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99 comments on McCain’s Energy Plan: Correct Diagnosis, Killer Prescription
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GAIA Host Collective
Jerome, you write:
I don't understand why you included a mention of 'more nuclear energy'in a context that implies you consider it to be a bad idea. In fact, 'more nuclear energy' may be the only realistic alternative to 'more drilling'. Or the choice may between 'more nuclear energy' and total economic collapse. It's as matter of relative risk and determining which is the lesser evil.
Do we still have the luxury of a choice? The problem is not lack of oil reserves, at least not yet. It is that in the race to offset the decline of the flow rate existing oil wells, we can't install enough new oil wells fast enough to bump up the flow rate where we want it to be. How could the solution be the move to a totally different energy source? This replaces the oil flow rate with an electricity flow rate. This requires replacing not only oil wells with nuclear power plants, but also all the distribution and storage infrastructure plus the energy consuming devices. This just increases the difficulty of the task by an order of magnitude.
Given infinite amount of time, the replacement of oil with nuclear could perhaps be done. The problem is we are dealing with a race. If the transition is not done on time, then we have to deal with forced demand destruction.
PolR, I didn't make any such proposal. I just suggested that nuclear energy shouldn't be ruled out. If one includes externalities (climate change factor) I would even say that nuclear energy should be 'ruled in'.
The problem to solve is replacing the incremental decline in imports of oil less any efficiency savings
I prefer to say the problem is to find energy savings to match the decline in imports less new energy that can be brought into line in the given time frame. Same equation, different focus.
You must not leave the time out of equation and it is hard to see how non-oil energy can replace oil this fast given the magnitude of the infrastructure. Simple things like using a bicycle to job commute instead of a car can do a lot. Also buying products that are made near where they are consumed instead of made on a remote continent can also help. The good news is these things will occur naturally as oil price rises.
Well
Nuclear ~$3500/kw investment
Wind ~$1500/kw investment
Even allowing for intermittency, correctly sited wind is cheaper, takes about half the time to install, doesn't require a river nearby, and has no waste disposal problem. What's not to like?
Hi TJ,
And let's not forget DSM. The client file I'm currently reviewing: a 3.2 kW reduction in demand and an estimated 26,940 kWh/year in energy savings. Utility cost: $2,370.23. Capacity factor: 100%.
Cheers,
Paul
wind has a 25% capacity factor. That means that to get the equivalent of 1, 1 gwe nuclear power plant you need to install 4 gw of wind which in turn = $6000/kw of similar capacity factor energy production. In addition to that, wind is unreliable, which means that for every watt of wind power you install you need to keep spinning reserve which must be either fossil fuel plant or hydro (which is already tapped). In addition to THAT, in order to exceed 20% of total energy penetration, you must have either energy storage on a vast scale, or long distance transmission capability on a scale that does not currently exist.
Wind is great, but it there's only so much you're going to do with it.
All of this is neglecting the local resistance which always crops up whenever you actually go to build a windfarm.
I did say "correctly sited". Also, if you're using a 25% capacity factor, you do not get to say it's also unreliable and needs backup capacity. You've already installed enough wind to take care of that.
Yes, I DO get to say that it is unreliable. If you build 4 times as much of it to accomodate the capacity factor, you STILL need the storage and backup generation. The 25% capacity factor was just to get to the point where you are producing a comparable amount of KWH total, you then need to make it usable by providing it when you need it rather than when the wind is blowing.
The 25% capacity factor IS for properly sited wind. As penetration grows, the best sites (the ones that provide that juicy 25%) get used up and the capacity factor drops.
Not to mention estimated capital life of 1/3rd that of a reactor.
Wind is neat. It might even be useful. It services a totally different need than nuclear and shouldn't be viewed as an alternative to nuclear. That kind of thinking is why Germany is building more coal plants.
The second part of your comment is very insightful. The first part isn't because of the non lineary nature of the interest cost with the lifetime of the loan. That benefit is mostly societal, not economical/financial.
Or you could accept the cost of intermittiency, i.e. load management is a part of the solution. With any intermittent source or combination of intermittent sources, there will be periods when some degree of load shedding/management is necessary. The trick is to make a mix of intermittient, and reliable sources meet your economies needs. If I had a choice of 100% intermittient power, or 5%baseline plus 95%intermittient (this is a fairly extreme example), I would be willing to pay a premium for that 5%. So the real question (which involves statistics) is how much of a premium I am willing to pay (at any point in the reliability spectrum) for a unit more reliability. The answer to that will involve economics, and industrial design, as well as cultural attitudes.
