The Future of Nuclear Energy: Facts and Fiction - Part I: Nuclear Fission Energy Today

This is a guest post by Dr. Michael Dittmar. Dr. Dittmar is a researcher with the Institute of Particle Physics of ETH Zurich, and he also works at CERN in Geneva.

Nuclear fission energy is considered anywhere between the holy grail, that can solve all energy worries of the human industrialized civilization, and a fast path di­rectly to hell. Discussions about future energy sources and the possible contribution from nuclear energy are often tainted and dominated by irrational expectations and fears. As a consequence, very little actual knowledge is available to the general public and even to decision makers about the contribution of nuclear energy today, about uranium supplies, uranium resources, and current and future technological challenges and limitations.

This analysis about nuclear energy and its future contribution attempts to shed some light on the nuclear reality and its limitations. The report, presented in four parts, is based on data provided in documents made available by the IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency), the NEA (Nuclear Energy Agency of OECD countries), the WNA (World Nuclear Association), and the IEA (International Energy Agency).

Part I summarizes the state of the world wide nuclear fission energy today and its perspectives for the next 10 years; Part II presents the situation concerning secondary uranium and plutonium resources; Part III analyses the "known" uranium resource data as presented within the past editions of the IAEA/NEA Red Book; Part IV finally outlines the plans and prospects for the long term future of nuclear fission and fusion.

Introduction

Most people today agree that a comfortable way of life depends on the avail­ability of cheap energy with its almost limitless applications. The average per capita energy consumption in the developed world increased by a factor of three or more during the past 50 years. However at most one billion people, or 1/7 of the human population of today, enjoy this increase. They live mainly in the richer countries and use on average approximately 50,000 kWh of thermal energy from various sources per year. This is three times higher than the world average consumption, roughly five times higher than the average per person energy use in China, and about 10 times larger than in India [1].

Depending slightly on the counting procedure, roughly 85% of this energy comes from fossil energy sources: about 40% from oil, 20% from natural gas and 25% from coal. Our mobility depends to almost 100% on oil. Electric energy, made from various "fuels," has the highest value for stationary applications and forms a basis for essentially all hi-tech and luxury energy applications. On a world-wide scale, electric energy accounts for 16% of the end energy use and between 20-25% in most of the rich countries. About 70% of the electric energy is again made from fossil fuels, about 16% from hydropower, and only 14% from nuclear fission energy. The renewable wind, solar, and geothermal energy sources, with some minor local exceptions, contribute no more than 1-2% to the energy mix [2].

These numbers demonstrate that electric energy, especially the part of it that is made from nuclear energy and renewable energy sources, contributes only little to the total world energy mix. In contrast, one obtains a totally distorted picture of their importance when one follows the media coverage and the political discussions at all levels about the pros and cons of nuclear fission power, hydropower, wind power, geothermal, and direct and indirect solar energy sources. For Switzerland, an interesting example of a small, densely populated and rich industrialized country, one finds that electric energy contributes to roughly 24% of the final energy mix. Electric energy is produced almost exclusively from hydropower (≈ 60%), and nuclear fission power (≈ 40%) [3]. Consequently, the two big and three old and smaller nuclear power plants contribute only 10% to the Swiss energy mix.

Similar basic energy numbers can be found on the Internet at the IEA website [4] and at many other websites. As fossil fuel resources, and especially oil and gas, are not renewable, it is obvious that the world-wide energy mix of today is totally unsustainable.

While it is generally accepted that fossil fuels will not last forever, the energy situation is mainly discussed in relation to its effects on global warming. This is reflected in various high-level meetings, where climate change and other side effects of our energy use are on the agenda of world-wide policy makers. Even though the recent price explosions for crude oil have resulted in some policy changes, the serious consequences of limited oil and gas resources are rarely discussed. If addressed at all, one finds that they are discussed under the more ambiguous heading of "energy security."

Perhaps disillusioned by the official politically correct main stream arguments, many people have started to investigate the resource limitations, often under the title "peak oil and gas" and "peak everything." These problems and the need to react are now discussed at many levels, and plenty of details can be found at web sites such as the "oil drum," the "energy bulletin," and many others [5]. Those who have accepted that the situation with our use of fossil fuels is unsustainable suggest and support, in order to prevent wars, chaos, and collapse, mostly a mixture of the following three sometimes orthogonal evolutionary directions:

  • the nuclear energy option;
  • the all renewable energy option, based dominantly on the transformation of solar and wind energy;
  • the energy reduction option, which stands for some efficiency improvements combined with an overall coordinated reduction of consumerism. Consequently, economic activities will slow down and "we" all will have to live simpler, perhaps still satisfying, lifestyles.

In this report, we shed some light on the nuclear energy option and its limitations. This analysis is split into four parts: (I) the nuclear reality of today and its short term perspectives; (II) the situation concerning secondary uranium resources; (III) the existing data about "known" exploitable uranium resources; and (IV) status and perspectives of fast breeder reactors (fourth generation reactors) and why commercial fusion reactors will always be 50 years away.

We believe that a comprehensive discussion of nuclear energy must also address problems related to (1) the real and imagined dangers of nuclear energy relative to other energy forms; (2) nuclear weapon proliferation, and (3) the accumulated nuclear waste. Yet in this series of articles, we shall not enter into any details concerning these important issues and instead refer the interested reader to the extensive literature dealing with them [6].

In this first article, nuclear energy and its place in today's world energy mix are reviewed. As significant new constructions in the nuclear power cycle, including uranium mines, enrichment facilities, and power plants, require at least a 5-10 year construction time, the maximum possible contribution of the nuclear power sector up until almost 2020 is already known and presented in this report.

It should become clear from the facts presented in the following sections of this article that the nuclear energy situation is far from being in the often claimed "nuclear renaissance phase." In fact, even without considering the impact of the 2008/9 world financial chaos, it seems already now very difficult to stop the slow nuclear phase-out, with an annual decrease of about 1%, that has been observed during the past few years.

Energy from nuclear fission: past, present and the next 10 years

Humanity began to understand the laws of physics that describe nuclear energy with its enormous energy density about 100 years ago, when a new form of very energetic radiation from heavy elements, like uranium, was discovered. It became quickly evident that many appli­cations were waiting to be discovered and used. Among them, we learnt to build the "final weapon of mass destruction" and found a way to produce commercial energy from nuclear fission.

In 1938, O. Hahn and F. Strassner studied the neutron bombardment of uranium observing some lighter elements. Within weeks, L. Meitner and O. Frisch could explain the reaction as the fission of uranium atoms into two lighter atoms. Today we know that, on average, 2-3 neutrons and a large amount of energy are liberated in this reaction. This observation opened the road to a controlled chain reaction using the neutrons emitted from one fission reaction to fission further uranium atoms. Such a chain reaction with a power of 2 Watt was first achieved by E. Fermi and his team in 1942. Only three years later, the world saw the explosions of two fission bombs over Hiroshima and Nagasaki that killed 150,000 people instantaneously.

The civilian use of nuclear fission energy, i.e., the nuclear energy age, began during the 1950s with the hope that this would lead mankind to an almost unlimited future energy supply. This idea came from the fact that the fission of 1 kg of uranium liberates about the same amount of energy as 1,000,000 kg of coal. Even if only the U235 component of natural uranium, which contains the two isotopes U238 (99.29%) and U235 (0.71%), can be used, one still finds that 1 kg of natural uranium contains energy equivalent of more than 10,000 kg of coal. Thus even a "useless" rock, containing perhaps only 0.01% of uranium, i.e., 0.1 kg of uranium per ton, could in theory liberate more energy than 1 kg of coal.

The necessary chain reaction to liberate nuclear fission energy is known to be possible if, on average, more than one neutron is emitted for every fission reaction. This is essentially possible only with two uranium isotopes, U235 and U233, and with the plutonium isotope Pu239, where, on average, 2-3 neutrons are emitted per fission reaction. Among them, only U235 exists naturally in sizable quantities.

The fission of these heavy elements is induced usually by a bombardment with moderated (slowed down) neutrons. If these extra neutrons are used efficiently for new fission reactions, a chain reaction, either controlled (in a reactor) or uncontrolled (in a bomb) can be started. As only one neutron is required to keep the controlled chain reaction going, the other neutrons can be used to transform the non-fissionable U238 and Thorium 232 isotopes under neutron absorption and subsequent decays into the fissionable isotopes Pu239 and U233. This neutron absorption process can be used to breed (produce) fissionable material. Already in the existing reactors, often called "once through" reactors, up to 1/3 of the produced power comes from the fission of Pu239 produced from the above U238 transformation.

A more complicated technological challenge poses the Fast Breeder Reactor (FBR). This reactor is operated in a chain reaction mode using the prompt energetic (fast) fission neutrons. The­oretically, the amount of fissionable material can be increased with fast breeders by a large factor. So far, prototype commercial FBRs were not a great success for energy production [7]. More details can be found in the "Generation IV" nuclear power plant road map [8]. In this document, written by scientists from all larger nuclear energy countries, it is stated that at least 20 years of intense research and development are required before the breeder option can be considered as a real alternative to the existing standard nuclear reactors. More details about the status and prospects of FBRs will be presented in the fourth and final article in this series.

Nuclear fission power today

Today, about 30 countries on our planet operate commercial nuclear fission power plants. Dur­ing 2008, these power plants provided together 2601 TWhe [9]. "TWh" stands for Terra Watt hours or 1012 Wh and "e" stands for electric energy. The power of a standard nuclear power plant is usually given in units of GW or 109 W. If a 1 GW reactor is operated with 85% efficiency over one year, about 7.5 TWhe of electricity are produced.

The amount of nuclear electricity produced in 2008 is 2.1% below that of the record year 2006 where all nuclear power plants together produced 2658 TWhe. As a consequence of the ever increasing electric energy demand, the contribution from nuclear fission energy to the total amount of produced electric energy has decreased from 18% in 1993 to 14% in 2008. Roughly 16% of the world energy end use comes from electric energy [2]. Multiplying 14% by 16%, one finds that nuclear energy contributes now less than 2.5% to the world's end energy mix.

The true nuclear energy contribution is about three times smaller than the percentage stated in most reviews of the world energy situation. The IEA and other agencies convert various sources of energy into a so-called "primary energy equivalent." In order to do so, the produced thermal energy is used for the statistics, and nuclear electric energy is multiplied roughly by a factor of three.

However, this approach is somewhat misleading as it is unclear how hydropower, where no thermal waste heat is produced, should be used in comparison. Furthermore, hydropower and gas-fired power plants provide electric energy on demand. In contrast, an efficient operation of nuclear power plants requires their operation with little interruptions at 100% capacity. As a result, nuclear power plants produce the so-called base load for the electric grid, whereas hydro and gas-fired power plants are used to satisfy peak load needs.

A fairer comparison would thus give the electric energy produced from hydropower a much higher quality factor than the one from nuclear fission power. Another problem with the primary energy accounting is related to the efficiency of nuclear power plants, which, on average, have a thermal-to-electric energy conversion factor of 33%, much lower than modern fossil fuel power plants, where efficiency factors of 50% and more can be reached. In addition, the waste heat from nuclear power plants is of lower temperature than that from gas-fired power plants. Consequently, the usage of waste heat from today's nuclear power plants is much less efficient and therefore essentially wasted to the environment. We thus find it more logical to measure the contribution from nuclear fission energy to the world end energy mix.

According to the IAEA database [10], nuclear electric energy comes currently from 436 nuclear fission reactors with an electric power capacity of about 370 GWe. The average age of these reactors is already about 25 years, and 130 reactors with a capacity of more than 90 GWe have an age between 30 and 40 years. A large fraction of those reactors will probably be decommissioned during the coming 5 to 10 years. The two oldest relatively small commercial reactors of 0.217 GWe each, have an age of 41 and 42 years and are expected to be shut down by the end of 2010 [11].

In contrast to the often repeated statement that the world is in a phase of a "nuclear renaissance," the data show a very different picture. Since the beginning of 2008, one reactor in Slovakia and two of the older reactors in Japan were shut down permanently, whereas not a single new reactor was completed. In fact, the year 2008 marks the first year since 1968, when not a single new reactor was connected to the electric grid. During the past 10-15 years, about 3-5 new nuclear power plants per year were connected to the electric grid on average, and an equivalent number of smaller and older reactors were decommissioned.

Pursuant to the IAEA data base [10], 48 reactors are currently under construction, and according to the WNA data base, roughly 10 reactors per year will be completed, on average, during the coming 5-10 years [12]. While the connection of about 10 reactors per year would indicate a substantial increase compared to the past 15 years, this number is far lower than 25 years ago, when 33 new nuclear reactors were started up each year.

If one assumes a normal reactor construction time of 5-10 years, one could imagine that all these 48 reactors might be operational between 2015 to 2020. If they can be operated as efficiently as the existing reactors, these new nuclear power plants will contribute at most about 300 TWhe per year of additional electric energy, resulting for the years 2015-2020 in a total nuclear energy production of no more than 2900 TWhe.

However, if one takes the average retirement age for the so far closed 122 reactors as a guideline, one can expect that up to 100 older smaller reactors will be decommissioned during the next 10 years. Combining these two pieces of information, it seems rather unlikely that even a net increase of the world-wide fission-produced electric energy is possible by 2015. In contrast, if one uses the annual decline of almost 1% observed during the last years as a base, a production of 2350 TWhe may be expected for the year 2015.

Consequently, one can predict for 2015, ignoring other limiting factors, that the total contribution from nuclear power plants will remain at best close to the current level.

Those interested in following the nuclear evolution during the coming months and years can compare the planned and real start-up dates summarized in a recent WNA reference document [12]. According to this WNA data base, it is planned that 7 and 8 new reactors will be connected to the grid during the remaining months of 2009 and 2010, respectively. It seems that at least the 2009 expectations are already now highly unrealistic.

Requirements of natural uranium equivalent

In the previous section, we have presented how the long construction times for new nuclear power plants and the existing age structure of nuclear power plants constrain the evolution of nuclear power during the next 5-10 years. We will now investigate the nuclear fuel supply situation.

Current nuclear reactors have, for several reasons, a relatively low thermal efficiency of about 33%. To operate a 1 GWe power plant, one finds that U235 or Pu239 isotopes have to be fissioned at a rate of roughly 1020 fissions/sec (about 0.05 grams/second). Knowing that the U235 isotope makes up only 0.71% of natural uranium, one finds that about 6.5 gram of natural uranium equivalent are required per second to operate a 1 GWe nuclear reactor. Multiplying this amount with the number of seconds per year, one finds that 170 tons of natural uranium equivalent per year are needed to operate a 1 GWe power plant. Therefore, about 65,000 tons of natural uranium equivalent per year are needed to operate the existing 370 GWe nuclear capacity. It is generally believed that (1) this amount of uranium can easily be obtained from the existing mines combined with secondary resources; (2) it will be easy to extract a sufficient amount of uranium from new mines in the near future; and (3) no nuclear fuel shortages should be expected for the coming years.

However as will be shown below and in Part II of this review, the situation with uranium extraction from the known mines and with the secondary resources during the coming 5-10 years appears to be much more critical than generally believed. Before we present these data, a few more details about the usage of nuclear fuel might be helpful to understand the current uranium supply situation and how it will constrain the evolution of nuclear power during the coming 5-10 years.

Nuclear reactors produce energy from the fission of either uranium U235 or plutonium Pu239, which is one of the secondary sources of nuclear fuel. To simplify the discussion, we always use the natural uranium equivalent in the following. As has been explained above, the amount of fissile material required to operate a 1 GWe nuclear power plant for one year, e.g. assuming one annual refilling, is about 165-180 tons of natural uranium equivalent per year. In practice, the normal operation of most reactors requires a few weeks of annual shutdown in order to replace about 1/4 of the used up uranium fuel rods. Fresh reactor fuel rods contain a mixture of the fissile isotopes U235 or Pu239 component enriched to 3-4% and U238. During the few years of operation, the U235 content will be reduced to roughly 1%. At the same time due to neutron capture and subsequent β decays, some U238 is transformed into Pu239. During the reactor operation, Pu239 increases to something close to 1% and contributes on average up to 30% of the produced fission energy. Once the concentration of fissionable material in the fuel rods is reduced well below 2%, new fuel rods are usually required. The first uranium load, which brings a new 1 GWe reactor to nominal power, is about 500 tons of natural uranium equivalent.

Some important statistics about nuclear power plants in different countries, their electric energy production in 2007, and the corresponding uranium requirements, extracted from the Red Book data base of the IAEA and the NEA [14] and from the WNA [13], are summarized below.

The second column gives the number of reactors per country and in parantheses the corresponding electric power. The third column gives the total amount of electric energy produced in 2007. The number in parantheses indicates the average number of TWh produced per installed GWe power, which is an indication of how efficiently the nuclear power plants were operated in 2007. A non-negligible number of reactors is always on some kind of long-term technical shut-down. A typical example is the result of the 2007 earthquake in Japan, where some 8 GWe nuclear power plants were damaged and operation has not resumed yet after two years. The number in the fourth column shows the natural uranium equivalent requirements for 2008. The number in parantheses gives the average uranium requirements per GWe installed power for the world and the different countries.

Since about 15 years, only about 2/3 of the annual uranium requirements, i.e., between 31,000 and 44,000 tons, are extracted from the world-wide mining industry. This quantity is much smaller than the mining capacity, which for example in 2007 was, according to the Red Book, 54,000-57,000 tons [15].

The difference between the required and the extracted uranium in 2007 was about 23,000 tons. This is about the same amount as extracted by the three largest uranium producing countries, Canada, Australia, and Kazakhstan, together. The missing amount of fissile material is currently satisfied with secondary resources. These are the civilian and military stocks of uranium and plutonium that were accumu­lated during the cold war and the so called MOX, a mixture of U235 and plutonium recycled in an expensive and technically challenging process from the used fuel rods. The tails left over from the U235 enrichment process still contain some 0.2-0.3% of U235 and are another potential source of U235. In Part II, we shall present some publicly available data on secondary resources, which provide some quantitative explanations for the alarming situation expressed (highlighted by the author) in the IAEA and NEA press declaration of June 3, 2008 [16] about the new 2007 edition of the Red Book:

At the end of 2006, world uranium production (39,603 tons) provided about 60% of world reactor requirements (66,500 tons) for the 435 commercial nuclear reactors in operation. The gap between production and requirements was made up by secondary sources drawn from government and commercial inventories (such as the dismantling of over 12,000 nuclear warheads and the re-enrichment of uranium tails). Most secondary resources are now in decline and the gap will increasingly need to be closed by new production. Given the long lead time typically required to bring new resources into production, uranium supply shortfalls could develop if production facilities are not implemented in a timely manner.

Uranium extraction, past and present

In order to understand today's uranium supply situation, it is interesting to note that many formerly rich uranium mines, especially in large uranium consuming countries, closed many years ago. This closure has happened despite that (1) the claimed goal is energy independence, and (2) uranium explorations make only minor contributions to the electricity price. Reality shows that these countries are now largely dependent on uranium imports from other countries.

Today, the ten largest uranium consumers are the United States, France, Japan, Russia, Germany, Korea (South), UK, Ukraine, Canada, and Sweden. These countries consume about 84% of the uranium needed world wide or roughly 54,000 tons of the natural uranium equivalent. This number can be compared with the uranium extracted world wide. The latest numbers from the WNA indicate that 43,930 tons of uranium were extracted in 2008 [17]. The corresponding data from the WNA and the Red Book for the previous years are 41,279 tons in 2007, 39,429 tons in 2006 and 41,702 in 2005. Somewhat remarkable is the fact that the achieved numbers are usually at least one thousand tons smaller than the short term production forecast for the next year.

Only 4 of the above 10 countries, Canada, Russia, USA, and Ukraine, are still extracting uranium in sizable quantities. Out of these four countries, only Canada, which extracted 9476 tons in 2007, produces a large amount of uranium directly for export. It is interesting to note that the existing mines in Canada seem to be in a steep decline, while upgrades and new mines are unable to compensate for this decline. During the years 2002-2005, the Canadian mines produced, on average, more than 11,000 tons per year. Since then, production fell by 5% and more per year, and only 9000 tons were produced in 2008.

The uranium mines in the above 10 largest uranium consumer countries produce only about 28% of their uranium needs, i.e., 15,400 tons in 2007 and 14,751 tons in 2008. If the two uranium exporting countries in this list are not taken into account, the remaining eight countries need to import about 95% of their requirements. For the European countries, the uranium import dependence is now almost 100% and as such much larger than their relative dependence on oil and gas imports.

The table below shows some important numbers about nuclear fission energy and present and past uranium production for the entire world and for different countries as given in the Red Book 2007 [14] and the WNA data base [18].

As can be seen, (East) Germany and France have essentially stopped uranium mining, even though they used to extract large amounts of uranium from within their territory. Finally, Japan, the UK, South-Korea, and Sweden never had any substantial uranium mining of their own.

For the largest uranium consumer country, the United States, the situation is even more amazing. The internal uranium production declined from a peak of 17,000 tons per year around 1980 to a production of 1654 tons in 2007 and 1430 tons in 2008. Last year's amount does not even allow to operate 10% of their nuclear power plants. More interesting questions should come up when one considers that currently about 50% of the nuclear reactors in the USA are operated with excess military uranium stockpiles from Russia. As the bilateral contract between the USA and Russia ends in 2013 and as Russia has currently very ambitious plans to enlarge their own nuclear energy sector, it is unlikely that Russia will renew this contract in 2013. Consequently, the stability of the electric grid in the United States now depends on the friendship with their former archenemy and possibly today's and tomorrow's most important economic competitor. The dependence of USA on Russia's good will looks like an interesting problem for the next few years. These uranium data demonstrate the obvious contradiction between the goal that energy imports need to be reduced in order to achieve more energy security, as expressed by past and present US administrations, and reality.

Thus, the data demonstrate that there is nothing like uranium self-sufficiency in the United States, the European Union, Japan, and other rich countries, and that the uranium import dependence is in general much larger than for oil and gas. In fact, the data on uranium mining and the large import dependence for several large uranium consuming countries undermine strongly the widespread belief that uranium resources are plentiful and that uranium exploration and mining costs are only a minor problem for nuclear energy production.

A naive observer may conclude that the permanently repeated claims from authorities, such as from the NEA director general L. Echávarri and the IAEA deputy director Y. Sokolov in 2006 [19], that uranium resources are plentiful and sufficient to sustain the expected growth of nuclear power are either wishful thinking or assume that such statements are needed in order to reinforce the belief in a bright future for nuclear energy.

More details about uranium mining in different countries and especially their evolution during the past years and the near future needs will be presented in the next section.

Uranium needs and production limits: the next 10 years

As we have seen in the previous section, the world nuclear power plants can reach a maximum capacity of 410 GWe by 2015. In order to achieve this number, it has to be assumed that none of current 370 GWe reactors will be decommissioned and that all plants currently under construction can be completed by 2015.

We shall now estimate how much uranium fuel can be expected for the operation of nuclear power plants around the year 2015 and whether this amount will provide a second constraint for the number of nuclear plants in operation. Such estimates are fairly reliable because the fuel needs for the reactors operating or under construction today are well known. Fuel requirements of future generation reactors are irrelevant for the next 10 years as at least 20 years of research and development are required to build them [8].

Nuclear capacity estimates and the corresponding uranium needs for the years beyond 2015 are becoming more and more speculative. For example, one needs to know what will happen with the oldest nuclear reactors and whether they can be replaced in time. Nevertheless many government agencies, like the IAEA/NEA, the IEA or the EIA from the USA government, as well as large pro-nuclear organizations like the WNA try to make forecasts at least up to the year 2030. For example the 2008 press declaration for the 2007 edition of the Red Book states [16]:

World nuclear energy capacity is expected to grow from 372 GWe in 2007 to between 509 GWe (+38%) and 663 GWe (+80%) by 2030. To fuel this expansion, annual uranium requirements are anticipated to rise to between 94,000 tons and 122,000 tons, based on the type of reactors in use today.

More generally, three scenarios for the evolution of the yearly nuclear capacity are envisaged for the next 20 years [20]:

  1. a fast growth with an increase of +2% per year;
  2. a reference scenario with a 1% annual growth; and
  3. a slow decline scenario with a 1% annual decrease starting in 2010.

Taking the performance from the world-wide nuclear power plants and from the uranium mines in the last few years as an indication, only scenario (3), the slow phase-out, seems to be consistent with the current data. This trend might even be strengthened by the current financial world crisis, which will make it more difficult to obtain the large commitments needed for the construction of new nuclear power plants and new uranium mines, and indeed, some construction delays for new nuclear projects have already been announced [21]. In addition, it is evident that unpredictable events such as earthquakes, accidents or wars can only result in a capacity decrease.

The uranium requirements up to at least 2015 are already well known and summarized below:

The nuclear power perspectives up to 2015 for different countries and the world are extracted from the Red Book 2007 [14]. The WNA numbers are taken from [12]. As quantified within the 2007 edition of the Red Book and the WNA 2009 data base, the expected increase in nuclear power plant capacity is expected to come from a few countries only. Some important aspects about these near future world-wide nuclear plans are:

  • Germany, currently the fifth largest nuclear power consumer, has indicated a definite plan for their nuclear phase-out. According to this plan, the German nuclear power capacity should be reduced from 20.3 GWe to about 11 GWe by 2015 [22].
  • Very ambitious plans to complete a large number of nuclear power plants by 2015 are currently proposed by China, where the current 7.6 GWe (2007) should increase to 25-35 GWe [12]. A similar increase is planned by India, where 3.8 GWe (2007) should increase to 9.5-13.1 GWe. This can be compared with the plans from Japan, Russia, and South Korea, where their entire capacity should increase by an additional 8-10 GWe.
  • The rich OECD countries are planning currently for a roughly constant nuclear capacity.

However, the high growth 2010 forecast from the IAEA/NEA Red Book 2007 is, according to the more recent March 2009 WNA numbers, already unachievable. In fact, even this WNA estimate, which assumes that during 2009 and 2010 seven (4.3 GWe) and eight (5.2 GWe) new nuclear power plants will be connected to the grid [12], seems to be totally unrealistic.

As we are interested in estimating the maximum possible contribution from nuclear power plants during the next decade, the above Red Book scenario can be used as a guideline to estimate the requirements of uranium equivalent for the coming years. In order to operate the current and future running nuclear reactors, the authors of the Red Book 2007 estimated that between 70,000-75,000 tons of uranium equivalent are required for the year 2010 and between 77,000-86,000 tons by 2015. Following the IAEA/NEA June 2008 press declaration [16], such a growth for uranium mining seems to be a serious challenge:

Given the long lead time typically required to bring new resources into production, uranium supply shortfalls could develop if production facilities are not implemented in a timely manner.

Despite this and similar hidden warnings, the authors of the Red Book usually offer a rather rosy picture for the future uranium mining, as can be seen from the data summarized below:

The expected uranium production capacity is given in units of 1000 tons from the Red Book for the world and for different countries for the years 2010 and 2015 [25]. The expected world-wide capacity increase between 2007 and 2010 and from 2010 to 2015 is obtained from the evolution of the total capacity. The ratio between the real production numbers for 2007 from the WNA and the uranium capacity from the Red Book are given in column 2. Scenarios A and B are rough forecasts for the maximal uranium mining for the years 2010 and 2015 based on past capacity and real mining relation. For Scenario A, it is assumed that the mining performance will be 75% of the future capacity expected according to the Red Book. For Scenario B, we assume that the existing mines in 2007 will continue an average annual production of 40,000 tons and that only 50% of the capacity forecast can become operational in time.

The predicted large increase of world-wide uranium mining almost exactly matches the requirements. However, essentially all countries exaggerate their mining capacity predictions far beyond the amount that can be reasonably extracted, as demonstrated e.g. by comparing the 2007 claimed capacity with the actually achieved uranium 2007 mining results. The numbers in the second column indicate especially large and unrealistic expectations for Canada and the USA.

For 2007, the world-wide uranium mining capacity is given as of 54,370-56,855 tons. In comparison to this capacity, the expectations from the Red book for the year 2007 were given as 43,328 tons. Uranium mining 2007 achieved 41,264 tons, about 2000 tons less than the forecast for the same year. Similarly wrong estimates were given in past Red Book editions. For example the Red Book 2003 (2005) gave capacities for the year 2003 (2005) of 49,940 tons (49,720-51,565 tons). In comparison, the achieved uranium extraction was 35,492 tons in 2003 and 41,943 tons in 2005 [23].

As if these capacity numbers, exaggerated by 20-30%, would not be troubling enough, the discrep­ancy between the claimed new mining capacity and the amounts that were really achieved is even more surprising. According to the Red Book 2007, the total additional capacity in 2007 compared to 2005 was estimated to be 5290 tons. The real result for 2007, a combination from older sometimes declining operating mines and new mines, was about 700 tons lower than the one achieved in 2005. For 2008, the production reached 43,930 tons, which is 2200 tones larger than in the year 2005 but still far below the increase expected already for 2007 [17].

Similar discrepancies between Red Book predictions and real extraction data can be found in previous Red Book editions. These discrepancies are, somewhat hidden, acknowledged in the latest 2007 edition. Unfortunately instead of explaining the origin of such mistakes and correcting them in order to improve the quality of the Red Book, systematic differences are simply accepted with the statement that "world production has never exceeded 89% of the reported production capability and since 2003 has varied between 75% and 84% of production capability" [24]. Further inconsistencies exist between the expected mining capacity increase and the detailed timetable given for the opening and extensions of uranium mines [25]. For example the Red Book forecast, Table 24 (page 48), assumes that between 2007 and 2010, the uranium mining capacity will increase by 26,000 to 29,900 tons. However, direct counting of the new uranium mines (page 49) results in new capacity of about 20,000 tons.

Similarly the forecast between 2010 and 2015 assumes that new mining projects should increase the capacity by another 15,000-30,000 tons. In comparison, direct counting of new uranium mines sums up at most to about 21,000 tons, about 30% below the claimed upper limit of 30,000 tons.

A critical reader of the Red Book will thus be intrigued to investigate, in which countries these capacity increases are expected. Some of these predictions, extracted from the Red Book, are shown in the table printed above. One finds that about 50% of the world-wide uranium increase between 2007 and 2010 should come from Kazakhstan. It is claimed that their production capacity will increase from 7000 tons in 2007 to 18,000 tons. Such an increase should have raised some critical reflections and comments from the authors of the Red Book, as it would put Kazakhstan on equal terms with the combined production of Canada and Australia in 2008. According to the WNA spring 2009 document, the 2010 forecast for Kazakhstan has already been reduced to 15,000 tons [26]. If one takes the latest news about a huge corruption affair concerning the uranium resources of Kazakhstan into account [27], a further drastic reduction of the 2009 and 2010 forecasts can be predicted.

Uranium mining in Canada is also far behind the Red Book expectations [28]. Not only are the real mining numbers much lower than the claimed capacities, but the existing three mines, which produce essentially 100% of the Canadian uranium, are in steep decline. The production from these three large mines (McArthur River, McClean Lake, and Rabbit Lake) declined from 11,400 tons in 2005 to 9000 tons in 2008. The previously expected 2007 start of the Cigar Lake mine, with an estimated yearly production capacity of 7000 tons, was stopped due to catastrophic flooding in late 2006. The start-up date of this mine is now delayed until at least 2012.

One may conclude that the Red Book uranium mining extrapolations are exaggerated and not based on hard facts, as one would have expected from this internationally well respected document.

Those interested in the near future nuclear energy contribution and thus uranium mining perspectives for the next 10 years should consequently not use the Red Book data directly. Instead, we might try to guess more realistic numbers by using the ratio between the 2007 mining results and the 2007 capacity as a first guess and update and improve these numbers accordingly during the next few years. Following this method, we should reduce the mining capacities by at least 20-30% in order to obtain a more meaningful forecast (Scenario A). As a result, we might predict a total uranium production of about 60,000 tons in 2010 and 72,000 tons in 2015. At least for 2010, it is already clear that the Scenario A numbers are still quite a bit too high.

For Scenario B, we used the evolution of new uranium mines in order to determine how fast new capacity can become operational. Using this procedure and the real mining data from the past few years, roughly 40,000 tons per year, and assuming that only 50% of the new mining capacities can be realized, we might predict a perhaps more realistic production of 54,000 tons in 2010, and 61,500 tons by 2015. Those numbers can be compared to the latest WNA June 2009 estimates, where a total of 49,400 tons and 74,000 tons are predicted for 2009 and 2015, respectively [29]. It seems that such professional estimations do not use much more input than a mixture of the above two simple-minded methods. Within less than one year, we shall be able to update the above scenarios using the 2009 results and improve the 2010 and 2015 forecasts accordingly.

For those interested, I am offering a bet that the 2009 and 2010 numbers will not be higher than 45,000 tons and 47,000 tons, respectively.

Taking into account that civilian secondary resources currently provide about 21,000 tons of natural uranium equivalent per year and that the civilian part of these resources will be basically exhausted within the next few years, one finds that even the optimistic WNA 2009 numbers indicate uranium fuel supply stress during the coming years. According to a recent presentation at the annual WNA September 2008 symposium from the Ux consulting (Macquarie Research commodities ) [29], about 1200 tons of uranium are missing for the 2009 demand. Furthermore, an uranium mining result below 50,000 tons/year in 2009 and beyond will result in a serious uranium shortage.

Summary of Part I: Nuclear fission energy today

Our analysis of publicly available data from the large international and very pro-nuclear organiza­tions, the IAEA and the WNA, show that the current evolution of nuclear fission energy is consistent with a slow nuclear phase-out. This situation is summarized by the following points:

  • The overall fraction of nuclear energy to electric energy has gone down from 18% in 1993 to less than 14% in 2008. With electric energy providing roughly 16% of the world-wide energy end use, one finds overall a nuclear energy contribution of less than 2.5%.
  • The number of produced TWhe of electric energy from world-wide nuclear power plants is now lower than in 2005, and it has decreased by about 2% from a maximum of 2658 TWhe in 2006 to 2601 TWhe in 2008.
  • Today and world wide, 48 nuclear power plants with a capacity of about 40 GWe are under construction. Only 10% of them are being constructed within OECD countries, which host currently about 85% of the existing nuclear reactors. However, about 100 older reactors with slightly larger capacity are reaching their retirement age during the same period. It follows that even if all 48 reactors might be connected within the next 5 to 10 years to the electric grid, it will be difficult to maintain the current level of TWhe produced by nuclear energy.
  • The natural uranium equivalent required to operate the 370 GWe nuclear power plants of today is roughly 65,000 tons per year. However during the past 10 years, the world-wide uranium mines extracted, on average, only about 40,000 tons of uranium per year, and the difference had to be compensated for by secondary resources. According to the data from the Red Book 2007 and the WNA, the remaining civilian uranium stocks are expected to be exhausted during the next few years. Consequently the current uranium supply situation is unsustainable.
  • The urgency to increase world-wide uranium mining by a large amount is well documented in the current and past Red Book editions and related official declarations. However, the latest uranium mining data indicate that new uranium mines will not be capable to compensate for the diminishing secondary uranium resources, and that it will be difficult to fuel the existing 370 GWe. It seems that either a rather welcome but improbable further large conversion of nuclear weapons into reactor material will happen during the coming years, or fuel supply problems within the next 3-5 years will force a 10-20 GWe reduction of the operational nuclear power capacity.

We can thus conclude Part I: Nuclear Fission Energy Today, with the statement that publicly available official data are inconsistent with the widespread belief that the world is in a "Nuclear Energy Renaissance" phase. In reality, the data about uranium mining and the large number of aging nuclear reactors indicate that the trend of a 1% annual decrease of fission produced TWhe will continue at least up until 2015. In fact, the increasingly serious uranium supply situation might even lead to a forced nuclear shutdown of perhaps 5% of the world-wide reactors, most likely in countries without sufficient domestic uranium mining and enrichment facilities. Such a result would certainly end the widespread belief in a bright future for nuclear fission energy.

References

[1] Statistics about the energy use in different countries can be found at the statistics page of the International Energy Agency at http://www.iea.org/Textbase/stats/index.asp.

[2] Detailed information about the electric energy production and use can be found at http://www.iea.org/Textbase/stats/prodresult.asp?PRODUCT=Electricity/Heat.

[3] Cf. for example Switzerland under [2] or the Swiss Bundesamt für Energie at http://www.bfe.admin.ch/themen/00526/00541/00542/00630/index.html?lang=de&dossier id=00765.

[4] World energy statistics are collected and published on a yearly basis by the IEA, http://www.iea.org/textbase/nppdf/free/2008/key_stats_2008.pdf; the EIA, the Energy Information Administration of the USA government, http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/international/contents.html; and from BP in their "Statistical Review of World Energy 2009" http://www.bp.com/productlanding.do?categoryId=6929&contentId=7044622.

[5] Some examples of government independent websites with discussions about the en­ergy problem are The Oil Drum, http://www.theoildrum.com/; the Energy Bulletin, http://www.energybulletin.net/; and The Post Carbon Institute, http://www.postcarbon.org/.

[6] For more detailed information and further references cf. for example http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_weapon and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioactive_waste.

[7] Operation statistics, history, and known concrete plans concerning Fast Breeder Reac­tors (FBRs) and all other reactor types can be obtained from the IAEA PRIS data base at http://www.iaea.org/programmes/a2/ and the IAEA Fast Reactor Database at http://www.iaea.org/inisnkm/nkm/aws/frdb/index.html. Additional details can be found in the WNA Information papers http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf98.html.

[8] Cf. the Generation IV "Technology Roadmap" document at the GenIV International Forum http://gif.inel.gov/roadmap/.

[9] For the year 2008 status and production of nuclear electric energy cf. for example the WNA papers at http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/reactors.html; http://www.world-­nuclear.org/info/inf01.html; and http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/nshare.html.

[10] Past and present electric energy production data for essentially all nuclear reactors and for differ­ent countries can be found at the IAEA PRIS data base at http://www.iaea.org/programmes/a2/.

[11] For an overview of the decommissioning of nuclear facilities cf. http://www.world­-nuclear.org/info/inf19.html, and for particular plans about reactor terminations in the United Kingdom cf. http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf84.html.

[12] For a detailed timetable about the expected grid connection of near future nuclear power plants cf. the table at the end of the WNA document "Plans For New Reactors Worldwide" at http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf17.html.

[13] The 2007/2008 numbers are from the WNA document http://www.world-­nuclear.org/info/reactors-jul08.html. Regular updates of this table including the 2008/2009 situation can be found at http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/reactors.html.

[14] The detailed numbers are extracted from the Red Book 2007 edition, "Ura­nium 2007 Resources, Production and Demand." The book is published ev­ery two years by the IAEA/NEA and can be found at the OECD book store http://www.oecdbookshop.org/oecd/display.asp?K=5KZLLSXQS6ZV&DS=Uranium-2007. Free online versions of some past editions can be found via "Google books."

[15] Cf. [14] Table 24 on page 48.

[16] Nuclear Energy Agency press declaration of June 3, 2008 concerning the new edi­tion of the Red Book 2007 "Uranium 2007 Resources, Production and Demand" at http://www.nea.fr/html/general/press/2008/2008-02.html.

[17] Results for world-wide uranium mining extractions including the 2008 data are summa­rized at http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf23.html. Many more detailed numbers and some past estimates for the coming year(s) can be found in the different Red Book editions at the OECD book store http://www.oecdbookshop.org/oecd/display.asp?K=5KZLLSXQS6ZV&DS=Uranium-2007 and the 2006 review "Forty Years of Uranium Resources, Production and Demand in Perspective. The Red Book Retrospective."

[18] The 2008 data concerning uranium mining are from the WNA http://www.world-­nuclear.org/info/inf23.html. The other numbers are extracted from the Red Book 2007 edition [14] and the from the 2006 review of the past 40 years cited under [17].

[19] Cf. for example the presentation by Luis E. Echávarri, NEA Director-General and Yuri Sokolov, International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Deputy Director-General, for the new "Red Book" 2005 edition at http://www.nea.fr/html/general/press/2006/redbook/redbook.pdf.

[20] For the three scenarios up to the year 2030, cf. http://www.world­-nuclear.org/sym/2005/pdf/Maeda.pdf. Some ideas about long-term nuclear growth with surprising guesses for many countries are presented by the WNA "Nuclear Century Outlook" document at http://www.world-nuclear.org/outlook/clean_energy_need.html. For example, the nuclear capacity for Germany by 2030 is estimated to be between today's 20 GWe and 50 GWe, and many more surprising and totally unrealistic numbers can be found at http://www.world-nuclear.org/outlook/nuclear_century_outlook.html.

[21] Cf. for example Nature News November 19, 2008 "Nuclear renaissance plans hit by financial crisis" at http://www.nature.com/news/2008/081119/full/456286a.html; Ameren suspends new nuclear plant plans (April 24, 2009) at http://www.world-nuclear-news.org/newsarticle.aspx?id=25101 and http://www.world-nuclear-news.org/newsarticle.aspx?id=23202 concerning a three-year delay due to various construction problems of the AREVA EPR reactor in Finland. Some more details can be found in the May 2009 IEA review: "The impacts of the financial and economic crisis on the global energy investment" and page 50/51 about its consequences for the nuclear energy sector at http://www.iea.org/textbase/Papers/2009/G8_FinCrisis_Impact.pdf.

[22] The current schedule for the nuclear phase-out of different nuclear power plants in Germany is given in http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf43.html.

[23] The uranium mining capacity numbers are taken from the past Red Book editions of 2003 and 2005.

[24] Red Book 2007 [14] page 86.

[25] Cf. pages 48 and 49 of the Red Book 2007 edition [14].

[26] Details about uranium mining in Kazakhstan are given under http://www.world­-nuclear.org/info/inf89.html.

[27] Some details about the corruption affair in Kazakhstan can be found at http://www.world-nuclear-news.org/ENF_Response_to_Kazakh_investigation_0306092.html.

[28] The latest uranium mining result and future expectations can be found at http://www.world­-nuclear.org/info/inf49.html.

[29] Cf. the presentation of Maximilian Layton, Macquarie Capital Securities "The global uranium outlook: is 2008/09 a buying opportunity?" at the 2008 WNA symposium http://www.world-nuclear.org/sym/2008/presentations/laytonpresentation.pdf and for the latest 2009 forecast of 49,375 tons from the WNA http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf23.html.

Michael,
You state: "This analysis about nuclear energy and its future contribution attempts to shed some light on the nuclear reality and its limitations."
While you have given a good summary of some of the potential limitations of nuclear replacing some FF energy,
most importantly you have left out some of the potential of nuclear energy.
While 40GWe is under construction, 131GWe is in the planning stages. China which produces just 1% of its electricity from nuclear has plans to expand it's present 8GW to 60GW by 2020(12 under construction others being contracted). It would be surprising if China and India do not at least generate 20% of their electricity from nuclear in next two decades, even as they expand wind and solar, because they do not have the coal reserves.

"While the connection of about 10 reactors per year would indicate a substantial increase compared to the past 15 years, this number is far lower than 25 years ago, when 33 new nuclear reactors were started up each year."
So what? Is there a reason why you think we would be unable to complete 33 reactors per year in the next decades?

It is not clear that many of the existing reactors are going to shut down after 40 years operation, licensing is usually for periods of 20 years and then must be renewed. Some of the earlier shut downs were older less safe designs such as the graphite moderated reactors in E Europe and UK. Other planned shut downs may well be delayed or licensing extended for another 20 years.

As far as uranium supplies, one mine expansion planned in Australia ( Olympic dam) will increase uranium from 4,000 tonnes to 19,000 tonnes/year. Many other mines in Australia are waiting for higher prices before being developed. New technology has enabled very deep deposits to be economically mined.
http://bravenewclimate.com/2009/04/05/carbon-footprint-of-the-olympic-da...

Longer term, breeder fuel cycles have the potential to extend uranium and thorium supplies by X400 times what is available from using the U235 isotope.

Why would you not consider a kWh(3.6MJ) generated by a nuclear power plant worth three times the energy content of 3.6MJ of coal, since 10.8MJ of coal is needed to generate one kWh of electricity? Electricity consumers use kWh not the BTU's in uranium or coal. In terms of base-load nuclear and coal are fairly comparable, hydro is more flexible and receives a premium price because of that.

A good article accessible to me with only a general science degree.
Michael:
You seem IMHO to be being disingenuous.
Chinese building is trivial and the effect of increasing potential resource shortfall is covered in the posting.
'Longer term, breeder fuel...potential' the posting is all about the here and now not a fantastic world vision.
As to expanding the building program generally what are they going to run on.

The light water thorium breeder reactor was well proven in the 1970's. That technology can be retrofit into existing reactors (www.thoriumpower.com). Canadian CANDU style reactors can also breed thorium very efficiently. Thorium has been ignored because uranium (and plutonium from decommissioning bombs) has been so cheap. While I agree that a transition will take some time, it is readily achievable and not pie-in-the-sky. If the true costs of climate change were applied to coal immediately, nuclear would expand dramatically (along with wind, solar, etc...)

Great post and thank you for your analysis.

Most of the physics is over my head, but would agree that physics is not the challenge?

You are saying that until 2015-2020, we are in status quo in terms of additional global nuclear power capacity. Understood.

Now, constraints to expansion of nuclear power are:
1. NIMBY location of power plant concerns.
2. Waste storage concerns.
3. Lack of new plant construction.
4. Lack of uranium.

If the power is needed, and nothing else is available, 1 and 2 will disappear as concerns.

3 is also not a challenge. Sure, nuclear power plants are expensive, but not for the US/Europe which just paid out trillions of dollars to support a credit system and are paying billions more for clunker automobiles.

4 is the real challenge. A large amount of uranium over the past twenty years has come from weapons decommissioning, particularly from former Soviet States. This availability has kept uranium prices low and discouraged exploration by miners. Is the uranium available? What do the cost curves for uranium miners look like? Are there large known quantities of low grade ore available such that, once uranium prices rise, miners will be able to produce much more?

Your list is incomplete.

The lack of new construction means that it will take a decade plus to just rebuild the workforce experience and supporting supply network.

