, there is no direct way to dissolve traditional energy and transition entirely into renewables overnight. So, rather than stand on opposite sides of the digital wall and scream at each other, perhaps it's time for a little overlap.
I really think that's all Sec. Chu was driving at: The importance of all sorts of shades of gray in the energy equation. No one says you have to see nukes as the shining light of an energy future. But, perhaps we can see it as a way to transition, a "baby step" toward a different energy economy.
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I agree with you on being rational on the portfolio of energy generation. There are all sorts of issues that come up on building big generators and unfortunately everyone wants them built somewhere else. Here in California we need to increase our clean base load (and I am a nuclear proponent)to cleaner generation and phase out the fossil plants. But as fate would have it, there are people that don't want to build in the desert because it will harm the desert environment; the state wants to stop once through cooling so pretty much eliminating coastal plants not to speak about where are we going to get the water for cooling with big cooling towers. We don't want to build wind generators because they will disturb the pristine valley and ridges where the wind is; we don't want to build solar thermal plants because they take up hundreds of acres of desert land and require water for condensing and we don't want to build transmission lines because it might disturb the big horn sheep who are endangered and might be there. We do want to build PV on parking structures and commercial and residential roofs . . . as long as we can get a rebate and this is supposed to solve our energy problems and take care of the projected growth.
ReplyDeleteHere we go again. Nuclear IS clean and it IS available. It is available when the wind doesn’t blow and it is available on cloudy days and at night when the sun doesn’t shine. But, the first commenter seemed to hit one part of the nail on the head, the NIMBY (Not In My Back Yard) continues to make it difficult at best to generate ANY power. Nobody wants a power generator in their back yard.
ReplyDeleteNuclear has been designed to contain any design basis accident and is centered on maintaining the health and welfare of the general public. It is the general public who through ignorance of the technology keeps fighting and new Nukes. This is the same general public who, by droves, signed a petition to ban di-Hydrogen Oxide (H20 or water as it is commonly called) when given “facts” presented in an almost hysterical manner by an employee of the comedians Penn and Teller. “It causes urination when consumed and is being dumped in our oceans, lakes and reservoirs... and... it makes steel rust”. OK so? Nuclear is in the same boat. If you take the time to Know Nukes, you won’t be shouting, “No Nukes”.
Me, personally, I’m not a proponent of manmade global warming either. The folks predicting the weather can’t get next week right so what would make me believe they can predict 10 or 100 years down the road. Secondly even as President Obama said when speaking about the control of man over nature, earthquakes are caused by nature and nothing man can do can change nature. I don’t agree with much he says, but on that we are in one accord. So why try to degrade our economy to tilt at windmills?
Lastly, photovoltaic cells aren’t the green “tree hugging” technology that they are portrayed to be either. You get plenty of heavy metals and nasty chemical waste making those solar cells. Nuclear waste has a half life and decays away, so much so that in 400 years, the level of radioactivity will be the same as the ore it was mined from. There is no half life on chemical waste, and for the life of me, I can’t remember any “Love Canal” incidents involving the nuclear industry.
Anyway, for the time being, neither solar or wind produce power at the same cleanliness and economic level as Nuclear, so let’s build Nukes. Until we do, I’ll be saying “Know Nukes, Know Nukes”.
Thom Peschke
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ReplyDeleteAre nukes the answer? Well, what's the question? Foreign oil dependence? Nope, won't do anything about that. Reduce man caused global warming by displacing fossil fired generation? In your dreams, won't make a spit's worth of difference in this century.
ReplyDeleteCurrently coal and nuclear provide base load generation. System designs that attempt to replace coal and nuclear would require an enormous amount of new transmission capacity. For example, the US peak demand is about 800,000 MW. Lets say that we wanted to provide one fourth of that peak capacity as base load power from wind, or 200,000 MW. Because on average wind has only a 1/3rd capacity factor we would have to build 600,000 MW of wind, or about 300,000 to 400,000 wind turbines which would cost about 1.2 trillion dollars. That's the easy part. The hard part is the transmission. Because of the extreme diversity and low capacity factor of wind, there would be times we would need to import and export wind power in and out of regions. Lets put that 600,000 MW of wind in three areas, the east, the west, and the middle of the US. At times we would be importing or exporting 200,000 MW in and out of the three areas. Considering that a 765 kV power line could deliver 5000 MW, we would need about 40 of these lines running east west across the US of length of about 2500 miles average length for a total of 100,000 miles of 765 kV transmission. If the cost per mile is 5 million dollars this is an investment of 500 billion dollars bringing the total investment to about 1.7 trillion dollars to replace about 200,000 MW of base load coal and nuclear. And I have not even added in the cost of solar.