The cost of money has a giant effect. If you're shooting for 15% ROIs or better on your projects, you always end up with the low investment options. Anything that requires a lot of investment and long construction times just does not get authorized. This is one of the big reasons most nations are building a lot of ultra-cheap gas power plants even now.
re: TJ
==The cost of money has a giant effect. If you're shooting for 15% ROIs or better on your projects, you always end up with the low investment options. Anything that requires a lot of investment and long construction times just does not get authorized. This is one of the big reasons most nations are building a lot of ultra-cheap gas power plants even now.==
Exactly, thats also why the arguments that "Nuclear power has longer lifetimes" doesn't really hold much weight.
Since it has a horrible ROI, with a high default risk, and the loan increment is massive.
Exactly the hallmarks of what makes it poison to investors.
http://goliath.ecnext.com/coms2/gi_0199-5785236/Nuclear-power-a-hedge-ag...
http://www.manhattan-institute.org/html/eper_01.htm#05
Even after spending $13 Million bucks on planning, not even Warren Buffet can find a way to make Nuclear power profitable on an open market.
http://www.nwenergy.org/news/midamerican-withdrawing-nuke-plans-in-idaho
Utility operators won't even touch it unless 100% of the capital loan risk is covered by the Fed.
http://greyfalcon.net/nuclearloans.png
http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2008/6/13/11021/6597
http://www.usnews.com/blogs/beyond-the-barrel/2008/2/21/nuclear-industry...
http://www.greencarcongress.com/2008/04/doe-plans-385b.html
The cost-of-money is more than giant, it's absolute.
The cost-of-money is more than giant, it's absolute.
At the present time, that's for damn sure. Unless you're a defense contractor.
Whether people are for or aginst Nuclear or wind is not the the point Wind is scalable quickly by most developed nations and every Kw/Hr or MJ of energy produced by wind displaces the same amount of gas/coal being burnt .Which we will have to burn on the days there is no wind!
personaly I would rather have a huge wind turbine and not leave all the nuclear Waste Shit to my sons/Grandsons to solve. Bar burying it in a hole nobody has come up with a better a idea yet.
Why everyone frets about spent fuel that can be stored in a parking lot and no one gives a thought to the mountains of toxic waste that will be toxic forever I dont quite understand.
I propose doing geologic storage of nuclear waste under the mountains of nonnuclear toxic waste that no one worrys about today.
"I propose doing geologic storage of nuclear waste under the mountains of nonnuclear toxic waste that no one worrys about today."
I am anti-nuclear, and yet I think this is brilliant :D
Beware the false comparison. Mercury is toxic forever, but it ends up sinking in to what will be future coal. It occurs in nature and we are just overdoing it. Nuclear waste includes isotopes that do not occur in nature and thus has a much more dangerous effect.
Chris
Beware the poorly educated assertion. Mercury is but one of the toxic waste materials that are around forever. PCBs are a second example that come to mind but there are thousands of examples. Whether the isotope "exists in nature" or not has no bearing whatsoever on the risk level posed by the material. Most of the most powerful toxins occur regularly in nature, including among others, cyanide.
Nuclear waste is only dangerous at the "standing next to it kills you" level for 10 years or so, after that it drops to the "eating more than the RDA gives you cancer", it remains there for a few hundred years and then drops to the "I wouldn't suggest building your house out of it" level. The dangers of rad-waste are massively exaggerated.
PCBs last for a long time, but not forever. Perhaps you would care to try again?
Chris
By the time mercury is isolated by the environment, nuclear waste has all decayed. So what? At least we isolate spent fuel from the environment. In terms of measurable risk, there are millions of people who have been killed by toxic byproducts. Compared to how many who have been killed by spent fuel?
We should bury the thousands of tons of spent fuel under the millions of tons of arsenic, mercury, etc. There should be enough just from the founderies of solar cells.
This type of arguments have been busted several times in other threads. Ignorance of grid dynamics, proliferating the baseload fallacy, omitting historical reliability factors, technical power output curves...
All aspects of propaganda. Not really helping to solve the problems.
Think constructive guys.
TJ,
I didn't say I didn't like wind. But your cost calculations are not undisputed. All depends on what you mean by 'correctly sited'. You may have indicated the lowest conceivable cost of wind energy generated electricity rather than the average cost.
Naturally, in regions where there is no wind, wind turbines cannot generated any electricity, and the cost per kw reaches infinity.
True. And in places where there is no water, nuclear would be closer to $7000-8000/kw. The above numbers are pretty close to the cheapest for both types of power that I've come across. Jerome once estimated the investment costs for France for it's nuclear program; they were around $2800/kw. And that was with ultra-low financing, a large number of standardized reactors, and probably most importantly, over twenty-five years ago when oil and water were cheap.