MASSIVE costs to do so (max eight new USA nukes in 10 years, first one likely to cost $`12+ billion).

Money better spent elsewhere.

Once better uses of capital are fully funded, then lets spend $50 billion to revive the US nuke building industry so that we can built 7 new nukes in the first decade and 30 in the next decade and more in the third decade (maybe).

Alan

The solution is to modularize the construction: China is planning to build 100 Westinghouse AP1000s by 2020 -GASP !!

http://nextbigfuture.com/2009/08/ap1000-modular-reactor-construction.html

-See, it CAN be done if there is a will to do it...

MIT Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering along with American Nuclear Society sponsored a Seminar in March 2009, unfortunately fuel availability was not on their radar screen. Presentations at http://mit.edu/ans/www/seminar2.html

Alan,

My respect for your understanding of the nuclear industry trends steadily upward.

Presuming that you mean by "better spent else where" spent on conservation you are almost certainly correct in terms of bang for the buck.

I did not realize until now that the uranium supply depends so heavily on imports.

But that could change fast if some good deposits known to exist w/i our borders are developed-if things get bad enough ,the owners can buy off the nimby crowd with a few million in goodies for the locals.

BUMP FOR LaTeX

Longer term, breeder fuel cycles have the potential to extend uranium and thorium supplies by X400 times what is available from using the U235 isotope.

Yes, and

1) this is unproven potential, though if the X400 figure is close, we may throw a lot of resources at the problem and make it work somehow.

2) a coal train or oil tanker has no military escort, but an LNG tanker does. this is because LNG's energy density is far higher. if breeders really have X400 energy density as you claim, they will require orders of magnitude more militarism.

1. Breeders are not really unproven. There have been several working breeder reactors built since the 70-ies. They are simply not economical yet due to the increased complexity.

(update: my math was off a bit)
2. The X400 extension of supplies claimed is way, way, WAY to low. The correct extension should a few million times or so. The reason is as follows: First (if we only look at uranium) breeders would give us about 50 times more energy per kilogram of natural uranium.

Second, and this is important, when energy extraction is 50 times better, you can obviously(?) use ores 50 times more diluted. Combine this with the fact that there is a 300-fold increase in the amount of uranium recoverable for each tenfold decrease in ore grade, and you will find that allowing a 50-fold decrease in ore grade makes 16000 times more uranium recoverable.

Then you just need to multiply: 50 times better energy extraction times 16000 times more uranium available. 50*16000 = 800,000 times more uranium energy available than today. Then we have thorium, which is more abundant than uranium...

Second, and this is important, when energy extraction is 50 times better, you can obviously(?) use ores 50 times more diluted.

No, no, no and no! Not at a net energy gain necessarily!

That's just bad bad bad science

I stand by my statement. Could you please explain why you oppose it, and not just that you do?

50 times the thermal energy doesn't mean 50 times the net electrical energy, since it doesn't automaticaly follow that the eficiency of of the thermal-electrical conversion of both reactors is the same and that the energy inputs are the same proportion to the outputs.

By the way, I don't know if it is the same, and, if you know, I'd like to hear your answer.

Is there any reason to believe thermal-to-electrical conversion will be significantly worse for breeder designs? At least some of the breeder designs operates at higher temperatures, allowing for higher conversion efficiency than today.

I thought he may be thinking that energy invested in mining would grow faster than the inverse of the ore grade, but I don't understand why that would be.

The efficiency depends on the temperature. The higher the temperature, the better the efficiency rate will be. However, the temperature of a nuclear reactor is chosen much lower than that of a coal-fired or gas-fired power plant, because this lengthens the life-time of the burning chamber. A fossil-fuel furnace can be shut down every 10 years or so to replace the burner. You can't do this with a nuclear power plant because of the radiation. For this reason, a temperature is chosen that is a compromise between keeping the efficiency acceptably high (around 33%), while allowing the burner to operate for about 40 years.

It has quite a bit more to do with the fact that most reactors are light water reactors and dependent on the corrosiveness of water at certain temperatures. Gas cooled and molten salt reactors dont have these limitations and can run quite hot.

Indeed, and the latest LWR's have higher thermal efficiencies. EPR is 37 % while the Mitsubishi APWR is 39 % IIRC.

may be you wanted to say:

the new EPR is hopping to have 37% efficiency

lets wait till the first EPR is working and see the actual numbers!

michael

ps.. as was pointed out the upper temperature is limited because of
corrosion and other effects
therefore it will never be better than a gas power fired plant

also do you really want to make a big point of a change from 33% to 37% ??

also do you really want to make a big point of a change from 33% to 37% ??

Why not? If it could be applied to all reactors, the extra power would be about as much as all the wind power in the world.

ok,

if you think that makes an impact!

And i thought you want to find a way to compensate for
the coming decline from oil gas and coal somehow

3% decline of oil alone and ignoring that electric energy does not replace
our oil uses ..

thus 40% of the world energy is roughly from oil
3% of this = 1%
thus how many nukes (even with 37% efficiency) need to be ready in time
and how much uranium will be needed?

michael

I think improvments by 12% are noteworthy (37/33 = 1.12). It all adds up, you know?

About replacing oil - it is unclear what, if any, path nuclear energy will take to replace oil. If we go the battery path, uranium may very well replace oil at a 1:1 ratio or better (primary-energy-wise). If we go from fission to hydrogen and then possibly to ammonia or methanol, the ratio depends on the losses in those conversions, which in turn depend on whether you deploy HTE reactors and so on.

If we assume a one-to-one ratio, nuclear needs to be at 15+40=55%, requiring an expansion to 370% of today's levels. Uranium requirements would also stand at 370%, of course, unless we use breeders, in which case uranium requirements would stand at less than 10% of today's levels.

if 14% of the worlds electric energy comes from nuclear

and 16% of the world mix is electric

well

perhaps you could compare

2.5% with the 40% oil no?

if you belief that cars can be all electric like trains lets say
well yes you need the factor of 4 or so
otherwise another factor of 2-3!

thus 370 GWe --> 1500 GWe (/efficiency of an unproven large scale technology)

for france alone from roughly 60 nuclear power plants to 240 right?

and already now their is not enough cooling water during the summer!

do you really imagine this scenario to be realistic?

michael

ps.. do you really believe that one can build a large commercial FBR today?
if so who can do this?
but I would prefer to keep the FBR out of the discussion for a few weeks
and stick to todays known once through reactors and their uranium needs

Michael

You have not addressed the comments that I have had on uprating existing nuclear plants and using new technology for ultra-uprating with dual cooled fuel. You also have not addressed the work in the US (Idaho National Labs), Japan and other places for extending existing plant operating life to 60-80 years.

http://www.inl.gov/featurestories/docs/inl_07-13543_08.pdf

The modular construction in Korea/Westinghouse (which is being followed for china's build up appears to be enabling faster and cheaper and predictable construction. The use of Intergraph smart Plan for design, project planning and control is new and was not available in past projects.
http://nextbigfuture.com/2009/08/faster-and-cheaper-nuclear-plant.html

http://www.nei.org/resourcesandstats/publicationsandmedia/insight/insigh...
there are ways to use less fresh water for nuclear plant cooling. there is waste water cooling and seawater cooling and forced air cooling.

The electric power industry is pursuing strategies to use less water, less freshwater, or no freshwater at all for plant cooling.

For instance, the Palo Verde nuclear plant in Arizona, the largest power plant in the United States, is the only nuclear plant in the world to use recycled, partially-treated municipal wastewater for the plant’s cooling towers. Palo Verde is the only U.S. nuclear plant not situated on a large body of water.

Another innovative cooling strategy is used by the Limerick nuclear plant near Philadelphia, which makes use of mine pool water to augment river flow during shortages.

Some companies planning to build new nuclear plants intend to use hybrid cooling systems, or use water treatment technology, such as seawater desalination to conserve freshwater resources, or even dry cooling systems that would use forced air rather than water.

Water consumption at nuclear power plants
http://www.nei.org/keyissues/protectingtheenvironment/factsheets/waterco...

coal (any thermal plant - solar thermal, natural gas) also uses water for cooling
http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/cooling_power_plants_inf121.html

Michael

You have not addressed the comments that I have had on uprating existing nuclear plants and using new technology for ultra-uprating with dual cooled fuel. You also have not addressed the work in the US (Idaho National Labs), Japan and other places for extending existing plant operating life to 60-80 years.

sorry perhaps i overlooked your question.

in the paper I give the figures from the PRIS IAEA website

it is now 370 GWe slighly down from last year. despite perhaps a few improved power numbers
by the way the "cooling powers" of big nuclear power plants in Switzerland seem to require
up to 5% of the generated electric energy to be operated ..
(i doubt that this is included in the carnot efficiency of 33% given)

the planned new power p[lants for 2009 (and 2010 it seems)
nicely listed in one post

are already outdated
in fact as far as I could check

only the Japanese one (start foreseen Dec 2009 might make it this year
(the indian ones are already delayed from last years and their uranium shortage
which makes them running the power plants on 50% power is not over
despite the tries to ignore the NPT laws by the former Bush government

for the increased power yes sure lets see how many of the reactors can/will do this

for now not a single reactor was connected to the grid in 2008
and not a single one in 2009 so far

but some were terminated and others are on technical stop
the latest IAEA numbers for 2009 and the OECD countries indicate another reduction of the number of kWh from nuclear

(and this yes despite sometimes very massive hidden subvention policies..)

michael

Browns Ferry unit 1 started 2007

http://www.hinduonnet.com/fline/stories/20090814261611600.htm
Interview with S.K. Jain, Chairman and Managing Director, Nuclear Power Corporation of India Limited.

Unit-1 will start producing power early 2010. As per the progress achieved so far, we expect Unit-2 also to go critical 2010. We are making all efforts to keep the gap in the criticality between the two units to less than a year.

India had signed an agreement with Russia for importing 2,000 tonnes of natural uranium to fuel its PHWRs …

The yellowcake from Areva and a consignment from Russia have reached the Nuclear Fuel Complex [NFC] in Hyderabad. We have, after getting the clearance of the International Atomic Energy Agency [IAEA], started the fabrication of fuel from this imported raw material. I flagged off the first consignment of the fabricated fuel on July 11 at the NFC for use in the second reactor at the Rajasthan Atomic Power Station [RAPS], which [the second unit] is already under safeguards.

We expect the entire initial core load of fabricated fuel to be made available at RAPS-2 in August. We plan to start the reactor in August and it will be producing its full power of 200 MWe by September. The indigenous fuel supply also has improved. The mill and the mine at Turamdih [in Jharkhand] have added to the supply of natural uranium fuel from Jaduguda. We have, therefore, increased the power level of our reactors to 65 per cent from less than 50 per cent. I plan to take them to 70 per cent.

RAPS 5 and 6, and Kaiga-4 [in Karnataka] are waiting for fuel. As per the Separation Plan, Rajasthan 5 and 6 will be put under the IAEA safeguards. Kaiga-4 will be outside that domain. So RAPS 5 and 6 also become eligible for the use of imported fuel. The fuel is getting ready. If the fuel fabrication plans at the NFC are achieved… we hope that by this year-end both RAPS 5 and 6 will be commissioned and they will start operating at their full capacity.

With the increased flow of indigenous uranium, we hope that fuel will be available in another six to eight months, and Kaiga-4 will start operating.

Are our problems over as far as the uranium supply is concerned?

As the CMD of NPCIL, I feel that I have come out of a bad dream. The turnaround is taking place and we want to march ahead.

What is the status of the PFBR (500 MWe) construction?

By this year-end, the construction of the nuclear island building will be 100 per cent complete. We have received the main vessel, the inner vessel, the core-catcher, the core support structure and the roof beam. All the critical components of the core are at the site. The pumps and the heat exchangers are in an advanced stage of completion.

From September onwards, we will witness a series of critical activities in the PFBR construction. The work on conventional island building has picked up. Our target is achieving criticality in 2011.

Volgadonsk 2 - set for Oct 2009 start
http://www.world-nuclear-news.org/NN_Volgodonsk_2_on__the_final_straight...

Russian reactors
Russia's Afrikantov OKBM has completed the assembly of the second KLT-40S reactor for the country's first floating nuclear power plant, currently under construction in St Petersburg. The first reactor has already been delivered.
http://www.world-nuclear-news.org/NN-Reactors_ready_for_first_floating_p...

the production described is basically on track.

there also has been uprate completions
http://www.powermag.com/nuclear/Nuclear-Uprates-Add-Critical-Capacity_18...
Power uprates alone have added more than 5,600 MW since 1998 — the equivalent of five new nuclear plants.

Boiler Water reactor uprates
Browns Ferry 1,2, 3 are adding 125 MWe each.
Monticello adding 80 MWe

Each of the three units at Tennessee Valley Authority’s Browns Ferry Nuclear Plant is expecting NRC approval of a 15% EPU in 2009. The NRC operating licenses for Units 1, 2, and 3 were renewed in May 2006, which will allow continued operation of the units until 2033, 2034, and 2036.

USA PWR uprates
2010 6 plants 2,274 MWt 758 MWe
2011 8 plants 3173 MWt 1058 MWe
2012 1 plant 522 174
2013 2 plants 870 MWt 290 MWe

You have not addressed operating life extensions. Your thesis is 100 plant shutdowns from now to 2020. so any delays of a few months or a year as production ramps up is offset by shutdowns that do not happen.

if 14% of the worlds electric energy comes from nuclear and 16% of the world mix is electric well perhaps you could compare 2.5% with the 40% oil no?

You are right and wrong. Nuclear stands at 6% of the world primary energy mix, so I should have calculated (40+6)/6 = 1200% to get a ballpark figure for oil replacement by nuclear at 1:1 in primary energy.

thus 370 GWe --> 1500 GWe (/efficiency of an unproven large scale technology)

More like 370 GWe -> 4300 GWe. That is probably not practical without breeding.

for france alone from roughly 60 nuclear power plants to 240 right?

France's oil consumption stands at 2 million barrels a day, which, if I calculated this correctly, represents about 3.3 TWh. At the same time, their nuclear power plants produce about 3.5 TWh thermal energy per day. So France wouldn't even have to double their fleet, assuming 1:1 ratio in primary energy.

and already now their is not enough cooling water during the summer!

Is that really a problem? Just place the new reactors along the shores.

ps.. do you really believe that one can build a large commercial FBR today?

Typical FBRs are not economical in the current energy environment, no. The world is flush with cheap coal, natural gas and uranium - adding complexity to be frugal with fuel makes no sense. However, the somewhat hyped LFTR seems to be fundamentally less expensive than current light water reactors. But if it is to take off in this environment, I guess some government has to take the costs of creating and building a type-certifiable design.

I should have calculated (40+6)/6 = 1200%

That's more like 767%.

More like 370 GWe -> 4300 GWe. That is probably not practical without breeding.

Perhaps, but Th-232 is also fertile, is roughly 4x as abundant as U-238 and can be bred at breakeven or better in thermal reactors.

Nuclear is not 2.5 % of all energy, but about 6 % IIRC. Your fraction of electricity as a share of energy use is not only wrong, but the share of electricity is growing. If EV's or PHEV's are introduced on a broad front, the fraction will grow explosively.

During the peak year in French nuclear reactor deployment 8 reactors were built. The year before that 6, and the year after 6. The peak year was 1983 IIRC, a mere 10 years after the crash program had been launched. That is, in year 9, 10 and 11, 20 reactors were completed (export reactors not included).

Taking the larger populations in account that'd be 27 for Germany and 100 for the US. Just in the three top years. This is what is evidently possible from an engineering point of view (as it has already been done once), if there is a strong political will.

One, the French has not completed only one new reactor in the 17 years leading up to the start of their crash program.

Two, I question the safety standards during that crash build.

It is *NOT* just a "matter of political will".

The knowledge and experience base has died or retired and the supply chain supports only maintenance.

Alan

The knowledge and experience base has died or retired and the supply chain supports only maintenance.

Where was the knowledge and experience base before the build?

Naval reactors, research reactors and early small commercial reactors.

Today, for good reason, we have higher safety standards than in the 1950s and 1960s. We should not repeat the low quality of those early reactors. Or try and emulate Chinese quality.

The fact is that no new commercial nuke has been completed in 13 years in the USA (Watts Bar 1, started 1973, completed May 1996). And less than a handful have been completed in the last 20 years.

The experience and knowledge base is simply gone.

And a shortage of experience and knowledge is what killed the nuke building industry last time. A new Rush to Nukes will likely have the same result (waste $100 billion on half completed plants).

One of too many

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marble_Hill_Nuclear_Power_Plant

Alan

And a shortage of experience and knowledge is what killed the nuke building industry last time.

It was a combination of political opposition and poor management. Trojan was shut down largely because of political uncertainty.

I seriously doubt that the industry would forget past lessons going forward; In any case we're discussing hypotheticals here. We aren't going to introduce some national mobilization to build new nukes in the next ten years but we will be building a few here and there to rebuild capacity. We aren't going to have brownouts across the nation to make any sort of national mobilization politically possible weather or not its a good idea.

In ten years we might be signing up for tens or hundreds, and we'll be more ready either way. Hopefully in 20 years we'll be moving towards mass production of liquid fuel reactors, but who can say? With so much coal still avaliable we might just keep burning that for decades... What we will do and should do are different beasts entirely.

We aren't going to introduce some national mobilization to build new nukes in the next ten years but we will be building a few here and there to rebuild capacity... In ten years we might be signing up for tens or hundreds, and we'll be more ready either way.

I largely agree. But there are advocates on this thread for building a dozen prototype reactors, each with a fundamentally different technology, IN ADDITION TO a French style "Rush to Nukes".

"Poor Management" on almost every new nuke being built ? Such universal "poor management" was due to a lack of knowledge and experience from the top to the middle and the ranks.

BTW, if one looks at what operating nukes were selling for a decade plus ago (their fair market value) and what new steam generators cost (Trojan's were worn out), it made business sense to shut Trojan down. The steam generators cost about as much what they could have sold Trojan to a 3rd party for.

Alan

Naval reactors, research reactors and early small commercial reactors…

The experience and knowledge base is simply gone.

Today we have naval reactors, research reactors, large commercial reactors and associated supply chains and several decades of experience running real plants. The existing knowledge base is far larger than before the first build.

Today, for good reason, we have higher safety standards than in the 1950s and 1960s.

Coal kills 30,000 per year in the U.S. generating half our electricity. Without our 104 nuclear plants we would have more coal plants killing another 10,000 per year. Over the last 20 years about 200,000 lives saved by nuclear power.

How many have died due to the low safety standards of our 104 plants?

How many nuclear plants would we have if fossil fuel had to pay for the full cost of the damage there emissions do?

List all of the “good reasons” for higher safety standards and calculate how many lives will be saved by the higher standards that make plants more expensive and keep us dependent on fossil fuel longer.

Could it be that you want to make nuclear plants as expensive as possible to give your preferred technologies an advantage?

Coal kills 30,000 per year in the U.S. generating half our electricity.

Link?

Killer coal. Make it 20,000 deaths per year.

http://www.catf.us/publications/reports/Dirty_Air_Dirty_Power.pdf

One, the French has not completed only one new reactor in the 17 years leading up to the start of their crash program.

I don't really understand what you're trying to get at here?

Before the crash program, the French had been working with gas reactors, and were also had a small scale PWR program (Fessenheim was under construction). So there already was a small if solid knowledge base. How would that be different from now, where their is already a huge (if somehwat greyed) knowledge base? It's not like it can't be expanded. As a matter of fact, that's exactly what's happening. Just look at enrollment in nuclear courses at your local engineering school.

And I guess you're saying that the French have just completed a single reactor in the last 17 years? That's just not correct.

1992: Cattentom 4, Penly 2.
1994: Golfech 2.
1996: Chooz B1.
1999: Chooz B2, Civaux 1.
2000: Civaux 2.

(exports not included.)

Speaking of the security I think you've mentioned that before, but as far I've know I've never seen any sources or studies (peer-reviewed or not) that corroborate it.

The French, as you said, had a small but solid core of experienced people to start with. The United States does not.

I remember the hires for the last (or one of the last) new nuke plants to start construction in the USA (as others were being completed), Palo Verde. They "got the pick of the litter", "the guys with grey hair that had built a couple of nukes before". Palo Verde started construction in 1976. And ended in 1988.

Since Palo Verde was completed, 21 years ago, what have those "grey hairs" done ? A few moved onto finishing Watts Bar, most found other careers and have since retired. Many are dead.

The Finns had problems pouring the concrete for the foundation of their new EPR (from memory). Who in the USA has supervised pouring the foundation for new nuke ? Every last one of them is in their 70s, 80s or dead. We can expect the same problems that the Finns had.

Taking a man who left, say, Comanche Peak (1974-1990, one of the very last to be completed) two decades ago as a junior .... and found a completely new career afterwards, and is now planning his retirement, Making him a senior .... is not a recipe for success *IF* he is willing to take the job.

The once vast experience of the USA is dead, retired or about to retire. Simply being away for twenty plus years from nuke construction is a loss of experience. Few people can pick up where they left off.

The French had a far superior experience base (see your list) to what the United States has today. Anyone who has been around newly graduated engineers knows that they are dangerous if not supervised. And who will supervise them ?

Alan

The French, as you said, had a small but solid core of experienced people to start with. The United States does not.

How big was the experience pool in nuclear weapons in 1941. We had two working designs and production facilities by 1945.

How big was the experience pool in moon landings before Kennedy said we are going there?

What special skills are required to pour concrete, pull wiring, weld pipe etc, much less than building spaceships.

If experience is so important, why did the early plants go up faster and at much lower cost than later plants?

{sigh}

for such a nuke advocate, you know so VERY little about building nukes.

Nuclear power plants are built on the aviation model. The aerospace industry has demonstrated a unique ability to make complex machines with extraordinarily low failure rates. (Note: Not true of WW II production).

A pipe fitter with 30 years experience in coal and natural gas fired plants is not qualified to build nukes. He does not understand the system and that "good enough" is *NOT* good enough for a nuke !

Often those old timers can never get a nuke rating.

OTOH, a riveter from Boeing is valued because he can be taught a different skill and he understands zero tolerance quality control and quality assurance, documentation and procedure.

Think of those 104 nukes as being coal plants built by Boeing, to the same standards as their 737s, 787s and satellites . Built by aerospace workers and not auto workers.

Zimmer was built by (guy in charge) a guy with GREAT coal plant building experience. Worked on a dozen in his career, headed up building two; both came in on budget and on time. Zimmer was completed and could NOT get an operating license (rightfully so). So Zimmer was converted into a coal fired plant. Billions wasted.

Your attitude reminds me very much of the head of Zimmer. If it is good enough for coal, if it is good enough for war time conditions, it is "good enough". But you point to the safety record of plants that were continually improving their safety and built to ever higher standards while advocating abolishing those standards.

Alan

The Westinghouse AP1000 and the korean APR1400 have mostly factory built modules.

the AP1000 design has half of the valves and building volume
and 65% of the pumps, one fifth the amount of pipe and 30% of the cable.

Less crew needed to build and more automation

Shandong Nuclear Power Construction Group
http://www.sepcc.net/en/about/

The Corporation currently has 11,487 employees including 6,028 staff who have the technical/college diploma, bachelor degree and above, 3,667 engineers and technicians, over 622 senior technical titled personnel, 223 national First Class Project Manager Certificate holder and 1,399 qualified welders engaging in welding activities of high-pressure pipes and vessels.

SEPCO has class A qualification for EPC contracting of electric power project construction, qualification for the installation of nuclear power pressure components, qualification for manufacturing of large bore PCCPs. The Corporation was granted the certificates of the management system for quality, safety & health and environment

Shaw Group is involved in the manufacturing and module plant. the company has evolved into a diverse engineering, construction, technology, fabrication, environmental and industrial services organization with 26,000 employees in strategic locations around the world.

http://www.shawgrp.com/markets/powersvcs/nuclearpower/nucoverview

http://www.world-nuclear-news.org/NN_Capabilities_in_place_for_new_Chine...

Shandong said the new 71,000 square metre factory includes a cutting workshop, a pipeline workshop, a paint shop and a workshop for containment vessels (the steel liners that lie within the overall reinforced concrete reactor containment).

Large components for the Haiyang units have already been contracted: Doosan Heavy Industries of Korea is making the reactor pressure vessels and steam generators, while Mitsubishi Heavy Industries of Japan and Harbin Boiler Works of China will supply the steam turbines. For Westinghouse's other pair of AP1000s at Sanmen the steam generators and reactor pressure vessels will be made in China by either Harbin, First Heavy Machinery Works or Shanghai Electric.


one fifth of the steel and concrete. Easier to scale up.

http://www.asmeconferences.org/ICONE16/pdfs/NewPlantsBeBuilt.pdf

http://www.asmeconferences.org/ICONE16/TechnicalProgramOverview.cfm#24

All of the reliability and proof of the AP1000 will be first shown in China because that is where they will be built.

http://www.asmeconferences.org/ICONE16/TechnicalProgramOverview.cfm#143

12-2 New Construction - Where are we headed? (Technical Session)

Session Description:
This session addresses how to incorporate lessons learned from the existing fleet into current designs, the impact of uranium supply and demand on future and current plant designs, and the next evolutionary steps in design (passive) and construction.

Session Schedule: Wednesday, May 14, 2008 03:45 PM-05:30 PM

Session Sponsors:

Session Chair: hideaki heki, Toshiba Corporation

Session Co-Chair: John Tuohy, Hitachi America, Ltd

ICONE16-48207
Solution to Pakistan Electrical Power Crisis
Technical Publication

ICONE16-48507
Near-Term Deployment of Advanced Light Water Reactors
ICONE16-48507
Technical Publication

Near-Term Deployment of Advanced Light Water Reactors

Authors

Jeffrey Hamel, Electric Power Research Institute

Abstract
New nuclear power plants incorporating advanced light water reactor (ALWR) technology must overcome a number of regulatory, economic, technical, and social barriers prior to licensing, construction and successful start-up. Many of these barriers can be addressed through technical products and targeted tools that minimize deployment risks. EPRI’s Advanced Nuclear Technology (ANT) Program has been initiated to complement – and help accelerate – industry activities aimed at enabling and building confidence in new nuclear plant deployment through coordinated work on cross cutting issues. The program is built around three core elements: transferring technology to new plant designs, developing effective tools for performance management, and providing robust planning and evaluation tools for new plant deployment. This paper discusses the projects EPRI is working on with industry to enable and build confidence in new nuclear plant deployment.

ICONE16-48573
Near Term Deployment, Long Term Impact: Uranium Price Over the Lifetime of New Capacity

Authors

Erich Schneider, The University of Texas at Austin

Neil Shah, The University of Texas at Austin

Abstract
While reasonable short-term resource price projections can be obtained by taking a bottom-up approach – constructing a supply curve based upon current production capacities and costs – this approach breaks down as the time horizon of the analysis lengthens. One approach to long-term price forecasting is to calibrate a simple model of a commodity market against past data. To that end, an analogy was drawn between the behavior of the uranium market and that of some three dozen materials for which the United States Geologic Survey (USGS) maintains data. This work adds to previously published results showing that the USGS-reported prices of minerals similar to uranium have consistently declined over the past century. In this paper, the extent to which uranium geology and extraction technologies are indeed analogous to other minerals is quantitatively addressed. A study of crustal abundances, ore grades being economically mined, concentration factors, market share of extraction techniques, years of proven reserve and other factors indicates that uranium is not at all exceptional with respect to the average of the USGS minerals. This suggests that, on the supply side, the analogy between the USGS minerals and uranium may indeed offer valuable insights into medium and long term uranium price behavior.

ICONE16-48137
Technical Publication

Best Practices in Japan of Human Resources Development for NPP Oa&M: Roles and Lessons From Training Centers

Authors

Shinji YAMAMOTO, Japan Atomic Industrial Forum, Inc.

Toshiro KITAMURA, Japan Atomic Industrial Forum, Inc.

Abstract
The use of best practices and their lateral expansion as a benchmark is one of effective methods of "knowledge management". Best practices of human resources development were collected (selected examples are listed below) from all 11 training centers annexed to the nuclear power plants in Japan and lessons were learned for possible lateral development for improving other stakeholders’ NK. Such best practices will provide productive information for designing their own human resources development strategies. Examples of collected good practices: •Exhibition of troubles and negative legacies: The actual machineries, equipment or components, explanatory documents or news articles of the past troubles experienced by themselves are effective to maintain and refresh the awareness and preparedness of trainees and other employees for recurrence prevention. The exhibitions are open to the visitors, too. •Experience-type training facilities: Off-normal conditions of components and systems are simulated for the staff practical training by the use of the facilities which provide an off-normal environment. Examples are: water hammers, abnormal vibrations and noises of rotating machineries, pump cavitations, pinholes, plumbing airs, etc. •Advanced simulators for operators training: Each electric company has its own simulators for training their own operating staff. These simulators are annexed to the nuclear power plants and used to train the operation staff by the experienced shift managers. The operation staff use the simulator for continually confirming the operation procedures and the plant behavior, etc. specific to their plants. Training for generic plant behavior and operators’ responses are mainly outsourced to the dedicated training centers run by the Owners’ Groups (BWR, PWR). •The SAT methods: The IAEA proposed SAT (Systematic Approach to Training) approach is applied to the training of the operating staff and the maintenance staff. It is structured in a flow of Job analysis ? Training program design ?Training material development ?Training ? Evaluation. •Training in real situations: An example is a trainee actually hung with a lifeline on a harness to learn a method of putting on the lifeline. On the other hand, the efficiency (availability) of the training facilities for maintenance work is very limited, because each electric company installs the training facilities individually. Experiences of ICONE-16 participants from other countries in improving the availability are of our interest.

Session: 12-1 Training the Workforce

Alan, your theory that we need a vast workforce with years of specialized nuclear training is totally contradicted by the history of technological progress. You consistently duck the key questions that make this contradiction obvious.

1… If nuclear experience is so important, why did the early plants go up faster and at much lower cost than later plants?

2… How big was the experience pool and knowledge base in nuclear weapons in 1941?

3… How did we produce two working weapon designs and production facilities by 1945 starting with zero experienced nuclear weapons workers?

4… How did Ford ramp up the mass production of cars using workers with no prior experience in a mass production factory environment?

5… How big was the experience pool in moon landings before Kennedy said we are going there?

6… How many have died due to the low safety standards of our 104 plants?

7… How many nuclear plants would we have if fossil fuel had to pay for the full cost of the damage their emissions do?

8… List all of the “good reasons” for higher safety standards and calculate how many lives will be saved by the higher standards that make plants more expensive and keep us dependent on fossil fuel longer.

8a… How many lives would have been saves if our 104 plants had been built to those higher standards?

A pipe fitter with 30 years experience in coal and natural gas fired plants is not qualified to build nukes. He does not understand the system and that "good enough" is *NOT* good enough for a nuke !

9… What was the prior experience of welders who built the early nuclear plants?

10… How many people have been killed by bad welds in nuclear plants?

{sigh}for such a nuke advocate, you know so VERY little about building nukes…

Nuclear power plants are built on the aviation model…

Think of those 104 nukes as being coal plants built by Boeing, to the same standards as their 737s, 787s and satellites . Built by aerospace workers and not auto workers.

Alan, it is you who does not seem to know how nuclear plants are built. The correct statement is

“Nuclear power plants SHOULD be built on the aviation model.”

11… When was the last time Boeing built a jumbo jet outdoors in the middle of a Mississippi swamp using contractors from all over the country?

But you point to the safety record of plants that were continually improving their safety and built to ever higher standards while advocating abolishing those standards.

12… Show us a graph of the high accident rate and death toll of early plants built by inexperienced workers.

Actually the U.S. did have a facility to build nuclear power plants like Boeing builds jumbo jets.

http://www.atomicinsights.com/aug96/Offshore.html

Allowing Offshore Power Systems to die was one of our biggest mistakes.

If we built two such facilities on each coast and ramped them up to five plants per year each that would be 20 plants per year, some of which could be sold overseas to help balance our trade deficit.

There was no market for Offshore Systems, so keeping them around would have been a white elephant.

And ships sink (attractive terrorist targets too !). Ship based nukes provide a new safety risk and I find them generally unacceptable until PROVEN, beyond a shadow of a doubt, otherwise.

Alan

AFAIK, eight nuclear subs have sunk and not been recovered. It doesn't amount to much of a problem, it seems.

None were in shallow waters close to population centers.

And all were much smaller than typical power reactors.

Alan

If such a reactor sinks in shallow waters, I guess you'd retrieve it and restart it.

Having seen the effects of submerging "just about everything" in saline water for week in New Orleans, I am *SURE* that such a sunk reactor would be scrapped.

Alan

Having seen what can be done to make boats un-sinkable by filling spaces with materials like styrofoam, I doubt that a properly designed floating reactor could be sunk, period.

According to your judgment, we do not need safe nukes. We have TOO much safety, according to you.

The rest of society disagrees with you. Your judgment in other areas is suspect as well (Radiation is good for you).

Your examples seem to suggest that primitive reactors built to the war time standards of 1945 should get NRC licenses to operate for 80 years today.

Once the full dimensions of a large scale nuclear accident became apparent, the aviation model of construction was adopted for new nukes. I am QUITE surprised that you are not aware of this fundamental decision made (in the mid or late 1960s ?). This is the cornerstone of nuclear regulation in the USA (which even if you disagree with, you should have been aware of).

As for premature deaths, coal is not the greatest villain. BY YOUR METRICS, we should spend your first few hundred billion on what I propose and make new nukes a secondary priority (as I do propose).

Automobiles & trucks killed 43,313 people directly in 2008. Hundreds of thousands of life altering injuries. They created a majority of air pollution, and that pollution was concentrated in major urban areas where they would hurt as many people as possible.

If delayed deaths from auto injuries and pollution deaths are included, they killed well over 100,000 people in the USA in 2008.

In addition, walking and bicycling cure obesity. People that bicycle to work live 10 years longer on average (+12 years health, -2 years accidents).

I propose a few hundred billion for electrifying railroads (and shifting most freight to them), Urban rail, bicycling and walkable neighborhoods.

Best Hopes,

Alan

I propose a few hundred billion for electrifying railroads (and shifting most freight to them), Urban rail, bicycling and walkable neighborhoods.

I don't think any of us pro-nuke advocates disagree with that.

Best hopes indeed!

THANKS !

I think that salvation for the USA lies in diverting several % of GDP from consumption (including real estate consumption) to investment in long lived energy producing or energy efficient infrastructure.

IMO, new nukes are part of that. Just not the leading or most important part. I see higher priorities.

I do support spending (my SWAG) $50 billion# to finish Watts Bar 2 and six new nukes within the decade. Perhaps these nukes will not be economic, but it allows for an economic second wave of new nukes. And from a societal POV, that makes it a worthwhile investment.

Alan

# Some #s run around in this thread make me wonder if I am low balling with my $50 billion estimate (I came up with that around 2005).

I think that salvation for the USA lies in diverting several % of GDP from consumption (including real estate consumption) to investment in long lived energy producing or energy efficient infrastructure.<(i>

IMO, new nukes are part of that. Just not the leading or most important part. I see higher priorities.


Agreed!

Nukes do after all produce power, which isn't really the big problem. Transportation is.

Why have you posted this as a response to my comment? You have not answered any of the 12 questions asked.

I answered your questions in summary.

I do not have the time or interest to debate this on your extreme framing. Your logic, your views and your values are simply outside the social and scientific consensus.

I can never convince you of anything, it is just the others that I want to keep from, being mislead.

Alan

PS: I AM surprised that you did not know that nuke safety was based on the aviation model. But this explains why you think miniature 1945 reactors have any relevance to the possible future build rate.

You seem highly committed to the belief that our nuclear plants were built on the “aviation model.” Provide references explaining what the ‘aviation model” is and how those plants were built to that model.

Provide more than a “summary” answer to this question.

11… When was the last time Boeing built a jumbo jet outdoors in the middle of a Mississippi swamp using contractors from all over the country?

I was taught while in training at River Bend nuclear power plant about the aviation model, which later practice confirmed.

Also mentioned during my tour as a student of Brown's Ferry while under construction.

Your question #11 is nonsensical.

Alan

NQA-1 is largely a subset of ISO 9001.

The requirements of the Quality Assurance parts of 10 CFR are a copy of similar regs for aviation.

http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/cfr/part050/part050-appb.html

The Finns had problems pouring the concrete for the foundation of their new EPR (from memory). Who in the USA has supervised pouring the foundation for new nuke ? Every last one of them is in their 70s, 80s or dead. We can expect the same problems that the Finns had.

Or you could design your new nuclear powerplants to use thicker layers of lower strenght concrete that has other benificial properties such as easier to blend, easier to pour and less likely to crack. It took me less then a minute to figure out a potential solution to this problem when I heard about it but I dont know the details that drive the foundation and concrete specifications.

But you are right that the first generation of plants will take longer to build then the following plants when you can apply the lessons learned from building the new designs.

Anyone who has been around newly graduated engineers knows that they are dangerous if not supervised. And who will supervise them ?

If Americans can't hack it, bring in senior French engineers to run your first batch of plant construction projects. After all, you could see it as payback from the French for borrowing the PWR design from the US Navy. Some of the French might even like La Nouvelle-Orléans so much they stay and join the local Cajuns. ;)

Veolia (from France) has taken over management of our local transit agency. Requests for site visits and transfers have been pouring in ! *VERY* few problems in tapping expertise from the home office in Paris :-)

Perhaps. I know a senior staff working at the Falcon jet fitting plant in Little Rock. The Americans there get along well with the engineers from Dassault (as long as politics are not mentioned; the French did not think much of GWB).

However, heavy construction has it's own ethic and culture. Not sure about French engineers and American workers there ....

Alan

First of all the only way to really raise efficiency of a heat engine is to raise its operating temperature and that reduces its safety; given the huge size of commercial plants significantly higher temperatures pose engineering problems.
What if 1000 MW units must be replaced by two 500 MW units or even smaller?

It would be good to highlight the problems inherent in breeder reactors.

The attraction is that they make their own fuel--extending their operation but they burn fuel up quicker than they make it.

In a once-thru breeder operating with a conversion ratio of 1, the amount of fuel overtime would reduce simply by the build up of fusion products and the reduction of input fertile material, not to mention the build up of reactor 'poisons'(absorber isotopes).

One problem with thermal breeders is that the conversion/breed ratio falls when the burn up rate rises in a normally moderated reactor(which is why fast breeders are not moderated with water).

A thorium/uranium LW breeder reactor with a CR of 1 would typically get about 40% of its energy from U-233 bred from thorium, the rest would come from the inital breeding medium of
U-235.

http://www-pub.iaea.org/MTCD/publications/PDF/TE_1450_web.pdf

A downside would be that the once thru waste would be more radioactive than normal reactor spent fuel as U-233 is a very strong gamma emitter.

The way that fast breeders get around these problems is by
using lead, sodium, or liquid salt to raise the conversion ratio at high burn up.

However high burnup means high products of fusion and 'waste' which require continuous removal and 'reprocessing' to recover the bred fuel.

Reprocessing has not been successful to up now. It is as energy intensive as uranium processing and more dangerous as it handles reactor waste.

In current technology at most the amount of energy that would come out of a breeder from bred materials is 70% with the other 30% coming from the initial starter fuel, U-235.

There is also the problem that in breeders the amount of U-235 is about 20%, not the usual 4% as in LWR and a large amount of energy is required to produce almost pure U-235.

All this points to the conclusion that fission breeders will simply extend uranium supplies by one or two cycles at most.

The idea that fission breeders will extend their fuel infinitely is a delusion IMO.

First of all the only way to really raise efficiency of a heat engine is to raise its operating temperature and that reduces its safety;

Early steam engines operated at low temperature and pressure yet killed people quite regularly. A low pressure high temperature molten salt reactor would be vastly safer than the low temperature high pressure Chernobyl reactor.

The attraction is that they make their own fuel--extending their operation but they burn fuel up quicker than they make it.

Breeders are called breeders because they make more fissile material than they consume.

In a once-thru breeder…

No such thing.

One problem with thermal breeders is that the conversion/breed ratio falls when the burn up rate rises in a normally moderated reactor(which is why fast breeders are not moderated with water).

A well designed breeder, fast with uranium or thermal with thorium, can split over 99% of the atoms mined to fuel them.

For example, to produce a lifetime supply of electricity for an average American with fission we must split 5.4 ounces of uranium or thorium. Today we mine 58 lb. of uranium to do that. With well designed breeders we would mine less than 6 ounces.

A fast breeder moderated with water would no longer be fast or a breeder

However high burnup means high products of fusion and 'waste' which require continuous removal and 'reprocessing' to recover the bred fuel.

Today we produce about 9 lb. of spent fuel per lifetime supply of electricity in the U.S. containing 5.4 ounces of fission products and a few ounces of plutonium that require 130,000 years to become less radiotoxic than uranium ore. With well designed breeders the waste product would be 5.4 ounces of fission products dissolved in a few pounds of glass or rock. It will be less radiotoxic than uranium ore in 270 years. Actually high temperature breeder reactors will consume even less fuel due to improved thermodynamic efficiency.

Reprocessing has not been successful to up now. It is as energy intensive as uranium processing and more dangerous as it handles reactor waste.

I do not support reprocessing at this time because uranium is very inexpensive, but the French have been doing it successfully for years. The routine operation of coal plants kill 30,000 Americans per year, how many French die from reprocessing each year?

All this points to the conclusion that fission breeders will simply extend uranium supplies by one or two cycles at most.
The idea that fission breeders will extend their fuel infinitely is a delusion IMO.

There are dozens of ways to split uranium and thorium atoms. If you perform an analysis assuming the worst technology you get unfavorable results.

My recommendation is to push every possible technology as hard as possible, build prototypes of everything, and pick the BEST technology.

http://www.theoildrum.com/node/4961#comment-459021

A low pressure high temperature molten salt reactor would be vastly safer than the low temperature high pressure Chernobyl reactor.

And you base that on what operating commercial plant? As far as I know most PWR(pressurized water reactors) use water well above
"low pressure".

Breeders are called breeders because they make more fissile material than they consume.

That's about as logical as saying families with one child don't have any children.

All reactors breed to some extent.
About 25% of the energy in a LWR comes from plutonium bred in the reactor.

No such thing[once-thru breeder]....I do not support reprocessing at this time because uranium is very inexpensive, but the French have been doing it successfully for years.

You can't have it both ways. Either the reactor is once-thru or there's reprocessing.

Think about the difficulty of reprocessing highly radioactive fuel---gravimetrically separating nearly identical isotopes of nearly identical weight. In uranium processing U-235 is separated from slightly heavier U-238. The Iranians have been trying for years.

As for the French reprocessing 'success',
http://www.fissilematerials.org/ipfm/site_down/rr04.pdf

A well designed breeder, fast with uranium or thermal with thorium, can split over 99% of the atoms mined to fuel them.

Please document this statement!!
You appear to be a nuclear cornucopian.

And you base that on what operating commercial plant? As far as I know most PWR(pressurized water reactors) use water well above
"low pressure".

If you use molten salt coolants you're operating at atmospheric pressure. We did this with the ORNL MSBR experiment decades ago.

That's about as logical as saying families with one child don't have any children.

All reactors breed to some extent.
About 25% of the energy in a LWR comes from plutonium bred in the reactor.

Yes, LWRs have breeding ratios of about .6, and CANDUs have breeding ratios of about .8. But unless you have a breeding ratio above 1 your reactor isn't considered a breeder, its considered a burner. If it has a breeding ratio of exactly 1 its considered a converter.

You can't have it both ways. Either the reactor is once-thru or there's reprocessing.

You're comparing apples to oranges here. Once through vs reprocessing is fuel cycle whereas breeder vs burner is the reactor itself. Technically you could have a reactor with a breeding ratio above 1 where you throw all the bred fuel away, but no one would do this.

Think about the difficulty of reprocessing highly radioactive fuel---gravimetrically separating nearly identical isotopes of nearly identical weight. In uranium processing U-235 is separated from slightly heavier U-238. The Iranians have been trying for years.

No they haven't. No one does isotopic seperation of spent fuel.

No they haven't. No one does isotopic seperation of spent fuel.

If you want to extract 99% of the energy from waste as many here have claimed, you have to.

They use PUREX to separate plutonium from uranium.

Typically plutonium plus actinides is 1% of nuclear waste versus 3.5% fission products. The rest is uranium and the .5% U-235 fuel that is left can only be separated by gravimetric methods.

Lighter fissionable products are separated by weight. Plutonium is active fuel but the separable uranium with various actinides is slightly less fertile than natural uranium.

The total non-military inventory of reprocessed plutonium of the French nuclear is 320 tons of plutonium and 45000 tons of separable uranium. This could be made into about 10000 tons of reactor fuel for a typical LWR and 35000 tons of useless separable uranium. This amounts to about fuel for 360 1 GW LWR reactors for 1 year.

http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf69.html#References

In a fast breeder reactors where the charges are typically 20% plutonium or U-235 this amounts to 1650 tons of fuel which 165 1 GW fast breeder reactors.

The fact is the only way a small number of fission breeders can
exist is off the reprocessed waste stream of a huge numbers of LWRs because their fuel is

Separating thorium from U-233 is more difficult than plutonium from uranium and the Indians have given up on molten salt breeder reactors.

"The thorium-uranium 233 cycle in fast breeders does not appear attractive, and for the uranium 238-plutonium cycle, only metallic fuel offers hope of a relatively fast doubling and reprocessing time. To increase the share of nuclear power in the coming decades, India should consider the construction of a number of large thermal reactors based on indigenous and imported uranium and also the design, development and validation of reactors that operate with thorium-plutonium fuels,"

http://www.energy-daily.com/reports/Thorium_Reactors_Integral_To_Indian_...

If you want to extract 99% of the energy from waste as many here have claimed, you have to (do isotopic separation on spent fuel).

No, none of the various fuel cycles that achieve high fuel burn-up and low waste production require isotopic separation on spent fuel. In a fast spectrum breeder, there's no need to separate U235 and U238. The U235 fissions, and the U238 is converted to plutonium and then fissions. All that's needed is to remove the fission daughter products that would otherwise accumulate and poison the reactor's neutron economy.