ReplyDeleteNow lets consider an alternative plan that leaves 100,000 MW of existing nuclear in place and converts 100,000 MW of coal to nuclear. There is no new transmission cost because the conversion uses existing transmission. If the conversion costs $5 per watt, then the total cost of conversion is 500 billion dollars, about one third the cost of the wind power plan. Now which scenario would you want, a jazzillion wind generators and power lines all over the place at a cost of 1700 billion or our existing belch fire coal plants converted to quiet nuclear plants at a cost of 500 billion?
ReplyDeleteGene Preston
http://egpreston.com
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ReplyDeleteOne of the many things that made this country great is that we moved ahead when others (countries, people, etc) waffled. What we are doing now is waffling BIG TIME and the costs to move ahead keep rising. It is my belief that this country is still the best in the world and we need to stop talking and start acting. This is our opportunity to build the clean nuclear to replace the old less efficient plants. I find it interesting that the only country to have a nuclear weapon used against it is 37% nuclear and we haven't built a new plant since the 70's. We built the technology and it is all overseas now! The Kyoto accords were hashed out in a country that used to have a big problem with pollution and the pollution from power plants is not their biggest problem now. I know that I'm rambling but I hate the fact that we have been "talking" for over 40 years and accomplishing exactly nothing (virtually). Being a Californian, I say let's quit talking and start doing . . . let us continue to be the innovators. Lets move ahead!
ReplyDeleteIt is extremely helpful for me.
ReplyDeletegenerator hire & new generator sales
April 15, 2012
ReplyDeleteFolks, My experiment with renewable energy is finished. Let me explain. Some ten years ago we bought a country property for retirement living. This 50 acre farm did not have any hydro wires. Given my background as a nuclear engineer and having an open mind about wind and solar energy, this was a perfect opportunity to do a real life experiment with wind turbines and solar panels initially on a weekend retreat and more recently as we tried living off-grid.
Over the course of ten years we spent approximately $25,000 on a small wind turbine, solar panels, batteries, inverter, power cables and wiring, and back-up generators. This cost would have been much higher if it wasn’t for my DIY ability to ‘engineer’ this system and not have to pay somebody to install it.
Once we got a house built, we depended on the sun and wind for the well pump, furnace, water heater, lights, microwave oven, coffee maker, toaster, fridge, freezer, TV, VCR, computers. This $30,000 system was small and could only run two appliances at a time. My wife and I became skilled in demand management.
The turning point came at the end of summer 2011 with increased running of the generator to compensate for with shorter days and longer nights, simultaneous with decreasing performance of the battery.
I figured an additional $30,000 had to be spent on new batteries, and make everything else larger: larger inverter, a larger wind turbine and more solar panels. I visualized the endpoint of being broke surrounded by a pile of electronics much like we read about now, eg. Solyndra, and other companies.
I made two phone calls, one to Hydro One, and another call to an electrical contractor. Two weeks later in October 2011, the solar and wind was disconnected and we connected to the giant griddle that was once part of my job to keep the lights on as a nuclear engineer. As long as the province does not go hog-wild with renewable energy, we can enjoy a modest amount of power for approximately $100 each month. No longer do I need to head out on cold mornings to start the back-up generator in order to make coffee, and wonder if the back-up will even start.
I learned much about renewable energy. How many individuals or corporations have spent their own money to install renewable energy on their own dime? Everybody says renewable energy is good as long as somebody else pays.
While the wind and the sun might be renewable, the machines and electronics are as industrial as any chemical or nuclear plant using special minerals mined from the earth in order to harvest meagre and sporadic bits of energy in northern latitudes and no hope of storing energy overnight.
My experience bodes ill if extrapolated across Ontario. It is time for McGuinty and Co to pull the plug on their experiment and implement the moratorium.
I have more to say.
This is a tragedy of the commons when large tracts of land need to be forever spoiled with turbine towers and underground cables built with huge profits for the developers
Renewable energy may have its place in remote northern communities that currently rely on Diesel fuel being flown in for their generators. The problem is often too much too quick and mistakes are made by eg. the armchair zealots who have never ever connected wires to anything but their iPod, who have never chopped a cord of wood, and who couldn’t run a pedal generator to make a cup of coffee. Those folks should not be in government, and should not be advising members of parliament let alone dictating energy policy.
I hope McGuinty realizes his experiment is over too, and put a moratorium in place and do a sanity check on renewable energy. Why are we shutting down, not just coal, but nuclear and hydraulic, and paying premium prices for wind and solar.