For my own WAG, I'd say that with the current state of the economy, nuclear is going to die a quick death, along with anything else that requires billions of dollars of investment right at the start.
Perhaps it would be less confusing if the cost comparisons were made on the basis of kWh rather than capacity.
Estimates or calculations differ considerably depending on your source. For example, according to a recent report commissioned by the UK authorities, a 'nuclear' kWh costs 2.3 cents, while an 'onshore wind' kWh costs 3.7 cents.
But then they would say that, wouldn't they?
http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf02.html
While according to the Earth and Sky Women's Peace Caravan for a Compassionate Society, the 'nuclear' kWh costs a minimum of 10 cents, while the 'wind' kWh costs a minimum of 5 cents.
But then they would say that, wouldn't they?
http://www.greens.org/s-r/11/11-09.html
Eh. I personally wouldn't believe either of them without looking at the particular project economics: the investment required, the project life, the depreciation schedule used, the decommissioning costs, etc. They would of course have to be evaluated using the same time frame and cost of money.
Carolus Obscurus,
Why are we arguing about which is cheaper, whether the cost is 2.3 or 10cents/kwh for either wind or nuclear? These prices are a bargain if we can replace 1 gallon of gasoline with 2-4 kwh of electricity( based on using a PHEV or BEV) its a no-brainer( $4-8 for gasoline versus 10-40cents for electricity!!).
Rather than a $300 million prize(stunt), use the money towards the first 100,000 PHEV or BEV sold in US. Or better still, spend $3Billion towards the batteries of the first million vehicles so that all manufactures could have a shot at starting production. The US doesn't need another brilliant invention, we need to get into manufacturing what has already been developed. A new invention is going to take >10 years before getting into mass production. In that time you could have 10 million new PHEV's on the roads.
World wind capacity expansion(>25% a year?) is going flat-out, this needs to be maintained. It will still take many years for wind capacity to reach 20% of electricity capacity in most countries. New nuclear capacity should also be encouraged.
Neither are going to solve the problems created by peak oil unless the peak is a long way off, conservation in all forms is the only short term(5-10year) solution, this means more gasoline fuel efficient cars, less driving( car pooling, less shopping and recreation trips),better use of fleet mix(higher VMT by the most efficient vehicles), more use of existing mass-transit. Gasoline rationing may be needed if real shortages occur, but should only be used after introducing much higher registration taxes on low mpg vehicles( new and used), much higher fuel taxes(European levels), and greatly increased CAFE standards next year not 2015 or 2020.
re: TJ
==Nuclear ~$3500/kw investment==
$6000-$8000/kw all-in investment, would be more realistic.
http://www.nirs.org/images/fplturkeypointcostchart.jpg
http://neimagazine.com/story.asp?storyCode=2047917
http://www.nirs.org/factsheets/quickeconfact208.pdf
And that doesn't even encompass the fact that the Decommissioning Costs seem to keep doubling every few years.
http://www.neimagazine.com/story.asp?storyCode=2049012
In deference to you and nuclear energy, might I suggest you'd want to get away from fission and its long lasting radioactive waste and focus instead on a currently working thermonuclear plant about 98 million miles away.
Best of all, its currently operating at capacity and for FREE.
Use it.
It seems that anything other that total economic collapse will result in backsliding into business as usual until there is another bigger crisis, and over and over, another crisis, until there is total economic collapse.
New theory: "Peak Crisis"
Remember, we still have coal as an option to battle the 'total economic collapse'. Well under certain technical assumptions about future energy systems at least.
Pollution and GhG would be the issues then. Heavy metals and soot etc are nasty although they might be strongly mitigated through technical intervention. But not a very plausible cause for total economic collapse.
GhG could very well be though. So again it's down to a technical assumption - some form of exponentially scalable carbon sequestration. Pretty grim hopes for that IMHO, especially globally.
I think nuclear fission can contribute much stronger but it's not a plausible silver bullet at this point in time. There's a lot of local succes but globally it's a moribund industry. And due to lack of private investment, there's not a lot of hope for that to change on the short term. The specialized nature of a lot of the equipment is another negative for rapid short term growth. Aerodynamics, construction, mechanical and electrical engineers are more common than nuclear engineers and can be borrowed from other industries. Same for PV and ST. Micro-electronics, general mechanical engineers respectively.
Things could get better on the medium to long term, but then will competitors just sit back and read the newspapers? What kind of competitive market will there be in one or two decades? I guess it makes sense to find out but we can't afford not to accelerate development via an equal incentive structure.