The total non-military inventory of reprocessed plutonium of the French nuclear is 320 tons of plutonium and 45000 tons of separable uranium. This could be made into about 10000 tons of reactor fuel for a typical LWR and 35000 tons of useless separable uranium.

What do you mean by "separable uranium"? And "useless separable uranium"? I'll take your word on the 320 tons of plutonium and 45000 tons of uranium recovered from spent fuel; that sounds about the right ratio. And the 45000 tons of recovered uranium, after a 4.5x enrichment would indeed yield about 10,000 tons of uranium, at about the right enrichment level to fuel a conventional LWR. But if it's intended to be used in a fast spectrum reactor, there's no need for enrichment -- and no need to waste the 35000 tons of depleted uranium that enrichment would otherwise leave. The entire 45320 tons of plutonium and uranium is grist for the fast spectrum mill.

The fact is the only way a small number of fission breeders can
exist is off the reprocessed waste stream of a huge numbers of LWRs because their fuel is

Did you leave that as a sentence fragment because you meant to delete it? Because it is, in fact, nonsense.

Separating thorium from U-233 is more difficult than plutonium from uranium and the Indians have given up on molten salt breeder reactors.

The Indians, AFAIK, have never had any program for molten salt reactors -- at least not in the form they're currently being discussed. (I.e., with molten uranium fluoride salts as the reactor fuel.) If they've looked at molten salts at all, it's been simply as the coolant in a high temperature reactor with conventional solid fuel rods. In the context of the liquid fluoride thorium reactor, uranium is almost trivially easy to separate from the thorium tetrafluoride in the breeder blanket. Just bubble a little fluorine gas through the molten salt, and the uranium comes off as UF6 gas.

In the context of a reactor design with solid fuel rod assemblies with thorium oxide pellets, I can well imagine that separation of the bred U233 would be problematic. That would be a stupid design.

No one does isotopic seperation of spent fuel.

If you want to extract 99% of the energy from waste as many here have claimed, you have to.

They use PUREX to separate plutonium from uranium.

PUREX is a chemical separation process, not an isotopic separation process.  (We now have superior processes to PUREX, such as pyroprocessing, which does not involve organic solvents and does not lead to the waste problems such as at Hanford.)

Separating thorium from U-233 is more difficult than plutonium from uranium

Uranium is easily removed from a mixture of thorium fluoride and other salts by fluorination.  This converts the UF3 and UF4 to UF6, which is a gas at STP.  The UF6 is converted back to UF4 by reacting with hydrogen:
UF6 + H2 -> UF4 + 2HF

You have demonstrated that you have no idea what you are talking about.  Please go remedy your ignorance before coming back to this discussion.

Uranium is easily removed from a mixture of thorium fluoride and other salts by fluorination. This converts the UF3 and UF4 to UF6, which is a gas at STP. The UF6 is converted back to UF4 by reacting with hydrogen:
UF6 + H2 -> UF4 + 2HF----Poetical troll

You're back to your arrogant, blustering old self, PT--fact checker extraordinaire!

You obviously don't know how they remove thorium from uranium.
They use the Acid-Thorex process or the PUREX method neither of which has anything to do with fluoride.

https://www.iaea.org/inisnkm/nkm/aws/htgr/fulltext/iwggcr8_26.pdf

http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/bk-1980-0117.ch026

You have demonstrated that you have no idea what you are talking about. Please go remedy your ignorance before coming back to this discussion.

Right. :-D

You obviously don't know the difference between gaseous diffusion of UF6 to separate U-235 from U-238 and the acid processes to separate plutonium or thorium from uranium.

This whole thing started, Poetical Troll when this statement was made,

A well designed breeder, fast with uranium or thermal with thorium, can split over 99% of the atoms mined to fuel them.

To which I replied,

Think about the difficulty of reprocessing highly radioactive fuel---gravimetrically separating nearly identical isotopes of nearly identical weight. In uranium processing U-235 is separated from slightly heavier U-238. The Iranians have been trying for years.........Please document this statement!![above]
You appear to be a nuclear cornucopian.

I was talking about splitting 99% of the atoms! There is no such reprocessing on this planet. All they do is try to recover plutonium by PUREX. In a LWR waste that is .9% of the spent fuel, the .5% of the fuel being U-235 in the separated uranium and .1% actinides.

Of course leave it to you to misread the entire exchange and them insert some nonsense about UF6.

As far as the comment about India giving up on molten salt reactors...

"The thorium-uranium 233 cycle in fast breeders does not appear attractive, and for the uranium 238-plutonium cycle, only metallic fuel offers hope of a relatively fast doubling and reprocessing time. To increase the share of nuclear power in the coming decades, India should consider the construction of a number of large thermal reactors based on indigenous and imported uranium and also the design, development and validation of reactors that operate with thorium-plutonium fuels," they add.
--Dr.Arunachalam, India government nuke expert(previously posted by me)

http://www.energy-daily.com/reports/Thorium_Reactors_Integral_To_Indian_...

The Indians do not intend to pursue the use of U-233 fast breeders(non-thermal breeders like salt reactors) and want to use thorium-plutonium in LWRs.

SO YES ROGER, I WAS CORRECT. THE INDIANS DON'T WANT MOLTEN SALT THORIUM BREEDERS. That should tell you something about the concept.

The fact is the only way a small number of fission breeders can
exist is off the reprocessed waste stream of a huge numbers of LWRs because their fuel is...

Did you leave that as a sentence fragment because you meant to delete it? Because it is, in fact, nonsense.

Yeah, I must have deleted that part inadvertantly but no, it is not nonsense.

You don't understand HOW fast breeders would work in practice.

Here I am REPOSTING for the THIRD time an article about how fast breeders would work in the nuclear system of 2050.

http://web.mit.edu/nuclearpower/pdf/nuclearpower-ch4-9.pdf

Notice Table 4-3 and Fig 4-3, with LWRs feeding FBRs.
Notice (in the example)out of 16235 tons of fuel fed to the LWR, you get 14285 tons of separable uranium. That's not 99% burn up or 70% burn up, but a measley 12% burn up using the technology of 2050. This report was put out by the pre-eminient nuke school in the USA, MIT.

But nuclear cornucopians(assisted by pompous trolls) insist they can burn up literally millions of tons of uranium and that total reprocessing is simple as pie.

The detachment from reality of the nuke cornucopians is complete.

You don't understand HOW fast breeders would work in practice.

Here I am REPOSTING for the THIRD time an article about how fast breeders would work in the nuclear system of 2050.

http://web.mit.edu/nuclearpower/pdf/nuclearpower-ch4-9.pdf

Notice Table 4-3 and Fig 4-3, with LWRs feeding FBRs.
Notice (in the example)out of 16235 tons of fuel fed to the LWR, you get 14285 tons of separable uranium.

It helps to also read the text.

It is important to note that this balanced closed fuel cycle is entirely different from breeder fast reactor fuel cycles

I.e. they're talking about fast reactors, but not fast breeder reactors. The two words are not synonymous.

They explain why they're not talking about breeder reactors:

For example, according to the Australian Uranium Information Center,a doubling of the uranium price from its current value of about $30/kgU could be expected to create about a ten-fold increase in known resources recoverable at costs < $80/kgU i.e.,from about 3 to 30 million tonnes. By comparison, a fleet of 1500 1000 MWe reactors operating for 50 years requires about 15 million tonnes of uranium (306,000 MTU/yr as indicated in Table 4.2), using conventional assumptions about burn-up and enrichment.

...
In sum, we conclude that resource utilization is not a pressing reason for proceeding to reprocessing and breeding for many years to come.

Marjorian,

If you want to contribute the discussion, it would help if you'd work on your reading comprehension.

EP's statement about separation of uranium from thorium was made in the context of the liquid fluoride thorium reactor. It was entirely correct. The paper you referenced describes a process for separating uranium and thorium in the context of a fast spectrum breeder reactor using mixed oxide solid fuel elements. Totally different type of reactor, and and a vastly more challenging chemical separation. Thorium oxide is uber-stable, and hard to dissolve.

As to the Indian reactor program, the article you linked is quite correct in its headline, "Thorium Reactors Integral to Indian Energy Independence". But the thorium cycle on which India has been focused is a fast spectrum breeder design with solid oxide fuel. I don't know much about the politics and technical factors that led them to that selection. I'd guess that they were following the mainstreaming thinking about fast plutonium breeders that prevailed twenty years ago, when the program was initiated. Thorium can be bred to U233 in a fast spectrum reactor that also breeds U238 into plutonium, and it involves what may have been seen as small tweaks to familiar technology. But I don't know that. There was no information in the article that explained it, or even gave any indication what alternatives were evaluated.

SO YES ROGER, I WAS CORRECT. THE INDIANS DON'T WANT MOLTEN SALT THORIUM BREEDERS. That should tell you something about the concept.

LOL! That's quite a leap! There's nothing in the article you referenced that says anything at all about liquid fluoride reactors. Your statement boils down to "They're not doing it, therefore they must have performed a competent technical evaluation and found that it flawed".

An equally plausible alternative is that they were simply unaware of the work done at Oak Ridge on liquid fluoride reactors, and never considered that approach. For political reasons, that work was pretty well buried. I certainly had never heard about it, until Kirk Sorenson dusted it off and put it on the web. But if you know of anything that explains how India arrived at its current nuclear program and what options they evaluated, I'd be very interested in hearing about it.

Roger,

Thanks for prefacing your response with an ad hominem.
That's typical troll behavior and pretty much regular fare at TOD going by EP.

Thorium Oxide dissolves in 13 M nitric acid with .05 M HF as is explained in the Acid-Thorex process the article you didn't bother to read. So EP's (and your)chemistry is wrong.

Here it is again.
https://www.iaea.org/inisnkm/nkm/aws/htgr/fulltext/iwggcr8_26.pdf

As for the position of the Indian government which just reversed course away from thorium breeders after over 30 years of investigation, you dismiss it with "So what?" and point to an
7.4 MW thermal experiment that ended 30 years ago. Oh yes, and Fuji is planning a 100 MW molten salt reactor. Of course you never read the link I provided which explains that the conversion rate for thorium fast breeders is to low for India, who are sticking with uranium.

Here I post the India link yet again.

"The thorium-uranium 233 cycle in fast breeders does not appear attractive, and for the uranium 238-plutonium cycle, only metallic fuel offers hope of a relatively fast doubling and reprocessing time....
Kalam's recommendation assumes importance in the wake of debates taking place in India over the efficacy of thorium as opposed to uranium for the country's fast-breeder reactors. This debate has been going on within the Indian scientific fraternity for almost a decade.

http://www.energy-daily.com/reports/Thorium_Reactors_Integral_To_Indian_...

Kirk Sorenson and the good folks at thoriumpower, who have much to gain by the mere rumor of anyone doing anything in thorium nukes. Do you own any stock in thoriumpower.com?
http://www.thoriumpower.com/

BTW, I have sole ownership a bridge over the East River in New York City you may be interested in buying.

Thanks for prefacing your response with an ad hominem.

Don't be such a child; Ad hominemns are attempts to discredit the argument by discrediting the person. Roger simply said you aren't reading what he wrote, and you still arent.

Thorium Oxide dissolves in 13 M nitric acid with .05 M HF as is explained in the Acid-Thorex process the article you didn't bother to read. So EP's (and your)chemistry is wrong.

Not even wrong. Roger and EP are talking about fluorination processes, while you're bringing up aqueous processes. They aren't even the same thing.

Kalam's recommendation assumes importance in the wake of debates taking place in India over the efficacy of thorium as opposed to uranium for the country's fast-breeder reactors. This debate has been going on within the Indian scientific fraternity for almost a decade.

Sure, because fast breeders are completely unnecissary except for doing actinide incineration. Doubling time and other ridiculous arguments are based on the notion we'll be facing an imminent shortage of fissile material.

You aren't even keeping your arguments coherent. I cant even tell what you're arguing against.

Kirk Sorenson and the good folks at thoriumpower, who have much to gain by the mere rumor of anyone doing anything in thorium nukes. Do you own any stock in thoriumpower.com?

Hah. If you even went to Kirks blog, you would know the opinion there is near universal that thoriumpower.com guys aren't related at all. They deal with fuel fabrication.

A low pressure high temperature molten salt reactor would be vastly safer than the low temperature high pressure Chernobyl reactor.
And you base that on what operating commercial plant?

I base that on the fact that MSR’s can run on a minimal load of fissile fuel and have no positive reactivity temperature coefficients that could drive them to power levels 100 times rated power in a few seconds.

Water moderated reactors have similar inherently safe qualities. There have been no Chernobyl like accidents with water moderated reactors.

What examples of high temperature equating to high risk do you base your opinion on.

Breeders are called breeders because they make more fissile material than they consume.
That's about as logical as saying families with one child don't have any children.

Converter reactors with a conversion ratio equal or greater than one are called breeders.

You can't have it both ways. Either the reactor is once-thru or there's reprocessing.
Think about the difficulty of reprocessing highly radioactive fuel---gravimetrically separating nearly identical isotopes of nearly identical weight. In uranium processing U-235 is separated from slightly heavier U-238. The Iranians have been trying for years.

Separating plutonium from uranium is easy; uranium from thorium is even easier.

I recommend using the cheapest technology. For the next hundred years or so, that will probably be a factory mass produced modular Molten Salt reactors running on a once through fuel cycle. That gives us plenty of time to develop breeders. When breeder technology can compete on a level playing field with all externalities included, we should make the switch. The accumulated spent fuel will keep them running for thousands of years.

A well designed breeder, fast with uranium or thermal with thorium, can split over 99% of the atoms mined to fuel them.
Please document this statement!!
You appear to be a nuclear cornucopian.

Here is part of a general discussion of the IFR.

“The way the IFR fuel cycle would work would be: you could start with mined uranium, or you could start with fuel for present day reactors. Either one would do perfectly well. It's left in the metal form because metal is a particularly easy thing to fabricate. And so you cast it into uranium. They're put in steel jackets and loaded into the reactor. They stay in there about three to four years, and when they come out, they're put through a very simple process. One step separates out the useful materials. And then cast the metal again back into fuel that go right back into the reactor. The material that's left behind is the true, the natural waste.
Q: The fission products.
A: Fission products. But none of the long-lived toxic elements like plutonium and americium or curium, the so-called manmade elements. They're the long-lived toxic ones. And they're recycled back into the reactor ... and work every bit as well as plutonium.”

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/reaction/interviews/till.html

Collection efficiencies close to 100% have been achieved in laboratory-scale tests of the liquid cadmium cathode. A typical liquid cadmium cathode deposit contains approximately 3 kg Pu and minor actinides, together with a small quantity (several hundred ppm) of the rare earth fission products.

http://www.osti.gov/energycitations/servlets/purl/10185588-Su5o1L/101855...

Several hundred ppm is less than 1000 ppm which is 1 part per thousand which is 0.1%. So separation efficiency is better than 99.9%.

Since the role of chief nitpicker seems to have fallen to me, I have to get this one too:

Collection efficiencies close to 100% have been achieved in laboratory-scale tests of the liquid cadmium cathode. A typical liquid cadmium cathode deposit contains approximately 3 kg Pu and minor actinides, together with a small quantity (several hundred ppm) of the rare earth fission products.

http://www.osti.gov/energycitations/servlets/purl/10185588-Su5o1L/101855...

Several hundred ppm is less than 1000 ppm which is 1 part per thousand which is 0.1%. So separation efficiency is better than 99.9%.

In all fairness, that figure is for waste products included with recovered fuel (Pu), not fuel isotopes lost with the waste.  As a way of making the reclaimed fuel impossible to divert it's good, but it doesn't bear on the question of how much of the original fuel supply is actually used to make energy.

In all fairness, that figure is for waste products included with recovered fuel (Pu), not fuel isotopes lost with the waste.

True. Consider this.

“Only 13% of the rare earths was removed, while 99.9% of the uranium in the salt was removed;
subsequently, the rare earths were also reduced to low concentrations. The uranium concentration
in the salt was reduced to 0.05 ppm after uranium and rare earths were transferred from
the salt to a solid mandrel cathode with a catch crucible. Rare earth concentrations in the salt
were reduced to less than 0.01 wt % in these operations.”

http://www.osti.gov/bridge/servlets/purl/10129897-ND4siI/native/10129897...

How about this.

“Preliminary, calculations have been performed for a PT/C System application to the Hanford Site
single-shell tank waste stream (of approximately 200,000 Mg, including added water), by assuming
that a PT/C System would be capable of complete dissociation of the input feed and a 99% separation
efficiency of all elements above 80 amu.”

http://www.osti.gov/bridge/servlets/purl/10185294-0vgomC/10185294.pdf

The efficient separation and recycle of heavy atoms with more than 99% efficiency has been demonstrated. It is just chemistry. High purity separation processes are common in many industries.

My recommendation is to push every possible technology as hard as possible, build prototypes of everything, and pick the BEST technology.

Nuclear power has dominated government spending on energy research and development, accounting for over US$159 billion between 1974 and 1998. Although its share has fallen, it still accounts for 51% of the OECD energy R&D budget:

http://www.world-nuclear.org/sym/2001/fig-htm/frasf6-h.htm

People may not be willing to continue to spend that much on R&D for nuclear energy.

Most people don't actually care whether the warm shower water was heated on ones roof or in an efficient co-generation plant or a heat pump and whether this heat pump simply replaced a wasteful electric heater and thus saved electricity or was powered by some photovoltaics on the roof, wind, csp, hydro, geothermal, biomass or nuclear.

The question on most people's mind is not:
What can the world do to save and expand nuclear.

The question is:
What can the world do to provide every body with a warm shower and a hot coffee.


http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6176229.stm

What can the world do to provide every body with a warm shower and a hot coffee.

And a washing machine. Washing by hand really sucks, but people don't seem to care becasue women usually have to do it. Throw in a refrigerator, electric lightning and a stove for good measure.

Actually it's all in there.

And a washing machine doesn't in fact require a lot of energy when its warm water is already provided for (e.g. from the roof, geothermal, efficient heat pump, waste heat etc.) and modern fabrics should not be washed above 40 C anyway.

Efficient lighting hardly requires any energy compared to the energy needed to heat or cool a building.

And this 165 Liter freezer has an average power consumption of 0.005 kW.

http://www.greenboxusa.com/Default.aspx?tabid=1075&CategoryID=230&List=0...

How do you post pictures like that? My img-tags always seem to end in FAIL.

Thanks.

That pie chart may be valid for the UK, but not for much of the rest of the world.

Alan

So most of the rest of the world doesn't take hot showers or warm baths?

And most of the rest of world doesn't require heat energy to either heat or cool buildings?

Btw, Solarthermal modules are not only used to heat but also to cool buildings:
http://www.solarserver.de/solarmagazin/download/solar_energy_for_heating...
http://www.solarcool.com/index.php?article_id=1&clang=2

The percentages in the pie chart are representative of the UK (and probably generally applicable to Germany as well), but they are quite out of line for Los Angeles, New Orleans, San Paulo, Mexico City, Rome, etc.

Alan (I use a tankless gas water heater and hope to add a solar supplement).

My recommendation is to push every possible technology as hard as possible, build prototypes of everything, and pick the BEST technology.

My recommendation is that we:

Have a Rush to Wind, HV DC and pumped storage (and more geothermal and solar)

Dramatically increase efficiency in our economy (housing, industry, commerce).

as a subset of above:

Build out an efficient Non-Oil Transportation system using electrified railroads, Urban Rail, bicycles and walkable communities (see obesity post recently on TOD).

Finish Watts Bar 2, build six new nukes in the USA (preferably three different designs) and buy a % of a new nuke or two in Ontario in the next ten years. And towards the end of that decade decide how many new nukes in the second decade (10 to 30 is my SWAG, hopefully closer to 30).

We have spent *FAR* too much already on nuke R&D in the last half century. Any new tech will take several decades to gain enough operating experience to be safety and otherwise competitive with existing, evolving designs.

New nuke R&D is simply a waste of scarce resources. Still 51% of OECD energy R&D (quoted elsewhere in this thread).

Figuring out better and cheaper means of building R-60 walls is not as sexy as new tech nukes, but it has more social value (and costs FAR less !)

Best Hopes for Better R&D Spending,

Alan

My recommendation is that we:
Have a Rush to Wind, HV DC and pumped storage (and more geothermal and solar)

I acknowledge I might be wrong. That is why we should build prototypes of everything and pick the best on a level playing field. Could you be wrong?

We have spent *FAR* too much already on nuke R&D in the last half century. We have spent *FAR* too much already on nuke R&D in the last half century.

The DOE spends a lot of money on military nuclear issues. There are far better ways to split uranium and thorium atoms than steroidal submarine reactors. How many new experimental commercial power reactor prototypes has DOE built since the 70’s?

Taxes and fees collected by the government on commercial nuclear power far exceed R&D money spent developing new commercial reactors. Quite the opposite with wind and solar.

There are MUCH better uses for the tens/hundreds of billions required to build nuke prototypes of everything. Nuke R&D spending has hogged the energy R&D budget for half a century already.

Unlike with new types of nukes, there is no technological risk with what I propose. Since there is no technological risk, this significantly reduces that chance that I am wrong. So, you could be wrong, but not I >:-)

DoE has spent their nuke R&D money largely as the nuke industry wanted them too. Don't look at me, but at the nuke industry if the R&D money was misspent. 50 years and hundreds of billions (in 2009 $) spent. Sorry if there is very little to show for it.

I question your figures. New nukes get the same incentives as new wind. I see GWs of new wind coming on-line every year. I see no new nukes, just talk and some paperwork. As a practical matter new wind >>> new nukes.

Alan

With well designed breeders the waste product would be 5.4 ounces of fission products dissolved in a few pounds of glass or rock. It will be less radiotoxic than uranium ore in 270 years.

If the lifespan is that short, using a glass or ceramic matrix makes no sense; the goal is to prevent the escape of radiotoxic materials until they have decayed, and a system designed to last hundreds of thousands of years is wasted on products which barely last a quarter-millenium.  The fission products include platinum-group metals which are extremely valuable, so the waste should be packaged in e.g. stainless-steel capsules until it is desirable to recover them.

The engineering calculations are straightforward, if rather complex. What error have you found in them that shows that thermal efficiecny will not reach the levels prognosticated?

also do you really want to make a big point of a change from 33% to 37% ??
Well, it's a 12 % rise, or about 320 TWh. Only 12 nations out of about 180 consume more power than that, and it's more than the total power consumption of Italy. I'd say powering all of Italy qualifies as a big point, and I'd guess Enel would agree.

Dear jeppen,

Second, and this is important, when energy extraction is 50 times better, you can obviously(?) use ores 50 times more diluted.

Sorry, this doesn't follow. You still need to enrich the ore above a critical value before it will be able to go (just sub-)critical.

In a breeder reactor, the reason you can use more diluted ores is because you clad the reactor with unenriched (or depleted) uranium-238 or thorium-232. These are then converted by the excess neutrons respectively into either Pu239 or U233. This can then be chemically separated from the cladding material (because it's a different element instead of just a different isotope -- also the reason why they pose more of a proliferation concern; massive centrifuges are unnecessary to enrich the material).

However, your statement that you can use 50 times more diluted starting uranium if it is used 50 times better is practically a nonsequiter in this context. You still have to extract the uranium from the starting ore, which may or may not take 50 times as much energy as extracting from current ores.

It could well take a million times as much energy to extract 50 times lower quality ore...

Again, I'm not saying this is necessarily the case, or that your conclusion is wrong, but the reasoning doesn't follow the way you imply.

You seem to think I am confusing diluted ores with U235 enrichment, or that I suggest diluted use in the reactor. I do neither.

I'm saying 50 times more dilute ores could be used since extraction costs are proportional to the inverse of the ore grade. I have read that it is so, but if you have other information, I am interested in hearing it. (It won't matter much in practice. We could run breeders on already existing stockpiles of depleted uranium for hundreds of years.)

Hiya,

I do understand the difference; one is an extremely difficult physical separation that is massively expensive, and one is done via chemical leeching from ore material.

If extraction costs are inversely proportional to the ore grade, then I have no complaint with your conclusion. However, as a scientist, I simply took issue with the statement that it was obvious =) In any event, I imagine that well more than an order of magnitude more earth would have to be dug up and destroyed to produce an energy equivalent of coal from a mine...

Alright, maybe it wasn't so obvious.

I imagine that well more than an order of magnitude more earth would have to be dug up and destroyed to produce an energy equivalent of coal from a mine...

No, orders of magnitude less, actually. Coal typically contains more energy in the form of breeder fuel than is released from ordinary combustion.

In terms of fissionables, ordinary dirt has more energy than coal...

You still need to enrich the ore above a critical value before it will be able to go (just sub-)critical.

Essentially all natural uranium has the same fraction of U-235, no matter the grade of the ore.

I imagine that well more than an order of magnitude more earth would have to be dug up and destroyed to produce an energy equivalent of coal from a mine...

In the USA, uranium mining doesn't dig up ores.  If my sources are correct, all US mining going on at the moment is in-situ leaching.  This changes the chemistry of water going through aquifers to liberate the uranium and capture it in ion-exchange media.  Aside from a few drill cores, nothing is dug up at all.  I have posted pertinent links elsewhere in this discussion.

If we could profitably leach the uranium from coal-ash dumps, it might pay for the conversion of the lead, mercury and other toxics to insoluble forms.  This might bear looking into:  uranium mining as environmental remediation!

It actually does follow, at least as logically as the arguments against it. ANY discussion of enrichment is off the table, because once you've got chemically pure unenriched (natural) uranium, the costs from there onward are identical. Purifying the much lower quality ore is the only problem, but is not in any way significant at the levels of uranium fuel required vs. energy available from the resulting product. Purifying is a simple chemical separation process, well known and of no significant concern down to ore richness levels WAY below any being exploited now. (See posted discussion of relationship of uranium vs. coal energy content)

Hi Neil,

you write:
> While 40GWe is under construction, 131GWe is in the planning stages.

what does planning stage stand for in the nuclear energy history?
If you look up numbers from 20-30 years ago
it was said that by the year 2000 one should have 1000 or more GWe
from nuclear power.

As I document just for the past few years the numbers of new reactors
are always too high. When you click on the link for
new reactors from the WNA and compare with the different country informations
also from WNA you can see that the 2009 hopes and 2010 as well
for new reactors are already out of question.
in fact it might be that not a single new reactor can be connected to the grid
in 2009..

in contrary shutdowns are happening.. follow the PRIS link..
as well as shutdown plans from different countries on the WNA website..

more later

michael

I think it is not really fruitful to make precise forecast. We do have more nuclear construction and planning going on now than a few years ago, but we don't know yet whether we will start serious ramping or not. Let's just agree that decades ago, we could connect 33 new reactors per year and since there are more people now, we have a much stronger global economy and we have simpler designs, we could easily do 100 or more new reactors each year . But with cheap coal and NG, it won't happen just yet, and perhaps it will never happen b/c something better may appear, such as acoustic fusion. We'll just have to wait and see.

> we could easily do 100 or more new reactors each year

Is this statement based on any hard industry numbers?

reality in many countries looks very different!

not enough experts being trained to even keep reactors
going.

Areva seems to be not too far away from dying
only kept a life because it is half state owned
Siemens gave up their shares and try to join the russian equivalent.

and yes,
you should look at the story of the finish EPR reactor
mentioned in one of the comments.

regards

michael

Well, I don't know about hard numbers. But look at it like this: A hundred reactors each year would total about $400 billion per year. Now, oil and gas exploration in 2008 alone seems to have totalled about $475 billion

. Then there was investments in infrastructure, refining capacity and so on. Many here would argue that these investments would have to be done in parallel, and that may be so, but it shows that the industrial scale is not unreasonable.

Really man, i think your a bit out of conTROLL, ehh?

475 billion may be true for oil and gas, however, the oil and gas infrastructure is ALREADY IN PLACE!! Infrastructure for fast breeder reactors and such is NOT in place. People seem to think that nuclear power plants build themselves, sigh.

Man, what are you talking about? Nukes are built today for around $4B a piece. I expect it to become cheaper when real mass production come into play, not more expensive.

Jeppen, where are you getting your numbers? The Florida Power and Light PUC statement was far more than this value, excluding the power line upgrades. The new Finnish reactor is running well past $4 billion Euro.

What are you using for sources?

Well, you are right that the new US contracts are running a higher "all-in" cost, 10-17 billion for two AP1000 reactors. OTOH, the Florida estimate is, according to wikipedia, $5144 per kilowatt for the first one and the second $3376/kW. The first one is expensive!

The China quotes I have seen is about $2 billion per reactor and as I understand it, Japanese and French reactors built on time is $3-4 billion. The Finnish fifth has overrun due to new design and regulatory quarrels, but Finland and Areva expects to do better next time.

The one you're referring to is the first EPR developed and has run into first time regulatory issues. The second EPR in France is going to be far less expensive.

Really the first ten new reactors in the US are going to be quite expensive, and you wont be able to build more than that over the next five years. But thats not saying you couldn't build 100 a year after the infrastructure is in place, though it would take about twenty years to ramp up to that rate. No way in hell is there going to be that kind of crazy demand however, and if there was we wouldn't use light water reactors, so its a bit of a rhetorical fantasyland.

According to today's Next Big Future, China is shooting to have one hundred AP-1000s on line by 2020. I'd bet that they do it.

2022 or 2023 is more likely IMHO. Still impressive.

Alan

Once they can do that, they're in a position to leave the rest of the world who won't move their systems off fossil fuels "in the dust".

well for your great believe in China's capabilities

check yourself on the WNA china article

it seems that all their plans are completely unrealistic

but at least the one contract with Areva
asked for uranium delivery gurantees up to 2027 or so I rememeber

for the WNA china check here:
http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf63.html

and on occasion this just appeared
under the WNA news .. (may be some influential people realize that not all is
fine with china nuclear..)

``CNNC chief under investigation
Citing state news agencies the Chinese Communist Party has said that Kang Rixin, head of China National Nuclear Corporation (CNNC), is under investigation for a serious disciplinary matter. No futher details were given. "

Michael,
Looking over the 3August update, I can't see why you say that China's plans are unrealistic. They seem to have a progressive construction program spread over a number of different design, and spaced over time. This is certainly less ambitious than the program started in US in the 1970's, and China has the advantage of having the foreign exchange reserves out-bid on critical supplies.
It seems they will be completing about 8-9 reactors per year(10GWe) from 2013 onwards. The only issue I am not sure about is the cost. China has similar very ambitious wind and solar programs reported to be low cost, I guess only time will tell.
When you complete your article about future uranium supplies I am hoping you will also consider thorium use, both in present reactors, and in newer designs such as molten salt.

How does the chinese official at CNNC being investigated effect the larger nuclear build ? The head of Sinopec took 20 million or so in bribes -does that mean that Sinopec will produce less oil ?

It means that they may be officially out of favor - not a nice position to be in if one wants to obtain a more than 10 fold increase in investment. 'Favored' parts of the military industrial complex may have corrupt officials stepping down but these are not published,

Keep also in mind:

At the end of the day, people don't actually care whether the warm shower water was heated on ones roof or in an efficient co-generation plant or a heat pump and whether this heat pump simply replaced a wasteful electric heater and thus saved electricity or was powered by some photovoltaics on the roof, wind, csp, hydro, geothermal, biomass or nuclear.

The question on most people's mind is not:
What can the world do to expand nuclear.

The question is:
What can the world do to provide every body with a warm shower and a hot coffee in a reasonable time.

Even if the global economy does not grow in terms of discretionary retail sales, I believe electrical demand must greatly increase. That demand will come mainly from electrified transport in lieu of liquid fuels but also enhanced applications such as water desalination and thermal comfort in the face of weather extremes. Much of that demand will be non-deferable so that it cannot be guaranteed by current forms of wind and solar. Even if natural gas can provide enough dispatchable power short term it faces depletion and carbon constraints. Conceivably nuclear hydrogen may also have a future role in synthetic fuels and metal refining.

The evidence from Spain, Denmark, Germany and elsewhere (even the Amish in the US) points to the difficulty of a mixed economy operating without at least 50% dispatchable power. Therefore I think we must solve either or both of the problems of storing renewable energy on a large scale or fission generators that have a high fuel burn rate. Either objective must be achieved at affordable cost ie what we can invest within the remaining 20 year time frame.

The USA uses 0.19% of it's electricity for transportation.

France uses 2.3% (lower per capita than USA) for transportation. France is trending towards a strong Non-Oil Transportation system, powered by human muscles (walking & bicycling) and electricity.

100% electrified railroads by 2026 (over half today)
1,500 km of new trams by 2017
More TGV lines

are unlikely to (my SWAG) push French transportation electricity above 4% of total electricity. Widespread use of EVs would change that.

As for climate, increased insulation, windows, etc. and increased efficiency of heat pumps can shrink that demand significantly (>50%).

So I can see an "electric future" with Non-Oil providing most movement and electricity most heating and cooling but with significantly less electricity.

Alan

I think this was a pretty fair description of the future of nuclear power under a "business as usual" scenario. The BAU approach is one in which the nuclear industry has been crippled and forced into the back seat by fossil fuel interests. That may or may not be how things will continue in the future.

In any long range forecasting, it's important to distinguish between what is likely based on extraopolation of current trends, vs. what is possible, based on fundamentals, if events disruptive to current trends should develop. In citing how long it takes to build a new reactor or open a new mine, it's worth recalling that there was a scant four years between the discovery of plutonium and the detonation of the plutonium bomb over Nagasaki. In the Manhattan project, plutonium production reactors were designed in one month and built in the next.

I've seen no evidence that limitations on either reactor construction or uranium mining are in any way fundamental. On the contrary, a lot of what I've read -- admittedly on mostly pro-nuclear web sites -- suggests that order of magnitude increases in both would not be hard to achieve. Perhaps Michael will address this in the next part of the article.

I've seen no evidence that limitations on either reactor construction or uranium mining are in any way fundamental. On the contrary, a lot of what I've read -- admittedly on mostly pro-nuclear web sites -- suggests that order of magnitude increases in both would not be hard to achieve.

Not withstanding the above comment, I'll say that I am not a fan of the "nuclear renaissance" as it is proposed by the current nuclear establishment (such as it is). That proposal is for deployment of a moderate number of new light water reactors of the current generation of "once through" designs, and a "go slow" approach toward development of advanced reactors.

The rationale for this approach sounds good, on the surface: with new mines that will be opening, there will be no problem supplying all of the "once through" reactors that could be built in the next 20 years. Going with proven safe, efficient, and already licenced designs like the AP1000 will minimize risk and opposition from a still-skeptical public. It's the best way to get a moribund nuclear industry back on its feet. All plausible and very practical. Except that ...

Except that it doesn't address the thesis that I'm pretty sure Michael is building up to: that the contribution of current nuclear power and the conservatively projected build-up is so minor that it isn't worth the effort. It's a distraction from the serious business of getting on with the powering down of civilization and accommodation to a low-energy way of life. It creates a false hope that we can somehow manage to keep our current economy and way of life going for at least the next few decades.

That's a very complex thesis, and there's more to say about it than I could possibly squeeze into one short comment. But I'll agree with this much: any plan for future nuclear power needs to be radical and game-changing, or it isn't worth pursuing. And the semi-official "plan of record" of the nuclear establishment doesn't remotely qualify.

As it happens, I think that a radical and game-changing approach is, indeed available. It's the Liquid Thorium Thorium Reactor .

If nuclear power is too minor to be worth pursuing then there is nothing constructive that is worth pursuing.

Its like deciding to not build the Grand Inga hydropowerplant since it only can power 20-50% of Africa depending on the prosperity level.

Deciding not to build Grand Inga would be a good decision.

http://www.wrm.org.uy/bulletin/77/Congo.html

And this from the "Current Dams" part of the wiki entry:

"Currently, the two hydroelectric dams, Inga I and Inga II, operate at low output. The existing dams are famous white elephants, with total installed capacity 1,775 MW, of former Président Mobutu Sese Seko, part of the Inga-Shaba project. They also served a political purpose, by allowing Kinshasa to control the energy supply of the sometimes rebellious Shaba province"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inga_Dam

South Africa (the largest, by far, electricity user in Africa) wants to build more HV DC transmission lines to access this "surplus" power. Several nations to be crossed, politics, capital investment required to properly use this power.

Alan

How can the continued lack of electricity be a good thing?

I find it more humane to wish that dark skinned people with bad governments should fix their governments and get investments going so they can light their homes and streets, run microwave ovens and water boilers instead of burning wood, power all kinds of industry, get clean running water and power electric wehicels and railways.

A the article cited states, there are other, smaller scale ways to get electricity to the people. Huge schemes like this in Africa and most other places in the developed world end up as boondoggles that benefit the few while beggaring many.

There are inherent advantages to grid electricity as opposed to self generated power.

Grand Inga, plus existing and under construction hydro & geothermal plants, can supply the existing African demand with a margin left over for expansion.

This can mean that many South African coal fired plants can be mothballed, that oil fired plants elsewhere can be too. And even the natural gas fired plants in oil exporters can be throttled back.

All good for the environment and likely local economies (local manufacturing could compete better with electricity 24/7 for 50.5 weeks/year and a planned 2 week shutdown when Grand Inga flow declines). Grand Inga has truly minimal environmental impact (about as much as Niagara for much the same reasons).

Grand Inga is not meant (AFAIK) to electrify every village but to supplant existing FF generation. Shifting 40 GW from FF to hydro will cause a downward blip on global carbon emissions !

As to who would be beggared ? I can only see South African coal miners; but new German demand should keep them employed.

Best Hopes for Grand Inga,

Alan

"All good for the environment"

Well, that depends on what the energy is used for. We want to imagine that it is used for the most benign purposes, but mostly it will be used to run tvs that will help brainwash a whole new continent into the consumerist culture.

Most see that we need to power down. Why do we think others need to "power up"?

The suffering in Africa has many sources, most having to do with native and foreign elites robbing the populous. Adding more energy into that mix does nothing but further strengthen the already powerful.

I am perhaps spoiled by living in a functioning society?

But I simply can not accept that it should be impossible for other people to achive an equivalent ability to host very large scale investments in a way that enriches the society they live in.

All that sustainable energy, liquid wealth, just flowing downhill into the ocean. I guess my reaction to the main waterfall if I ever were to see it would put me in a 0.1% cathegory... WOW! Immense power! Imagine the generators this could spin!

Ha, it's the same for me. They have just built this beautiful little waterfall in the city center, diverted a little of the river through a park. Tiny flow, maybe 2 metre head, even got a fish stair. Very pretty. And my first subconscious thought was: wow, we gotta dam this! LOL.

I must confess to thinking the same while enjoying the pitiful little fall on our local creek. I grew up in various places but always near creeks. Most summers I was out in them knee deep building little damns.

I like to think I've matured a bit since then, but maybe not so much.

Do we really just want to dam them all to hell? ;-}

Do we really just want to dam them all to hell? ;-}

I'm afraid so, good thing they won't let us. ;)

I grew up in various places but always near creeks. Most summers I was out in them knee deep building little damns.

LOL, I was absolutely fascinated by running water when I was a kid too, always playing with water and building dams. Still get that little kick whenever I see water running through newly dug ditches for the first time... Is this weird, is there a diagnosis, and do we need professional help? Maybe building you own microhydro station will reduce the symptons, or possibly just aggravate them?

:: ::

Hey, someone has filmed that tiny little city stream I mentioned and put it up on Youtube!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L99Zz--dzUE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UArEmxABL5E

Yeah, and here is the first time the thing gets water in it! :D

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-7488346544026749621

The fishes which will recolonize the river are called Asp, a Carp fish which is the provincial fish of Uppland, the ancient province in which the city of Uppsala where I live is located. They have been exterminated from the upper reaches of the local river through contruction of small dams and waterfalls, and the idea is that these stairs (there is one more already and one is in the planning stage) will bring it back. The fish are big beasties that can reach a length over one metre and a weight of over 12 kg. Due to its rarity around here they are not often eaten, but they are a somewhat common food fish in eastern Europe. I've never had one, but as soon as a stable population is established I'm going to try it.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/ad/Aspius_aspius.jpg

The Asp was named by Carl Linneaus, who also happened to live in Uppsala.

Totally OT, but I hope no one minds. :)

If nuclear power is too minor to be worth pursuing then there is nothing constructive that is worth pursuing.

What is worth pursuing is a path toward much less energy intensive way of life, localization, proximity to agriculture, etc. Tent cities are spring up all over the country. The money to help build small, dense, locally and regionally self-sufficient societies could get one lot more bang for the buck than that spent on expanding nuclear or bailing out those too big to fail.

Survival in a reduced energy consumption environment for millions of people is constructive.

Orthogonal consideration.

Yes, use less, but use less of WHAT?

Use less fossil fuels and it's same tune, different fiddler.

We need to use less AND convert to longer time-scale energy sources, both nuclear and renewables.

Nuclear will run out eventually, but unlike NG it has a long enough time scale and enough usage similarities to wind and solar to serve as a proper bridge technology. NG is just extending the current BAU without putting any leverage in the right direction.

On the other hand, all those folks living in Shruburbs are using less energy so one way or the other you get your wish.

Nuclear will run out eventually

In the same sense that the sun will burn out eventually. When we're talking about millions of years of fuel, I dont think the argument 'nuclear will run out' is even worth bringing up.

You'd have more luck selling your techno-fixes if you could spell fluoride correctly :-)

LOL! You're right about the spelling, of course, but I dunno about how it affects my techno-fix selling ability. Don't blunders like that increase one's "street creds" as an engineer and geek?

the nuclear industry has been crippled and forced into the back seat by fossil fuel interests.

The nuke building industry destroyed itself.

Zimmer, a 99+% complete nuke that could not get an operating license due to poor quality. Wasted billions.

TVA cancels 11 new nukes and repairs on Brown's Ferry on one day.

WHOOPs wastes $25 billion (1980 $) (biggest municipal default in US history) building 5 nukes, finishes one.

TMI (and every B&W reactor goes down for years for retrofits).

Endless more examples of waste.

Like an alcoholic blaming everyone but themselves, the nuke building industry & supporters have to accept the blame to prevent a repeat.

IT IS NOT FOSSIL FUEL INTERESTS,
IT IS NOT ENVIRONMENTALISTS,
IT WAS THE NUKE BUILDING INDUSTRY !

That destroyed the nuke building industry in the USA,

Best Hopes for Facing Reality,

Alan

Alan, the nuke industry couldn't have killed itself if it wanted to, if it weren't for the abundance of coal.

Alan,

I believe he's got you by the neck with both hands this time!No cheap coal would have equaled herea nuke,there a nuke,...

I respectfully disagree.

In the era when massive cost over-runs and multi-year delays were the norm, no cheap coal would have likely resulted in:

1) Much higher electric rates
2) More efficient use of electricity > Less use
3) More electricity from natural gas, small hydro, geothermal, biomass (wind was just beginning to take off).
4) Much more Canadian Hydro imports (perhaps 15-20 GW)
4) Other substitutes for electricity (shut down aluminum production in Pacific NW, ship electricity to California instead, build hydropower plants elsewhere in world to make aluminum).

After Zimmer & TMI, financial people were scared to death of the financial risks of nukes. New nukes were simply *NOT* a viable option !

Oddly Zimmer seemed to have the most impact. "What, after a 200% cost over-run and 3+ year delay, we can't turn on a finished new nuke !!"

Alan

US centric as always... Without cheap coal all over the world, many, many countries, including the US, would have pushed a nuclear agenda and would have streamlined the red tape. Technical progress would have been more steady and we'd already have breeders, thorium reactors and an electricity generation dominated by nuclear reactors.

Alan,

I knew you would have a reasonable and well reasoned answer to my challenge-which should have had a winking smiley ,sorry I forgot that.

You have made a point or two that I can respond to -most heavy industries seem to have quite a few failures in the early days.Maybe nukes would have overcome the costs problem,maybe not.

Srandardization and a for damn sure this is what we are going to build and this is how we are going to build it attitude would surely cut costs a lot today.

Builders should have a fixed set of construction rules they can depend on.And then bond themselves to do it on time and on budget.Maybe it can't be done.Maybe the reason is that it wasn't necessary,since the govt stepped up do it.

Perhaps a lot of the costs overruns were due to trying to build too many nukes too fast at that time.Welders and pipe fitters and electricians working on nukes were making doctor/lawyer money

The answer to TMI ?none probably,but imo the coverage was mostly hysterical and the media,always starved for sensational shocking tittillating news over did it.The enviromentalists saw a chance to slay the nuclear hydra for good and went all out,pulling every stop regardless of the facts.The truths that nukes emit no co2 and require no large scale strip mining were conveniently overlooked by the greens at that time,as were the even then well known facts regarding the ill health effects assoiciated with air pollution,etc.

Nowadays at least we have a few environmentalists of great stature willing to admit that these things are due serious consideration in the energy debate.

My personal preference is that ,given the fact that the nuclear genie is out of his bottle, we go ahead and build some more-as many as we can.My gut feeling is that natural gas and coal are going to both go thru the roof price wise before I depart this world if my luck holds.

Ditto all the wind and solar and geothermal we can-whatever renewables survive the political rat race to the stage of ground breaking should be built,with the exception of coal burners.The ones we have now will outlast cheap coal with a couple of rebuilds.

Build now.While it is still possible to build.It may be impossible later-probably not,but this IS a one time thru experiment,as many others have pointed out.

I agree that we (the USA) should spend $50 billion or so and build six or seven new nukes + complete Watts Bar 2 in ten to twelve years and then decide how many after that.

Not my highest priority for the first $50 billion, but ahead of AIG bailouts.

Once the industry has been re-established and experience given to a variety of people, we may see the nuke advocate prices for new nukes in the "second wave" (after the first 6-7) *IF* the build-out rate is reasonable.

Alan

Like an alcoholic blaming everyone but themselves, the nuke building industry & supporters have to accept the blame to prevent a repeat.

I'm not sure if the psychology of individuals applies all that well to whole industries, and issues of assigning blame are rarely constructive in the first place. But it's certainly true the industry played a central role in the dynamics leading to its downfall. And I agree that it's important to understand those dynamics as clearly as possible if one hopes to avoid a repeat.

The nuclear industry was tainted from birth by "original sin" -- its evolution from and close association with the military programs to breed plutonium and produce weapons. It embraced close regulation by the government and was political from the outset. There was no incentive to resist cost inflation from overblown safety reviews and paperwork, because the work was mostly done on a government "cost plus" basis. The industry didn't think it had to worry about competition from outside the club of government-cleared contractors.

The choice of the reactor technology to pursue when Eisenhower announced "atoms for peace" was politically influenced by the heritage of the bomb. It seemed to make sense to develop a "civilian" version of the light water reactor that was developed for Rickover's nuclear navy. The navy reactors used highly enriched uranium diverted from bomb production. It was expected that plutonium breeders would be developed quickly after the first generation of once-through light water reactors, and experience in dealing with plutonium was spread around the country in government labs and military facilities. The AEC, in deciding how to direct funding, was mindful of the support from congressional delegations from those states.

Most people today are not even aware that there was ever any alternative to the enriched uranium fuel cycle and plutonium breeding in fast spectrum reactors. Or that the original designer of the light water reactor was fired from his position at Oak Ridge for being too vocal in his support of what he considered to be a superior alternative for a civilian power reactor. Check out the last of those Google tech talk links on liquid flouride thorium reactors that I posted above. It gives some fascinating historical background on reactor development. The path we didn't follow could have led us to a different world than we face today.

The article appears to be a good example of erudite tunnel vision,to put the best construction on it.As Roger Arnold has pointed out,there are other reactor designs which are better than the current commonly used technology.This barely rates a mention in the article.

The article also stresses that many of the nations which have a nuclear power industry have depleted their own uranium reserves and that is hardly a surprise.What the writer doesn't mention is that other nations have large known reserves and there are still unexplored regions with a fair probability of finding significant deposits.

Outside of uranium,the thorium technology is known to work and there is no shortage of thorium.

This article illustrates the mindset of the anti-nuclear crowd.In some ways that mindset is similar to that of global warming deniers;a lot of numbers of dubious quality linked to a spurious argument.We won't see much progress on any vital issue as long as these sort of people stand in the way with their heads stuck firmly up their own nether parts.

Yes, I'd also point out that the '2.5% of energy' figure is a fairly gross error - we are effectively assuming 100% efficiency for oil-powered transportation and gas central heating for this to be correct. A trivial thought experiment is to compare the end efficiency of electric vs. petrol cars.

The idea that Uranium *resources* are depleted is also a bit strange; even a country like the UK has significant Uranium resources, which we don't mine due to expense. You have to assume that only conventional mining of high grade deposits is viable to reach the conclusion.

The main thing that the article illustrates is that the Nuclear industry has been generally neglected over the past few decades,due to a fairly toxic combination of insistance by economists that energy policy be driven by short term market considerations with blind resistance from 'environmentalists' who, if they get their way, will first see every scrap of fossil fuel burnt followed by the environmental apocolypse known as 'powerdown'.

Yes, I'd also point out that the '2.5% of energy' figure is a fairly gross error - we are effectively assuming 100% efficiency for oil-powered transportation and gas central heating for this to be correct. A trivial thought experiment is to compare the end efficiency of electric vs. petrol cars.

Lets try to fix this point.

after all we are interested in the service we can get for the energy invested right?

thus, what can you do for one kwhe for example

transformation and comparison with primary source is obviously more tricky.

but in case if you need to charge a battery first
or make hydrogen or whatever "future car fuel"

the efficiency to charge a battery is perhaps 30% or so
similar for electric to hydrogen

thus you loose a factor of three for every kwhe
while the oil is directly "countable"

similar one joule coal ist not the same as 1 joule oil right
(this is among other a reason why the oil drum has been started!)

the eMergy metric from H. Odum tries to take all this into account

in any case if one compares apples with apples
the efficiency of a modern gas or coal power plant should be used
for comparison!

and yes
I hope you agree that it does not make any sense
to give nuclear energy a factor of three
but hydropower a factor of one
like the IEA does.

by this one gets nuclear about 7% in the mix
and hydro less than 3%

while the number of kwhe from Hydro is 10-15% higher than the nuclear one!

michael

That response is close to incoherent. But anyway.. regarding electric cars,

http://batteryuniversity.com/partone-12.htm

Battery charge/discharge is nowhere near as low as 30% - closer to 90% - the waste heat alone from such an inefficient cycle would blow the faster-charging batteries up! I'm not sure why you go on about hydrogen in this context. I didn't.

And no, the oil is not directly countable. Because 1kWh of energy in a battery will give almost 1kWh at the wheel, wheras 1kWh of petrol energy will be lucky to give you 0.25kWh. The use of natural gas in heating will give another conversion factor, although the effect would be smaller.

my numbers are perhaps outdated with modern lithium batteries
good if true!

but in contrast to the article
my laptop heats up a bit while the batteries get charged ..

michael

No, 30% is grossly inaccurate for a new lead-acid battery storing energy for short term (such as one day). It's efficiency is between 80% and 90% and decreases as it ages and for longer storage periods.

Yes, I'd also point out that the '2.5% of energy' figure is a fairly gross error - we are effectively assuming 100% efficiency for oil-powered transportation and gas central heating for this to be correct. A trivial thought experiment is to compare the end efficiency of electric vs. petrol cars.

Lets try to fix this point.

after all we are interested in the service we can get for the energy invested right?

thus, what can you do for one kwhe for example

transformation and comparison with primary source is obviously more tricky.

but in case if you need to charge a battery first
or make hydrogen or whatever "future car fuel"

the efficiency to charge a battery is perhaps 30% or so
similar for electric to hydrogen

thus you loose a factor of three for every kwhe
while the oil is directly "countable"

similar one joule coal ist not the same as 1 joule oil right
(this is among other a reason why the oil drum has been started!)

the eMergy metric from H. Odum tries to take all this into account

in any case if one compares apples with apples
the efficiency of a modern gas or coal power plant should be used
for comparison!

and yes
I hope you agree that it does not make any sense
to give nuclear energy a factor of three
but hydropower a factor of one
like the IEA does.

by this one gets nuclear about 7% in the mix
and hydro less than 3%

while the number of kwhe from Hydro is 10-15% higher than the nuclear one!

michael

Natural gas (and propane) for space heating is pretty efficient (80%-99.9%).

Natural gas is transported to the end user by the most efficient means possible, pipeline, while propane transport is more inefficient.

Using LNG loses about 1/3rd of the energy in natural gas.

So piped NG > propane > LNG for keeping warm.

Electric rail (using power from the grid) is quite efficient, especially for transporting goods. In the USA, moving freight from heavy trucks to electrified rail trades (end use) 20 BTUs/joules of diesel for 1 BTU/joule of electricity.

The complexities of energy accounting are daunting and would, IMHO, require a staff to do properly.

Best Hopes for Better Numbers & Analysis,

Alan

While NG can have an almost 100 % efficiency in space heating, electricity can have several hundred percents of efficiency if heat pupms are used.

"At warmer temperatures" heat pumps have excellent efficiency but at the price of heating the entire house instead of just bedrooms and bathroom. And with MUCH more mechanical complexity & cost with shorter lived equipment. All for minimal heating requirements. That equipment is not "energy free".

I have 10,000 BTU (2.9 kW) in the bedrooms, 6,000 BTU (1.75 kW) in the bathroom and kitchen (not "enough" in kitchen but keeps it tolerable). Just barely enough for the average "coldest day of winter" (-3 C, 27 F)

Since we use old steam natural gas fired generation, it will take almost 300% efficiency for a heat pump to equal direct heat from natural gas.

Alan

A typical air-source heat pump will have a heating value (COP) of 3-4 (some models reach 6 under ideal conditions), ie for every joule of electricity you send into it you get 3-4 joules of heat back. So it'll be more efficient even if the gas plant operates at only 25-33 % thermal efficiency. Combined cycle plants, as you well know, operate at far higher efficiencies than that, and gas-fired CHP reach almost 90 % percent, except that only a considerable fraction of the energy is produced in the form of the more valuable electricity.

It seems to me that if gas is your fuel of choice you should burn it in a CHP, use the hot water to heat the city with a district heating system (and if we're talking New Orleans, use the system for district cooling in summer and dispense with the power hogging air condition) while using the electricity produce to run heat pumps in areas to remote for district heating to make sense.

On top of that, gas is just plain scary. We don't have it around here for either heating or cooking or power (hundreds of kilometres from the closest pipelines, but we do run our buses on biogas), and I'm sure I'd blow myself up if I had to use it regularly (the biogas reactor did blow up recently).

I feel we did replace town gas with electricity for a good reason.

After the thorough analysis (thanks) a bit of anecdotal evidence for the demise of the nuclear power industry:

Moody's cut ratings of companies building nuclear power plants, because they are a financial risk (http://www.grist.org/article/nuclear-plans-hurting-power-companies-credi...)

The experience with Olkiluoto in Finland is a nice example of problems building new plants (http://www.tvo.fi/www/page/2986/). The costs of the plant (1.6 GW) now stand at about 7 billion dollars (60% over budget), and further cost overruns are inevitable. Of course, these costs do not include fuel, and more importantly, waste disposal and decommissioning. Furthermore, AREVA was so keen on building a new plant that it’s making a huge loss with these numbers anyway (paid by their gullible or powerless customers). The plant was supposed to be online last May. Instead,the new schedule is July 2012 (if you believe they will manage, please raise your hand).

Ontario suspends nuclear power plans (http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/ontario-suspends-nuclear-po...). The reason: The Ontario bid process required the risk of cost overruns to be assumed by the would-be vendors, which initially included French-based Areva Group, and Westinghouse Electric Co. If all governments require the same, nuclear power is dead, because new renewables are cheaper (wind, small hydro, geothermal, solar heat) or will be cheaper by the time the plants are finished (photovoltaics)

There are three initiatives for building Finlands sixth nuclear powerplant. The interest in building new nuclear power has increased during the building of Olkiluoto 3 and greenfield sites are being proposed by Fennovoima.

http://www.fennovoima.com/en
http://www.tvo.fi/www/page/ol4_en/
http://www.loviisa-3.fi/en/

There are already plans for more high tension lines for these projects.

Fennovoimas photo montages of the proposed sites will probably make a lot of people think they are wildlife preserves but this is how much of Finland and also Sweden look like, miles after miles of slow growing forests with little population.

The Olkiluoto site also include the high level waste repository they are building.
The Swedish equivalent will aslo be sited close to a running nuclear powerplant, Forsmark in the Östhammar municipiality, this is due to local political acceptance and the presense of a large body of solid granite with very few cracks and good heat conductivity.

The driving force for the investments is probably the imported coal getting more expensive, the climate issue and the political risk from importing electricity and natural gas from Putins Russia. Finland has like Sweden lots of paper, pulp and metallurgical industry that use a lot of electricity and they are among the financers for these efforts.

A ToD perspective on this would be applying the export land model on Russias electricity export. Before the financial crash there started to be rumours about a Russian interest for making the back-to-back HVDC link bidirectional to make it possible for Russia to import electricity from Finland.

I hope that all three projects will be built during the next decade since that would save a lot of CO2 emissions and make the nordic electricity trading are much less dependant on imported coal. They would then need to build even more reactors to also replace the oldest ones. Finland is a few years ahead of us in Sweden but I have good hopes that we will get replacements for our old reactors built. It must be extremely good to have enourmous ammounts of electricity available in the post peak oil era.

I hope the Fins use the same procedure as Ontario to decide whether it makes financial sense. I also hope they wait until Olkiluoto is online (my bet: not before 2014; with further cost overruns).

Something about the so-called reliability of nuclear power: "Seven German nuclear plants have failed to generate any electricity this month due to technical breakdowns. They have about half the production capacity of Germany's 17 nuclear reactors, but Germany did not suffer any power shortages" (http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=47909).

Sounds familiar? The UK had 7 out of 19 down in 2007 (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/7058185.stm).

The old plants are getting creakier with time. The new ones cannot be financed.

It seems 2601 TWh was produced globally in nuclear power plants in 2008 from an installed capacity of 373 GWe. This means the availability averaged 79%, and as I understand it, there is an upward trend on availability. Do you have data contradicting this?

No, I think that long experience with the old plants has allowed a gradual increase in availability. New plants will have to go through the same learning process, which is not calculated in.

One the recent closures in Germany has shown that the operator Vattenfall has been cutting corners on maintenance. Similar stories all over the world (Sweden, Japan), and I don't want to know about the plants in China.

As the plants are undeniably getting older and older, more and more problems will surface in unexpected areas. I'm afraid that it's just a matter of time before a more serious accident will happen.

to be honest I reckon the Chinese would run a tight ship. I think it is unfair to assume that they would let safety standards slip at their nuclear reactors. The Chinese are meticulous in detail.

Also, remember the story of the contaminated milk a while back? Well the person who was responsible for the deaths of 7 children was convicted and then taken outside and shot through the head. The Chinese don't take failure lightly. I reckon anyone caught asleep at their posts in a nuclear reactor would not only be shot but likely their entire family would be skinned alive too!

If I had a nickel for every time someone claimed some group or other "would never let that happen because ..." (like, for instance, unsafe cars being sold, worthless or even harmful substances being passed off as medicine, important software being released with inadequate testing, the list is virtually endless) I would certainly be rich by now...

"to be honest I reckon the Chinese would run a tight ship."

Hahahahahahahahahahah.

Sorry.

Hahahahahahaha.

Ok, it's just hard to stop laughing at this ridiculous statement.

Did they run a "tight ship" when they built all those dirty coal plants that are giving people asthma and other respiratory diseases all over the country? Was anyone shot or skinned alive for that?

I have great respect for China and the Chinese. I studied the language and culture for years and my brother has spent most of his adult life there. But it is as stupid to idealize them as it is to demonize them. Westerners tend to do one or the other.

One the recent closures in Germany has shown that the operator Vattenfall has been cutting corners on maintenance. Similar stories all over the world (Sweden, Japan), and I don't want to know about the plants in China.

Not really. (I'm from Sweden, so I have followed this quite closely.) That's just media trying to scare people to sell more.

I'm afraid that it's just a matter of time before a more serious accident will happen.

Well, that's ok. Coal kills many more anyway.

On the contrary, all nations began improving their capacity rates at about the same time, and new plants reach the high capapcity levels (85-95 %) soon after startup. It's not about knowing the intricacies of each individual plants (and ven less so as te new standardised designs are deployed) but rather learning how to optimize these kind of systems.

http://www.whatisnuclear.com/img/capacity_factors.png

Hi,

better check this statement on the PRIS website
it does not seem to be valid (in most cases)
but we have so few new reactors ..

anyway the capacity rise from the diagram can be more related to the
"continuous day and night operation" of the plants

e.g. one learned that it is more efficient to run them in "base load" ..

michael

Some efficiency improvements have been achieved by making better use of the excess heat. For example in Switzerland, it might be better to heat the houses of Olten with the excess heat of Gösgen than the trout fish in the Aare river.

Nuclear heat is used in only a handful places on the planet, I'd say max ten power reactors do this, and probably closer to five. It has has an insignificant effect on global capacity rates, and especially US capacity rates. Indeed, even if that use was widespread it would have no effect on capacity rates as that describes the fraction of time that the reactor is operating. The effect would be on the thermal efficiency of the plant.

e.g. one learned that it is more efficient to run them in "base load" ..

This is not something you "learn" after years and years of operation, it's something which is absolutely blatantly obvious when you check the (high) price tags of the nukes and their (low) operating costs.

Well, I was not talking about monetary efficiency

people talk about xenon poisoning building up in the reactor fuel rods
(high neutron capture which makes it more and more difficult to restart a reactor
after shutdowns or to regulate the power!)

but this is also a reason of course!
(even though electric energy at night in abundance is great for countries
with high hydro pump storage capacity
its not so clear how great it is for France

simple electric heating everywhere at night

as a result during cold days in France and around 19:00 the french system
can not provide enough electric energy and needs to import huge amounts
from other countries (as long as they have)...

michael

Old plants often run at very high efficiency.I believe North Anna 1 and 2 in Virginia have SUPERB performance records.

They pretty much all do... Ironically I think TMI recently won an award for it. But it's really about excellent processes and management. Look at Exelon which bought shitloads of badly managed nukes for chump change during the 90's, brought in their own people and pushed capacity factors to 90-95 % across the fleet.

The experience with Olkiluoto in Finland is a nice example of problems building new plants

The French and the Japanese have been quite good at building plants on time and on schedule. That the Fins have problems with a first-of-a-kind plant is perhaps a "nice example" if you are opposed to nuclear power, but it is not very typical. Things are ok now and will improve even more once the nuclear renaissance gets up to speed with standardised plants and experienced construction crews.

Of course, these costs do not include fuel, and more importantly, waste disposal and decommissioning.

Less importantly, I'd say. Such costs are not very significant.

If all governments require the same, nuclear power is dead, because new renewables are cheaper (wind, small hydro, geothermal, solar heat) or will be cheaper by the time the plants are finished (photovoltaics)

In the real world, what you claim is not supported by facts. Nuclear is cheaper and more scaleable. Also, the PV claim is pure speculation.

Well, since Asse in Germany is a disaster, and Yucca Mountain was scrapped, waste disposal and decommissioning are unsolved and have been handed over to future generations, at ever increasing cost (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_decommissioning). Brennilis in France cost Euro 480 milion (20 times estimate). Latest numbers go to USD 4000 per kWe (about what it used to cost to build a new one).

Regarding experience building new plants: Olkiluoto is being built by AREVA, the French specialist, which doesn't seem to help much.

The Cooper report (www.nirs.org/neconomics/cooperreport_neconomics062009.pdf) shows that by far most nuclear power plants had over 3-fold cost overruns.

"Half of the reactors ordered in the 1960s and 1970s were cancelled, with abandoned costs in the tens of billions of dollars."

"The most recent cost projections for new nuclear reactors are, on average, over four times as high as the initial “nuclear renaissance” projections."

Well, since Asse in Germany is a disaster, and Yucca Mountain was scrapped, waste disposal and decommissioning are unsolved

It is solved when you want it to be solved. The problem today is political, not technical. And much more R&D money than necessary has been spent on this matter.

Latest numbers go to USD 4000 per kWe

Wikipedia state US utilities average $325 million per reactor, so more like $325 per KWe.

The Cooper report shows that by far most nuclear power plants had over 3-fold cost overruns.

"Half of the reactors ordered in the 1960s and 1970s were cancelled, with abandoned costs in the tens of billions of dollars."

So, how was the windmill and PV businesses in the 60-ies?

"The most recent cost projections for new nuclear reactors are, on average, over four times as high as the initial “nuclear renaissance” projections."

Well, as I understand it, US utilities are signing contracts now, at reasonable prices. Let's see how it plays out.

Nuclear is cheaper and more scaleable. Also, the PV claim is pure speculation.

Florida Power and Light estimates its two new plants will cost as much as $24 billion.

Actually, that may be close to $10'000 per kW and nuclear power plants have to compete at utility level and PV on existing roofs do not.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=89169837

First Solar has already reached $980 per kW (not speculation):
http://www.edn.com/article/CA6640264.html

QS Solar aims at $750 per kW:
http://www.solarplaza.com/article/solar-module-sales-price-of-1-per-watt...

Oerlikon Solar even aims at $700 per kW by 2010 (and last year was at $1500 per kW (not speculation)).
http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/energy/renewables/first-solar-quest-for-the...

Florida Power and Light estimates its two new plants will cost as much as $24 billion.

Where have you read that? The two new reactors, according to wikipedia, has "calculated overnight capital cost from $2444 to $3582 per kW, which were grossed up to include cooling towers, site works, land costs, transmission costs and risk management for total costs of $3108 to $4540 per kilowatt. Adding in finance charges increased the overall figures to $5780 to $8071 per kW".

First Solar has already reached $980 per kW (not speculation)

That's just the manufacturing cost for the cells. I don't think this even includes as much as the overnight capital cost of a nuke. And then a solar kW is worth about one fifth of a nuclear kW, since the sun isn't at zenith all the time. PV is still extremely expensive and needs much more government subsidies than wind.

Where have you read that?
Here:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=89169837

Florida Power and Light estimates its two new plants will cost as much as $24 billion.

Which may be close to $10'000 per kW.

I don't think this even includes as much as the overnight capital cost of a nuke.
PV modules can be installed overnight or at least in a matter of days, new nuclear power plants require years.

These are just the manufacturing costs of the cells.
No these are actually the manufacturing costs of the entire modules:
http://www.edn.com/article/CA6640264.html

solar modules manufactured below the $1 per watt point, at a cost of $0.98 per watt.

And then a solar kW is worth about one fifth of a nuclear kW,
1. PV only produces electricity during daytime when electricity prices are always higher than at night.
2. Nuclear has to compete at utility price level and PV on existing roofs does not.

Well, the $24 billion is simply wrong. Other more precise sources cite lower costs.

Ok, modules if the article has it right, but they still have to be profited from, transported, mounted, perhaps tracking the sun, integrated with the grid and so on.

1. PV only produces electricity during daytime when electricity prices are always higher than at night.

That's nice, but also illustrates that PV is a niche solution, not something we can rely on for most of our power.

2. Nuclear has to compete at utility price level and PV on existing roofs does not.

Homeowners often delude themselves by disregarding discount, deprecation and so on. Also, if there is a cost advantage due to feed-in tariffs, different taxation and so on, this is unfair towards nuclear and will result in suboptimal energy production. PV on roofs are small-scale and entails a lot of overhead, btw - forget about $1/kW.

In Spain, solar PV has a feed-in tariff at 32 euro-cents. Wind has a feed-in tariff at up to 7 euro-cents. Why, do you think, if solar-PV is such a slam-dunk in economic terms? This tells me that wind is not competitive with nuclear, and that solar PV is likely 4-5 times more expensive than wind. (Also, the Spain solar tariff is down this year from 45 euro-cents, and installations are expected to drop like a rock because of it.)

Well, the $24 billion is simply wrong. Other more precise sources cite lower costs.

Other more precise sources which you didn't post?
And you are suggesting that Florida Light and Power is simply lying.

PV on roofs are small-scale and entails a lot of overhead,

Actually several 100 Millions of roofs and facades are large scale and do already exist.

In Spain, solar PV has a feed-in tariff at 32 euro-cents.

That might explain why PV-manufacturers made record profits last year.

That's nice, but also illustrates that PV is a niche solution, not something we can rely on for most of our power.

Actually this is something we can rely on to power a significant portion of all buildings and reduce the load on the grid at the same time. Besides heat pumps are becoming increasingly popular and heat energy is being stored cheaply.

I did a citation, the source of which you can find using two seconds and Google. A few more seconds will convince you that most sources state $12-$17 billion as the estimated all-in cost. If you dismiss this and keep going with the highest number you can find on the Internet for nuclear and the lowest you can find on solar, I'll simply include this fact in my appraisal of your objectivity.

Actually several 100 Millions of roofs and facades are large scale and do already exist.

To me, that would make for 100 million small scale installations. It would obviously be more rational to buy some land and do a big installation.

Actually this is something we can rely on to power a significant portion of all buildings

Yes, we can thus irrationalize a "significant part" of our electricity production (perhaps 20%), but we shouldn't. Nuclear is both more economical and better for the environment.

I did a citation,

No you didn't.

To me, that would make for 100 million small scale installations. It would obviously be more rational to buy some land and do a big installation.

If you build it on existing roofs and facades you don't need to buy any land and you are connected to the grid and reduce the load on the grid.

but we shouldn't. Nuclear is both more economical and better for the environment.

Actually:
PV has lower capital costs.
PV doesn't require any fuel.
PV generates many decentralized jobs.
PV requires hardly any maintenance.
PV reduces the dependence on foreign fuels.
PV can easily be recycled and doesn't have high decommissioning costs.
PV reduces the load on the grid.
PV doesn't require reprocessing plants and repositories.

Solar cost estimates never include the cost of the backup plants and their fuel supply systems. Coal plants are designed for a 40 year lifetime and the average age of a coal plant in the U.S. is already over 40 years, so if we go with wind and solar we will have to build a new set of backup plants.

The same problem exists in developing countries that do not have a large conventional grid.

The emissions from constructing and operating the backup plants should be applied to the wind and solar plants.

Solar cost estimates never include the cost of the backup plants

Besides that PV on existing roofs produces power every single day and reduces the load on the grid, do nuclear power plants include the costs of the backup plants?

Seven German nuclear plants have failed to generate any electricity this month due to technical breakdowns. They have about half the production capacity of Germany's 17 nuclear reactors, but Germany did not suffer any power shortages.

http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=47909

We have plenty of new natural gas plants to serve as back-up for solar, wind and nukes (who can and do go down unexpectedly for many months and even years at a time).

OTOH, large new nukes require large amounts of spinning reserve, while wind & solar require almost none.

Best Hopes for a Rush to Wind and a Safe, Economic Build-out of new nukes,

Alan

If there is an unexpected drop in the wind over a large area containing many wind farms, it is like losing several conventional power plants at the same time. A recent unforcast wind lull in Texas gave us a preview of this.

“The grid operator went directly to the second stage of an emergency plan … System operators curtailed power to interruptible customers to shave 1,100 megawatts of demand within 10 minutes… ERCOT said the grid's frequency dropped suddenly when wind production fell from more than 1,700 megawatts, before the event, to 300 MW when the emergency was declared”.

ERCOT wants to double its wind capacity. If the wind farms had been fully built out that same lull would have produce a much larger loss of generation.

The possibility of common mode failure due to widespread meteorological conditions resulting in a large drop in generation dramatically increases the spinning reserve required to assure grid reliability. The cost, fuel consumption and emissions associated with maintaining a larger spinning reserve for wind arrays should be attributed to the windmills.

Spinning reserves in ERCOT are set by STNP and Comanche Peak. Those nukes require such large spinning reserves that wind is covered several times over.

Spinning reserve is a weakness of large nukes, not wind.

And yes the coal burned to maintain spinning reserves needs to be included when calculating the benefits of nukes.

Wind winds down slow enough that interruptibile customers can be interrupted (LOTS of rotational inertia). Not so for nukes. Spinning reserve is required to back them up !

Alan

and yet the contribution from solar power remains tiny. You have to build the factories and the supply chain to make the PV.

One of the big issues with Solar power is that there are a lot of companies trying different technologies and many of them fail. They get a few million and achieve some lab success then they get tens to a hundred million to scale up over 4 years and then they fail. The assumption is that scaling up is easy but it is not.
http://www.greentechmedia.com/cleantech-investing/

Roofing is the 6th most dangerous job.

Costs have to include not just the solar cells but the installation, grid hookup, supply chain, factories etc...

They get a few million and achieve some lab success then they get tens to a hundred million to scale up over 4 years and then they fail. The assumption is that scaling up is easy but it is not.
PV production grew by 86% to 6.9 GW last year. So apparently scaling up did work.
Solar PV production (annual)
2007: 3.7 GW
2008: 6.9 GW (these are serious factories - no one produces 6.9 GW in a lab)
http://www.ren21.net/pdf/RE_GSR_2009_Update.pdf
Besides PV modules are usually offered with a 25 year warranty.

Roofing is the 6th most dangerous job.
In that case we'll have to forgo roofing and sit in the rain until someone invents a safety rope?

You have to build the factories and the supply chain to make the PV.
A thinfilm PV factory that produces 1.6 GW in 10 years costs less than $0.3 billion.
The substrates they require is window glass. There's no window glass shortage.
And for the silicon layer they require silane, which is produced in abundance for the construction market (e.g. silicone).
http://www.oerlikon.com/ecomaXL/index.php?site=SOLAR_EN_press_releases_d...

Costs have to include not just the solar cells but the installation, grid hookup, supply chain, factories etc.
The costs for the solar modules obviously do include the costs of the factories and its supply chain, the converters are available below $300/kW and the installation of a one household PV system can be done in a day.

And manufacturing costs of solar modules have reached $980/kW, which makes them competitive, especially if utilities keep on increasing electricity prices to buy carbon tax on their fossil power plants, to pay for the increasing cng prices or to fund new nuclear power plants.
http://investor.firstsolar.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=201491&p=irol-newsArticle...

http://seekingalpha.com/article/151572-four-problems-facing-solar-power-...

at least four structural problems facing existing public solar power companies:

There is risk that some new entrant will leapfrog them by developing a better, disruptive technology.
Solar energy has to compete with the memory chip industry for its raw semiconducting materials, which, much like corn, gasoline and ethanol, breaks the link between input cost and selling price.
Competition comes not just from other producers of solar energy, but from other producers of electricity from other alternatives and conventional sources. On a LCOE basis, solar will usually lose on pure economics. Thus,
Demand is heavily reliant on subsidies that will inevitably be reduced or phased out.

http://news.cnet.com/greentech/?keyword=solar+shakeout
Hayward, Calif.-based OptiSolar said last week that it has closed its solar cell manufacturing plant and is laying off 200 employees, according to reports. Late last year, it cut its staff in half and warned that it would need more capital to continue operating.

===
I am pointing out a problem for investors in the tech and industry as a whole. If significant numbers of investors lose their money then that industry has more trouble raising money going forward.

worldwide market for solar energy roughly doubled last year, to $33 billion. Plus tens of billions more in government tax credits (Germany feed in taxes).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_power

Solar power has great potential, but in 2008 supplied less than 0.02% of the world's total energy supply. There are many competing technologies, including fourteen types of photovoltaic cells, such as thin film, monocrystalline silicon, polycrystalline silicon, and amorphous cells, as well as multiple types of concentrating solar power. It is too early to know which technology will become dominant

http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/alternate/page/renew_energy_consump/table3....

Most residential roofs are sloped.

Of the solar companies and tech. I like CoolEarth

http://www.coolearthsolar.com/technology

Balloon concentrators over farmland (no falling), less material.

and Sunrgi (concentrators)

Solar energy has to compete with the memory chip industry for its raw semiconducting materials, which, much like corn, gasoline and ethanol, breaks the link between input cost and selling price.
As I said before thinfilm silicon PV doesn't compete for raw materials with the semiconducting industry:
http://www.oerlikon.com/solar/
http://www.appliedmaterials.com/products/solar_3.html

Besides not even the polycrystalline cells compete with the semiconductor industry as they produce polysilicon with a much lower quality specifically for PV purposes. The times where the PV industry uses the same silicon wafer material as the semiconductor industry are mostly gone.

Hayward, Calif.-based OptiSolar said last week that it has closed its solar cell manufacturing plant.
That's a start-up with a bad website and which doesn't even sell any products.
http://www.optisolar.com/

(concentrators)
The disadvantage of concentrators is that they always require direct sunlight. Thinfilm PV is actually quite efficient without direct sunlight.

Solar power has great potential, but in 2008 supplied less than 0.02% of the world's total energy supply.
They don't include solar hot water capacity which obviously also produces a form of energy and there's already 145 GWth installed.
China installed 14 GWth of solar hot water capacity last year alone.
www.ren21.net/pdf/RE_GSR_2009_Update.pdf

There's lots of potential in solar hot water and solar cooling:
http://www.solarserver.de/solarmagazin/anlage_0308_e.html
http://www.solarcool.com/index.php?article_id=3&clang=2

And that still doesn't change the fact that thinfilm PV factories can essentially produce 100 GW per year.
It's mainly a question of capital not resources.
With the $180 billion AIG bailout one could have financed PV factories which produce 960 GW in 10 years:
http://www.oerlikon.com/ecomaXL/index.php?site=SOLAR_EN_press_releases

Last but not least: 2 billion people are still not connected to a grid. It takes less time to connect a house to a PV-module than to wait for a grid to arrive.

Yes, I did provide a citation.

I could do a point-by-point rebuttal to your list, but I'll just repeat that solar PV requires HUGE feed-in tariffs or other subsidies to be built in any kind of volume.

Well, the $24 billion is simply wrong. Other more precise sources cite lower costs.

Other more precise sources which you didn't post?
And you are suggesting that Florida Light and Power is simply lying.

FPL had considered building two 1550 MW reactors; they've opted for two 1100 MW reactors instead, with a consequent reduction in cost.

I did a citation,

No you didn't.

He did: "The two new reactors, according to wikipedia, has ..."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turkey_Point_Nuclear_Generating_Station

In Spain, solar PV has a feed-in tariff at 32 euro-cents.

That might explain why PV-manufacturers made record profits last year.

And why they won't this year.

While Spain did want to spur PV last year, the feed-in tariffs offered were miscalculated by officials, so that new installations could be paid off in as little as a year. This led to explosive growth which won't be repeated in 2009 because Spain capped installations it will support at 0.5GW. That means that somehow the world market would have to make up that 2GW shortfall to match last year, which is unlikely industry observers believe.
http://www.solid-state.com/display_article/367644/5/none/none/APPLI/Glob...

While some solar panel makers have dialed down their production volumes, the industry overall is still churning out way too many products. The problem is so bad that the glut is likely to stay until 2012, according to a new report by iSuppli, a market research firm in El Segundo, Calif.
http://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/solar-panel-glut-could-last-...

FPL had considered building two 1550 MW reactors; they've opted for two 1100 MW reactors instead, with a consequent reduction in cost.

...and without change in costs per kW

While some solar panel makers have dialed down their production volumes, the industry overall is still churning out way too many products.

which will further reduce solar module costs, since there are still a few 100 Million uncovered roofs left...

If all 80 million residential roofs in the USA had solar power installed then one would expect 9 times the annual roofing deaths of 300 people or 2700 people (roofers to die). This would generate about 240 TWh of power each year. (30% of the power generated from nuclear power in the USA). 90 people per year over an optimistic life of 30 years for the panels not including maintenance or any electrical shock incidents.

note: also the energy generation expected would probably be less with all roofs covered as the northern states get less solar insolation and you will have to clear any snow from them in winter and leaves in the fall.

one would expect 9 times the annual roofing deaths of 300 people or 2700 people (roofers to die).
In that case we'll have to forgo roofing and sit in the rain until someone invents a safety rope or solar modules are simply and only installed on flat roofs?

Like this flat roof with a railing in the back - feel safe?

Btw these are Oerlikon thinfilm-modules:
http://guntherportfolio.blogspot.com/2007/09/oerlikon-solar-almost-at-wo...

the micromorph tandem module delivers up to 10% module efficiency at costs of less than $0.70 per Watt-peak with 100+ MWp (MegaWatt-peak) scale Fabs all by 2010.

also the energy generation expected would probably be less with all roofs covered as the northern states get less solar insolation and you will have to clear any snow from them in winter and leaves in the fall.
On the other hand they might get more wind, or geothermal energy or run efficient cogeneration plants powered by manure, waste, FSC-wood or import hydroelectricity from Canada.

calculated overnight capital cost from $2444 to $3582 per kW, which were grossed up to include cooling towers, site works, land costs, transmission costs and risk management for total costs of $3108 to $4540 per kilowatt. Adding in finance charges increased the overall figures to $5780 to $8071 per kW

Ah, so it's all really about the loans being very expensive then. Thankfully there is a very simple solution to that: government loan guarantees or just straight state ownership and financing.

It is incorrect to argue that past fast breeders have not been successful, and generation IV designs are not going to be mature for 20 years. The BN-600 in Beloyarsk, Russia is a commercial fast breeder that has reliably provided commercial power to the grid since 1980. As for the generation IV designs, only the gas-cooled fast reactor design is not mature. The sodium-cooled fast reactor design is mature and could be persued today. Known as the Integral Fast Reactor, the sodium cooled gen-iv design was cancelled by Clinton for political reasons in 1994 before large-scale, commercial pyrometallurgical processing and electrorefining could be demonstrated in every detail. GE has the technology, and was recently talking about rapidly building these modular reactors right into the boilers of coal plants to quickly phase out coal. These reactors could be powered for millenia on our existing nuclear waste alone.
http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2009/06/23/nuclear-power-going-fast/

Umm, I am not an expert in nuclear fission and barely understand the basics of fast-breed reactors but the following statement:

These reactors could be powered for millenia on our existing nuclear waste alone.

Does sound a bit like the tried-and-tested cornucopian view that:

We have enough oil to last hundreds of years...

I am also firmly of the opinion that if fast-breed reactors are viable and so efficient then pro-nuclear governments around the world would be actively discussing them as a part of the energy mix. In the UK i believe that the newly commissioned reactors are only the standard type (but I am happy to be corrected) and that as such the UK government doesn't think much of fast-breed for whatever reason. Given the choice, why would they not go for the much more efficient less consumptive reactors which would 'last for millenia on our existing waste alone'

These reactors could be powered for millenia on our existing nuclear waste alone.

Does sound a bit like the tried-and-tested cornucopian view that:

We have enough oil to last hundreds of years...

Yes, but the reactor statement is true nevertheless. Fuel supply is not a problem with breeders and will never be a problem with breeders.

UK government doesn't think much of fast-breed for whatever reason. Given the choice, why would they not go for the much more efficient less consumptive reactors which would 'last for millenia on our existing waste alone'

Because fuel is not a problem yet, even for our wasteful light-water reactors. Fuel is dirt cheap - not really a signicant part of the final electricity production cost. And breeders with molten salt moderation is more complex and expensive to create and operate.

Given the choice, why would they not go for the much more efficient less consumptive reactors which would 'last for millenia on our existing waste alone'

Because capital costs more than fuel. When we have centuries worth of fuel from the once fuel cycle alone, breeders need to compete more than just on fuel efficiency, and the fast reactors dont do that. LFTRs could compete probably however.

Sodium cooled is a technology that scares me. NIMBY !!!

Inherently unsafe (OK to put them in Idaho & Siberia perhaps).

Alan

It sure is neat though. I love the technology, and sodium is a fantastic coolant. No corrosion at all, very moderate neutron activation. Only problem is the fact that it catches on fire as soon as its exposed to air and the reactor itself is damned useless. It solves the problem of a plutonium shortage, one we'll never ever have.

Well, it might be useful for actinide incineration also, but really dry cask storage untill something better comes along is far more prudent.

Installation of the BN-800 reactor core will start in September.

Regarding the "swords to plowshares" of turning warheads into fuel rods, here is an article from 2001 by Joseph Stiglitz about problems encountered in the US with USEC, the private spin-off from the Department of Energy that was supposed to recycle Russian warheads, but decided that that would not maximize profits.
http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/stiglitz7

Its a politically popular program that is a terrible idea technically. Its throwing away enrichment on fuel that could be more readily used for submarines and other high enrichment reactors. It would be better to stockpile it than downblend it because we're just going to have to reenrich it eventually.

Oh, that's interesting. Even in that case, the USEC should have been buying the Russian warheads. Maybe USEC was not aware of the US fuel needs on the military side? An intelligence failure? Myopia? Or is everything ok?

Well, honestly I just dont think Russia would be willing to sell the US weapons material. Its a political agreement, and not everything in politics make sense.

In order to do so, the produced thermal energy is used for the statistics, and nuclear electric energy is multiplied roughly by a factor of three.

No. the output of windmills and solar cells are multiplied by a factor of three when comparing them with other fuels to account for this issue.

Furthermore, hydropower and gas-fired power plants provide electric energy on demand. In contrast, an efficient operation of nuclear power plants requires their operation with little interruptions at 100% capacity. As a result, nuclear power plants produce the so-called base load for the electric grid, whereas hydro and gas-fired power plants are used to satisfy peak load needs. A fairer comparison would thus give the electric energy produced from hydropower a much higher quality factor than the one from nuclear fission power.

Nonsense. Hydro plants limit output because they do not have enough water to run continuously at 100%. If they had more water they would run more. Gen III plants are designed to follow load if needed but due to their low O&M cost they will run at 100% most of the time.

Uranium mining in Canada is also far behind the Red Book expectations… One may conclude that the Red Book uranium mining extrapolations are exaggerated and not based on hard facts, as one would have expected from this internationally well respected document.

Which reactors shutdown or throttled back due to a shortage of uranium?

Uranium prices have dropped from $130/lb in 2007 to $50/lb in 2009.

http://www.uxc.com/review/uxc_g_2yr-price.html

If all U.S. electricity were nuclear we would need about ¾ lb per person per year at a cost of 0.3 cents per kWh, a small fraction of natural gas cost per kWh.

What would the price be if world uranium production was, say, 30% higher over this period, $20/lb, $0/lb, or perhaps minus $20/lb? What is so hard to understand about economics 101, supply vs. demand?

What would happen to the uranium production rate if the price were stable at the equivalent cost of natural gas, $360/lb?

What other source of baseload carbon free energy is in a position to ramp up with unlimited capacity at an affordable price? Fission is not perfect, it is just better than any other option.

I guess you wanted to write

yes, and the output of windmills etc is also multiplied by a factor of 3
(even though it has much less efficiency)

For what concerns practical things

we are interested in the "end use" of energy
that 2/3 is wasted does not matter besides perhaps the fishes
in french rivers during the summer time (but that is another story).

if one wants to know how much co2 is not emitted by a kWhe
one could say a modern gas/coal fired power plant has an efficiency of 50-60%
and use this number

if one wants to know the MTOE (million tons of oil equivalent) as BP does
and compare with coal and an average efficiency of today 38%
that is perhaps ok.

still it neglects the fact of peak load electric energy needs
and its cost and the wasteful use of electric energy at night
following the near 80% nuclear produced electric energy in France.

concerning Hydropower pump stations (for example in Switzerland)
you know that these are filled up at night with cheap kwhe from France
and sold during the peak load time back.. ?

otherwise, if you do not believe that it is difficult and inefficient
to regulate nuclear power plants according to demand
check yourself in the literature about why nuclear fission power plants are operated
always at 100% capacity (if possible).

or ask your neighboring nuke operator on why they take such a long time
to switch back on to full power after exchanging fuel..

(of course if their would be infinite amount of water nobody would use
anything else than hydropower! and yes hydropower plants have their own
problems but this is another subject!)

you ask:
> Which reactors shutdown or throttled back due to a shortage of uranium?

for sure we only know about the reactors in India!

for the uranium price

this is something interesting and as you know probably well
only 5-10% or so are openly sold on the market.

For the rest there are long term contracts (details are most likely hidden to the public).

but as I try to explain
no matter what the price is

the existing reactors require roughly 65000 tons natural uranium per year
and only 2/3 of this comes out of primary extraction.
the rest is draw down and the civilian stocks are largely depleted
as I will discuss in detail in the next part ..

for Western Europe or the USA.. wouldn't you like to be in the situation
to tell the USA power plants to switch of if they do not behave
according to the wishes of Mr. P.?

>What other source of baseload carbon free energy is in a position to ramp up with unlimited >capacity at an affordable price? Fission is not perfect, it is just better than any other option.

well, may be there is no other source besides
slowing down? wanted or not

regards michael

for the uranium price
this is something interesting and as you know probably well
only 5-10% or so are openly sold on the market.
For the rest there are long term contracts (details are most likely hidden to the public).

Good point. Looking at the spot price as I did makes uranium prices look higher than they really are. Most long term contracts are created when prices are low, not when they are peaking.

For example, in 2007 when spot prices peaked at $130/lb the average price actually paid by U.S. utilities was only $24.45/lb, equal to 0.18 cents per kWh using our primitive steroidal submarine reactors that only split 1% of the uranium atoms mined to fuel them.

http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/nuclear/umar/summarytable1.html

for Western Europe or the USA.. wouldn't you like to be in the situation
to tell the USA power plants to switch of if they do not behave
according to the wishes of Mr. P.?

What does this mean?

you ask:

for Western Europe or the USA.. wouldn't you like to be in the situation
to tell the USA power plants to switch of if they do not behave
according to the wishes of Mr. P.?

What does this mean?

Mr P = Putin

isn't it interesting that 50% of the USA powered nuclear plants are
operated on Russia's good will?

michael

Mr P = Putin
isn't it interesting that 50% of the USA powered nuclear plants are
operated on Russia's good will?

We pay Russia well for their uranium. They need the money. There is a world market for uranium. If Putin sells it to somebody else we can buy it from someone else or ramp up domestic production.

Unlike oil, uranium is very cheap, so a price increase will stimulate production without increasing the cost of electricity significantly.

stockinterview.com/News/06082007/nuclear-fuel-conference-uranium-price.html

Dr. Kim opened our eyes.
He told his audience that fuel is four to five times the ‘hyped’ cost of nuclear power – between 20 and 25 percent instead of the mere five percent.
He announced, “At $1000/pound for uranium, a nuclear utility’s fuel cost would rise to $70/MWH compared to $5/MWH at legacy contract prices of about $20/pound.
Dr. Kim shot down the premature conclusion that utilities would rather pay the high prices instead of going through a costly decommissioning process. He said, “There is no compulsion to immediately decommission – stations can be held in standby or cold shutdown.”
Finally, he took up the matter of ‘utilities not caring about fuel costs.’ He pointed out, “Take $900 million from your company’s annual net profits. See how happy your management is.”
Because of what we've previously been led to believe, we questioned his numbers and conclusions. So we asked TradeTech’s Gene Clark for a second opinion. Clark emailed back and confirmed Dr. Kim’s calculations were accurate, writing, “At $1000/lb U3O8, I get $86.6/MWh total, but $16.6 is the carrying cost. Without the carrying cost, it’s exactly $70.”

Nonsense. Hydro plants limit output because they do not have enough water to run continuously at 100%

A falsity.

Most Hydropower plants are designed to NOT run at 100% all the time.

If they are storage (even minimal), the turbines are sized to run on "fish release" water at 3 AM and at 100% at peak, with modulation in between.

Unless their major customer is an aluminum plant (constant load 24/7), in which case they run all turbines but one constantly, at maximum efficiency (which is often slightly less than 100%). One turbine is kept as a spare for overhauls, unexpected downtime, etc.

Almost all dams# have some "spill" during floods, when storage is full and all turbines are operating. (#I do not expect Hoover to spill excess water in my lifetime).

IMO, most dams could use more turbines. Primarily to catch the water currently being spilled. Example is Sir Adam Beck in Ontario (run-of-river @ Niagara Falls with a head pond). They are drilling another tunnel (14.4 m diameter, 10.4 km long) and added 196 MW of hydropower. From memory, this addition will reduce the % of time that excess water is spilled (or given to the Americans) at Niagara from 65% to 15%.

Best Hopes for the Niagara Tunnel (they need it with current problems)

Alan

I recently had a look at UK hydro. Load factors were of the order 10% (from memory), but the benefit comes form being able to call on that load when it is most needed.

The other surprising stat was that about 50% of our hydro output came from 3 "large" pump storage schemes. These are storing nuclear and coal base load at night - so its not really clean green energy at all.

Hi,

yes similar in other countries

it also tells

nuclear without hydropower pump stations is even more expensive
in France we have enourmous amount of night electreic heating
thanks to overproduction in the past
now the grid is in a difficult situation whenever a cold wave comes
and yes France grid survives only because of so far existing spare capacity
in the neighboring countries have a look at
http://arxiv.org/pdf/0803.4421v1

early january 2009 was some kind of hard at the limits
the edf data base does not even show the correct data anymore
to embarrassing i guess (i wrote a mail to them that their records are not agreeing with
their more detailed data base but for some "strange" reason they did not change)

for the other post about
lights are not going off now in Germany because of some nuclear power plants outages

My reply is wait for the high load time during winter

the stress to the grid in spring summer in Europe is relatively low
and fuel changes in nuclear power plants happen during this time
when rivers are giving good results as well

michael
ps
Wind and Solar face similar problems of storage once larger
fractions than the political correct alibi numbers are contributed..

UK wind installed capacity already exceeds installed hydro capacity - and that clearly presents problems using existing hydro to both balance wind or to store wind via pumping. Its a great idea to store wind pumping hydro, and a great sound bite - but scaling seems to be a major issue.

Danish wind is balanced against Norwegian Hydro - one small windy country using a major hydro resource to great benefit - but not everyone can do this.

What about an HV DC link Scotland-Iceland ?

Alan

Build the much shorter and already planned HVDC link to Norway. Norway can add more peak load turbines to their hydropower and have better geography for buiding pumped storage and the nordic electricty market is very likely to get a surplus of non fossil electricity.

I've read about such plans. I found them a bit perverse, since the cost was about equivalent to building a nuke in Germany with the same capacity as the carrying capacity of the link.

Too expensive to make sense.

Gas and oil heaters can be substituted by heat pumps.
There's no reason to waste gas and oil in order to heat buildings directly.

And heat pumps obviously do not run continuously and can be turned on when there's lots of wind and turned off when there is little wind.

In addition there is more wind energy during winter time, when more heat energy is required anyways:
http://www.wind-energie.de/de/technik/netz%5Cverbundnetz/?type=97

There's no reason to waste gas and oil in order to heat buildings directly

Depends.

New Orleans electricity runs off natural gas and nuclear power (some coal when Alabama has a surplus). *FAR* better to burn NG for space and water heating (as I do, tankless gas water heater and space heaters). I hope to add supplemental solar water heating later.

Room by room heating with gas (99.9% efficient) beats heat pumps operated with NG fired electricity, in part since heat pumps would heat the entire house evenly all night.

NG is produced nearby and minimal energy is used in transporting it here for household use.

Best Hopes for Regional Differences,

Alan

Are their any more good sites where pumped hydro could be deployed in the UK, like the massive 1800 MW "Electric Mountain" Dinorwig? That thing repayed itself in 10 years according to Wikipedia, and building a second would be a great stimulus program.

Nonsense. Hydro plants limit output because they do not have enough water to run continuously at 100%

A falsity.
Most Hydropower plants are designed to NOT run at 100% all the time…
Almost all dams# have some "spill" during floods, when storage is full and all turbines are operating. (#I do not expect Hoover to spill excess water in my lifetime).

It is interesting that you call my statement a falsity and then explain why it is true. It makes no sense to add more turbines that will only operate during floods with a very low capacity factor.

Niagara Falls is a valuable tourist attraction, otherwise its energy potential would have been fully developed long ago. It is not a good basis for general policy making.

Roughly 16% of the world energy end use comes from electric energy [2]. Multiplying 14% by 16%, one finds that nuclear energy contributes now less than 2.5% to the world's end energy mix.

This is followed by an explanation of the reasoning behind departing from the typical "primary energy" model (where nuclear credited 6%) to the undefined(?) "end energy mix", but that explanation is quite flawed. Old nukes are compared to "modern fossil plants", and no mention is made of the abysmal efficiency in transportation. I don't think it matters very much, but to be fair, nuclear should definitely be credited more than 2.5%.

Old nukes are compared with..

well it is true that nukes are old right?
the future ones we still have to see operating!

otherwise I agree a full calculation of the EROEI should always be done
but this is avoided by all officials like the ``devil avoids the holy water"

let stay with the fact that the number of TWhe from nuclear has gone down
during the past three years and that the fraction of electric energy worldwide
from nuclear went down from 18% to less than 14% now.

michael

Yes, nukes are old, but what is the proportion of "modern" coal plants (last I heard, the Chinese often use old tech even for new plants)? And how many of the NG plants are advanced combined cycle?

Yes, nuclear has went down as a proportion of the electricity production. However, that is due to expansion of coal and NG, which isn't sustainable. Nuclear stands at 86% of the non-fossil, non-hydro generation (year 2007). I'm assuming hydro and fossils won't suffice to power the human civilisation in, say, the year 2100.

Unfortunately I am not disagreeing with the statement that

1) wind and solar electric energy are making a close to zero contribution.

2) that
``I'm assuming hydro and fossils won't suffice to power the human civilisation in, say, the year 2100."

it won't suffice to power the current "civilization"

true fossils will be gone and hydro ... well thats another interesting topic
but at least it will not make much more kWhe than today!

3) thus either we find another way of civilization or we don't
Question how did the Mozart and Bachs and Newtons etc did their work without
electric energy?

regards
michael

About number 3 - we know that uranium/thorium in breeders suffice for whatever energy needs we have. So if we don't find anything better, that's what we'll do. We won't voluntarily go back to eighteenth century standards of living.

>About number 3 - we know that uranium/thorium in breeders suffice for whatever energy needs we >have. So if we don't find anything better, that's what we'll do. We won't voluntarily go back to >eighteenth century standards of living.

can you give a figure on how many kwh were produced so far with your wonder
reactors?

but stop perhaps we can leave this for the part IV of my contribution
as it is kind of off topic now

lets agree on what is now and in the next 10 years!

michael

can you give a figure on how many kwh were produced so far with your wonder
reactors?

Well, France's Superphenix produced 3,392,000,000 KWh electricity.
Russia's BN-600 has produced 560 MWe since 1980, but with some problems, so lets assume 50% availability, i.e. 71,131,200,000 KWh electricity.

The other 16 fast breeder reactors constructed by US, India, Germany, France, Russia UK and Japan are smaller and most of them were used for R&D, so lets disregard their contributions.

lets agree on what is now and in the next 10 years!

In the next ten years, China will be well along a big ramp-up phase, possibly along with India and Russia. The US will have built a few new ones but won't have started any big ramp-up yet. UK and Italy might start planning for new reactors. Arab nations may be starting as well as a lot of smaller countries.

Ten years is not much when there is no pressing need. Coal and NG serves us well.

Well, France's Superphenix produced 3,392,000,000 KWh electricity.

According to a 1996 report by the French Accounting Office (Cour des Comptes), the total expenditure on the reactor to date was estimated at 60 billion franc (9.1 billion euro).

That's 2,683 Euro/MWh at utility level.

Yep, and that's why it was closed down. My guess is that they could do better if they tried again. Seemingly, BN-600 has been more successful and Monju somewhere in between. The Russians are working on the BN-800.

Michael,
can you give a figure on how many kwh were produced so far with your wonder
reactors?

Not from wonder reactors but from regular PWR designs.

This link gives a value for the Shippingport reactor that ran on thorium as a LWBR for 5 years(1977-1983). Total power output on thorium was 2.1BillionkWh and increased fissile fuel by 1.39% over that period.
http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf62.html

What this means is that virtually all PWR's and CANDU reactors could be run on thorium, but are not because uranium is so cheap and only accounts for a small part of the cost of nuclear power. FOr this reason thorium must be considered as part of fissile fuel resources.

Michael,

Wind energy added last year world wide was more than 27 GW at growth rate of over 30%:
http://ewea.org/fileadmin/ewea_documents/documents/press_releases/2009/G...

PV added last year was 5.5 GW at growth rate of 129%:
http://www.pv-tech.org/news/_a/eipa_photovoltaics_market_topped_5.5gw_in...

Direct geothermal heating added last year was 15 GWth:
http://www.unep.fr/shared/docs/publications/RE_GSR_2009_Update.pdf

China added 14 GWth solar thermal last year alone:
http://www.unep.fr/shared/docs/publications/RE_GSR_2009_Update.pdf

Besides efficiency it's unlikely that renewables will not play a significant role in the coming decades.

Also most energy in households is needed for heating and cooling purposes, which do not necessarily require lots of electric energy (solar thermal and geothermal) and if they do heat energy can be stored cheaply and thus electricity does not need to be provided at a constant level.


http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6176229.stm

In fact this house in central Europe stores solar heat energy from the summer in order to provide sufficient heating and solar hot water during the entire winter time (plenty of storage time to put it bluntly).

Keep also in mind:
Most people want a warm shower and a running TV and do not care, how the energy to provide for this has been generated.

Great post!!!
This is a huge read. I can't say I've read the whole thing in one sitting. But this is the kind of material that makes daily visits to TOD rewarding.

Thank you.

Glad you liked it. The future installments are planned at approximately two week intervals.

Hello,

As the question of secondary uranium resources,
"official" uranium resources and future breeder (Plutonium or Thorium-> U233)
and fusion energy will be discussed in detail during the coming weeks
in the next three "chapters" I would like to
keep the discussion on the actual real situation with nuclear fission power
which includes the well defined near future up to 2015 and perhaps 2020.

this should provide a solid basis
on how things are!

in the meantime i came across some funny misunderstanding on another "discussion" site
for the entertainment. Just to make it clear

at CERN we do not make energy but consume a lot with relatively little
efficiency to produce high energy beams
(for what Mr. Steve seems to confuse

its the energy per proton what one talks about. There are perhaps
eventually up to 10**11 protons per bunch, thus
the total energy within the beam is very dense but tiny in total.

here is the quote:

Steve
August 01, 2009 - 2:52 PM
Flag this as Inappropriate
Fission is old technology, fusion is the wave of the future. South Koreas TOKAMAK fusion reactors are improving, and if we tap into the energy produced at CERNs LHC we could power the entire planet. The large ring is a superconducting 5 tev (terra electron volts) per beam, or 10 trillion volts of electricity. Tap into that and share the wealth, but that will never happen because electricity is a mafia run monopoly.

http://www.ottawacitizen.com/business/fp/Nuclear+summer/1848047/story.html

I would like to keep the discussion on the actual real situation with nuclear fission power which includes the well defined near future up to 2015 and perhaps 2020.
this should provide a solid basis on how things are!

It is obvious that you want to limit the discussion to “how things are” under business as usual conditions, but the important discussion is “how could things be if we took aggressive action.” That is what most people would like to know.

For more than 50 years there has been controversy over the significance of exposure to low levels of ionizing radiation. Clearly acute whole body exposures near 500 rad or rem (5 gray or sievert) are lethal to humans. The controversy relates to exposures in the millirad range. The scientific evidence is largely buried in a sea of statistical noise. The linear no-threshold theory is basically a political construct but has been accepted by regulatory bodies and much of the scientific and general public. Beginning around 1980 with T. D. Luckey there has been increasing interest in the possibility of radiation hormesis. After reading Luckey, Bernard Cohen and others it is my own belief that there is more scientific evidence for radiation hormesis that there is for LNT. This question has been previously mentioned on TOD but remains relevant to any discussion of nuclear power plants or waste disposal.

http://www.amazon.com/Radiation-Hormesis-T-D-Luckey/dp/0849361591

http://www.phyast.pitt.edu/%7Eblc/Cancer_risk.pdf

I would suggest to make another interesting topic out of this
and stick here to the actual and near future nuclear fission energy

as I wrote in the article

current "decision makers" do not consider such side effects
neither from nuclear nor from chemical toxic waste nor anything else

michael

Thanks for the article. Hormesis and LNT might make a topic for another day. But if by decision makers you include the radiation fearing general public, have they at times prevented or delayed the construction of nuclear power plants, thus adding to the cost? Have they instigated or contributed to the closure of new or functioning plants?

it is my own belief

But, as stated elsewhere, the theory that "radiation is good for you" is NOT accepted by the overwhelming majority of scientific community.

The linear model is NOT a "political construct", but the generally accepted scientific theory, with only some very fringe elements (see above) supporting the opposite (radiation is good for you).

There are valid non-linear radiation theories that are possibly correct (radiation is bad for you, but a 1/2 dose is only 1/4th as bad as a full dose).

But for regulatory and other purposes, the linear model is the prudent and proper decision.
Alan

===== follows Alan and is RW

But, as stated elsewhere, the theory that "radiation is good for you" is NOT accepted by the overwhelming majority of scientific community.

=====I am not convinced that a significant majority of the scientific community has studied this issue

The linear model is NOT a "political construct", but the generally accepted scientific theory, with only some very fringe elements (see above) supporting the opposite (radiation is good for you).

=====Have you followed the development of Beir I, Beir II etc. through Beir VII? Have you you studied Dr. Cohen's answers to the critics of his radon studies.

There are valid non-linear radiation theories that are possibly correct (radiation is bad for you, but a 1/2 dose is only 1/4th as bad as a full dose).

=====If there are valid non-linear hypothesis or theories that are possibly correct, could there be a correct no-threshold theory?

But for regulatory and other purposes, the linear model is the prudent and proper decision.

=====Would it be prudent and proper to develop missiles to divert any astroids or other objects that might destroy the earth. Or prudent and proper to stop the production of any vehicular systems that crash and/or run over pedestrians or that use electricity produced by the burning of coal? Would it be prudent and proper to abandon cities that are located at or below sea level - including mine.

"Would it be prudent and proper to abandon cities that are located at or below sea level - including mine."

Yes.

RW,

You mean this crackpot? [Dr. Bernard Cohen]

"When Ralph Nader described plutonium as "the most toxic substance known to mankind", Cohen, then a tenured professor, offered to consume on camera as much plutonium oxide as Nader could consume of caffeine,[5] the stimulant found in coffee and other beverages, which in its pure form has an oral (LD50) of 192 milligrams per kilogram in rats.[6]"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernard_Cohen_(physicist)

And what did Nader do? Any guesses as to how many deaths Nader attributed to plutonium? Have you read Cohen's article published in the premier peer reviewed imaging journal The American Journal of Roentgenology or any of his other books or articles published over recent decades? Have you read any of the books and papers written by T. D. Luckey who includes well over 1000 references to studies involving the effect of radiation in plants and animals?

The idea of a natural resistance to cell-killing radioactive rays is unscientific, after all, radiation can erode metals.

What kind of process would heal such degradation?

Sunlight(radiation) ages the skin. That would seem to refute hormesis.
http://www.ccohs.ca/oshanswers/diseases/skin_cancer.html

BTW, it was bizarre behavior by Cohen to make such a offer, so I am forced to discount anything Cohen the Mad Scientist says.

The man ruined his own reputation, not Nader's.
---------------------------------------------------------------
Surprise! Bizarre behavior can injure your reputation!

Alfred Wallace, the co-discoverer of natural selection made an ass out of himself by endorsing spiritualism, phrenology and attacked medical vaccinations.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Russel_Wallace

Our cells have significant mechanisms to repair DNA damage from radiation (and other sources); these mechanisms are often turned off in cancer cells, which is why radiotherapy (fairly) selectively kills cancer cells.

Note that damage and repair of DNA is a continuous process in everyone. You would be dead a long time ago without it.

Too much radiation will 'swamp' this DNA-repair mechanism and lead to mutations being unrepaired, which is how the start of cancer gets triggered. However, there is some suggestion that the opposite can happen - if you have very little DNA damage going on (zero radiation, lots of antioxidants in the food), then the DNA-repair system can become inactivated, and hence mutations get past it.

This is a speculative hypothesis, don't read it as a statement of fact.

An interesting article on the chemical mediation of the immune response (a chemical from bacteria).

http://www.the-scientist.com/article/display/55864/

Alan

The imperfect repair process itself sometimes causes mutation, so
since radiation causes damage, the 'hormesis mechanism' would probably cause cancer as well.

http://www.bio-medicine.org/medicine-news/Unchecked-Cellular-Repair-Path...

The linear model is NOT a "political construct", but the generally accepted scientific theory, with only some very fringe elements (see above) supporting the opposite (radiation is good for you).

Alan, when you asked me for references supporting hormesis theory I provided them.

http://www.theoildrum.com/node/5216#comment-491397

When I asked you for references supporting LNT based on actual low level exposure, not an extrapolation from high dose exposure, you provided nothing.

Here are some references. These are serious authors, not a fringe group.

http://www.apegs.sk.ca/adx/aspx/adxGetMedia.aspx?DocID=2989,1688,4,1054,...

http://www.acsh.org/docLib/20090331_NuclearEnergy2009314dw.pdf

http://www.phyast.pitt.edu/~blc/Cancer_risk.pdf

The irrational fear of radiation and reactor accidents account in part for the high cost of plant construction. For example, the new Ariva reactor, the EPR is the Mercedes Benz of power reactors. It contains extraordinary levels of redundancy to prevent a meltdown accident. It also includes a containment building and core catcher that will contain and solidify a melted core in a safe configuration.

So the extreme redundancy does not save lives, it provides a tiny reduction in the probability of an accident that will kill no one. Yet the cost and delay keeps us dependent on coal with routine emissions that kill 30,000 per year in the U.S. alone, from routine operation.

We do not need a new Mercedes Benz, we need a simple inexpensive safe reactor that can be mass produced in unlimited quantities, like this.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AZR0UKxNPh8&eurl=http%3A%2F%2Fthoriumener...

For More;

http://thoriumenergy.blogspot.com/

Bill, you write:

When I asked you [Alan] for references supporting LNT based on actual low level exposure, not an extrapolation from high dose exposure, you [Alan] provided nothing.

They never do -- like judges with the death sentences in their pockets before they hear the evidence, the anti--nuclear know-nothings NEVER provide references -- other than anecdotal junk or rubbish about 'cancer clusters'. They have NEVER seriously examined the hormesis hypothesis. What doesn't fit into their ideology, they simply ignore.

Yes, the linear dose hypothesis is 'prudent', but only in the sense that the general public is so clueless about the scientific method that it would currently be political suicide to challenge this hypothesis, despite the fact that it is unencumbered by hard data.

Thanks to you and Robert Wilson for your efforts, anyhow.

Oh, and calling Bernard Cohen a 'crackpot' -- well that's the kind of 'argument' one expects to encounter in the anti-nuclear community.

Bill

My two cents worth may or may not support your view.I was taught in ag and biology classes that there are doses small enough ,theoritically at least,of any poison,that the dose is harmless.

"Harmless" at any given time is defined as not producing statistically detectable signs of injury.

The radiation exposure levels considered acceptable have been lowered several times over the years until they are so low that if you are a nuclear worker and you have an auto accident and get a couple of x rays there is a major incentive to lie about your health history exposure.Otherwise you may not be hired.You may actually be "fired" temporarily as you are allowed only so many millirems per week,month,quarter,or year.

People who fly a lot or who live at high altitudes are known to accumulate more total exposure to ionizing radiation than most nuclear workers.

I have been in about six different containments as a contract maintainence employee and exposure was VERY CAREFULLY MONITERED at all six.

If you failed to follow the rules you became one of the "fry'em and fly'em group" fast-and you were not likely rehired either.

Whether various poisons are linearly effective or not as a general thing I can't say but insectides applied at twenty five percent of the reccomended rate don't kill many bugs-certainly a lot less than 25 percent.

When I had an accident(off premises) and had x rays I was suprised by the very casual attitude of the doctors regarding exposure-this at a major teaching hospital ,the MCV.

A lot of life forms have evolved on this planet under conditions of frequent exposure-daily as a matter of fact for most larger animals-and constant exposure due to background radiation from granite,radon,etc.Coal in and of itself is a significant source of exposure if you work in coal industry.

It therefore seems quite reasonable to assume we have evolved a certain amount of resistance to injury from radiation.It is known that certain "lower "species are able to withstand exposure levels w/o apparent ill effect for long periods that would kill us in short order.

Getting from there to the claim that a certain amount of radiation is good for us is another thing altogether-but it is perhaps within reason that this is true,as SOMETHING must drive the mutation engine that drives evolution.Without radiation it might not run FAST ENOUGH.This does not mean there aren't other causes of mutations of course-obviously there are some ,including certain chemicals known to occur in the natural environment.

Probably a small increase in exposures drives a small increase in tumors, etc,which seems to be borne out by research.IIrc,the graph is supposed to be flat at zero effect up to a certain small dose,linear more or less up to a certain level,and then more or less almost vertical for a short distance-at which point all test subjects are either obviously sick or dead.

It's been a long time since I was in any class touching on these matters so I may be past my expiration date these last four paragraphs.

But for regulatory and other purposes, the linear model is the prudent and proper decision.

I dont know; When bananas are considerd a radiotoxic hazard it seems a bit wonky.

In any case LNT even if appropriate gets quickly lost in statistical noise. We're counting angels on pinheads here.

In any case LNT even if appropriate gets quickly lost in statistical noise. We're counting angels on pinheads here.

Not only that, there is something almost absurd about the 'safety first' philosophy behind LNT.

Let's take aspirin. If LNT as applied to ionising radiation were applied to aspirin, the results would look something like this:

Fact: 100 aspirin pills administered to 1 person on a single day leads to the death of that person.

THEREFORE, if 100 aspirins are administered to 100 persons on a single day (one pill per capita), one of those persons will die, if we 'extrapolate' from the proven lethasl effect of the high-dose of 100 pills.

THEREFORE aspirin is 'one of the most lethal substances known to man'

J.H. Christ wept.

Aspirin poisoning has nothing in common with radiation poisoning.

Aspirin is a discrete, known chemical compound with mechanisms within the body to metabolize it, etc.

Radiation randomly breaks chemical bonds within an EXTRAORDINARILY complex chemical machine, our bodies.

I think of removing random nuts and bolts from an auto engine. Due to engineering, very few single bolts will cause immediate failure (although quite a few will cause failure after extended use). But the more removed, the greater the risk of failure.

Science has diagrammed out, in great detail, most of the genetic/DNA causes of intestinal cancer. The two most common involve 6 and 7 specific mutations. If you get a single cell that "wins the lottery" it can, and likely will, grow into a cancer tumor.

If you inherited one of these genetic defects, you will need only 5 (or 6 for the other type) more mutations during your lifespan to get intestinal cancer. You have a family risk factor.

Chemical mutations are thought to be the primary cause of these mutations, with radiation being a secondary cause (strictly random breaking of chemical bonds occasionally creates one of these mutations).

The mechanism seems clear, eat more carcinogenic foods (smoked meats are mentioned I believe), get more mutations till one cell "wins" the lottery. Get more radiation, more mutations, same result.

Colon polyps often (almost always ?) contain cells with several of these mutations, removing them reduces the population of cells that need only one or two more mutations to metastasize.

The "radiation is good for you" theory is not worth my time to debunk, any more than "intelligent creation" is. As above, I understand at least one mechanism where "more radiation is bad". Once all mechanisms for damage by radiation are mapped (in a few decades ?), then we can sum them up and come up with a non-linear curve (if appropriate). Until then, linear is the safe and prudent option.

Alan

PS: There is excitement now that a single polysaccharide from bacteria may mediate our immune response (no radiation required).

http://www.the-scientist.com/article/display/55864/

Alan,

I think that anyone with even a modest knowledge of rariation hazards will argee that any significant exposure above the normal background rate is bad news.

But from a strictly bioligical pov,the radiation-accounted-for-by-evolution hypothesis is not disproven by cancers that occur in older persons who SHOULD BE DEAD at thirty or thirty five,and thier kids big enough to survive in a band or group by the time parents are twenty five.The mechanisn does not have to be perfect-just ADEQUATE.

After all rabbits are well evolved to escape predators but rabbits are still eaten regularly.

I am going to have one for dinner any day now that has become too bold about raiding my garden.

I think that anyone with even a modest knowledge of radiation hazards will agree that any significant exposure above the normal background rate is bad news.

That "anyone" does not include several posters in this thread and the whole "radiation is good for you" theory.

We humans prefer a non-optimum life cycle (from an evolutionary POV). Most would like to be healthy and active (with full mental capacity) till their mid-80s or later. Many are unwilling to take the steps required today to optimize their chances, but will take whatever surgery etc. is required later.

Alan

Anecdotal evidence. As a youngster I had both the shoe fitting fluroscopy and the then fashionable therapeutic radiation for acne. My skin remains in reasonably good shape.
http://push.pickensplan.com/photo/2187034:Photo:24982?context=user
I started training as an xray technician while still in high school during the 40's and worked as a night and weekend hospital technician while in medical school. The equipment was primitive by today's standards. As a radiologist I handled both radioisotopes and radium needles. The 800KEV gamma from the needles was not easy to attenuate I always volunteered to be the test subject for new xray equipment and new film screen systems. I avoided doing this to patients or other employees. I never hesitated to assist in moving or immobilizing patients to obtain optimal images, even if it meant being exposed to the direct beam. I had my share of medically indicated xrays. I remain in excellent health and have had no evidence of cancer.
--I limit my bicycling to safe indoor spinning classes and drive large safe cars, currently a 2000 Mercury Marquis.

Alan ,
I should have said "not necessarily good for you but not yet proven to cause harm at current levels "or something to that effect rather than bad news.

The theory of poisons ,as I understand it,if not bastardized for various reasons,includes an allowance for doses too low to produce detectable harm.

We may or may not have reached that level of increase in background radiation country wide or world wide-the evidence may be there but buried in the noise,as others have remarked.We certainly have passed it by at Hiroshima and at Chernobyl!

The linear model seems to work mostly there after. Mostly.At some high dosage,every thing is poisonous,including plain water.

What we like as a practical matter and the facts behind radiation exposure considered as a biological problem are two dufferent things ,but as a PRACTICAL matter I agree whole heartedly.

I think of removing random nuts and bolts from an auto engine. Due to engineering, very few single bolts will cause immediate failure (although quite a few will cause failure after extended use). But the more removed, the greater the risk of failure.

Imagine that the engine has a mechanism to find the empty bolt holes and fill them with new bolts. To remain most effective the mechanism must be exercised, like an Olympic athlete. Too much exercise and the mechanism is overwhelmed, performance falls off. Not enough exercise and the mechanism grows fat and inefficient, performance falls off.

Life evolved in a world much more radioactive than now, so the optimum level of radiation to keep the repair mechanism most fit may be somewhat higher than most people are exposed to.

Many years ago congress called in the CEO’s of major cigarette companies and asked them, under oath, does smoking increase the risk for lung cancer. They all said no. It only took a few years of research to prove them wrong.

Since WWII radiation has been one of the most heavily studied health factors in our lives. If LNT theory accurately models reality we would have dozens of comprehensive studies validating the actual effects of low level radiation as predicted by LNT.

The fact that LNT is still based on extrapolation from high exposure data proves that the effects of low level radiation, good or bad, are far smaller than other risks we take in life with little or no thought or concern.

Sorry I don't have the link handy, but regarding radiation damage and cell repair, there was a recent science news article about a new drug for protection against radiation sickness. It was effective even after what would otherwise be lethal exposures. The drug has been tested in mice and, IIRC, has had some human testing as well. It was said to be nearing FDA approval.

It turns out that what makes radiation sickness lethal is not the direct radiation-induced damage to cells; it's apoptosis (cell "suicide") when the cells detect that they have incurred damage. (The cells "altruistically" self-destruct on detecting DNA damage, so that they can be replaced by undamaged cells. Normally a good strategy, but disasterous when too many cells suicide in a short period of time.) If the apoptosis mechanism is suppressed, the cells do their best to repair themselves and go on functioning. That suppression is what the new drug accomplishes.

The drug is intended for cancer treatments. Patients can receive much more intensive radiation treatment than would otherwise be safe, and without the usual side effects. Cancer cells, for some reason, are not protected the way normal cells are -- probably because, being cancer cells, their natural apoptosis mechansisms have already been switched off. The drug appears to make cancer cells more susceptable to radiation damage.

Sounded to me like a pretty significant breakthrough.

Sorry I don't have the link handy, but regarding radiation damage and cell repair, there was a recent science news article about a new drug for protection against radiation sickness. It was effective even after what would otherwise be lethal exposures. The drug has been tested in mice and, IIRC, has had some human testing as well. It was said to be nearing FDA approval.

Here's a link:
Cure for radiation sickness found?"

"Radiation is good for you" hypothesis is WAY outside the scientific consensus to put it charitably.

Your "explanation" has no correlation to known biochemistry that I am aware of.

Suicide is the most common way that cells deal with DNA damage. More radiation, more cell suicides.

A mutation turning off this suicide trait (known as p53) is the MOST common mutation found in cancer cells.

Alan

PS: the levels of background radiation when mammals evolved was lower than today (thanks to bomb tests and elevated C14, etc.) Any "damage" we humans are getting from "too low" radiation has been taken care of since 1945. Add X-rays and we get plenty.

PS: the levels of background radiation when mammals evolved was lower than today (thanks to bomb tests and elevated C14, etc.) Any "damage" we humans are getting from "too low" radiation has been taken care of since 1945.

None of this is true. Human-caused background radiation is very low, so low that early mammals were slightly more exposed due to more Potassium-40. The major human-caused background radiation source is coal plants, btw, not nuke plants or nuke tests.

Close.

"We" doubled the C14 in the atmosphere (curve starts in 1955) and we are still about 20% above natural levels.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Radiocarbon_bomb_spike.svg

Potassium (K40) has a half-life of 1.25 billion years. Our bodies carefully regulate the % of K (several cellular processes require K in a relatively narrow range).

The mammalian evolutionary explosion started 65 million years ago and continued for some tens of millions of years after that. The decay of K40 would make about 2.5% less K40 today than at the start of the mammalian evolutionary explosion but <1.6% some 40 million years ago (when "we" were still changing rapidly).

The K40 to C14 ratio of radiation exposure in humans is about 39:1 (~2.5%). At the peak, man made C14 had a greater or equal exposure than 65 million years of decay of P40. Not true today.

Man made X-rays swing the balance towards man made sources.

But I very little evidence of increased human exposure to radiation from coal burning (mercury another story). Natural uranium & radon far exceed what we emit.

Alan

Fair enough (I looked up mammal origins which dates back 300M years, let's not argue about what is the more appropriate starting point.)

According to wikipedia: The United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation estimates that per gigawatt-year (GWea) of electrical energy produced by coal, using the current mix of technology throughout the world, the population impact is approximately 0.8 lethal cancers per plant-year distributed over the affected population. With 400 GW of coal-fired power plants in the world, this amounts to some 320 deaths per year.[13]

Granted, this is not much. But if nuclear power killed as many in proportion to its size every year in more overt accidents, nuclear would be off the table, and this is not rational. Nuclear, aviation and a number of other activities are held to higher standards than their alternatives for purely psychological reasons.

1… What is your evidence that mammalian cells have not inherited radiation protection mechanisms evolved in cells billions of years ago when earth was far more radioactive? Much of our DNA originates from long before mammals came on the scene.

The annual effective radiation dose from natural and man-made sources for the world's population is about 3 mSv, which includes exposure to alpha radiation from radon and its progeny nuclides. Nearly 80% of this dose (2.4 mSv) comes from natural background radiation, although levels of natural radiation can vary greatly. Ramsar, a northern coastal city in Iran, has areas with some of the highest levels of natural radiation measured to date. The effective dose equivalents in very high background radiation areas (VHBRAs) of Ramsar in particular in Talesh Mahalleh, are a few times higher than the ICRP-recommended radiation dose limits for radiation workers…

Inhabitants who live in some houses in this area receive annual doses as high as 132 mSv from external terrestrial sources…

The preliminary results of cytogenetical, immunological and hematological studies on the residents of high background radiation areas of Ramsar have been previously reported (Mortazavi et al. 2001, Ghiassi-Nejad et al. 2002 and Mortazavi et al. in press), suggesting that exposure to high levels of natural background radiation can induce radioadaptive response in human cells…

Based on results obtained in studies on high background radiation areas of Ramsar, high levels of natural radiation may have some bio-positive effects such as enhancing radiation-resistance…

http://www.angelfire.com/mo/radioadaptive/ramsar.html

The city of Ramsar Iran hosts some of the highest natural radiation levels on earth, and over
2000 people are exposed to radiation doses ranging from 1 to 26 rem per year. Curiously,
inhabitants of this region seem to have no greater incidence of cancer than those in neighboring
areas of normal background radiation levels, and preliminary studies suggest their blood cells
experience fewer induced chromosomal abnormalities when exposed to 150 rem “challenge”
doses of radiation than do the blood cells of their neighbors…

Preliminary studies (Ghiassi-nejad et al., 2002) show no significant differences between
residents in high background radiation areas (HBRAs) compared to those in normal background
radiation areas (NBRAs) in the areas of life span, cancer incidence, or background levels of
chromosomal abnormalities. Further, when administered an in vitro challenge dose of 1.5 Gy of
gamma rays, donor lymphocytes showed significantly reduced sensitivity to radiation as
evidenced by their experiencing fewer induced chromosome aberrations among residents of
HBRAs compared to those in NBRAs. Specifically, HBRA inhabitants had 44% fewer induced
chromosomal abnormalities compared to lymphocytes of NBRA residents following this
exposure…

One of the arguments used in support of increasingly strict radiation dose limits is that every
incremental reduction in radiation exposure carries with it a net benefit to the public health. This
hypothesis is also frequently cited by those with a seemingly irrational fear of radiation as
justifying their fears, and the continued use of the linear, no-threshold (LNT) hypothesis helps to
feed radiation phobia. Abandoning this hypothesis or explaining that it over-predicts risks at low
levels of radiation exposure, if supported by appropriate scientific studies, may help alleviate
radiation phobia.
Recently-published data suggest that there is no detectable chromsomal damage from the high
levels of natural background radiation found in Ramsar and other HBRAs, contrary to the
predictions of linear, no-threshold or supra-linear models of radiation dose-response (Ghiassinejad
et al. 2001; Mortazvi 2000). This suggests that the linear extrapolation of radiation risk
from very high dose at high dose rates (e.g., to A-bomb , many animal studies) to moderate doses
at natural low dose rates is scientifically invalid. Given the apparent lack of ill effects to the
populations of HBRAs, these data further suggest that current dose limits are overly
conservative…

http://www.wmsym.org/archives/2002/Proceedings/10/434.pdf

2…People have been living in these high radiation areas for generations. If LNT is valid why haven’t they been wiped out or riddled with cancer?

BTW, a large source of man made radiation is housing. Specifically radon from masonry, stone and basements.

Tepees, and New Orleans style housing (wooden, elevated a couple of feet above the ground) avoid this major source of cancer (except from granite counter tops).

Best hopes for Radiation Free Shelter >:-)

Alan

"Radiation is good for you" hypothesis is WAY outside the scientific consensus to put it charitably.

Hmmm. I can't speak to what is or isn't the scientific consensus on that issue. Not my subject, not something I track. HOWEVER, simply knowing how evolution works, and knowing that background radiation has been a universal feature of the environment from the time that the earth formed, is enough for a strong default hypothesis. The hypothesis would be that levels of radiation exposure not far above normal background levels are not harmful, and that levels substantially below background likely are.

I'm not asserting that that hypothesis is true; I have no evidence one way or the other. Just saying that it's what one would expect, given the observation that background radiation has been a reliable feature of the environment from the day life first evolved. In fact, it was substantially higher in the remote past than it is at present. (Crustal abundance of uranium was higher two billion years ago than it is today, and isotopic ratio of U235 to U238 was much higher. Enough so that in some areas where deposits of uranium ore formed, primitive nuclear reactors arose spontaneously.)

The nature of evolution is that if the environment includes a steady source of lemons, then it will keep trying until one of its creations acquires the trick of making lemonade. Then the lemonade maker will thrive, and will become the base model for future evolutionary experiments. So from that point of view, it seems virtually certain that lifeforms adapted early on to the presence of background radiation. It's even likely that they came to depend on it in some manner.

Given this, the linear no threshold (LNT) model of radiation damage is radically counter to what "makes sense". That doesn't say it's wrong, only that the scientific community ought to demand strong evidence before accepting it. And if strong evidence of its validity were found, then cellular biologists should be scratching their heads and burning midnight oil to explain how such a profound failure of adaptive evolution could come about.

As I understand it, though, there is virtually no evidence for the LNT model. By its nature, it's very hard to test. It was simply adopted as a default hypothesis at a time when knowledge of cell workings was primitive, and there was less awareness and understanding of the possibilities of adaptive evolution at the cellular level.

The best known feature in cellular biology to deal with radiation damage to the DNA is the p53 gene; aka "the suicide gene". It senses damage and then kills the cell (when replicating from memory).

Intensity of radiation was not so great as to generate a positive response. At least not one clearly identified to date.

I did link to an article about a positive adaptation of the immune system to the bacteria that cover our skin.

LOTS of bacteria, not that much radiation.

Alan

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20602099&sid=aewhXjhWu53A

This is interesting. Might add to the debate. Interesting how often they appear to need fixing. Also, I guess when a nuclear reactor needs repair you need to shut it down completely. I can't imagine it is a quick process to power back up?

Solid-fuel reactors with little excess reactivity (including all commercial light-water reactors) have issues with xenon poisoning.  Xenon-135 poisoning enforces a period of shutdown if the reactor power is reduced too far for too long.  The Xe-135 has to decay to a sufficiently low level before the reactor can be restarted; this appears to take a day or so.

Military reactors have enough excess reactivity to override the effects of Xe-135.  Molten-salt reactors can remove gases (including Xe) from the fuel salt so that it has no effect.  At the Molten Salt Reactor Experiment, it was standard practice to shut down the reactor on Friday night by draining the fuel to the dump tanks, and restart it Monday morning by refilling it.

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Most people today agree that a comfortable way of life depends on the avail­ability of cheap energy with its almost limitless applications.

A thoughtless point (i.e. "most people" have not thought seriously about it and alternatives have not been presented). They agree by default.

I strongly believe that a significantly higher quality of life (if with lower consumption) can be had with half the energy the USA uses today at 4x the price.

The question is infrastructure investments. And I do not see nuclear power as the highest and best use of our infrastructure investment dollars.

*AFTER* the highest and best uses have been built out, then a significant increase in nuclear power is in order.

Best Hopes for Good Priorities (and nuke is down the list),

Alan

yes true

"most people have not yet thought about alternatives"

but unfortunately if one is forced to live on the Titanic
isn't it better to be on the "upper" class level
than on the lower ones
(at least as long no collateral damage from ``French Revolution effects" start
to make some first class people shorter?)

michael

Although I am not a cornucopian and realize that the only realistic way we can have our present level of material consumption is with large amounts of cheap oil, most of our material consumption is not necessary and does not contribute to our standard of living in a large way. Someone posted a nice graph of the diminishing happiness returns of resource consumption: At low levels, resource consumption is great, at high levels, its only a little bit better. Having enough electricity to provide lighting is a really big deal, whereas having a car is only really a good thing because a) our society is deliberately engineered to force car-dependency and b) we have been trained to want cars. Similarly, shipped-in basic foods make cities possible while fresh Chilean strawberries in January are irrelevant. If Jared Diamond's assumption that the elite will do what benefits the elite holds true (I think it will), then that force may be enough to cause the collapse of society. Speaking of the elite, this link is interesting.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tittytainment

This seems remarkably similar to the "society of sloth" ideas I've seen here before.

Maybe the best use of Nuclear reactors in the near future will be developing them as low cost crematoriums for when the "Die 0ff" begins? (Big Grin?)
You could use the green glow from Uncle Fred's ashes as a night light?

It has been a long hot day and my brain is a bit fried.

The world does rely heavily on uranium 235 to sustain its nuclear power infrastructure, but there have been some advances made in the past where natural, unenriched uranium is used as the primary fuel. Most notably is the Canadian designed, heavy-water cooled CANDU design, which was marketed by the Canadians to countries lacking the ability to enrich uranium. While the output per unit of fuel is lower, the overall consumption of uranium is some 30-40% less than in traditional light-water designs.

Furthermore, CANDU's can breed fuel from natural thorium, though I imagine this increases the operating costs. While this might just put some fingers in the levee, it will at least extend our current uranium reserves and potentially lay the groundwork for a more sensible nuclear program in which a higher percentage of fissionable ores are put to use in electricity production.

All in all, I think this just underscores the need to accelerate the development and implementation of advanced reactor designs and implement more efficient fuel cycles.

CANDUs running on natural uranium aka 0.7% U-235 are inefficient,
which is why nobody does it. The big fans of CANDUs are the South Koreans and the Chinese.

When you talk about a reactor that can 'breed',
the question is for who else.

The breed ration is bound to be below 1 so then really you're just talking about extending the life of the fuel in that particular reactor.

People seem to be allegric to 'dangerous' molten sodium which melts at 100 degC but oblivious to 'safe' molten lead or molten salts which are at +300 deg C.

Argentinians are also big on Heavy Water Reactors, they have two not quite three of them. Atucha II was started in 1980, it's been built for something like 30 years, which must be some kind of a record, shame on you Finns !
Atucha II

CANDU reactors can already use thorium. If CANDU reactors used the plutonium from the spent fuel from LWR within a thorium blanket and the resulting uranium 233 was also used in CANDU reactors, uranium demand would be reduced by 90%.

I should also note that there is enough uranium in seawater to provide all of the electricity and synthetic hydrocarbon fuels for the entire planet for more than 3600 years without any breeding technology or even spent fuel reprocessing at all.

http://newpapyrusmagazine.blogspot.com/2008/10/fueling-our-nuclear-futur...

http://newpapyrusmagazine.blogspot.com/2008/01/nuclear-synfuel-economy.html

hi,

oh the seawater uranium...

perhaps you might consider two things here

1) how much can one get out of it

2) what is the energy invested relative to the energy you might eventually get..

try to do the simple math on how much seawater needs to be filtered
every second to operate only a 1 GWe reactor

(hint (i gave the number in my ASPO 2007 presentation)

michael

The seawater issue was aired out here.

http://europe.theoildrum.com/node/4558#comment-413193

A breeder reactor like the IFR, using seawater to cool its condenser, could extract all its fuel from the condenser cooling water.

didn't you forget to write

"perhaps if everything works as promised
but currently we do not know?

michael

oh the seawater uranium...

We'll never use uranium from seawater. Theres far too much avaliable in low grade ores for us to consider using uranium from seawater this side of 10000 years.

Michael
Thanks for volunteering your time and expertise with this guest essay. It is appreciated.

Michael (and Francois) - thanks very much for this excellent contribution. I'm looking forward to the next installments.

I guess my main takeaway is that the IAEA, like many other governmental bodies, don't seem to care about being wrong, can't be bothered checking if they were correct and seem more interested in presenting a view of the world that is palatable than accurate.

With regard to longer term viability of fission and controls exerted by U availability I look forward to seeing international mining stats. It seems that much of the military U was mined from a relatively small number of high grade deposits that are mostly mined out. There is of course a very large mass / volume of lower grade resources. But can these ever be mined as ores? The key issue here is the amount of energy used to mine and process lower grade ores in relation to the depth and amount of overburden that needs to be removed.

The mining industry always "high grades" deposits and the Cigar Lake episode is I believe a salutary reminder of the hazards of mineral extraction. Presumably this was the main undeveloped asset Cameco had on its books. BHP Billiton also ran into problems with Olympic Dam. The future of mineral and energy extraction is going to be more difficult than what has gone before - especially with nervous banks.

As today's comments show, nuclear energy is still a "hot" and "hotly debated" issue. Yet, Michael's analysis is dry, factual, and objective. It contains lots of information that was absolutely new to me, e.g. that the foreign dependence of the U.S. and Western Europe in terms of delivery of nuclear fuel is larger than in the case of oil. This article is a true jewel!

Yes, Thank You Michael for your objective analysis. It is clear that we have another energy crunch coming in the short term right behind the oil crunch predicted by Ace for 2012.

I'll second (or third or fourth...) the generally positive evaluations of this useful article. I look forward to future portions of the series.

I'll second (or fifth or sixth...) the generally positive evaluations of this useful article. I look forward to future portions of the series.

Hi,

thanks,
don't know which crunch comes first
or perhaps all at the same time for the
winter 2012/2013 perhaps
as some "old magic" predicted

i am looking forward for the Cameco 2nd quarter report next week
and the ones from the other large uranium mining players

as i wrote I consider it as essentially impossible to extract 49000 tons of uranium
in the 2009 crisis year and the year after
lets see

michael

I think this article got published in its entirety and I'm glad about that. On reading it there are large swathes I know I agree with. Other parts I need some time to evaluate. But the important thing is all those links into the data sources - allowing those who want to dig a bit deeper the opportunity to do so.

The viability of breeders is clearly a major issue, and not one that it is easy for a layman to have an informed opinion on. So no doubt more sharp debate will follow. Time scales are all important here. What can be delivered by 2020?

Euan,
"Time scales are all important here. What can be delivered by 2020?"
This is a valid and relevant question if we are referring to nuclear being used to phase out coal CO2 before 2020.
As far as replacing FF energy we have a longer time period and the limitation is not going to be electric power generation as we have nuclear, hydro, solar and wind power that can be increased over the next 20 years to replace NG and coal.

The immediate issue is replacing the potential loss of present oil production by improved gasoline and diesel ICE efficiency, replacing ICE vehicles by PHEV and EV, increasing bio-fuels and fuel rationing. This is not really a technical issue, we certainly have the technology and resources to make this transition, but a political issue. While oil is available political action will be slow, a rapid decline in oil will result in rapid political action.

A likely scenario is going to be gasoline and diesel rationing for 10 years. Not many people still alive with first hand experience in OECD countries(all had it for several years), but from second hand stories it was not in any way the hardship envisaged by "Kunstler" and many others.

Why use inefficient rationing cards instead of using the capitalist rationing system, known as the market? As far as I know, the gasoline market has never failed us.

Price fails when there is an absolute shortage of a commodity that is difficult to substitute. The US and UK rationed many items in WWII because of experiences in WWI.

"
Not sure where this idea that ration cards are inefficient comes from? The US present rationing legislation incorporates a "white market" so that people can sell "unused rations".

As far as I know, the gasoline market has never failed us.
Gasoline lines around the block as occurred in 1970's were a sign of a failed market. Price is effective over a long period, where people can re-locate to mass-transit, buy more fuel efficient vehicles, arrange car pooling, but cannot work during a short term absolute shortage, where some will take more than their far share, or hoard fuel.

Gasoline lines around the block as occurred in 1970's were a sign of a failed market.

They occured in direct response to price controls. It wasnt a market failure so much as a policy failure.

They occured in direct response to price controls. It wasnt a market failure so much as a policy failure.

Exactly. If you worry that poor people won't afford gas you should have a more progressive tax system or higher benefits for poor people. But screwing around with the gasoline market will just create problems.

Gasoline lines around the block as occurred in 1970's were a sign of a failed market.

Nonsense. Without price controls, there wouldn't have been any lines.

cannot work during a short term absolute shortage, where some will take more than their far share, or hoard fuel.

There are no shortages if the price is adjusted to make demand and supply meet.

(You yanks should think about this come hurricane season. Punishing gas station owners for "gouging" is pretty stupid - they SHOULD raise prices to make demand and supply meet.)

Yet, Michael's analysis is dry, factual, and objective.

Dry, yes.  But I think the comments have dug up enough information contradicting his claims (including some from his own sources) that we can rule out objectivity.

may be instead of just stating something

perhaps you could explicitly state what points are not objective
(after all I only use the data from the IAEA/WNA)

the natural uranium requirements perhaps

which are may be lower for the non existing commercial reactors ..

michael
ps..
perhaps you criticize the forthcoming article
which you have not seen so far!

I think it's ok for your article being subjective to a degree. Everybody tends to select facts that support ones viewpoints. However, if you really think you are objective, then you have a problem.

Let's examine your articles conclusions:

world-wide energy end use, one finds overall a nuclear energy contribution of less than 2.5%.

The use of "energy end-use" instead of the more common "primary energy" is chosen to make nuclear seem less important. There are advantages to both viewpoints, but you devote much of your article to justifying just one. And as I pointed out, if you regard fossils as unsustainable and hydro limited, nuclear accounts for 86% of all alternative energy production.

it has decreased by about 2% from a maximum of 2658 TWhe in 2006 to 2601 TWhe in 2008.

This seems cherry-picked and I question if this is significant. However, over a longer time period, say, from 1997-2007, nuclear increased 1.4% year-on-year, on average.

Today and world wide, 48 nuclear power plants with a capacity of about 40 GWe are under construction. Only 10% of them are being constructed within OECD countries

48 reactors under construction is twice as many as just two years ago. The number of reactors in planning has also doubled. That most of them are not in OECD countries show the potential of the technology - what if OECD gets going?

However, about 100 older reactors with slightly larger capacity are reaching their retirement age during the same period.

Please note that the average rating of the 122 permanently closed commercial reactors world-wide is 300 MW. Size seems to be the driving force behind most shut-downs - if the size is too small, the profit produced does not justify re-licensing and refurbishment costs. However, the average rating of the remaining 436 reactors is 856 MW - so almost all remaining reactors are fairly large. In the US, all reactors with a rating of less than 450 MW has been shut-down.

It follows that even if all 48 reactors might be connected within the next 5 to 10 years to the electric grid, it will be difficult to maintain the current level of TWhe produced by nuclear energy.

If they come online within 5-10 years, the energy produced is guaranteed to rise. I guess there will be 10-20 shutdowns during that time, with half the average size of the new stuff.

of today is roughly 65,000 tons per year. However during the past 10 years, the world-wide uranium mines extracted, on average, only about 40,000 tons of uranium per year, and the difference had to be compensated for by secondary resources.

You have this reversed. Since uranium from secondary resources has flooded the market, uranium mining has had to compensate by shrinking.

The urgency to increase world-wide uranium mining by a large amount is well documented in the current and past Red Book editions and related official declarations. However, the latest uranium mining data indicate that new uranium mines will not be capable to compensate for the diminishing secondary uranium resources,

In-situ leaching operations are quite easy to set up and there are no reserve shortages, so I think this will resolve itself.

I think it's ok for your article being subjective to a degree. Everybody tends to select facts that support ones viewpoints. However, if you really think you are objective, then you have a problem.

for this the oil drum quote of today is what matters!

“What gets us into trouble is not what we don't know, it's what we know for sure that just ain't so.”
—Mark Twain

"objective?? well one needs to define what this stands for in this context

but in you read my article (and the next ones or the other ones
read my article on the electric grid in Europe)
) careful I try to make an objective summary of realities
according to the documents presented by the IAEA and the WNA.

thus one should try to be as objective in an analysis as possible
why don't you try the same .. I like playing chess but this is another topic

I am interested to figure out realities and discuss and improve this understanding
in discussions with others. I am not interested to ``win"!
However, ideas that the vatican is the center of the world are proven to be wrong
and yes if one can eliminate certain wrong ideas/believes that is good!

discussions about nuclear fission energy should contain many more things
like the real and imagined dangers of radiation and clearly the waste problems
and on and on..

I agree that the real and imagined dangers from coal and other energy forms including
solar panels need to be discussed in a rational approach

like the dangers from "overshoot" in general and the seemingly impossibility to
react in a rational way to it!

I believe that my article might help in understanding that nuclear fission is
1) close to nothing today
2) has no real perspective (the once through power plants at least)
3) that it creates more problems than it solves.
there is more

objective with respect to denial concerning "overshoot and dieoff".. well but this is another topic..
but read the book from W. Catton

The use of "energy end-use" instead of the more common "primary energy" is chosen to make nuclear seem less important. There are advantages to both viewpoints, but you devote much of your article to justifying just one. And as I pointed out, if you regard fossils as unsustainable and hydro limited, nuclear accounts for 86% of all alternative energy production.

as you accept I present both numbers primary and enduse and discuss it. This is a rational approach isn't it?

but if you are happy with the 14% contribution to electric energy
and that it is now less than the hydropower contribution fine with me.

but the way the IEA does it is certainly wrong .. multiplying nuclear by three and hydro by one!

would be nice if you point this out in the future when you talk about nuclear and its future!

as well as that currently nobody can imagine to replace all petrol use with nuclear (or solar) made electric energy!

this would be objective

also distinguish clearly between what can be constructed today.
what should be tried
what should be investigated and how research projects should be funded.
etc

concerning the secondary uranium resources
why don't we postpone the discussion after my next paper comes
probably early next week!)

Nuclear fission is close to nothing?

2600 billion kwh

http://www.indexmundi.com/energy.aspx?product=hydro&graph=consumption

EIA figures on hydroelectric

2006 2997.179 3.43 %

So 10-15% more hydroelectric based on billion kwh. there is no adjustment for thermal in this case. Plus there is no inclusion of the nuclear powered submarines and aircraft carriers.

there has been district heating and desalination uses for the "waste heat" from nuclear power.
See the 19 page 2002 paper at this link. [not this is an IAEA document]
http://users.ictp.it/~pub_off/lectures/lns020/Majumdar/Majumdar_2.pdf

Desalination from nuclear in Japan and other places. [WNA documents]
http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf71.html

District heating networks exist in Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovakia, Belarus, Russia and Ukraine. Denmark, Finland, Sweden, and Switzerland also have developed heating networks.

Table VI from IAEA Tecdoc 1056 (1998), as improved in ref 2, shows the
world experience of nuclear reactors in commercial district heating. Out of these 46
reactors, only two in China and Russia were used for the sole purpose of district
heating. Over twenty plants in Russia and the Bruce CANDU plants in Canada were
used for electricity generation and to provide heat for both process heat and district
heating. Steam from Bruce A plant was used for the heavy water production plant and
for the nearby agricultural and industrial complex.

there is also heat for industrial uses and there is work towards using the heat for biofuels.

If the heat is used for work purposes then it counts. As noted there is not excess heat from hydro.

as well as that currently nobody can imagine to replace all petrol use with nuclear (or solar) made electric energy!

Same for hydro. So what is your point ?
My point is that nuclear is a significant contribution and is a growing contribution especially in China, S korea, Japan and Russia.

Current Nuclear power worldwide offsets 2 billion tons of CO2 per year and the particulate air pollution that would be generated if coal was used. the US is 50% coal for electricity and the navy ships would be using diesel or bunker oil if they were not nuclear powered and China is 70-80% coal so the 24 new reactors would be mostly coal if not for the nuclear build.

nuclear creates more problems that it solves

You have not shown the evidence sufficient to make this claim.

Coal power and waste details
http://nextbigfuture.com/2009/02/coal-power-and-waste-details.html

Deaths per TWH from all power sources
http://nextbigfuture.com/2008/03/deaths-per-twh-for-all-energy-sources.html

Failures of large dams, while rare, are potentially serious — the Banqiao Dam failure in Southern China resulted in the deaths of 171,000 people and left millions homeless. Dams may be subject to enemy bombardment during wartime, sabotage and terrorism. Smaller dams and micro hydro facilities are less vulnerable to these threats. The creation of a dam in a geologically inappropriate location may cause disasters like the one of the Vajont Dam in Italy, where almost 2000 people died, in 1963.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydroelectricity#Environmental_damage

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydroelectricity#Countries_with_the_most_hy...

Compare the cost benefits against the other power sources and the capacity for the others to be scaled up to address the needs of civilization and each country. You talk about die off and overshoot but do not address the need for power relative to those issues.

China is adding a three Gorges in hydro power every two years and will do so from now until 2030.
I am OK with cost benefit of this, but there are non financial costs.

You have left the many of the questions and challenges posed in my postings unanswered.
I asked you to do a reactor by reactor analysis of shutdown instead of your crappy average historical life 100 reactor guestimate.

I asked you to address the work and reality of operating life extensions.
54 US plants had license renewals, 18 are currently apply for renewals and 24 renewals applications are expected as they reach the point in operation where they need to apply
http://www.nei.org/resourcesandstats/nuclear_statistics/licenserenewal/

I asked you to address uprating and annular/dual cooled fuel.

I also provided information that the Indian reactors were slightly delayed into late 2009 and 2010 but they have uranium supplies now from Russia and their under used reactor fleet is powering up this year.

You are not doing the work to confirm your points when challenges are brought.

I asked you to do a reactor by reactor analysis of shutdown instead of your crappy average historical life 100 reactor guestimate.

Did somebody question your prophet that you're getting all riled up?

Well, if you try to be objective, you should try harder.

1) close to nothing today
2) has no real perspective (the once through power plants at least)
3) that it creates more problems than it solves.

1. As I said, nuclear and hydro totally dominates the non-fossil energy production.
2. I guess you mean that it doesn't scale without breeding? That depends on how much nuclear you require. Certainly, for true unlimited power, breeding and reprocessing is necessary. But currently, new plants can be built without any worries of fuel scarcity.
3. That is a very strange statement.

but the way the IEA does it is certainly wrong .. multiplying nuclear by three and hydro by one!

Is it really? It seems to multiply both by three:
http://www.eia.doe.gov/pub/international/iealf/table29.xls

as well as that currently nobody can imagine to replace all petrol use with nuclear (or solar) made electric energy!

I can imagine it.

I try to answer all in one!

......................................................
Nuclear fission is close to nothing?
.....................................................
2600 billion kwh

http://www.indexmundi.com/energy.aspx?product=hydro&graph=consumption

EIA figures on hydroelectric

2006 2997.179 (billion kwh added by me )

3.43 % (3.43% of what added by me)

*****************************

great here we have hard numbers hydro is 10-15% larger than nulcear!
>So 10-15% more hydroelectric based on billion kwh. there is no adjustment for thermal in this case. Plus there is no inclusion of >the nuclear powered submarines and aircraft carriers.

good give hard numbers here I am happy to add them to the electric energy one
is it 1% or 0.1% or less of the waste heat (and the other uses.. how many ships are powered by nuclear give the % as well!)

>but the way the IEA does it is certainly wrong .. multiplying nuclear by three and hydro by one!
***************************************************************
you reply:
Is it really? It seems to multiply both by three:
http://www.eia.doe.gov/pub/international/iealf/table29.xls

**************************************************************

my answer:
do you understand that their is the
IEA = international energy agency of all OECD countries (the USA is a member!)

and the USA EIA? (energy information agency)

but in case here is the IEA
http://www.iea.org/Textbase/stats/defs/sources/nuclear.htm
Nuclear shows the primary heat equivalent of the electricity produced by a nuclear power plant with an average thermal efficiency of 33 per cent.

Hydro

http://www.iea.org/Textbase/stats/defs/sources/hydro.htm

Hydro shows the energy content of the electricity produced in hydro power plants. Hydro output excludes output from pumped storage plants.

look at the result
http://www.iea.org/Textbase/speech/2008/Birol_WEO2008_PressConf.pdf
page 2 for example
nuclear is about a factor of 3 above hydro

despite the correctly given numbers of kwh (el) which for hydro is about 10-15% larger!

http://www.iea.org/textbase/stats/graphresults.asp?COUNTRY_CODE=29

compare nuclear and hydro

and as has been said above:
hard electric energy numbers are roughly
nuclear made 2600 TWHe 14% of all electric
Hydro 2900 TWhe 16% or so (don't have my pocket calculator with me)

>You are not doing the work to confirm your points when challenges are brought.

which points you talk about?

do you agree that total power of nukes according to the PRIS (IAEA) database is now
less than it was in 2008? (officially 327 GWe ---> 370 GWe now ..
http://www.iaea.org/programmes/a2/
if not why not do you have a better data base?

you wrote:

>I also provided information that the Indian reactors were slightly delayed into late 2009 and 2010 but they have uranium supplies >now from Russia and their under used reactor fleet is powering up this year.

thanks for confirming that a) they are late and b) that they indeed had uranium supply problems and
were running on 50% or so..

for ...

>
>To believe that your carefully selected set of facts makes a strong case for these conclusions shows a lack of objectivity.
>
>Lets focus on number 3.
>
>Nationwide, 700 premature deaths, 30,000 asthma attacks and 400 pediatric emergency room visits each year are linked to >current pollution from six Maryland power plants

thanks again for providing detailed numbers on how coal kills!

as far as I know I did not write anything about coal and its claimed advantages!

in the contrary I think that coal is bad and that new coal fired power plants
will make a bad situation worse!

thus no coal and no nuclear (because of lack of uranium and lack of "will and lots of other problems)

this brings us to the comment:
--------------------------------------
Wind power capacity:
2007: 94 GW
2008: 121 GW

Grid-connected solar PV capacity:
2007: 7.5 GW
2008: 13 GW

Solar hot water capacity:
2007: 126 GWth
2008: 145 GWth

----------------------------

not really the topic of my paper
but please
it would help of not mixing

maximal power capacity
and real produced energy!

here I must defend nuclear somehow

one could almost use energy= power times time
ignoring the capacity factor which is high for nuclear
and low for solar and wind!

it still ignores the problem of base load production of nuclear in
France for example were electric energy at night is somehow wasted
but lets ignore this little detail for now!

finally, I do not disagree the alternatives to keep on going
in todays way are not existing
neither with nuclear nor with wind and solar

but do we really want to continue our wasteful way of life
and its consequences
for some more years (if we could)

michael

Ship efficiency is usually measured in pounds of fuel per horsepower per hour. Roughly speaking, 0.25 lbs/hp/hr is considered to be pretty good, and 100,000 hp is a low-side estimate of an average container ship's horsepower. This then works out to 25,000 pounds of marine diesel fuel per hour. Marine diesel weighs about 7lbs/gallon, which gets us about 3600 gallons per burned per hour. A common cruise speed is 25 knots or 28.75mph. To make the math easier, let's call it 30mph. What this means is that for a container ship to travel 30 miles, it'll burn through 3600 gallons, which is the same as burning 120 gallons to go one mile . There are 5280 feet in a mile, so if 120 gallons is good for 5280 feet, then one gallon is burned every 44 feet.

http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_much_fuel_does_a_container_ship_burn

US nuclear navy has gone 136 million miles on nuclear power. close to triple that figure for US and USSR/Russia/UK/France etc... 300 million miles.

120 gallons to go one mile.

36 billion gallons of diesel not used.

Currently about 220 nuclear reactors of about 30-50MWe each. The cold war peak was about 600 nuclear ships (submarines mostly). About 7GW total now but was as high as 20 GW.

==
Industrial and process heat:

Several co-generation nuclear power plants in operation already supply process heat to industrial users. The largest projects implemented are in Canada (Bruce, heavy-water production and other industrial/agricultural users) and in Kazakstan (Aktau, desalination).

The regional heating usage is about 4.4 GWt from the article I previously provided.

New plants are incorporating cogeneration into the plans. China's pebble beds will be have industrial heat usage.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calvert_Cliffs_Nuclear_Power_Plant
Unique to Unit 3 will be a desalination plant to produce potable water using reverse osmosis. The desalination plant will produce up to 1,250,000 gallon of potable water per day for Unit 3 and supporting facilities with total dissolved solids (TDS) less than 400 parts per million (ppm). The source for the desalination plant will be the brackish bay water from the makeup supply to the circulating water system. The TDS for the brackish bay water runs 10,000-15,000 ppm. The potable water will be distributed as makeup water for the demineralized water system, miscellaneous potable water services, fire protection and source water for the four ultimate heatsink cooling towers used during normal shutdown and power operation.

http://bioage.typepad.com/greencarcongress/docs/IAEA07.pdf

New large ethanol plants require ~100 MW(t) of steam
The idea of using nuclear power plants to coproduce electricity and heat is not new. Since the beginning of the development of nuclear energy [8 *the link I already provided on non-electric uses of nuclear energy, INTERNATIONAL ATOMIC ENERGY AGENCY, Market Potential for Non-Electric Applications of Nuclear Energy, Technical Report Series No. 410, Vienna, Austria (2002], steam has been used for district heating (45 reactors), desalting (10 reactors), and industrial purposes (25 reactors). Canadian nuclear power plants have been used to produce electricity and steam, with the steam used for the isotopic separation of heavy water and other industrial purposes. This included the use of steam from the Bruce Nuclear Power Station in Canada for about a decade for the production of ethanol. Plants in Switzerland and Russia produce both electricity and district heat. In the United States, a two-unit nuclear plant was partially built at Midland, Michigan, to produce electricity and steam for the Dow Chemical Company. However, applications have been limited. One reason is that the prices of fossil fuels have been low. Equally important, very few markets exist for large quantities of steam. It is not usually worth the effort to modify a nuclear power plant producing 1500 to 4500 MW of steam to produce a few megawatts of heat to meet a local-industry or district-heating need.

The growth of the ethanol market may soon create a major market for cogeneration of steam from nuclear power plants. The ultimate size of this market is measured in hundreds of gigawatts of thermal energy and thus may become the dominant cogeneration market for nuclear heat. The corn-to-ethanol plants provide the near-term market for nuclear steam. The much larger market, the future cellulose-to-ethanol plants, is a longer-term market for nuclear steam that required development of lignin-to-fuels or other lignin-to-other-products.

Note: we are talking now to 2020. So the continued growth of biofuels is likely to see the cogeneration market develop substantially. Your case that it is insignificant and will stay insignificant is not likely to hold. Plus the GWt for heating, industrial and desal is still about equal to all of the solar thermal power in the world.

==

You see I have answers to your questions but you are unable to find the answers to mine and cannot even find the questions when they are listed below the complaint about lack of answers.

Present details on your list of reactors to be shut between now and 2020.
Operating efficiency increases likely for Ukraine and other countries.
The uprating programs in US, France, S korea,Spain and other places.

You have an implied presentation that because there was a lull in reactor completions in 2008 and so far into 2009 that this has some broader implication. You have not acknowledged that India has resolved its fuel issue and is powering up to full capacity. You have not acknowledged the evidence that reactors scheduled for 2009 completion are happening in 2010 or in late 2009.

====
You will notice that I am not biased against hydro or other power sources. I can present the facts for all of the energy sources and let the conclusions come from that. You are looking for numbers against nuclear and for hydro. This is bias.

your information is incomplete. thus you are thanking me for filling the gaps in your very incomplete and biased presentation. But you are not considering the evidence but are sticking with your preformed assumptions. This is bias and lack of objectivity.

You talk about the downsides of nuclear but ignore the downsides of hydro. I see no comment from you about the 170,000 deaths from the China dam accident or other hydro accidents.

Yes, hydro is bigger now for electricity (I think that is fine. I like Hydro). Hydro is keeping it pace and share because China is building so much of it.

But China has indicated that Hydro maxes out in 2030 at about 400 GWe. China will still need more power thus China is building out nuclear, wind and everything else.

--------------------------------------
Wind power capacity:
2007: 94 GW
2008: 121 GW

Grid-connected solar PV capacity:
2007: 7.5 GW
2008: 13 GW

Solar hot water capacity:
2007: 126 GWth
2008: 145 GWth
----------------------------

not really the topic of my paper
but please
it would help of not mixing

maximal power capacity
and real produced energy!

Actually I haven't mixed anything.
Power is capacity and given in GW.
GWe = Electric power.
GWth = Thermal power.

Yes renewables have a lower capacity factor than nuclear and thus generate less energy at the same power rating.

But please let's go back to the facts:
It's absurd when someone claims that nuclear is about to surpass renewables, eventhough 70 GW of renewables were added last year in one single year - regardless of the capacity factor.
http://www.ren21.net/pdf/RE_GSR_2009_Update.pdf

but do we really want to continue our wasteful way of life and its consequences for some more years (if we could)

No we don't have to. We can have a high quality of life without requiring lots of non-renewable energy. Well, at least if flying around the world and commuting in a Hummer is not our hobby. (But who knows maybe we will have cheap nuclear powered passenger aircrafts running on free-thorium-fuel anytime soon or maybe a free-thorium powered Hummer-Nucleon...)

Between your rambling style and your refusal to learn how to use the <blockquote> tag correctly in comments, what you say is barely coherent at the best of times.  I expect nothing of value from you in the future (which means I cannot be disappointed).

For posters for whom English is not their first language, I always make allowances. (How manny times has Magnus Redin spelled many with two n's ?)

Language skills, in a foreign language, are not a valid measure of thought and analytical ability.

Alan

PS: I always post a link full length. Never bothered to learn how to html the link into a highlighted phrase. Html skills are also a limited indicator.

I believe that my article might help in understanding that nuclear fission is
1) close to nothing today
2) has no real perspective (the once through power plants at least)
3) that it creates more problems than it solves.
there is more

To believe that your carefully selected set of facts makes a strong case for these conclusions shows a lack of objectivity.

Lets focus on number 3.

Nationwide, 700 premature deaths, 30,000 asthma attacks and 400 pediatric emergency room visits each year are linked to current pollution from six Maryland power plants

http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/feb2006/2006-02-15-02.asp

If the utilities had built nuclear plants instead, or converted them to nuclear,

http://coal2nuclear.com/carma_1.htm

they would be avoiding those deaths and adverse health effects, reducing mountain top removal and preventing a large flow of fossil CO2 into the atmosphere.

Please list and QUANTIFY the problems that override these advantages.

Michael posted his response to this comment elsewhere. To avoid confusion here it is.

thanks again for providing detailed numbers on how coal kills!
as far as I know I did not write anything about coal and its claimed advantages!
in the contrary I think that coal is bad and that new coal fired power plants
will make a bad situation worse!
thus no coal and no nuclear (because of lack of uranium and lack of "will and lots of other problems)

Your point 3 is,

3) that it [fission] creates more problems than it solves.

Replacing coal plants or refiting them with nuclear steam supply systems resolves some very big problems with coal.

If your point 3 is valid, replacing coal heat with fission heat produces even bigger problems. For point 3 to be true this statement must be true regardless of whether or not there are better solutions than fission.

1… List and QUANTIFY the problems with fission that override the benefit of replacing coal heat with fission heat.

1a… At what price does uranium become too expensive?

2… what is your plan for eliminating coal and nuclear while meeting the growing demand for reliable controllable affordable predictable electricity in the developing world?

2a… What is the cost of that plan?

2b… What are the potential problems of that plan and why are you sure that those problems will prove to be less than the problems with fission?

I doubt that his rebuttal will be any more coherent than what we have seen in the comments thus far.

I am beginning to doubt that any more parts of his thesis will even appear on TOD.  This one has been such an embarrassment that the editors may decide that discretion is the better part of valor and not publish them here.  If they do not agree with my appraisal, I am certainly primed to provide critical—and I do mean critical—reviews of their contents.

great post!

some information you do not like and you want to censor!

why don't you reveal your true name affiliation and other background?

michael

Yes, Engineer-Poet spend lots of time commenting here because he recieves $$$ from the nuclear industry, Big Oil, freemasons, Jews, CIA, and the lizards. Makes perfect sense.

I didn't say anything like that!

but in any case why hiding identity?

You (and others) are afraid of what?

michael

My name is available if you just check my e-mail adress.

I guess some of the earlier registered users didn't want to out themselves back then, because when I started looking at Peak Oil back in 2004 people looked at you like you were about as sane as the 9/11 conspiracy nuts.

some information you do not like and you want to censor!

Information?  A great deal of what you wrote is misinformation, such as the claims about limited uranium-mining capacity and mining's impacts.  I think anyone who posts misinformation should be embarrassed, and organizations should refuse to stand behind it.  I think The Oil Drum should have enough regard for its own reputation to insist that its authors adhere to some reasonable standards, and those standards should be higher than what you've shown in this piece.

why don't you reveal your true name affiliation and other background?

I have no affilitations except with TOD and my own blog.  Do you think that your misinformation will look better if you can find some dirt you can use to attack me personally?  Notice that I have attacked your claims (sometimes using your own sources), not you.  Nothing about my name or history—OR YOURS—is the least bit relevant to that.  My work and yours stands or falls on its own merits.  Deal with it.

If you think your work cannot withstand intense scrutiny, you should think twice about publishing it.  Even here.

I would strongly support publishing the balance of his articles !

This is not like the apologia for Texaco in Ecuador that Gail published. It is a valid and well supported thesis.

Best Hopes for No Censorship,

Alan

PS: I would give MichaelD a slight advantage over Engineer-Poet so far. E-P found some nits to pick, but his larger attacks were not convincing to me.

to make it clear (point 3)

only one nuclear weapon can ruin your day!

and we have 20000 or so of them!

enough to make the final dieoff and very fast!

if this is not enough of a problem
look at the mess with the nuclear power plant in Iran
but this is certainly another topic!

concerning India and the other new nuclear weapon states
and the NPT treaty

the "agreement" made with India clearly violates all previous
agreements of NPT countries
not enough that the 5 official bomb states
violate the NPT contract since ever!
(the nuclear disarmament)

hope this is clear enough!

michael

Commercial Nuclear power plants do not lead to more nuclear weapons and more nuclear weapons do not lead to increased risk of nuclear war.

Countries get nuclear bombs before they get commercial nuclear power.

Also, the risk profile (which is low ) does not increase when China say builds 200GWe commercial nuclear reactors by 2030. If anything risk of war is less because China and the US will have less need to compete in the middle east for oil and fossil fuel resources.

Nuclear proliferation: It was Pakistani scientist Khan in the seventies who proliferated the technology to N Korea, Iran and Iraq. It is the specific knowledge of how to make the bombs and not the commercial nuclear power plants or commercially enriched fuel.

US - Hiroshima/Nagasaki bombs before commercial nuclear power plants.
N Korea bombs but no commercial nuclear power plants.
Go down the list of countries. Bombs before commercial nuclear power plants or
bombs without commercial nuclear power plants or some places like Canada
commercial nuclear power plants but no nuclear bombs.

There is no linkage between commercial nuclear power plants and nuclear bombs and nuclear war.
There is some common technological base but the actual development paths are different.
It is highly inefficient to go to nuclear bomb materials via commercial nuclear reactors.

You can go after the petrochemical industry for fossil fuel power plants versus the chemical bombs and weapons made for military. The linkages there are probably more direct.

Also. conventional non-nuclear weapons since 1945 have killed about 200 million people. Nuclear weapons have killed less than 200,000.
Look at the deaths per Terawatt hour for each energy source. About 200 million deaths from fossil fuel air pollution since 1945 as well. About 500,000 deaths from mining accidents. Plus 5% of the oil usage is from moving about 6 billion tons of coal from mines to plants every year. 40% of all freight rail in the US and China is for moving coal. There is also coal moved by barge and truck. the truck movement causes more traffic deaths. 7% of the Appalachian forest have been blown into splinters and muck with mountain top removal coal mining.

You need to take an objective look at the numbers. I already provided you with the link to the deaths per TWH by source.

Well.

if I understand correctly (please correct) your view is

nuclear weapons are not so bad in any case
200 k death from the bombing is negligible to many other things.

I just do not share your view!
(and I hope that we never will see my view coming true!)

thus, I deeply hope that the "missing uranium" during the coming years
will come from the nuclear disarmament.

Otherwise I guess you are afraid of Iran completing their nuclear power plant
and their enrichment program (far away from bomb building).

Do you suggest bombing Irans nuclear installations
will prevent Iran from getting the bomb?

please clarify!

michael

Khan is the link between civilian nukes and bombs in the hands of North Korea.

The French invented centrifugal uranium enrichment (over US objections, because it would lead to proliferation). Khan got that technology (vague memory, he worked in France on the project).

First back home in Pakistan, then for sale to highest bidders.

Alan

Since you have accused me of trolling, I am now on alert.  I will pay close attention to your future posts, and will spend extra time to read them thoroughly and provide the sort of peer-review which was obviously lacking in this one.  As a contributor I can read stories in the queue, so I can make my critiques in a much more timely fashion than I did this time.

You will not be pleased (and you may not be the only one), but pleasing you is not my job.

And as I pointed out, if you regard fossils as unsustainable and hydro limited, nuclear accounts for 86% of all alternative energy production.

Unless you have certain proof that it will stop raining anytime soon, you definitely cannot exclude hydro from the alternative energy production. Besides: Every single power plant option is limited as long you do not have limitless capital (especially those with high capital costs and long construction time...).

And even if your figure were correct (which is doubtful), it doesn't appear that nuclear can keep your 'alternative' energy production share, considering this growth:

Wind power capacity:
2007: 94 GW
2008: 121 GW

Grid-connected solar PV capacity:
2007: 7.5 GW
2008: 13 GW

Solar hot water capacity:
2007: 126 GWth
2008: 145 GWth

Besides there also growth in biomass, geothermal, CSP as well as development in wave power.
http://www.ren21.net/pdf/RE_GSR_2009_Update.pdf
http://www.pelamiswave.com/

Unless you have certain proof that it will stop raining anytime soon, it's completely absurd to exclude hydro from the alternative energy production. Besides every single power plant option is limited as long you don't have limitless capital.

Sorry, hydro stands at 2% of primary energy production. It won't get further than this - it won't replace coal and NG, since there are not enough rivers to dam while humanity's appetite for energy is still growing. Nuclear, on the other hand, is not really limited. (Capital limitations are irrelevant in this context.)

And even if your figure were correct (which is doubtful), it doesn't appear that nuclear can keep your 'alternative' energy production share, considering this growth:

Yes, I agree. But nuclear is so far THE dominating fossil alternative. It remains to be seen if intermittent alternatives scale beyond, say, 15-20% of grid capacity.

(Capital limitations are irrelevant in this context.)

Capital limitations are relevant in any context.

Nope.

Ok, show us where you can get capital intensive nuclear power plants practically for free.

And show us where nuclear power plants be built over night in order to prevent any interest on the enormous capital costs.

As I said, none of this is relevant in the context of my post. Hydro cannot power the human civilisation - not enough rivers. Nuclear can - enough fertile material and a cost that is reasonable in comparison to world GDP.

As I said, none of this is relevant in the context of my post.

If you disregard tcapital costs, decommissioning costs, fuel costs and repository costs than your post is simply irrelevant and ludicrous.

Nuclear can

Actually, you do need to proof this and show us the cheap nuclear reactor which uses nuclear fuel much more efficiently and is commercially available.

In addition, you will need to show us, how you can meanwhile prevent the world from investing in efficiency and investing in solar thermal, PV, wind, biomass, geothermal and wave, since all those resources can exceed the world's energy demand.

Btw, biomass can power aircrafts. But when is the nuclear powered passenger aircraft going to take off.

If you disregard tcapital costs, decommissioning costs, fuel costs and repository costs than your post is simply irrelevant and ludicrous.

What is ludicrous is your obnoxious way of ignoring my argument and talking about other stuff that you think suits you better.

Actually, you do need to proof this and show us the cheap nuclear reactor which uses nuclear fuel much more efficiently and is commercially available.

No, I don't. I said hydro can't power humanity but that nuclear can. I stand by this and believe it is self evident - plenty of arguments are available in this discussion thread and I don't need to repeat them.

In addition, you will need to show us, how you can meanwhile prevent the world from investing in efficiency and investing in solar thermal, PV, wind, biomass, geothermal and wave, since all those resources can exceed the world's energy demand.

No, I don't, and yes they do, unlike hydro. But wind and solar are intermittent, geothermal and wave are too damned expensive and biomass we'd mostly like to leave be for environmental reasons.

Btw, biomass can power aircrafts. But when is the nuclear powered passenger aircraft going to take off.

No idea. Probably the NASA 40 kWe, eight-year-life trashcan-sized nuke would be good enough. But more likely is nuclear synthesized fuels.

What is ludicrous is your obnoxious way of ignoring my argument
What is ludicrous is your obnoxious way of ignoring capital costs, decommissioning costs, fuel costs and repository costs.

plenty of arguments are available in this discussion thread and I don't need to repeat them.
You mean the msr-nuclear reactor that has been invented in the 1950s, but is not yet commercially available?

The world may not have the patience to wait for it and will probably just move on with efficiency and renewable options available now.

But wind and solar are intermittent,
Besides that PV produces power every single day and interconnected wind farms provide baseload:

Seven German nuclear plants have failed to generate any electricity this month due to technical breakdowns. They have about half the production capacity of Germany's 17 nuclear reactors, but Germany did not suffer any power shortages.

http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=47909

No idea. Probably the NASA 40 kWe, eight-year-life trashcan-sized nuke would be good enough.
For a passenger aircraft you need more like 2 x 40'000 kW.

And general public may not accept a passenger aircraft flying with 8000 trashcan-sized nukes, besides the fact that it will most probably not be economical and too heavy to ever take off anyways.

What is ludicrous is your obnoxious way of ignoring capital costs, decommissioning costs, fuel costs and repository costs.

You have a problem, man. You really do.

You mean the msr-nuclear reactor that has been invented in the 1950s, but is not yet commercially available?

For instance.

The world may not have the patience to wait for it and will probably just move on with efficiency and renewable options available now.

And the conventional nuclear. Then, when peak fossils really hits us, we'll see what happens.

Besides that PV produces power every single day and interconnected wind farms provide baseload

PV highly variable every single day, and, if I remember correctly, 30% of the average output of interconnected wind farms can provide baseload.

Seven German nuclear plants have failed to generate any electricity this month

More nukes, fewer standing still. Sure, you could build very many of one type, discover a common flaw and then have to decide whether you want blackouts or risk continue operating the flawed plants while repairing a few at a time. Such things have to be taken into consideration. But wind has a more fundamental, guaranteed problem with intermittance.

For a passenger aircraft you need more like 2 x 40'000 kW. And general public may not accept a passenger aircraft flying with 8000 trashcan-sized nukes, besides the fact that it will most probably not be economical and too heavy to ever take off anyways.

2*40000/40 = 1000. Also, that were kWe from a stirling engine and with eight years of life. With a smaller plane, perhaps some sort of direct drive and a slightly larger nuke more optimized for power than for long life, I guess it could be done. There has been research and prototypes done on nuclear aircraft by both Americans and Soviets, and actually, the LFTR designs seems to have originated in such research. But this is all also beside the point.

And the conventional nuclear. Then, when peak fossils really hits us, we'll see what happens.

It possibly already hit us. But assuming it hasn't so if we prohibit renewables and efficiency now and invest all we have in conventional nuclear power plants we will be better off eventhough that will take more time and is more costly and we don't reduce the dependence on foreign uranium mining which currently delivers only 2/3 of the uranium demand?

PV highly variable every single day
No since it is obviously interconnected it levels out. Still better than these guys which shut off completely and unexpectedly:

Seven German nuclear plants have failed to generate any electricity this month due to technical breakdowns. They have about half the production capacity of Germany's 17 nuclear reactors, but Germany did not suffer any power shortages.

http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=47909

But wind has a more fundamental, guaranteed problem with intermittance.
No it doesn't because as opposed to unplanned nuclear power plant shut downs, interconnected wind farms always deliver predictable electricity.

2*40000/40 = 1000.
Actually that is 2000 not 1000.

With a smaller plane, perhaps some sort of direct drive and a slightly larger nuke more optimized for power than for long life, I guess it could be done.
A smaller plane won't be economical and more power density/less life will increase the risk of failure...

There has been research and prototypes done on nuclear aircraft by both Americans and Soviets
These were military applications and none of those actually propelled an aircraft.

so if we prohibit renewables and efficiency now and invest all we have in conventional nuclear power plants we will be better off eventhough that will take more time and is more costly and we don't reduce the dependence on foreign uranium mining which currently delivers only 2/3 of the uranium demand?

1. Why prohibit renewables and efficiency? Just stop subsidising stuff and streamline or abolish red tape.
2. Nuclear is cheaper than wind, solar and so on. It is also cheaper than some, but not all, "negawatts".
3. Foreign is no problem, especially not for nuclear. I'm a foreigner. So are you and everybody else.

PV highly variable every single day
No since it is obviously interconnected it levels out.

You make no sense.

Seven German nuclear plants

Do you know you are a repetitive spamming bastard?

No it doesn't because as opposed to unplanned nuclear power plant shut downs, interconnected wind farms always deliver predictable electricity.

Your non-existant interconnected farms doesn't always deliver predictable energy and even when they do, the predictable variations have to be balanced.

Just stop subsidising stuff

In that case nuclear power plants like these won't be built.

Florida Power and Light estimates its two new plants will cost as much as $24 billion. Progress Energy projects that its new plants will cost at least $14 billion.

Progress Energy spokesman Buddy Eller says that because of those high costs, if it weren't for the Florida law, passed in 2006, his firm wouldn't have considered the project.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=89169837&ps=rs

2. Nuclear is cheaper than wind, solar and so on. It is also cheaper than some, but not all, "negawatts".

No.

According to this study wind power costs between 3 and 6.4 cents per kWh (2006).
http://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy07osti/41435.pdf

According to this study, new nuclear costs between 25 and 30 cents per kWh:
http://tinyurl.com/9q5ge2

Foreign is no problem, especially not for nuclear.
Dependence on limited mining capacity is a problem.

bastard?
Just because you don't like facts is no reason to insult me.

Your non-existant interconnected farms
Actually over 130 GW of wind power is connected to the grid:
www.ren21.net/pdf/RE_GSR_2009_Update.pdf

doesn't always deliver predictable energy
Weather forecasts are actually pretty predictable.

and even when they do, the predictable variations have to be balanced.
And unplanned nuclear shut downs have to be balanced too.

Just stop subsidising stuff

In that case nuclear power plants like these won't be built.

Yes it will. The law you refer to isn't a subsidy, it lessens taxes and regulations.

According to this study, new nuclear costs between 25 and 30 cents per kWh

That study is pure bullshit and you know it. Please try to be honest.

Actually over 130 GW of wind power is connected to the grid:

That is not the same as "interconnected farms".

Dependence on limited mining capacity is a problem.

When have nukes shut down due to limited mining capacity?

Just because you don't like facts is no reason to insult me.

I insult you because you are a repetitive spamming bastard, not because i don't like facts. (I do like facts, btw, which is why I can add "lying" to the factually correct insults.)

doesn't always deliver predictable energy
Weather forecasts are actually pretty predictable.

"Pretty" doesn't really cut it.

and even when they do, the predictable variations have to be balanced.
And unplanned nuclear shut downs have to be balanced too.

Show me a region that balance as much wind as France balances nuclear power.

The law you refer to isn't a subsidy it lessens taxes and regulations

According to the facts it is a subsidy and is not based on taxes or regulations:

Progress Energy and Florida Power and Light. FPL's proposal is the one approved last week by Florida regulators. The plants would benefit from federal subsidies and also a new state law. In 2006, Florida's legislature passed a measure that allows utilities to recover from ratepayers the cost of plant construction when it's incurred — years before the plant goes online.

http://www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?storyId=89169837

That is not the same as "interconnected farms".
The grid is interconnected and so is anything connected to it.

"Pretty" doesn't really cut it.
Actually, unplanned nuclear power shut downs cut it even less or have you already forgotten:

Seven German nuclear plants have failed to generate any electricity this month due to technical breakdowns. They have about half the production capacity of Germany's 17 nuclear reactors, but Germany did not suffer any power shortages.

http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=47909

That study is pure bullshit and you know it. Please try to be honest.
Actually this study is based on facts from the nuclear power industry:
http://tinyurl.com/9q5ge2
And the Department of Energy is definitely more credible than some anonymous nobody:
http://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy07osti/41435.pdf

bastard
As I said: Insulting me doesn't change the facts which you prefer to ignore or dismiss without having any credentials to back it up.

France balances nuclear power.
Fortunately France is not alone and is interconnected with many countries with pump storage lakes and gas power plants helping with France's balancing needs.

According to the facts it is a subsidy and is not based on taxes or regulations:

No, you claimed the Florida law is a subsidy, which it is not. What you quote, being allowed to accumulate profits to pay for future investments, is quite normal, not a subsidy.

The grid is interconnected and so is anything connected to it.

Again, that is not what is meant by "interconnected farms". What is meant by that is a vastly improved grid that is able to balance large amounts of wind with other large amounts of wind across continents.

I've noted that your thinking seems to be quite rigid, that you interpret everything by the letter and believe any extreme figures on the Internet that support your view. Not a good combination. I also seem to remember a previous conversation with you that ended in much the same way as this.

Seven German nuclear plants

Has anyone mentioned that you are a repetitive spamming bastard?

Actually this study is based on facts from the nuclear power industry:

Please continue citing extreme outliers instead of mainstream thought on subjects.

Insulting me doesn't change the facts which you prefer to ignore or dismiss without having any credentials to back it up.

I don't ignore any facts - not your spam nor anything else. If you want me to comment more on something, then say so and motivate it instead of spamming us with the same text dozens of times!

Fortunately France is not alone and is interconnected with many countries with pump storage lakes and gas power plants helping with France's balancing needs.

According to CIA world factbook, France produced 570 TWh, imported just 11 TWh and exported 68 TWh. Now, having to import/export 2%/12% of production when 80% is nuclear doesn't seem to point at a balancing problem.

In contrast, Denmark, the world leader in wind electricity (percentage-wise) had to import/export around 30% of their production which is 20% wind.

No, you claimed the Florida law is a subsidy, which it is not. What you quote, being allowed to accumulate profits to pay for future investments, is quite normal, not a subsidy.
Actually it is state subsidy on top of a federal subsidy and it allows the utilities to charge the ratepayers the costs of the plant construction years before the plant goes online - if you had cared to read it.

Progress Energy and Florida Power and Light. FPL's proposal is the one approved last week by Florida regulators. The plants would benefit from federal subsidies and also a new state law. In 2006, Florida's legislature passed a measure that allows utilities to recover from ratepayers the cost of plant construction when it's incurred — years before the plant goes online.

Again, that is not what is meant by "interconnected farms". What is meant by that is a vastly improved grid that is able to balance large amounts of wind with other large amounts of wind across continents.
Actually the 'interconnected wind farm' study is based on only 19 sites in the midwestern US:

The array consequently behaves more and more similarly to a single farm with steady wind speed and thus steady deliverable wind power.
In this study, benefits of interconnecting wind farms were evaluated for 19 sites, located in the midwestern United States, with annual average wind speeds at 80 m above ground, the hub height of modern wind turbines, greater than 6.9 m/s (class 3 or greater). It was found that an average of 33% and a maximum of 47% of yearly averaged wind power from interconnected farms can be used as reliable, baseload electric power.

and:

In Spain, one of the leading countries for wind power production (American Wind Energy Association 2004; Energy Information Administration
2004), the combined output of 81% of the nation’s wind farms is remarkably smooth, and sudden wind power swings are eliminated.

http://www.stanford.edu/group/efmh/winds/aj07_jamc.pdf

Also:
http://www.reuters.com/article/rbssIndustryMaterialsUtilitiesNews/idUSL1...

Spain's biggest utility, Iberdrola (IBE.MC), derived 9.7 percent of all the power it produced in Spain in the first quarter from hydroelectric stations, down 20.8 percent for 2007 as a whole.

Wind power has done much to fill the gap recently and has set new generation records by providing as much as 24 percent of total demand in a given day.

If you want me to comment more on something, then say so
Actually, responding with facts instead of dismissing arguments with bullshit or bastard may be a good start.

Please continue citing extreme outliers instead of mainstream thought on subjects.
If you believe the studies are wrong and the Department of Energy is lying than proof it and deliver credible alternative sources.

France produced 570 TWh, imported just 11 TWh and exported 68 TWh.
France had a net export of 10% and Denmark a net-export of well over 20% of electricity in relation to its electricity consumption:
http://www.indexmundi.com/g/g.aspx?v=82&c=da&l=en
Denmark could replace some of its fossil heaters and CHP plants with heat pumps which can store surplus electric energy in heat energy.

I don't ignore any facts
You either ignore them or dismiss them without having any credentials to back them up or you simply insult me.

I've noted that your thinking seems to be quite rigid, that you interpret new nuclear power plants and not-commercially-available nuclear power plants contrary to the facts as cheap alternatives and ignore and dismiss facts about any other alternative options including efficiency available now. Not a good combination. I also seem to remember a previous conversation with you that ended in much the same way as this.

Actually it is state subsidy on top of a federal subsidy and it allows the utilities to charge the ratepayers the costs of the plant construction years before the plant goes online - if you had cared to read it.

So, if the state of Washington allows Microsoft to charge customers arbitrary amounts of money for Windows XP, money which Microsoft may use to develop and produce Windows Vista years before Windows Vista is available in stores, that is a state subsidy? Ok, thanks for clarifying this.

Actually the 'interconnected wind farm' study is based on only 19 sites in the midwestern US

Yes, but that is a theoretical calculation that tells you what would happen if you did such interconnections with a strong enough grid.

It was found that an average of 33% and a maximum of 47% of yearly averaged wind power from interconnected farms can be used as reliable, baseload electric power.

And with that, they seem to mean that on average, those 19 windfarms produced electricity of which 33% were as reliable as a SINGLE coal plant (that is - with a 12.5% outage). I question if this really is reliable - 19 windfarms may have the output of 19 coal plants but they do not have the reliability of 19 1GW coal plants - we can only rely on 33% of one large 19GW monster!

Actually, responding with facts instead of dismissing arguments with bullshit or bastard may be a good start.

My dismissals were fully justified.

If you believe the studies are wrong and the Department of Energy is lying than proof it and deliver credible alternative sources.

No, I'm comfortable in knowing that everybody here understands that 25-30 cents/kWh for new nuclear is bullshit (and that study was NOT of DoE). Thus I don't have to prove anything, I just rest my case and watch you ruin your credibility. (If anybody is still reading, that is.)

France had a net export of 10% and Denmark a net-export of well over 20% of electricity in relation to its electricity consumption:

Precisely, which combined with imports of 2% for France and 30% for Denmark proves that France doesn't need much balancing but Denmark does, due to its wind power. QED.

Denmark could replace some of its fossil heaters and CHP plants with heat pumps which can store surplus electric energy in heat energy.

If that were economical, they would, don't you think?

I've noted that your thinking seems to be quite rigid, that you interpret new nuclear power plants and not-commercially-available nuclear power plants contrary to the facts as cheap alternatives

New conventional nuclear is quite cheap, yes. Breeders are more expensive but may be realistic when fossils and uranium gets more expensive. LFTR, once mature, may be inherently cheaper than current conventional nukes.

dismiss facts about any other alternative options including efficiency available now.

I don't dismiss everything else, no; that's your unwarranted interpretation. I say wind is currently more expensive and solar PV much, much more expensive. Both are limited by intermittency. Hydro can be cheaper and better, but is limited by geography. Biomass is limited due to environmental concerns. Some efficiency is cheaper, some is more expensive.

I also seem to remember a previous conversation with you that ended in much the same way as this.

Then your memory is ok, anyway. I'm happy for you.

So, if the state of Washington allows Microsoft to charge customers arbitrary amounts of money for Windows XP, money which Microsoft may use to develop and produce Windows Vista years before Windows Vista is available in stores, that is a state subsidy?
Yes, but it wouldn't be effective, because consumers would just buy Windows XP in Florida. Unfortunately in the case of Florida electricity consumers do not have the option to buy their electricity in Washington.

My dismissals were fully justified.
No they weren't because you haven't presented any facts to back up your insults, dismissals and wishful thinking.
You are still an anonymous nobody.

19 windfarms may have the output of 19 coal plants but they do not have the reliability of 19 1GW coal plants - we can only rely on 33% of one large 19GW monster
No they don't have 1 GW, they have 0.0015 GW each - if you cared to read for once.
Actually the 'interconnected wind farm' study is based on only 19 windturbines in the midwestern-US. Besides grids are bigger than this and different turbines have different characteristics.

Each site is considered to have a single GE 1500-kW
turbine (General Electric 2004)

And Spain doesn't even have 19 GW of wind power and says this:

In Spain, one of the leading countries for wind power production (American Wind Energy Association 2004; Energy Information Administration 2004), the combined output of 81% of the nation’s wind farms is remarkably smooth, and sudden wind power swings are eliminated.

http://www.stanford.edu/group/efmh/winds/aj07_jamc.pdf

Spain's biggest utility, Iberdrola (IBE.MC), derived 9.7 percent of all the power it produced in Spain in the first quarter from hydroelectric stations, down 20.8 percent for 2007 as a whole.

Wind power has done much to fill the gap recently and has set new generation records by providing as much as 24 percent of total demand in a given day.

http://www.reuters.com/article/rbssIndustryMaterialsUtilitiesNews/idUSL1...

But even if your 33% figure were correct: So in order to receive the same base electricity as with 33% nuclear which is currently about 80% (world average) you need to build 2.4 more wind turbines.
According to the department of energy average wind turbine costs
were $1480 /kW in 2006:
http://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy07osti/41435.pdf
So assuming smart loads are prohibited and energy storage is prohibited too (no pump storage, no heat pumps, no ice storage, no compressed air energy storage, no hydrogen, no redox batteries, no EVs etc.) you need to spend $3552 /kW in order to reach your nuclear base.

On the other hand:
Florida Power and Light estimates its two new nuclear plants (2.2 GW to 3 GW) will cost as much as $24 billion:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=89169837
http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/Florida_Power_And_Light_Welcomes_Initi...
Even at 3GW that's $8000/kW.

The decommissioning of this nuclear plant has reached $1,400 per kW (after completing the decommission), which makes it almost as expensive as the capital costs of a new wind turbine.
http://www.secinfo.com/d11141.253.htm

The ultimate repository at Yucca mountain has already reached costs close to $1000 per kW and nuclear power plant:
http://www.postandcourier.com/news/2008/aug/27/nuclear_surge_needs_waste...

That's 292% more costs for nuclear than for wind. And even if the nuclear base costs were actually reduced by a factor of 3 (unfortunately these costs have typically been going up not down):

Uranium has to be purchased, imported, processed, enriched and homegrown Wind is actually free.

A nuclear power plant has higher operating costs.

A new nuclear power plant still requires 10 years to be built while a windfarm can be built within months.

And as opposed to nuclear power, wind power doesn't actually require cooling water.

Last but not least: Nuclear requires international tax-payer dependent institutions such as IAEA and EURATOM to promote their nuclear plants and requires 51% of the tax-payer paid R&D budget.
http://www.world-nuclear.org/sym/2001/fig-htm/frasf6-h.htm

If that were economical, they would, don't you think?
Once natural gas prices go up they will.

Precisely, which combined with imports of 2% for France and 30% for Denmark proves that France doesn't need much balancing but Denmark does,

Wrong: Besides that Denmark as opposed to France doesn't have any hydro at all and it imported only 6.4% of its electricity while exporting over 20% (as opposed to France which only net-exported 10%):
http://www.indexmundi.com/g/g.aspx?v=83&c=da&l=en

And even though Denmark has no nuclear power and net-exports over 20% of its electricity while Belgium is a net-electricity importer, Denmark generates 20% less CO2/per capita and has 27% lower industrial electricity prices than Belgium and Denmark has a 41% higher GDP per capita than Belgium:

Belgium (55.1 % nuclear power):
and 13.66 t of CO2/capita
and $47,617 GDP/capita

Denmark (0% nuclear power and 20% wind power):
and 10.94 t of CO2/capita
and $67,387 GDP/capita
http://www.iaea.org/inisnkm/nkm/aws/eedrb/data/BE-npsh.html

Industrial electricity prices before tax (2007):
Denmark (20% wind power): 7.06 cents/kWh
Belgium (55% nuclear power): 9.69 cents/kWh
http://tinyurl.com/mfnvku

And Danish wind manufacturers export over 90% of their wind-turbines with profit as opposed to France which generates losses with its state owned nuclear business.

I say wind is currently more expensive and solar PV much, much more expensive.
Again you are an anonymous nobody. The opinion of an anonymous nobody is completely irrelevant:
These facts say this:

According to this study wind power costs between 3 and 6.4 cents per kWh (2006).
http://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy07osti/41435.pdf

According to this study, new nuclear costs between 25 and 30 cents per kWh:
http://tinyurl.com/9q5ge2

First Solar has already reached $980 per kW for their PV modules:
http://www.edn.com/article/CA6640264.html

QS Solar aims at $750 per kW:
http://www.solarplaza.com/article/solar-module-sales-price-of-1-per-watt...

Oerlikon Solar even aims at $700 per kW by 2010 (and currently is at $1500 per kW).
http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/energy/renewables/first-solar-quest-for-the...

And DC/AC converters are at $300 per kW.

Compare this with the capital costs, decommissioning costs, repository costs, fuel costs, building time of a nuclear power plant and that a nuclear power plant has little flexibility and has to compete at utility level prices (as opposed to PV).

Keep in mind you are an anonymous nobody. If you have facts then present them otherwise keep your opinion and insults to yourself.

I guess your strategy is to tire you opponents with repeats of arguments and links and pretending they haven't already been refuted? I think that's a good strategy - you'll probably "win" this one too.

Yes, but it wouldn't be effective, because consumers would just buy Windows XP in another state.

It would have the same price in other states, silly. Again, thanks for clarifying that free market prices are "subsidies".

No they weren't because you haven't presented any facts to back up your insults, dismissals and wishful thinking.

Now you lie again. Don't you ever tire?

You are still an anonymous nobody.

Yes, but I think that is better than your standing here.

No they don't have 1 GW, they have 0.0015 GW each - if you cared to read for once.

That's just an arbitrary math choice, made for simplicity, genius. Within each site, the turbines will give about the same power, so the effect on real farms will be just what I said.

the combined output of 81% of the nation’s wind farms is remarkably smooth, and sudden wind power swings are eliminated.

Yes, smooth variability. Not baseload.

Wind power has done much to fill the gap recently and has set new generation records by providing as much as 24 percent of total demand in a given day.

And 0% other days. Useful, but limited.

in order to receive the same base electricity as with 33% nuclear which is currently about 80% (world average) you need to build 2.4 more wind turbines. [...] you need to spend $3552 /kW

Sorry, that would be 33% of average output, which is 33% of nameplate. So 7.2 more wind turbines and $10500/kW. And that's just for the turbines. Then add land, transmission, financial costs, tower, transport and so on.

Even at 3GW that's $8000/kW.

Yes, that is the worst case, all in cost for the first plant, which is lower than your $10500 for a mass-produced wind component at the factory gate.

The decommissioning of this nuclear plant has reached $1,400 per kW (after completing the decommission), which makes it almost as expensive as the capital costs of a new wind turbine.

Which again is one of your outliers, and again is compared with your wind turbine - which nameplate rating is worth just a third of nuclear and which lifetime is less than half, and which capital cost is up front, not paid after many decades of operation.

The ultimate repository at Yucca mountain has already reached costs close to $1000 per kW and nuclear power plant:

Which is an example of government inefficiency, not of nuclear inadequacies. Also, that cost will obviously not scale linearly with more waste. The marginal cost will be low, so this isn't an argument against new nuclear.

Uranium has to be purchased, imported, processed, enriched and homegrown Wind is actually free.

A nuclear power plant has higher operating costs.

A new nuclear power plant still requires 10 years to be built while a windfarm can be built within months.

None of this offsets the higher cost of wind. And even if it did, wind doesn't scale as nuclear anyway, b/c of intermittency issues.

Nuclear requires international tax-payer dependent institutions such as IAEA and EURATOM to promote their nuclear plants and require 51% of the tax-payer paid R&D budget.

Life's a bitch, man. Unfair and all.

Wrong: Denmark imported only 6.4% of its electricity while exporting over 20%:
http://www.indexmundi.com/g/g.aspx?v=83&c=da&l=en

If you follow that link, you see that it links to it's source, CIA World factbook. If you follow it and choose "Denmark", you'll se that I'm right and you're wrong. (I actually gave you the link a couple of posts ago, which I guess you didn't care to read? Or you read it, but prefer hunting down some faulty information that supports your argument?)

And eventhough Denmark has no nuclear power and exports over 20% of its electricity, it generates 20% less CO2/per capita than Belgium and has 27% lower industrial electricity prices than Belgium it has a 41% higher GDP per capita than Belgium:

Again you choose two datapoints that suit you, instead of trying to seek the truth. I guess you didn't choose France with more nuclear, since their electricity is so cheap? And Denmarks cheap wind can't have anything to do with subsidised wind?

And Danish wind manufacturers export over 90% of their wind-turbines with profit as opposed to France which generates losses with its state owned nuclear business.

So? Government subsidies have created a wind boom. Let's see what will happen if governments do the same with nuclear.

According to this study wind power costs between 3 and 6.4 cents per kWh (2006).

And if you care to read the footnote: "If the federal PTC was not available, wind power prices for 2006 projects would range from approximately $50/MWh to $85/MWh, with an average of roughly $70/MWh. Look - every time I take a closer look at one of your links, I totally own your ass. Have you noticed that? Ordinary people would be embarrased - but you will keep posting that link and you will keep making that same claim. That's a bit weird, actually.

According to this study, new nuclear costs between 25 and 30 cents per kWh:

Which is still bullshit, and everybody here but you knows it.

First Solar has already reached $980 per kW for their PV modules:

Which, of course, is a production cost for something with at best 20% availability, that has to be transported, installed, financed, profited from and so on. Which due to intermittance won't compete very much with baseload anyway.

And DC/AC converters are at $300 per kW.

Ah, thanks for reminding me. And there is some energy loss in those...

Compare this with your capital costs, decommissioning costs, repository costs, fuel costs, building time, that a nuclear power plant has little flexibility and has to compete at utility level prices.

I do, and I find nuclear being the more attractive choice. But hey, I do hope solar PV and wind becomes cheaper than nuclear, and that better, more scaleable storage solutions are found. I'm not wed to nuclear power - if something better comes along, let's do that instead. But today, it really seems nuclear is our best hope for large scale fossil replacement, while intermittent renewable delusions like those you market is a dangerous distraction that will keep coal on the table for much longer than need be.

Ok, show us where you can get capital intensive nuclear power plants practically for free.

Multi decade bonds at sovereign rates.

And show us where nuclear power plants be built over night in order to prevent any interest on the enormous capital costs.

See French nuclear crash program.

This simply shifts the costs of the capital markets and transfers risk (and associated costs) to the public.

Budget surpluses and shrinking debts drive down interest rates as the supply of sovereign debt diminishes. Enlarging the supply of sovereign debt would raise the interest rates for all of the debt.

There is no free lunch !

Alan

Enlarging the supply of sovereign debt would raise the interest rates for all of the debt.

Not in this case! Because no matter what, power plants eventually have to be built by someone, so there is no crowding out problem! The only difference is that because the government has a gold-plated credit rating, less money go to the bankers and more go to the shareholders/ratepayers.

This simply shifts the costs of the capital markets and transfers risk (and associated costs) to the public.
Construction costs can be hedged (turn-key contracts) and all other risks are political. Hence the government has a huge advantage in dealing with those risks.

Sum total: the total risk decreases, and with that the interest costs. This is one of the few free lunches that do exist!

(diversification is another.)

Multi decade bonds at sovereign rates.
Bonds do not give away nuclear power plants for free.

See French nuclear crash program.
As opposed to the renewable options, nuclear power plant were not built in a matter of days, weeks or even months.

Bonds do not give away nuclear power plants for free.
When financed over several decades at sovereign rates, the costs become so low that even with low power prices the plants turn into veritable printing presses. Far more profitable than buying sovereign bonds themselves. In that way, the real cost for the investor will be extremely low.

As opposed to the renewable options, nuclear power plant were not built in a matter of days, weeks or even months.
You're talking 4-6 years per plant in a big program, and you don't need to borrow all the money at the same time and have the interest accrue as your money is just sitting in a big pile while the invoices from the builder slowly arrive. No, when you have the full credit of a nation behind you, you can loan the money as you go, in small and manageable pieces. This will eliminate the "loaned pile of money"-problem.

Pro-nuclear people such as myself are not saying nuclear instead of hydro, wind etc..
We are saying nuclear instead of coal. Nuclear with hydro and wind etc...

Also, you need to look at kWh and not just GW.

That 21,000 MW of US Wind capacity will generate over 60 billion kWh of electricity in 2009. that is 1/13th of the US production of nuclear power.
http://www.awea.org/newsroom/releases/year_end_wrap_up_22dec08.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_power#Wind_power_usage
Wind power is at 200 TWh (200 billion KWh in 2008)

1/13th the level of nuclear power.

where will you add hydro power in the USA ?
Try getting a new river dammed.

Say 150 GWe of new nuclear power by 2020. Based on completion of existing reactors under construction and the planned reactors (about half in China but also in S korea, Japan, India and Russia etc...) Plus uprates and some operating efficiency gains in Ukraine etc...

This would be 1200 billion kwh.
an average of 120 billion kwh added per year.

Therefore nuclear power would be growing its share of power.
But the main thing is it would be offsetting new addition of coal plants.
If China is going max out on hydro power addition (which it is) and they are going
max out on wind and solar which they are. Then if one of the sources like nuclear is not built then what will they do ? They will build coal.

this is without any breakthrough implementation of dual cooled annular fuel.

Say 150 GWe of new nuclear power by 2020. ..
Therefore nuclear power would be growing its share of power.

Actually we were talking about the energy share, but anyway if you prefer power share:
In order for your statement to be remotely credible:

Not only would you need to proof hat 150 GW of new nuclear will be built and no old nuclear power plants will be shut down until 2020 with credible sources
But far more importantly:
You definitely need to proof that the installation of Wind, PV, Biomass, CSP, Geothermal will come to a halt, no additional hydro power plant, no new fossil fuel plant will be built and no old inefficient fossil power plants will be replaced by efficient co-generation plants.
But, since renewable power capacity grew by 70 GW from 2007 to 2008 and this with a 40% increase compared to the year before (70 GW in one year alone!) and since both wind and PV have had double digit growth for years this seems very unlikely:
http://www.ren21.net/pdf/RE_GSR_2009_Update.pdf
And since efficient cogeneration plants and onsite power are still becoming increasingly popular it seems even more unlikely:
http://www.dieselgasturbine.com/pdf/power_2008.pdf#zoom=100

Another Record Broken Reciprocating engines top 36 000 units and 69 GW of gas turbines are ordered

That is close to 100 GW in one year alone.

That 21,000 MW of US Wind capacity will generate over 60 billion kWh of electricity in 2009. that is 1/13th of the US production of nuclear power.

Actually the US had 25,369 MW of wind power in operation at the end of 2008: http://www.awea.org/pubs/documents/Outlook_2009.pdf
and with 8,545 MW added in 2008 it will have well over 30'000 MW by the end of 2009.

If China is going max out on hydro power addition (which it is)

Actually China apparently installs at least 68'630 MW of large hydro power plants in the near future:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_largest_hydroelectric_power_sta...
Not to mention small hydro:

Small hydropower increased to an estimated 85 GW worldwide.
Most of the small hydro is in China, where the boom in small hydro has continued with 4–6 GW added annually during 2004–08.

http://www.ren21.net/pdf/RE_GSR_2009_Update.pdf

and they are going max out on wind and solar which they are.

Actually wind doesn't seem to be maxing out in China on the contrary:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/feb/03/wind-power-eu

China, which added 6.3GW, now has 12.2GW of capacity and the country has identified wind energy as a key growth component in its economic stimulus package. Li Junfeng, the head of the Chinese Renewable Energy Industry Association, said new capacity would almost double again this year.

Nor does PV:
http://solarfocus.blogspot.com/2009/05/china-solar-photovoltaic-installe...
http://www.ren21.net/pdf/RE_GSR_2009_Update.pdf

The beginnings of growing grid-tied solar PV markets emerged in several countries
in 2007/2008, notably China. Including off-grid applications, total PV existing worldwide in 2008 increased to more than 16 GW.

Also, China added 14 GWth solar thermal last year alone:
http://www.unep.fr/shared/docs/publications/RE_GSR_2009_Update.pdf
(which definitely does reduce the demand on electric heaters and/or fossil fuels and increase the renewable energy share)

you misunderstood. China is maxing out and building as much hydro power as it can. Which I say is good.

I said that they are heading towards 300 GW of hydroelectric power by 2020 and 400 GW of hydro by 2030. That is when China has calculated that they will have built out all of the economic hydro power that they can. China still needs more power which is why they are also building nuclear power. 86 GWe target for 2020 for nuclear and 160+ GWe for 2030.

I am saying that they are adding as much nuclear, hydro, wind and solar as they can and they are still adding more coal. Coal which kills about 1 million people per year from air pollution. Part of the 3 million per that die from fossil fuel air pollution.

When renewables are not just preventing any new coal from being built but also replacing all fossil fuels then you can put forward the lets not build nuclear but built renewables.

Also, the usage of power is different. The thermal of new high temp fission reactors can replace the needed industrial process heat that coal thermal power is also used for.

>You definitely need to proof that the installation of Wind, PV, Biomass, CSP, Geothermal will come to a halt, no additional hydro power plant, no new fossil fuel plant will be built and no old inefficient fossil power plants will be replaced by efficient co-generation plants.

I do not need to prove that because I want as much wind and other power sources to be built as possible. Although I am not a fan of some forms of biomass as they have air pollution and other side effects.

Actually the US had 25,369 MW of wind power in operation at the end of 2008...
and with 8,545 MW added in 2008 it will have well over 30'000 MW by the end of 2009.

You keep confusing nameplate ratings and actual production.  You seem to have no concept of capacity factor.  The capacity factor of US wind is on the order of 0.35, so an installed base of 30 GW will produce perhaps 10.5 GW average (~92 TWh/year).  The capacity factor of hydro is determined by the ratio of the generating capacity and the river flow; if you have 5 GW of generators but only 750 MW of average flow in the river, your capacity factor will be 0.15 at best.

Nuclear plants often have capacity factors upwards of 0.9 (during one year, the Vermont Yankee plant had a capacity factor of 1.00).  They are a very different type of beast, which you should learn to appreciate.

You keep confusing nameplate ratings and actual production.

Actually, besides being insulting you keep on ignoring the facts:
Renewable power capacity grew by 70 GW from 2007 to 2008 in one single year.
http://www.ren21.net/pdf/RE_GSR_2009_Update.pdf
Even at an average capacity factor of 0.35 (hydro, biomass and geothermal is obviously higher) you still end up with 215 TWh.
What is the energy produced of all new nuclear power plants that went online in the year 2007?

your capacity factor will be 0.15 at best.

This is your own absurd example: Rivers with hydro power plants hardly stop 85% of the time.

Even this 100 year old hydro power plant at the Rhine (a river which does indeed flow less water during winter time) has a capacity factor of 0.75:
http://www.solarserver.de/news/news-8414.html

Btw, a nuclear power plant which has been shut down for a year, has a capacity factor of 0.0:
http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=47666
(and this is not my own made up example).

Renewable power capacity grew by 70 GW from 2007 to 2008 in one single year.

How much would nuclear capacity grow with the same government blessings and subsidies?

Blessings like these?

Nuclear power has dominated government spending on energy research and development, accounting for over US$159 billion between 1974 and 1998. Although its share has fallen, it still accounts for 51% of the OECD energy R&D budget:

http://www.world-nuclear.org/sym/2001/fig-htm/frasf6-h.htm

Florida Power and Light estimates its two new plants will cost as much as $24 billion. Progress Energy projects that its new plants will cost at least $14 billion.

Progress Energy spokesman Buddy Eller says that because of those high costs, if it weren't for the Florida law, passed in 2006, his firm wouldn't have considered the project.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=89169837&ps=rs

DOE's 1995 estimate of the total 1 mil per kw fee payments is that such payments will provide a revenue base of $28.1 billion (in 1996 constant dollars). Therefore, at a total program cost of $53.9 billion, the general taxpayer liability is $25.8 billion, or about half (48%) of the total estimated program cost.

http://www.state.nv.us/nucwaste/yucca/nuctome2.htm

Nuclear power has dominated government spending on energy research and development, accounting for over US$159 billion between 1974 and 1998.

1. This amounts to about $0.002 per kWh (just a quick ballpark estimate). Nuclear is taxed much more, and renewables are credited much more.
2. It would be irrational to not use a tech just b/c it was irrationally researched by governments.

Progress Energy spokesman Buddy Eller says that because of those high costs, if it weren't for the Florida law, passed in 2006, his firm wouldn't have considered the project.

The Florida law consisted of lower taxation, aka the "nuclear charge". Also, they allowed the utilities to recover costs beforehand - but this just points out that the system is stupidly regulated. The utilities should be able to charge whatever they want, of course.

Therefore, at a total program cost of $53.9 billion, the general taxpayer liability is $25.8 billion

The government is stupid and excessive about wastes, so nuclear is bad? (Btw, $26 billion for decades of operation is not much when you produce 800 billion kWh/year)

and renewables are credited much more.

which is mathematically impossible:

Although its share has fallen, it still accounts for 51% of the OECD energy R&D budget:

http://www.world-nuclear.org/sym/2001/fig-htm/frasf6-h.htm

But renewables should have been credited more considering that they have been delivering more power and energy and have been reducing the dependence on foreign resources:
http://www.ren21.net/pdf/RE_GSR_2009_Update.pdf
Renewable power capacity 2008: 1140 GW
Solar thermal capacity 2008: 145 GWth

The government is stupid and excessive about wastes, so nuclear is bad?
No it's not bad it just receives taxpayer funding.

Also, they allowed the utilities to recover costs beforehand .. The utilities should be able to charge whatever they want, of course.
So, if the utilities were to recover the costs for a renewable power plant option beforehand, it would be a crazy subsidy.
but if the utilities are recovering the costs for a nuclear power beforehand, it is simply their good right...

http://www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?storyId=89169837

Buddy Eller, a company spokesman, says because of that high cost, if it weren't for the new Florida law, Progress Energy wouldn't have considered the project.

which is mathematically impossible:

Per kWh, genius!

Renewable power capacity 2008: 1140 GW

That is 75% hydro, which I have already dismissed. Nuclear totally dominates the non-hydro fossil alternatives, so it isn't very strange that it dominates research. (For the fifth time.)

So, if the utilities were to recover the costs for a renewable power plant option beforehand, it would be a crazy subsidy.
but if the utilities are recovering the costs for a nuclear power beforehand, it is simply their good right...

No, both are ok.

Per kWh, genius!
Actually if one gets 51% everything else can get 49% max and 49% is less than 51%, genius.

Renewables have received a fraction of the OECD energy R&D budget for nuclear and nuclear is still producing less energy than all the renewables combined.
http://www.world-nuclear.org/sym/2001/fig-htm/frasf6-h.htm

Nuclear totally dominates the non-hydro fossil alternatives, so it isn't very strange that it dominates research.
For the 5th time you cannot exclude and dismiss hydro when hydro power plants are not only producing more electricity than nuclear but are still being built and small hydro plants are becoming increasingly popular and in fact more new hydro is being added than new nuclear.

Besides hydro power plants don't do unexpected shut downs, don't require foreign uranium and can easily adapt their power in case a nuclear power plant has an unexpected shut down and thus does make them more valuable:

Seven German nuclear plants have failed to generate any electricity this month due to technical breakdowns. They have about half the production capacity of Germany's 17 nuclear reactors, but Germany did not suffer any power shortages.

http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=47909

Renewable power capacity added 2008 was 70 GW:
http://www.ren21.net/pdf/RE_GSR_2009_Update.pdf

Solar thermal capacity added 2008 was 19 GWth.

How much nuclear power capacity was added 2008?

Per kWh, genius!
Actually if one gets 51% everything else can get 49% max and 49% is less than 51%, genius.

You don't understand the concept of division?

Renewables have received a fraction of the OECD energy R&D budget for nuclear and nuclear is still producing less energy than all the renewables combined.

Why would you research hydro a lot? According to your logic, hydro should get slightly more than nuclear, fusion should not get anything and wind should get much more than PV. Does this sound very smart? I don't think so.

For the 5th time you cannot exclude and dismiss hydro when hydro power plants are not only producing more electricity than nuclear but are still being built and small hydro plants are becoming increasingly popular and in fact more new hydro is being added than new nuclear.

Besides hydro power plants don't do unexpected shut downs, don't require foreign uranium and can easily adapt their power

You are just being thick. Hydro might be better than nuclear in many ways, but it does still not have the same potential as nuclear and it does not make sense to research hydro as much as nuclear.

Seven German nuclear plants

Has anyone mentioned that you are a repetitive spamming bastard?

but it does still not have the same potential as nuclear
Efficiency and renewables have far more potential than nuclear at lower costs.

Does this sound very smart?
No, but it is obviously your logic not mine.

bastard
Insulting me doesn't change the facts you dislike and prefer to ignore.

Efficiency and renewables have far more potential than nuclear at lower costs.

I was talking about hydro, genius. And no, they do not generally have more potential and lower costs.

No, but it is obviously your logic not mine.

I say nuclear dominates non-hydro fossil alternatives, and therefore it's quite reasonable it gets more R&D funding. You insist on including hydro and I have explained why this is not very smart. Now you agree that it is not, but say it is "my logic". WTF?

Insulting me doesn't change the facts you dislike and prefer to ignore.

Que? I don't ignore the fact that you are a repetitive spamming bastard.

And no, they do not generally have more potential and lower costs.
Besides that solar energy can power the entire world several 1000 times over.

So hydro beats nuclear in new capacity because it is more expensive and has received less subsidies?
And solar hot water beats nuclear in new capacity in China because as opposed to nuclear it doesn't receive any subsidies?
http://www.ren21.net/pdf/RE_GSR_2009_Update.pdf

And btw:
According to this study wind power costs between 3 and 6.4 cents per kWh (2006):
http://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy07osti/41435.pdf
According to this study, new nuclear costs between 25 and 30 cents per kWh:
http://tinyurl.com/9q5ge2

I say nuclear dominates non-hydro fossil alternatives, and therefore it's quite reasonable it gets more R&D funding.
Considering the fact that nuclear has received far more R&D subsidies than all renewables combined, it is pathetic that nuclear wasn't even able to beat hydro.
Worse hydro is actually still building more power capacity per year than nuclear does and so does wind and so does solar thermal.
www.ren21.net/pdf/RE_GSR_2009_Update.pdf

bastard
Insulting me will never change the facts you prefer to ignore and dismiss without having any credentials to back it up.

And no, they do not generally have more potential and lower costs.
Besides that solar energy can power the entire world several 1000 times over.

So can the hydrocarbons on Titan, but that's also impractical.

According to this study wind power costs between 3 and 6.4 cents per kWh (2006):

Between 5 and 8.5 cents without subsidies.

According to this study, new nuclear costs between 25 and 30 cents per kWh:

Bullshit study.

Considering the fact that nuclear has received far more R&D subsidies than all renewables combined, it is pathetic that nuclear wasn't even able to beat hydro.

*shrug* Hydro is what it is. You can whine all you want.

Worse hydro is actually still building more power capacity per year than nuclear does and so does wind and so does solar thermal.

Yes, and they will keep growing faster than nuclear for quite some time, perhaps until it is abundantly clear that the grids can't take any more intermittent power. I think it's quite ok for wind and solar thermal to grow and replace fossils. What I don't like is when guys like you keep making promises these techniques can't fulfil, and thus creating the impression that we don't need nuclear, that we can combat fossils with renewables alone. We can't.

How much would nuclear capacity grow with the same government blessings and subsidies?

None (so far).

Several years ago the first x GW (10 ?) of new nukes were given the same incentives as wind (PLUS Price Anderson).

I see several GW of new wind each year. I see slow paper shuffling for new nukes so far.

Alan

Are you saying that nuclear has the same incentives and taxes as wind in all US states? Do you have a link?

Energy Policy Act of 2005

a production tax credit of 1.8 cents per kilowatt-hour for 6,000 megawatts (MW) of capacity from new nuclear power plants for the first eight years of operation.

Nothing for public power providers (TVA, BPA, New York State, Austin Energy, etc.)

http://www.nei.org/keyissues/newnuclearplants/factsheets/highlightsenerg...

Alan

I see slow paper shuffling for new nukes so far.

This "slow paper shuffling" is apparently enough to swamp the capacity of the NRC to process the applications.  The planning and licensing takes about half of the cycle, so it will all look like paper-shuffling (including buying land, etc.) until all the heavy equipment suddenly arrives and goes to work about 2 years from now.

where will you add hydro power in the USA ?

3 GW Labrador
5 GW Manitoba
1.5 to 4 GW Quebec
? GW British Columbia

All for export to the USA.

Alan

The mining industry always "high grades" deposits and the Cigar Lake episode is I believe a salutary reminder of the hazards of mineral extraction.

Uhm, Rossing mine? 300ppm hard rock is high grade?

Again I would like to remind everyone:

http://nuclearinfo.net/Nuclearpower/WebHomeEnergyLifecycleOfNuclear_Power

Another Uranium source for Forsmark is the Rossing Mine in Namibia. A description of the operations of the mine is available here. The Rossing mine produced 3037 tonnes of Uranium in 2004, which is sufficient for 15 GigaWatt-years of electricity with current reactors. The energy used to mine and mill this Uranium was about 3% of a GigaWatt-year. Thus the energy produced is about 500 times more than the energy required to operate the mine.

I'd say we have quite a ways to go before we're running into energy limits from uranium mining even in the once through cycle.

excellent post. very educational. I'm not a "green cornucopian," any, I'm malthusian. I never baught into the whole, nuclear energy is going to save us scenerio.

I guess I should point out that we will be running out of a liquid fuel and no-amount of cheap or even free electricity is going to solve that for decades becuase we can't all have shiny new EVs day1 of the liquid fuels crisis...

Nick.

.. we can't all have shiny new EVs day1 of the liquid fuels crisis...

There won't be any "day 1". We won't be running out all at once. If we can reduce imported oil at a rate of 5% per year, we should be able to avoid the worst of the "crisis" aspects. Running ahead of the incoming tide.

A 5% per year reduction won't be easy, but it's probably do-able through a combination of conservation (reduction in vehicle miles traveled), migration toward smaller and more fuel-efficient conventional vehicles, electrification (PHEVs and small battery EVs and scooters), and fuel replacement (bio-fuels and various types of synthetic fuels).

The significant question, in my mind, is whether our social and economic systems can survive the stress.

The economic system surviving the stress is my primary concern. Unwinding all the debt means a very different world and there is no reason to eliminate collapse as a possibility at some point through the process.

Plus, we might be lucky to experience only a 5% decline rate. The net rate for oil importing countries could very easily be higher through a combination of the Export Land Model, producer-countries holding back oil for their people, breakdowns in the supply chain and more.

I constructed the graph below based roughly on Jeffrey Brown and Samuel Foucher's work. It is purposely not precise as it is meant to demonstrate the Export Land Model but the decline line and consumption line are in the ballpark.

Photobucket

I certainly agree that collapse due to stress on the economy (and related economic issues) is a real and serious threat. But I have a quibble about the Export Land Model. It implicitly assumes that exporting nations (a) control their own production, and (b) prioritize their own internal needs ahead of the world market. I consider those at best tenuous assumptions.

The advocates of increased drilling in currently protected areas around the US make the same assumption. But it is certainly not true in the US. All US production is sold to buyers on the world market, without regard to the buyer's nationality. The only things that increased domestic production would do would be to marginally increase total world production, increase profits for those in charge of the production, and serve as insurance that, should the world economic system switch soon to a mode where assumptions (a) and (b) were valid, the nationalized US supply would be a bit higher than it would otherwise be. Of course, the long term result would be the opposite: oil that we produce today is oil that won't be available to us tomorrow.

National governments that won't play by global market rules are defined as hostile and socialist. They tend to get overturned. Or, if they prove too popular or too well entrenched to overturn, they may get invaded. The real threat that Saddam Hussein represented is that he was ideologically committed to modernizing Iraq and reserving a portion of its oil production to provide an economic edge for Iraqi businesses. When sanctions failed to dissuade him and efforts to overthrow his regime from within were thwarted, what choice did the Cheney administration have? Clearly, the example he set couldn't be allowed to stand.

aangel
"The economic system surviving the stress is my primary concern. Unwinding all the debt means a very different world and there is no reason to eliminate collapse as a possibility at some point through the process."

The idea that the 2008 world wide financial crisis was going to lead to an economic collapse seemed a popular assumption. It appears that this is not going to happen due to banks collapsing. It also appears that not all debt is going to be unwound.

A high decline of oil production is likely to lead to gasoline rationing and high prices. This is not necessarily going to lead to an economic collapse any more than rationing in WWII lead to an economic collapse. A world where economic growth may only be 2%, where people only use automobile transport for essential trips, car pool or use mass-transit whenever possible and where there is a 2 year waiting list for electric and PHEV's is not necessarily what doomer's imagine, but also not exactly BAU, but closer to BAU than Kunstler's vision.

People should be planning for a world with no oil imports, it doesn't mean we have to live as people did in 1859, it means we wont be driving in ICE vehicles getting 25 mpg or perhaps not in ICE vehicles at all.

Michael,
Thanks for a very informative and detailed post. It seems that just like oil, it's the flow rate that is important, i.e. if it can't be mined fast enough to supply existing and future nuclear plants then that will be the restricting factor. I have a question about the supply - is the amount derived from decommissioned weapons enough that it has affected mining? That is, did enough come on the market that the price was driven down, thus curtailing mining operations?

Conventional and new uprate technology can increase the power from existing nuclear plants by 20-50%. Reactors are getting operating extensions and most that are "scheduled" for shutdown will not be shutdown. (btw: I write nextbigfuture.com which is quoted here and have a few hundred articles about nuclear power tracking the buildout that I think will happen.) there will be no meaningful shortage of Uranium, most reactors will not get shutdown, China, India, Japan, S korea, Russia will build a lot of reactors. The US will build some. Even more gets built if the chinese pebble bed works out or Hyperion Power Generation uranium hydride. Also, for total nuclear power usage there are about 250 nuclear powered submarines, air craft carriers and ice breakers. India is making nuclear ships now. The US navy will be adding 1-2 per year shortly for troop transport and cruisers. Nuclear ships could be used for commercial shipping. Save 9% of current annual oil usage.

Uranium HEU: Uranium shipments from Russia supply about 40 percent of enriched uranium for U.S. commercial reactors, are due to be cut roughly in half by 2013.

Russia will have an estimated 770 metric tons of bomb-grade uranium— and the United States, an estimated 675 metric tons —after the current HEU Agreement expires. [ Global Fissile Materials Report 2008] 300 MT or so is considered excess and can be used for uranium shortfalls for reactors (just a matter of paying the russians enough to part with it)

Thorium power is testing thorium fuel rods in Russia now that can be swapped into existing reactor configurations. This can also extend fuel supplies and help meet any shortfalls.

China is planning for an installed nuclear power capacity of 86 GWe by 2020. China will have 24 reactors under construction by the end of 2009. There is already 22.9 GWe of nuclear power capacity under construction end of 2008. China plans to accelerate nuclear power development in coastal provinces and autonomous regions, namely Liaoning, Guangdong, Zhejiang, Fujian, Guangxi, Jiangsu, Shandong and Hainan. Nuclear power plants will also be added in inland provinces of Jiangxi, Anhui, Hunan and Hubei.

Électricité de France (EdF, the main electricity generation and distribution company in France) uprated its four Chooz and Civaux N4 reactors from 1,455 to 1,500 MWe each in 2003. From 2008-2010, EdF is uprating five of its 900 MWe reactors by 3%. In 2007 EdF announced that the twenty 1300 MWe reactors would be uprated some 7% from 2015, within existing license limits, and adding about 15 TWh/yr to output.

The 900 MWe reactors all had their lifetimes extended by ten years in 2002, after their second 10-yearly (what is 10-yearly, once in a decade, or 10th yearly) review. A review of the 1300 MWe class followed and in October 2006 the regulatory authority cleared all twenty reactors for an extra ten years' operation conditional upon minor modifications at their 20-year outages from 2005-14.

The design of every U.S. commercial reactor has the excess capacity needed to potentially allow for an uprate, which can fall into one of three categories: 1) measurement uncertainty recapture power uprates, 2) stretch power uprates, and 3) extended power uprates.
1) Measurement uncertainty recapture power uprates are power increases less than 2 percent of the licensed power level, and are achieved by implementing enhanced techniques for calculating reactor power. This involves the use of state of the art devices to more precisely measure feedwater flow which is used to calculate reactor power. More precise measurements reduce the degree of uncertainty in the power level which is used by analysts to predict the ability of the reactor to be safely shut down under possible accident conditions.
2) Stretch power uprates are typically between 2 % and 7 %, with the actual increase in power depending on a plant design's specific operating margin. Stretch power uprates usually involve changes to instrumentation settings but do not involve major plant modifications.
3) Extended power uprates are greater than stretch power uprates and have been approved for increases as high as 20 %. Extended power uprates usually require significant modifications to major pieces of non-nuclear equipment such as high-pressure turbines, condensate pumps and motors, main generators, and/or transformers.
Exelon’s uprate projects use proven technologies and are overseen by the US? Nuclear Regulatory Commission(NRC.) They fall into four general categories:

* "Measurement uncertainty recapture" (MUR) uprates, in which more accurate metering allows more precise reactor operations and more electrical output. MUR uprates increase reactor thermal power and require NRC approval.
* Extended power uprates, in which reactor power can be safely increased by up to 20 % after careful, rigorous analysis, equipment upgrades and NRC approval.
* Generator rewinds, in which replacing certain generator components with new copper makes it possible for the generator to produce more electricity. Power plants will continue to meet all NRC license basis requirements.
* Turbine retrofits, in which advanced technology has allowed production of new and better shapes and sizes of turbine parts, such as blades, rotors and casings. These new parts make the turbines more efficient, akin to improving the gas mileage on an automobile by using computer-controlled fuel injection rather than a carburetor. Power plants will continue to meet all NRC license basis requirements.

An approximate 38-megawatt increase in output at an Exelon Nuclear plant last week launched a series of planned power uprates across the company’s nuclear fleet that will generate between 1,300 and 1,500 MW of additional generation capacity within eight years.

There is advanced nuclear fuel technology under development which could enable a significant increase in nuclear power generation. The technology is referred to as annular fuel or dual cooled fuel. The new fuels could enable ultra power uprates for existing pressure water reactors of from 20-50% by safely enabling a higher power density and uprates for existing boiler water reactors by 20-30%.

Annular fuel is especially well suited for pressurized water reactors, which make up 60% of the world's 443 reactors. The designer, MIT Professor Pavell Hejzlar says that utilities in the U.S., Japan, and South Korea have expressed interest in his design. The annular fuel would boost power by up to 50%. Nanoparticles in fluid would boost power by 20% for existing reactors and 40% for new reactors. Cross-shaped spiral design would boost boiler water reactors by 30%. The MIT fuel is thin walled donuts with pellets inside and using nanoparticles in the fluid.

Korea is studying MIT’s annular fuel and they think can achieve 20% uprates with minimal changes to the existing plants.

http://www.inspi.ufl.edu/topfuel2009/program/abstracts/2185.html
http://www.kaeri.re.kr/english/sub/sub04_02.jsp
http://www.inspi.ufl.edu/topfuel2009/program/abstracts/2080.pdf

Annular fuel allows PWR (what is PWR) power density to be raised by 50% within current safety limits. The sintered fuel pellets appear viable with appropriate manufacturing need lead tests. Annular fuel uprating is economic, depending on plant remaining lifetime, with IRR (pls spell out IRR) from 20% to 27%

A Potential of Dual Cooled Annular Fuel for OPR-1000 Power Uprate
T-H Chun, C-W Shin, W-K In, K-H Lee, K-H Bae, K-W Song (KAERI-Korea)

A highly promising concept of externally and internally cooled annular fuel for PWRs was studied earlier by MIT to increase the power density substantially. The reference plant of the study was the standard Westinghouse PWR. The purpose of this study is to evaluate a potential of the annular fuels for the OPR-1000 in Korea in terms of power uprate along with different constraints. The constraints are those considerations like more adaptive to the existing power plants by means with fewer changes on the plant system components and less impact on the current fuel design practice. Specifically, first of all, the fuel array configuration has to be structurally compatible with the current solid fuel in the operation of current control rod driving mechanism. Others are no reactor coolant pump changes, same core outlet temperature in standpoint of the plant system and operation, and 3 batch reload, fuel enrichment less than 5 w/o, maximum fuel burn-up less than 60 Mwd/kgU for the fuel management scheme. In this paper a proposed annular fuel for OPR will show the satisfaction of power uprate up to 20% through the reactor physics analysis, thermal-hydraulic analysis and safety analysis.
Structural integrity of the components of a dual-cooled fuel rod is studied in this paper. The investigated topics are: i) the thickness determination of a cladding tube (especially outer tube of a large diameter), ii) vibration issue of an inner cladding tube, iii) design concern of plenum spring and spacer.

A Study on the Structural Integrity Issues of a Dual-Cooled Fuel Rod
Hyung-Kyu Kim*, Kang-Hee Lee, Young-Ho Lee, Kyung-Ho Yoon, Jae-Yong Kim, Kun-Woo Song
Korea Atomic Energy Research Institute,

Irradiation Test of Dual-cooled Annular Fuel Pellets
Yong Sik Yang1, Dae Ho Kim1, Je Geon Bang1, Hyung Kyu Kim1, Tae Hyun Chun1, Keon
Sik Kim1, Chul Gyo Seo2, Hee Taek Chae2, Kun Woo Song1 Innovative Nuclear Fuel Division,

Thermo-mechanical analysis of a dual cooled annular fuel behavior
Ju-Seong Kima, Yong-Soo Kima+, Yong-Sik Yangb, Je-Geon Bangb, KunWoo Songb
a Hanyang University, bKorea Atomic Energy Research Institute,

The maximum temperature of the annular pellet turn out to be below 700_, even in 200% power up-rated conditions, pellet temperature remains below 950_. Furthermore in accident conditions, sub-channel local boiling occurs, pellet temperature is still below 1000_ that is very small value compare to existing solid fuel.

http://www.kaeri.re.kr/english/sub/sub04_02.jsp

Hi Gail,

My apologies if this request has already been made, but would it be possible to view this guest post in PDF?

Many thanks,

You can convert it yourself by downloading a free PDF converter.Primo is one.They operate via an installation on the printer program and are simple to use.

A fascinating piece of research!

The point about coming US dependence on Russia for fuel was an eye opener!

In general it looks like the "nuclear renaissance" might be a close relative of "green shoots".

My issue with nuclear power has always been its heavy dependence on a high level of technical and industrial infrastructure for its continuance, never mind expansion. Once that infrastructure begins withering, and I think it is and will, what will we (or our kids) be left with?

If the high level of technical and industrial knowledge "withers", we and our kids will have problems of such huge magnitude that people won't even spare a thought for some old nuclear reactors standing around.

However, if one takes the average retirement age for the so far closed 122 reactors as a guideline, one can expect that up to 100 older smaller reactors will be decommissioned during the next 10 years.

Average retirement of reactors is on the increase, and LWR's built after say 1970-1975 will have an average lifetime of say 50-60 years. So you can't really use the hirstorical data here.

Furthermore, the older plants that shut down are smaller than the new that are built, which further skews the comparison.

These uranium data demonstrate the obvious contradiction between the goal that energy imports need to be reduced in order to achieve more energy security, as expressed by past and present US administrations, and reality.

Thus, the data demonstrate that there is nothing like uranium self-sufficiency in the United States, the European Union, Japan, and other rich countries, and that the uranium import dependence is in general much larger than for oil and gas. In fact, the data on uranium mining and the large import dependence for several large uranium consuming countries undermine strongly the widespread belief that uranium resources are plentiful and that uranium exploration and mining costs are only a minor problem for nuclear energy production.

A naive observer may conclude that the permanently repeated claims from authorities, such as from the NEA director general L. Echávarri and the IAEA deputy director Y. Sokolov in 2006 [19], that uranium resources are plentiful and sufficient to sustain the expected growth of nuclear power are either wishful thinking or assume that such statements are needed in order to reinforce the belief in a bright future for nuclear energy.

Serveral things are mixed up here. First, the abundance of uranium is seen as the same as not being dependent on imports. This is obviously a very big error. Further, these imports are not really a worry, as they are mainly from stable nations. The two nations that mine the most uranium and have the biggest reserves are the notorious hotbeds of instability known as Canada and Australia.

Furthermore, the author ignores that proved reserves of uranium has increased radically as a response to the recent prospecting, which was pushed by the high uranium prices. Indeed, the proven reserves increased so dramatically that if we were talking about oil, no one could possibly worry about peak oil.

There was very little uranium exploration between 1985 and 2005, so the significant increase in exploration effort that we are now seeing could readily double the known economic resources. In the two years 2005-06 the world's known uranium resources tabulated above nd graphed below increased 15% (17% in the cost category to $80/kgU). World uranium exploration expenditure in 2006 was US$ 774 million, and the 2007 level was much the same.

http://www.world-nuclear.com/uploadedImages/org/info/uresources.jpg

(For some reason the graph doesn't seem to work.)

perhaps we can discuss these details in context of the forthcoming paper
and stick here to the

actual situation!

michael

Thats it? Where is the part about waste disposal. How can anybody even think of writing about nuclear power plants without considering waste disposal. Do you want to include that in next parts? You should have mention that.

What the article did cover was covered in good detail and depth though the history portion was unnecessary. Also the prelude was longer than needed. It would be better to get directly to point that this much is the contribution of nuclear energy in world energy consumption and this much uranium is needed per year, these are the estimated deposits and these are the available inventories and extraction rates. The charts were nice, both elaborate and to-the-point, good work.

I've written an article about that if you're interested: http://www.eurotrib.com/story/2006/8/13/184016/739

Inappropriate comment. It isn't all about you.

Starvid, thank you for the interesting and informative article.

You're welcome. :)

Please be my guest and ignore reading it then. No one will force you. I provided the link solely because WisdomfromPakistan wanted to read some stuff about nuclear waste management.

Nice write up.

As a side note:
Last year a big Swiss bank generated a record loss and was saved by the tax payer.
Despite the banks record loss, it spent 7 billion CHF on its bonuses.
This year the Swiss energy minister announced that his department will invest 0.01 billion CHF in photovoltaic modules (to 'boost' the economy).
So if only 1% of the banks bonuses (to reward the record loss) are spent in brothels, the Swiss tax payer will support brothels 7 times more than solar power.
This may give one a hunch regarding some of the priorities in the developed world.

Yes... always funny to hear when people say we can't afford to invest in this or that infrastructure (TGV, nukes, windpower, trams, EV's, what have you) when trillions can be blown at bailing out banks, and there's still like $4 trillion left to go until we reach the WW2 debt ratio: http://img.skitch.com/20090611-dw6d7ydx4mntpksa3u7mk9hri8.png

Reminds me that I should start a blog or at least keep my working..

My estimate (for the UK) was that a one time conversion of the entire country to a Nuclear/Electric economy would come to something like £600 billion over 20 years. Bearing in mind that a big chunk of this is money that would be spent anyway on new electric plant, cars and home heating. Practically chump change compared to the banking sector.

Could probably extract enough Uranium from Cornwall to power it all as well, although at some cost.

Hello,
let me try to give some answers in one combined post
*****************************************************
Bill Hannahan on August 5, 2009 - 8:49pm
>I would like to keep the discussion on the actual real situation with nuclear fission power which >includes the well defined near future up to 2015 and perhaps 2020.
>this should provide a solid basis on how things are!

It is obvious that you want to limit the discussion to “how things are” under business as usual conditions, but the important discussion is “how could things be if we took aggressive action.” That is what most people would like to know.

reply:
as I said lets delay this discussion for a few weeks please
and

1) The article (first one) is on the status and the near future
(other points will be discussed in the subsequent articles)

while it is always interesting to chat about this or that future concept
the Thorium use or Future Fast Breeder situation etc
it is a little of the point. But yes, all this will be considered in detail
in part IV

for some more details about existing reactors types their performance etc etc
i suggest to go to the PRIS IAEA database (they are not totally up-to-date but
almost.. http://www.iaea.org/programmes/a2/ and click on
world summary reactor details
or to the WNA

lets have a quick look at the existing FBR and the ones in construction

for example Russia
http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf45.html

their FBR (started operation in Nov 1981 and scheduled close = 2010!
(hardly 30 years lifetime only!)

their new FBR BN-800 is planned to start in 2014 only (now)

These facts disagree with the widely hold belief that they are a great success!

(similar for India planned start is now 2011)

no other FBR are under construction right now!

no Thorium Breeders either it seems

Thus, as my article intended to say something about the
status and near future of nuclear fission energy
perhaps one could stick in the discussion to this topic
the rest will come soon.

2) Escape Artist on August 5, 2009 - 8:12pm
Michael,
Thanks for a very informative and detailed post. It seems that just like oil, it's the flow rate that is important, i.e. if it can't be mined fast enough to supply existing and future nuclear plants then that will be the restricting factor.
*******************
my reply: yes that's what seems to be the case no matter what the price is
if some uranium is missing some reactors will not run!
************

I have a question about the supply - is the amount derived from decommissioned weapons enough that it has affected mining? That is, did enough come on the market that the price was driven down, thus curtailing mining operations?

**********
my reply: yes very interesting point

my guess is that indeed the Russian uranium made some kind of dumping
and effectively reduced the number of players in the uranium sector

these "mining companies" are not more stupid than others
and know that a shortage will increase the price
but some have hands in both the fission power and the mining

I believe that the next year(s) will become a power play between
state owned uranium (military) and the mining companies which struggle to fulfill
what they promised
for what concerns me I would be happy to see that the huge amount of military
reserved uranium gets out of the control of the military
(but.. as conflict seem to increase and not decrease this is likely to be wishful thinking)

michael

ps.. the Chinese and India nuclear program

I doubt that any of their goals for 2015 / 20 can be achieved
like they failed already for the 2010 dates..

You want to talk near term and up to 2020.

You have not addressed the uprate plans and likely increases in uprates. You have not addressed plant operating license extensions.
Uprates in France, USA, Spain, Finland, Sweden, South Korea.

Spain has a program to add 810 MWe (11%) to its nuclear capacity through upgrading its nine reactors by up to 13%. Some 519 MWe of the increase is already in place.

Finland Finland has boosted the capacity of the Olkiluoto plant by 29% to 1700 MWe. This plant started with two 660 MWe Swedish BWRs commissioned in 1978 and 1980. It is now licensed to operate to 2018. The Loviisa plant, with two VVER-440 (PWR) reactors, has been uprated by 90 MWe (10%).

Sweden is uprating Forsmark plant by 13% (410 MWe) over 2008-10 at a cost of EUR 225 million, and Oskarshamn-3 by 21% to 1450 MWe at a cost of EUR 180 million.

You claim 100 plants will be powered down from now to 2020. Ok what is your list of plants ? There are only 439 plants. Just go down the list and pull the ones that would be expected to shutdown by 2020.

I think you are wrong and many will not get shutdown.

UK is delaying plant shutdowns and providing operating extensions. some of the UK plants will be shutdown but several will extend past 2020.
Canada:
http://www.tbs-sct.gc.ca/rpp/2008-2009/inst/CSN/CSN01-eng.asp
Canada has 22 nuclear power reactors, several of which are approaching the end of their designed operating lives. As a result, nuclear power plant licensees are moving forward with projects to refurbish these plants for continued operation. To date, seven reactors have been refurbished, are in the process of being refurbished, or have refurbishments planned.

Canada cancelled the new Ontario reactors but will be refurbishing and uprating reactors. Bruce said it will withdraw its application to build new reactors at Nanticoke, Ontario and refurbish its Bruce A and B nuclear stations along Lake Huron. The improvements would add 1,500 MW of baseload generation.

http://www.pennenergy.com/index/articles/display/366745/s-articles/s-pow...

Germany phase out. Will it happen ?
http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1909228,00.html
Merkel, who agreed to leave the deal intact while forming a coalition with the Social Democrats in 2005, now wants to "phase out the phase out." She argues that it is unrealistic in the face of high oil costs, will endanger renewable energy goals, and will leave Germany vulnerable to the whims of its largest gas supplier, Russia. If the chancellor's party manages to ditch the Social Democrats to form a coalition with the pro-business Free Democrats in September, Merkel may get her wish to keep nuclear plants open longer.

And she may get help from the country's youth. Germany is still the center of anti-nuclear sentiment in Europe, but a new generation of Germans with shifting priorities has their doubts about the 2001 agreement. The government's stated goal on greenhouse gases is to reduce emissions by 40% from 1990 levels by 2020 and 80% by 2050. Without nuclear energy, many are asking, is that a mere pipe dream?

Fast Breeders etc...

China's 65MWt fast breeder reactor is completed and about to be connected in 2009.

Japan's Monju fast breeder is probably restarting in 2009
http://www.jaea.go.jp/english/news/090514/index.shtml
http://carbonnation.info/2009/04/07/china-closer-to-firing-up-a-fast-rea...

New Reactors now to 2015, plus the US has the Watts Bar completion for 2013.

Start Operation* REACTOR TYPE MWe (net)

2009 India, NPCIL Rawatbhata 5 PHWR 202
2009 India, NPCIL Kaiga 4 PHWR 202
2009 India, NPCIL Kudankulam 1 PWR
950

2009 India, NPCIL Rawatbhata 6 PHWR 202
2009 Iran, AEOI Bushehr 1 PWR 950
2009 Russia, Energoatom Volgodonsk 2 PWR 950
2009 Japan, Hokkaido Tomari 3 PWR 912
2010 India, NPCIL Kudankalam 2 PWR 950
2010 Canada, Bruce Power Bruce A1 PHWR 769
2010 Canada, Bruce Power Bruce A2 PHWR 769
2010 Korea, KHNP Shin Kori 1 PWR 1000
2010 China, CGNPC Lingao 3 PWR 1080
2010 Argentina, CNEA Atucha 2 PHWR 692
2010 Russia, Energoatom Severodvinsk PWR x 2 70
2011 India, NPCIL Kalpakkam FBR 470
2011 Taiwan Power Lungmen 1 ABWR 1300
2011 Russia, Energoatom Kalinin 4 PWR 950
2011 Korea, KHNP Shin Kori 2 PWR 1000
2011 China, CNNC Qinshan 6 PWR 650
2011 China, CGNPC Lingao 4 PWR 1080
2011 Pakistan, PAEC Chashma 2 PWR 300
2012 Finland, TVO Olkiluoto 3 PWR 1600
2012 China, CNNC Qinshan 7 PWR 650
2012 Taiwan Power Lungmen 2 ABWR 1300
2012 Korea, KHNP Shin Wolsong 1 PWR 1000
2012 France, EdF Flamanville 3 PWR 1630
2012 Russia, Energoatom Beloyarsk 4 FBR 750
2012 Japan, Chugoku Shimane 3 PWR 1375
2012 Russia, Energoatom Novovoronezh 6 PWR 1070
2012 Slovakia, SE Mochovce 3 PWR 440
2012 China, CGNPC Hongyanhe 1 PWR 1080
2012 China, CGNPC Ningde 1 PWR 1080
2013 China, CNNC Sanmen 1 PWR 1100
2013 China, CGNPC Ningde 2 PWR 1080
2013 Krea, KHNP Shin Wolsong 2 PWR 1000
2013 Russia, Energoatom Leningrad 5 PWR 1070
2013 Russia, Energoatom Novovoronezh 7 PWR 1070
2013 Russia, Energoatom Rostov/ Volgodonsk 3 PWR 1070
2013 Korea, KHNP Shin Kori 3 PWR 1350
2013 China, CGNPC Yangjiang 1 PWR 1080
2013 China, CGNPC Taishan 1 PWR 1700
2013 China, CNNC Fangjiashan 1 PWR 1000
2013 China, CNNC Fuqing 1 PWR 1000
2013 Slovakia, SE Mochovce 4 PWR 440
2014 China, CGNPC Hongyanhe 2 PWR 1080
2014 China , CNNC Sanmen 2 PWR 1100
2014 China , CPI Haiyang 1 PWR 1100
2014 China , CGNPC Ningde 3 PWR 1080
2014 China , CGNPC Hongyanhe 3 PWR 1080
2014 China, CNNC Fangjiashan 2 PWR 1000
2014 China, CNNC Fuqing 2 PWR 1000
2014 China, China Huaneng Shidaowan HTR 200
2014 Korea, KHNP Shin-Kori 4 PWR 1350
2014 Japan, Tepco Fukishima I-7 ABWR 1350
2014 Japan, EPDC/J Power Ohma ABWR 1350
2014 Bulgaria, NEK Belene 1 PWR 1000
2014 Russia , Energoatom Leningrad 6 PWR 1200
2014 Russia , Energoatom Rostov/ Volgodonsk 4 PWR 1200
2015 Japan , Tepco Fukishima I-8 ABWR 1080
2015 China , CGNPC Yangjiang 2 PWR 1080
2015 China , CGNPC Taishan 2 PWR 1700
2015 China , CPI Haiyang 2 PWR 1100
2015 Romania, SNN Cernavoda 3 PHWR 655
2015 Korea, KHNP Shin-Ulchin 1 PWR 1350
2015 Russia, Energoatom Seversk 1 PWR 1200
2015 Russia, Energoatom Baltic 1 PWR 1200
2015 Russia, Energoatom Tver 1 PWR 1200
2015 Russia, Energoatom Leningrad 7 PWR 1200
2015 Japan, Chugoku Kaminoseki 1 ABWR 1373
2015 Japan , Tepco Higashidori 1 ABWR 1080

You doubt China can achieve its nuclear energy build targets. You should have a more detailed case for why the now until 2020 projects will have problems and what kind of problems. You want to talk now to 2020 then fine talk now to 2020. You cannot just handwave a one liner about a missed 2010 target. What were the root causes of the 2010 slips, what were the stated 2010 targets, when were they made and what happened.

South Korea and Westinghouse have had recent build success. They are using Intergraph Smart Plan 4D cad design. It seems that new methodology and techonology can keep the build process more predictable and shorter. China is using the Westinghouse methods and tech. As well China is building a few dozen CPR1000.
http://nextbigfuture.com/2009/08/faster-and-cheaper-nuclear-plant.html

You talk favorably about hydroelectric power.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydroelectricity#Proposed_major_hydroelectr...

Name Maximum Capacity Country Construction starts Scheduled completion Comments

Red Sea dam 50,000 MW Africa/Middle East Unknown Unknown Still in planning, would be largest dam in the world

Grand Inga 40,000 MW Democratic Republic of the Congo 2010 Unknown

Baihetan Dam 13,050 MW China 2009 2015 Still in planning
Wudongde Dam 7,500 MW China 2009 2015 Still in planning
Rampart Dam 4,500 MW United States Canceled
Maji Dam 4,200 MW China 2008 2013
Songta Dam 4,200 MW China 2008 2013
Liangjiaren Dam 4,000 MW China 2009 2015 Still in planning
Jirau Dam 3,300 MW Brazil 2007 2012
Pati Dam 3,300 MW Argentina
Santo Antônio Dam 3,150 MW Brazil 2007 2012
Dibang 3,000 MW India
Lower Churchill 2,800 MW Canada 2009 2014
HidroAysén 2,750 MW Chile 2020
Lenggu Dam 2,718 MW China 2015
Changheba Dam 2,200 MW China 2009 2015
Subansiri Upper HE Project 2,500 MW India 2012 Unknown
Banduo 1 Dam 2,000 MW China 2009

Of the major hydroelectric build (particularly project not in doubt like the Africa ones) that is also pretty much China.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydroelectricity#Major_schemes_under_constr...

China looks on target to get the 300GW hydro target for 2020. And then to roughly max out at 400GW for hydro for 2030

Strange how he can write an article about nuclear energy while conveniently omitting the fact that the nuclear industry cannot survive without not only state subsidy but cannot even insure itself without special state law.

The private industry won't touch nuclear insurance and so a special law had to be drafted. In other words, the public promises to pay in case of an accident.

Furthermore, nuclear cannot even survive - as in build plants - without subsidy.

The vast amount of qualitatively unique and quantitatively dense fossil-fuels used to mine the dilute nuclear fuel-containing minerals, grind them up and refine them into fuel for nuclear plants is an enormous subsidy by itself, though of course such a break isn't enough either...

The nuclear industry is so inefficient that even the massive subsidy provided by cheap fossil fuels isn't enough to keep in running - it also relies on enormous pork from the public-funds trough including direct and indirect subsidies such as insurance, liability limitation, etc. Private markets would never fund them without these things.

As for Uranium fuel, mining today runs on cheap oil - and Uranium minerals are some of the most dilute of all commonly-mined metals. There is no replacement for cheap oil. There will be no electric tractors or massive dump-trucks, graders, etc. to haul the thousands of tons of Uranium bearing ore.

Besides the failing airline industry, mining is the most oil-addicted industry in the world, and the one least likely to ever function under any other non-liquid-fuels regime due to the remoteness of its operations, heavy vehicles hauling enormous loads, and low energy density of any alternative to liquid fuel which together spell doom for most any mining operation, never mind one so wastefully inefficient and environmentally toxic as Uranium mining.

To see how Uranium mining works today, check these photos of the world's uranium mines. Note the equipment used and the sheer scale of operations.

How is Uranium Mined [with photos]
http://ees.nmt.edu/~dulmer/NMCEP/NMCEP%20Nuclear%20Energy7.html

Rabbit Lake Uranium Mine [with photos, note scale of machinery]
http://maewww.blogspot.com/search/label/Uranium%20Mining%20in%20Northern...

After mining, all that ore has to be trucked or trained (diesel) to a plant where huge volumes are ground up using electric grinders (powered by coal more often than not in the US), processed and refined down in the most intensive and complex system until it is fuel-ready.

The nuclear energy system ALREADY has net negative ROI, never mind when the fossil fuels that subsidize it become more expensive, and the people subjected to taxes to fund its unfundable operations decide to revolt or are no longer paying taxes.

As with most so-called 'alternative energy' schemes, it turns out to be cheaper to make guns and blow people's brains out to reduce the excess population than to implement these energy 'sources' which are invariably energy sinks.

The entire nuclear 'industry' is an artifact of cheap oil and of course public pork-barrel subsidy, including the military-industrial complex to which it owes its existence. Along with these things, it will disappear along with the cheap oil from which it came.

Government To Guarantee Loans For Nuclear Power Plants
http://freeinternetpress.com/story.php?sid=21733

1996: $7.1 billion nuclear subsidy
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Corporate_Welfare/Nuclear_Subsidies.html

Nuke power not so clean or green
http://news.cnet.com/Nuke-power-not-so-clean-or-green/2008-11392_3-61898...

The True Cost Of Nuclear Power
http://www.mecgrassroots.org/NEWSL/ISS38/38.07CostNuclear.html

"New" Nuclear Reactors, Same Old Story
http://www.rmi.org/sitepages/pid601.php

"As a business necessity, a nuclear power plant has to be insured, and to prove itself profitable and economically competitive against other technologies in the market for producing electricity."

"Here you meet two fatal shortcomings of the nuclear industry: No insurance company has ever agreed to insure a nuclear power plant. A nuclear plant is too risky to insure. Congress had to step in and pass a law that limits the owner's liability (called The Price Anderson Act of 1957. You and I, dear taxpayer, are the industry's insurance). And regarding competitiveness, Nuclear News, the American Nuclear Society's magazine of March 2005, had this to say:

'Nuclear advocates have made it clear in recent months that even if all regulatory matters were settled ... the actual ordering and building of new power reactors would depend heavily at first on financial incentives to reduce the cost burden to those organizations that build the first plants.'"

"So much for competitiveness."

From: Nuclear Looks Worse than Ever
http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0430-24.htm

1. Uranium ore is many orders of magnitude more energy dense than coal or oil.
2. Cheap coal and oil does not subsidise nuclear as much as they make nuclear comparatively expensive and therefore not as interesting as it would be otherwise.
3. Nuclear power is generally taxed much more than it is subsidised. I'd venture fossil fuels have much larger external costs that they do not carry.
4. When fossil fuels start peaking, you will see the public opinion DEMANDING nuclear power to protect our civilisation and our way of life.
5. Liquid fuels to power fissionables mining operations can always be synthesized from electricity.

a standard believe!

hard nuclear realities indicate another picture

did you read my paper?
I have not seen much comments on its content from you.

michael
ps.. for more on what you wrote wait perhaps for the next ones..

Your response is completely incoherent and doesnt actually adress any of the points brought up. Could you elaborate on what you're actually trying to say?

http://www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?storyId=89169837

In 2006, Florida's legislature passed a measure that allows utilities to recover from ratepayers the cost of plant construction when it's incurred — years before the plant goes online.

And those costs can be eye-popping. Florida Power and Light estimates its two new plants will cost as much as $24 billion. Progress Energy projects that its new plants will cost at least $14 billion. Buddy Eller, a company spokesman, says because of that high cost, if it weren't for the new Florida law, Progress Energy wouldn't have considered the project.

mining is the most oil-addicted industry in the world, and the one least likely to ever function under any other non-liquid-fuels regime

BS !!

Many mines today use electric conveyor belts instead of heavy trucks, electric excavators (or long wall miners), electric crushers and so forth. It is an engineering calculation whether to use oil powered equipment or electrical. Raise the price of oil and mining demand will shift.

Alan

Thank you!

That mining myth is so damn widesread I just can't believe it. The most oil-addicted industry in the world is air traffic.

Question (as a summary of many comments)

Do I understand correctly that essentially all contributers to the discussion
of my article agree that

the "once through cycle (EPR etc reactors)
1) has no perspective and in fact the hard numbers of uranium mining
do not seem to support even the 1%/year growth hoped for by the

WNA, IAEA and others?

2) that the 1%/year growth rate is far too low to compensate for
the declining of oil and other fossil fuels

3) the near future real policy nuclear and non nuclear will
in fact lead to coming backouts (iif the power down option will not be
chosen?

michael

ps as said the sitation with secondary resources and "known" uranium resources
as well as with FBR and Fusion energy will be presented during the coming weeks

the "once through cycle (EPR etc reactors)
1) has no perspective and in fact the hard numbers of uranium mining
do not seem to support even the 1%/year growth hoped for by the

WNA, IAEA and others?

Seriously? No. Not even close. Uranium cost doesn't amount to a significant percentage of the cost of nuclear power at all, and even the low grade ores have fantastic energy and financial return (see Rossing mine at 300ppm.) Uranium just from phosphates and shales is essentially unlimited in the once through cycle alone.

ps as said the sitation with secondary resources and "known" uranium resources
as well as with FBR and Fusion energy will be presented during the coming weeks

Here's a hint. The reserve estimates are at $130/kg from the redbook. You dont even start to notice the price of uranium in electric power costs untill it reaches ten times that.

And don't forget that out of the total cost of nuclear fuel, roughly one third is enrichment, another third is fuel element manufacture and just the last third actually is the cost of the uranium.

Uranium cost doesn't amount to a significant percentage of the cost of nuclear power at all

Really?
stockinterview.com/News/06082007/nuclear-fuel-conference-uranium-price.html

Dr. Kim opened our eyes.
He told his audience that fuel is four to five times the ‘hyped’ cost of nuclear power – between 20 and 25 percent instead of the mere five percent.
He announced, “At $1000/pound for uranium, a nuclear utility’s fuel cost would rise to $70/MWH compared to $5/MWH at legacy contract prices of about $20/pound.
Dr. Kim shot down the premature conclusion that utilities would rather pay the high prices instead of going through a costly decommissioning process. He said, “There is no compulsion to immediately decommission – stations can be held in standby or cold shutdown.”
Finally, he took up the matter of ‘utilities not caring about fuel costs.’ He pointed out, “Take $900 million from your company’s annual net profits. See how happy your management is.”
Because of what we've previously been led to believe, we questioned his numbers and conclusions. So we asked TradeTech’s Gene Clark for a second opinion. Clark emailed back and confirmed Dr. Kim’s calculations were accurate, writing, “At $1000/lb U3O8, I get $86.6/MWh total, but $16.6 is the carrying cost. Without the carrying cost, it’s exactly $70.”

[Dr. Kim] announced, “At $1000/pound for uranium, a nuclear utility’s fuel cost would rise to $70/MWH compared to $5/MWH at legacy contract prices of about $20/pound.

Why do you keep reposting this? Uranium doesn't cost $1000/lb. It doesn't even cost $100/lb.

It doesn't even cost $100/lb.

at least for now and yet:

He told his audience that fuel is four to five times the ‘hyped’ cost of nuclear power – between 20 and 25 percent instead of the mere five percent.

This pump and dump stock interview aside, you aren't saying anything new, except that when fuel uranium are some 20 times todays prices it impacts final cost per kw/h. Now the kicker is of course this opens up thousands of times the resources as is avaliable at $130/kg. Its impossible for long term uranium contracts to rise to these prices in the next several centuries.

I disagree. I think there will be progress on new reactors but in the pre-2020 timeframe it is the existing reactors that will make the most difference. Uprating those that have been built and making more of the Gen 3 and 3.5 reactors. Maybe 4 GWe from china's new pebble beds. Maybe 20 GWe if Hyperion Power generation is fully successful. Maybe 1 GWe how much from russia's new small breeder. First russian might get done 2016-2018.

successfully finishin the research, development and deployment of ultra-uprates would be key to getting and extra 20-30% from the best operating of the existing reactors. I could see an extra from those uprates 60-90GWe. more conservatively they would be 10-30GWe. Also, capacity factor improvement room from some of the less well operated reactors. Currently some in russia and Ukraine at 70% capacity. Can see them getting help with processes and knowhow to get up to 85-90%. 10-15% improvement there would add two hundred billion kwh or so.

I project that Uranium production will ramp up and the total nuclear power levels above can be achieved. The US is a bit more questionable and may have fewer reactors but more uprates could make up for it (Annual uprates possible in the 2016-2020 timeframe)

KazAtomProm announced that Kazakhstan's uranium production increased 28% in 2008 to 8521 tonnes, compared with 6637 tonnes in 2007. Production in 2008 was, however, 1080 tonnes less than planned.

Plans call for uranium production to reach 11,900 tonnes in 2009.

Kazakhstan plans to increase uranium output to some 18,000 tonnes by 2010, which would make the country the world's largest producer of uranium. Kazakhstan has set a uranium production target of 30,000 tonnes per year by 2018, the increase being due to a perceived shortfall being likely about 2014.

http://nextbigfuture.com/2008/09/uranium-mining-forecast-to-2020.html

1. No, absolutely not. Uranium mining can support more growth than that. Btw, I think the growth rate is set to increase substantially.

WNA has a list of reactors, by country, that are operating, being built, are ordered/planned and proposed. You can watch old lists too:
January 2007, there were 435 operating, 28 building, 64 ordered/planned and 158 proposed.
January 2008, there were 439 operating, 34 building, 93 ordered/planned and 222 proposed.
February 2009, there were 436 operating, 43 building, 108 ordered/planned and 266 proposed.
August 2009, there were 436 operating, 49 building, 136 ordered/planned and 288 proposed.

Building, planning, and proposing has doubled in two and a half years. You will not see the impact on the number of reactors operating for a few years yet, though, but the ramping has clearly begun. This renaissance is not only driven by China, btw - in January 2007 there were 17 countries that were ordering/planning and now there is 26.

2. There are no declining fossils. (Oil has declined a bit, but that is due to a slump in demand.)

3. Nothing points to blackouts in the forseeable future.

2. There are no declining fossils. (Oil has declined a bit, but that is due to a slump in demand.)

Oil supply remained approximately flat from 2005-2008 while price rose at 30%/year.  Demand was squeezed out by e.g. poor nations shutting down their oil-fired electric generation because they could not afford fuel.  If that's not enough to convince you that peak oil has already come, what is?

More time.

To elaborate: Conventional oil may have peaked, but we don't know yet. Saudi has increased capacity and for instance Iraq and Iran could, if internal politics allow. However, liquids production may still increase - CTL, LNG, oil shale and so on can be used to increase production. Invididual countries' liquids production have peaked historically in the context of low to moderate prices. With modern tech and at increasing prices, the ball game is quite different.

Whether or not the peak has already occurred, we are in the "peak window". The actual, permanent, final production peak for oil is either past or imminent. Given the financial situation for production investment and depletion of the super-giants it is probably past, but if it is not past it isn't far in the future.

This is of course barring some new development on the order of someone discovering a way to tap Titan directly for its hydrocarbon reserves...

jeppen,
I generally agree with your thinking.
The vision of the post-peak oil world descending into ever frequent black-outs, roving mobs looting and society falling apart makes for a great science fantasy story but doesn't withstand several reality tests.
1)Almost no oil is used to produce electricity by burning and the amounts of diesel and bunker fuel used for NG and coal transport are very small percentages of present oil consumption.
2)We have blackouts now, less frequent in US more common in 3rd world countries. People manage.
3)The is no shortage of wind and solar energy resources to produce electricity
4) The technology for replacing oil transport with NG or electricity is ready to go except for air transport.
5) Two thirds of gasoline consumption is for non-essential travel with one person per vehicle. Long term prices above $10/gallon will result in a dramatic reduction in gasoline consumption and accelerate the shift away from FF to renewable and nuclear.

Right! Nice to hear there are some guys here that are able to think rationally about this.

Michael,

It's off-topic for most of what you wrote in this Part 1 article, but since you indicated that you would be writing about Gen IV reactors in Part 4, I wanted to put in a request that you cover liquid fluoride thorium reactors as well. They're not part of the international Gen IV roadmap -- although some of us think they should be.

You and I have different opinions regarding nuclear power, but I have no problem reading anything you write. You seem to have a scientist's regard for uncovering the truth rather than merely justifying one's preconceptions. When I've tried to research anti-nuclear articles for material that might refute claims made by LFTR proponents, I've been so disgusted by blatent misinformation and misrepresentations that it's been hard to wade through the sewage. At least I can be fairly certain that anything you turn up is an honest opinion from somebody who knows a photo from a photon. (Whether you know a hawk from a handsaw is another matter. Appologies to James Joyce. :-)

Right now, it's looking to me that LFTRs are different enough and superior enough to any other nuclear reactor technology (w/ possible exception of Hyperion) as to be game-changing. Here's a short list of claims you can take aim at:

  • Very small size and very high power density from the core itself. Enables low-cost production from factories;
  • Normal radiation shielding, but no high-pressure containment required. Just dig a hole. No possibility of Chernobyl-type explosion;
  • Highly efficient neutron economy, because fission products that accumulate as neutron poisons in solid-fuel reactors are easily removed from the molten salt as they are created.
  • Very low inventory of fissile material required for operation. Order of 1% of requirements for solid-fueled reactors. Enabled by the efficient neutron economy; new fuel can be added regularly, without interrupting operation, to replace burned fuel;
  • Self-regulating by high negative temperature coefficient of reactivity. Inherently load-following, as fission rate adjusts automatically to rate of heat withdrawl;
  • Ultra-simple fail-safe shutdown mode. A frozen plug of salt in an actively cooled segment of drain pipe melts, and molten salt drains into passively-cooled holding tank;
  • Virtually no transuranic production; fission daughter products removed as waste have short half-lives. Combined with very small volume, largely eliminates waste disposal issue. ("Wastes" would be held and harvested for a range of valuable elements and isotopes.)

The points seem to add up to what should be a dramatically lower capital cost per megawatt. Conventional nuclear plants are extremely safe -- especially compared to coal -- but the safety comes at the cost of extremely high overhead for inspections and paperwork. Less than 1% of the capital cost of a conventional nuclear plant is for the concrete, steel, and other materials that go into the plant. The rest is for "labor", and most of that labor is in inspections, paperwork, and unproductive waiting. A cubic yard of concrete in a nuclear power plant ends up costing on the order of 100 times what a cubic yard on a regular building project would cost. With the LFTR, however, the safety is so intrinsic and so obvious that the overhead of lawyers and inspectors should be cut dramatically.

OK, there's your target for part 4. I look forward to seeing whether, and how well, you can shoot it down.

Hi Roger,

I will try to write something yes!

michael

ps the article posted earlier today
says already something important
about the Thorium issue

http://www.energy-daily.com/reports/Thorium_Reactors_Integral_To_Indian_...

Thanks, and thanks for the link. A word of caution, however, about drawing any conclusions from India's thorium reactor program: it has no relationship to the thermal spectrum thorium breeder that the folks at Energy from thorium are advocating. From the article you linked:

The thorium-uranium 233 cycle in fast breeders does not appear attractive, and for the uranium 238-plutonium cycle, only metallic fuel offers hope of a relatively fast doubling and reprocessing time.

The guy quoted is probably correct: thorium breeding in a fast reactor (using solid fuel assemblies with mixed oxides) "does not appear attractive". But that's a completely different beast than the thermal spectrum molten salt thorium breeder.

I have only had time to read the article itself.  I wrote this comment while going through it.  Others may have addressed the various issues in the comments before this, and I do not mean to detract from their efforts in any way.

FTA:

As significant new constructions in the nuclear power cycle, including uranium mines, enrichment facilities, and power plants, require at least a 5-10 year construction time, the maximum possible contribution of the nuclear power sector up until almost 2020 is already known and presented in this report.

I must disagree with this.  Given an emergency effort, molten-salt reactors have the potential to be built in quantity in much less than 10 years.  The fuel supply for MSRs includes plutonium (extracted from spent LWR fuel; the uranium can be recycled as CANDU fuel) and thorium (some 8000 tons of which were buried as waste in Nevada); none of it requires mining or enrichment.

As a consequence of the ever increasing electric energy demand, the contribution from nuclear fission energy to the total amount of produced electric energy has decreased from 18% in 1993 to 14% in 2008.

This is largely due to a lack of new construction for decades in the West and decommissioning of some very old plants in places like England.  Meanwhile, the capacity factor of nuclear plants in the USA keeps going up.

A fairer comparison would thus give the electric energy produced from hydropower a much higher quality factor than the one from nuclear fission power.

This is not fair at all, because the economics are so different.  The energy supply for a hydro plant is strictly limited by the flow of its river, while that of a nuclear plant is essentially limitless.  The major capital cost for the hydro plant is the dam, not the turbines and generators; it makes excellent sense to over-size the generators and run them at peak-demand hours to maximize revenue.  In contrast the nuclear plant is only restricted by its maximum power, which even a PWR can produce continuously for over a year on a single fuelling.  If you are looking to minimize expenses and emissions, using nuclear for base load makes the most sense.

... the waste heat from nuclear power plants is of lower temperature than that from gas-fired power plants. Consequently, the usage of waste heat from today's nuclear power plants is much less efficient and therefore essentially wasted to the environment.

This is not true.  The exhaust of a gas turbine is quite hot, but in a combined-cycle plant the heat is goes to a Heat Recovery Steam Generator (HSRG) and thence to a steam turbine.  The spent steam from a combined-cycle plant is no hotter than that from a nuclear plant; if it was, it would represent wasted energy which could have been converted to electricity.

The dependence of USA on Russia's good will looks like an interesting problem for the next few years. These uranium data demonstrate the obvious contradiction between the goal that energy imports need to be reduced in order to achieve more energy security, as expressed by past and present US administrations, and reality.

I'm no expert on uranium mining, but the in-situ leaching process (already in use in the USA) appears to make this issue moot because the process can be set up very quickly.  There is a World-nuclear.org page on this process, which states in part (emphasis in bold added):

In the USA the production life of an individual ISL well pattern is typically one to three years. Most of the uranium is recovered during the first six months of the operation. The most successful operations have achieved a total overall recovery of about 80% of the ore, the minimum is about 60%. In Australia individual well patterns can operate from between 6 and 18 months with target recoveries of around 70% in 12 months.

Given such short lifespans and rapid recovery for the resource, putting mines into operation just years or even months before production of reactor fuel assemblies does not appear to be risky.  I suspect that radon measurements of well water provide a measure of in-situ uranium resources without further drilling.

essentially all countries exaggerate their mining capacity predictions far beyond the amount that can be reasonably extracted, as demonstrated e.g. by comparing the 2007 claimed capacity with the actually achieved uranium 2007 mining results.

On the contrary, given the capability to press water-drilling rigs into service for in-situ leach mining, the capacity claims appear very realistic.

Fuel requirements of future generation reactors are irrelevant for the next 10 years as at least 20 years of research and development are required to build them [8]

I would dispute this also, going back to the beginning of this comment.  MSR technology is available off-the-shelf and requires no advances in materials, machining or anything else.  Its most remarkable characteristic is that it is cheap and easy; it takes almost nothing to make a metal tube and fill it with salt.  It has been ignored because it is a disruptive technology, threatening the revenues of the existing nuclear business (such as fuel fabrication); the established interests did not want to get off the gravy train.  If the gravy train is now threatened by FAILING to take advantage of it, we still have the capacity to act.

Given an emergency effort, molten-salt reactors have the potential to be built in quantity in much less than 10 years.

Why would an emergency effort be justified?

Most people don't actually care whether the warm shower water was heated on ones roof or in an efficient co-generation plant which replaced a coal power plant or a heat pump and whether this heat pump simply replaced a wasteful electric heater and thus saved electricity or was powered by some photovoltaics on the roof, wind, csp, hydro, geothermal, biomass or nuclear.

The energy supply for a hydro plant is strictly limited by the flow of its river, while that of a nuclear plant is essentially limitless.

The energy supply of a nuclear power plant per year is limited by the power rating of the nuclear power plant times its capacity factor.

The exhaust of a gas turbine is quite hot, but in a combined-cycle plant the heat is goes to a Heat Recovery Steam Generator (HSRG) and thence to a steam turbine.

That would explain, why a combined-cycle gas power plant is significantly more efficient than a nuclear power plant.

If you are looking to minimize expenses and emissions, using nuclear for base load makes the most sense.

And if you look at electricity prices paid at peak demand vs base demand, peak electricity prices are significantly higher than base electricity prices. (Within less than one day the spotmarket price for European electricity went up by almost 400% to 155 eurocents/kWh in this example: http://tinyurl.com/ny3vap
Also in the summer months base load electricity prices can be as low as 0 cents/kWh, which may make base load power plants not particularly attractive: http://tinyurl.com/lcp9z8
This may be one of the reason why building of pump storage lakes (no rivers) in the Alps is currently booming - besides not having smart loads to reduce peak demand.)

MSR technology is available off-the-shelf

Where can we buy it off the shelf and what does it cost per kW and how quickly can it be built?

It has been ignored because it is a disruptive technology, threatening the revenues of the existing nuclear business (such as fuel fabrication)

Conspiracy?

Why would an emergency effort be justified?

Well, goodness, if we have a fiscal or climate crisis looming, don't you think that would justify going onto a war footing?

Most people don't actually care whether the warm shower water was heated on ones roof or in an efficient co-generation plant

Thank you for acknowledging that these things are fungible.  To dig deeper, one's early-morning shower might or might not be taken from warm water heated on one's roof the previous day, but the juice to run one's computer to read the overnight e-mail—or to charge the PHEV for the morning's drive to work—is much less easily derived.

And if you look at electricity prices paid at peak demand vs base demand, peak electricity prices are significantly higher than base electricity prices.

Quite irrelevant.  Base-load generators are paid at peak rates during peak periods.  That's one of the things which lets them sell so cheaply during off-peak periods.

Where can we buy it off the shelf

I said the technology, not production hardware.  Create a market and the technology will be translated to product.

Well, goodness, if we have a fiscal or climate crisis looming, don't you think that would justify going onto a war footing?

Well, goodness, efficiency and renewable energy is therefore a no go? Everything has to be thrown at a nuclear power reactor which is not even commercially available?

Since capital is actually limited this may not be a particularly smart move.

Create a market and the technology will be translated to product.

Considering the power added worldwide each year, the market is obviously here - you just need to bring the product. After all you've had plenty of funding:

Nuclear power has dominated government spending on energy research and development, accounting for over US$159 billion between 1974 and 1998. Although its share has fallen, it still accounts for 51% of the OECD energy R&D budget:

http://www.world-nuclear.org/sym/2001/fig-htm/frasf6-h.htm

To dig deeper, one's early-morning shower might or might not be taken from warm water heated on one's roof the previous day, but the juice to run one's computer to read the overnight e-mail

Actually you cannot power a computer with solar hot water. This is just simple physics - not even that deep.

That's one of the things which lets them sell so cheaply during off-peak periods.

The utilities still need to generate a profit and they can only do this if they can produce cheap electricity in the first place, which seems to be challenge:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=89169837&ps=rs

Florida Power and Light estimates its two new plants will cost as much as $24 billion. Progress Energy projects that its new plants will cost at least $14 billion.

Progress Energy spokesman Buddy Eller says that because of those high costs, if it weren't for the Florida law, passed in 2006, his firm wouldn't have considered the project.

Actually you cannot power a computer with solar hot water.

And I said as much; the energy for the computer "is much less easily derived".  If my prose is written at a level beyond your competency in English, perhaps you should discuss things with others.

Well, goodness, efficiency and renewable energy is therefore a no go? Everything has to be thrown at a nuclear power reactor which is not even commercially available?

Those are all good but they are not going to be sufficient.

Since capital is actually limited this may not be a particularly smart move.

Limited capital is actually the best reason to pursue LFTR.  The small size and simplicity of the reactors, the possibility of building most of the system in factories and trucking completed assemblies to the site, plus the potential to slash the size and cost of the power-conversion systems using e.g. supercritical CO2 turbines instead of steam, all add up to less capital per kW.  The ability to burn reclaimed actinides as the starting fuel load and eliminate the expense of monitoring spent LWR fuel is another investment in reduced future costs.

Francois,
your arguments go surprisingly in line with reports of the Energy Watch Group (www.energywatchgroup.org), e.g.
http://www.energywatchgroup.org/fileadmin/global/pdf/EWG_Report_Uranium_...
Did you know about this or is this pure coincidence?

You need to ask Michael. I was only the editor of this story, not its author.

Hi Drillo,

I know this excellent Energy Watch Group report. It contains many detailed informations
and yes I would say it comes to the same conclusions.

In fact many different people and groups came and come to similar cpnclusions

the fueling of the world wide nuclear power plants is in a very critical shape.

For what concerns my article(s) it is an extension and update of my talk
which I gave on the ASPO meeting in Ireland in Sep. 2007
(for an update of this talk and extended with many diagrams see http://ihp-lx2.ethz.ch/energy21/nuclearoptionpisa.pdf
or the original http://ihp-lx2.ethz.ch/energy21/nuclearoption.pdf

with references to other studies

For what concerns my article it was triggered
by the 2007 Red Book (which appeared in June 2008)
and the comparison with the 2005 Red Book which I had used for my ASPO talk.

my approach tries to use only the information from the most authoritative pro nuclear organisations
the IAEA and the WNA. From this analysis one finds that indeed the conclusions obtained
by many different groups are in fact (well hidden) more or less included in the publications
of these organizations.

I believe it adds some valuable informations to a rational discussion about the
future of nuclear energy.

Especially in the "chapter three and four " I will comment/reference on the results obtained by the energy other groups.
but yes conclusions are similar
but I believe with the latest data become more and more strong!

michael

There is an article in a recent edition of The Economics entitled: How long till the lights go out? that is relevant to this debate.

The article proposes that NG storage should be increased and that grid connections to Europe are increased. Both have value in themselves, but the best way to ensure electricity supply is not interrupted is to build more wind and nuclear energy in the UK, and improve home insulation. These will reduce NG and electricity consumption, keeping more available for peak demand.

Most energy in UK households is needed for heating purposes. Heat energy cannot only be saved with insulation but also stored cheaply and thus electricity does not need to be provided at a constant level, so wind power can actually power many heat pumps replacing existing fossil fuel heaters:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6176229.stm
Needless to say, that there's more wind power during winter time, when heating demand peaks.

In fact this house in central Europe stores solar heat energy from the summer in order to provide sufficient heating and solar hot water during the entire winter time (plenty of storage time to put it bluntly).