Aging power: The Watts Bar nuclear plant, shown here, is one of the newest in the United States. It started operations in 1996 (construction began in 1973).
TVA
Loan guarantees in the 2011 federal budget could help revive the nuclear power industry.
President Obama's proposed 2011 budget could provide a significant boost to the U.S. nuclear power industry, which has been stalled for decades. If approved by Congress, the budget would provide $36 billion in loan guarantees for nuclear power plants, opening the way for around seven new nuclear power plants, depending on the final cost of each. The new guarantees are in addition to $18.5 billion in guarantees provided for in a 2005 energy bill.
The increased support for nuclear power marks a change for the Obama administration, which has opposed similar increases in the past. Some policy experts say it is part of a strategy to win Republican votes for a comprehensive climate and energy bill.
The loan guarantees are needed because investors are reluctant to put up money for nuclear power plants, which raises the cost of financing. Investors are worried about uncertainties in the cost of the plants, especially since it's been so long since any new ones have been built. They're also concerned that, historically, political support for nuclear power plants has been unstable, with regulatory backing disappearing in less time than it would take to build a new plant.
By guaranteeing loans, the government can bring down financing costs. The fact that the support for nuclear is now bipartisan--coming from both the president and from Republicans in Congress--also suggests that it will remain stable beyond the current administration, says Charles Forsberg, the executive director of the MIT Nuclear Fuel Cycle Project. As a result, he says, more utilities could be willing to undertake the construction of nuclear power plants.
According to one recent analysis, the cost of building nuclear power plants has approximately doubled in the last seven years (due to things such as increasing materials costs). As it stands, this means that the cost of electricity from new plants would be around 8.4 cents per kilowatt hour, compared to about 6 cents per kilowatt hour for conventional fossil fuel plants. But cutting the cost of financing could make nuclear competitive with fossil fuels, says Andrew Kadak, a professor of nuclear engineering at MIT.
Electricity prices will increase, but your bill could actually come down.
The maker of nuclear power plants is promoting a process to use the waste as fuel.
Thirty years after Three Mile Island, nuclear is still too risky. But now the risks have shifted from physical to financial.
Nothing like the free market operating in all its glory
Is nuclear as cost competitive with individual solar electric, solar hot water and geothermal heat and cooling, when you add to the costs of power generation the associated costs of
*power lost due to line loss v/s power generated on site where it is consumed,
*private liability insurance covering the entirety of a catastrophic accident or an accident during transport of waste,
*costs for securing plants, shipment and storage of waste from terrorist attacks,
*the cost of transporting waste,
*local state and federal taxes paid by consumers for the power they buy,
*the cost to decommission and transport old plant debris to safe storage sites,
*the cost to maintain and secure safe waste storage sites,
*the added national security costs due to proliferation,
*additional costs needed to beef up and secure the national power grid to facilitate a highly centralized power generation model
Re: Nothing like the free market operating in all its glory
To answer your question yes it is. The reasons being:
1) Low fuel cost
2) Very long lifetime
3) Very high power density
The things you mentioned work well on a small scale, but you have to remember that individual homes do not account for the majority of the energy consumption. Solar water heating, and geothermal home climate control are probably the best ways to reduce electrical consumption for homes, but they can in no way meet the energy demands of larger establishments.
Nuclear power provides stable, reliable, clean, and cheap electricity because of the power density of uranium and the economies of scale. 1 small nuclear power plant can provide electricity for more than 1000 homes. The only other generation source that can provide baseload power at the same cost is coal.
The main issue with nuclear is high level waste, which is a political, not a technical issue.
Re: Nothing like the free market operating in all its glory
ok then how about VERY LONG lead times to actually get the plant both approved to build and then built.
not quite so reliable when you factor in reactor closings for maintenance and refueling.
1000 highly skilled workers per plant, most of existing workers are getting older.
NO RETURN ON INVESTMENT till plant is actually running.
LOSS TO TAXPAYERS from money tied up in loans and possible defaults.
and as previous poster mentioned, subsidies of liability insurance. If a solar power plant is destroyed by flood / terrorist / earthquake / maintenance goof (cause of soviet nuclear disaster) a solar plant won't kill lots of people, make large areas uninhabitable, plus raised cancer levels in large area outside danger zone, and raise global radiation levels.
as mentioned, costs now 1/3 more than fossil fuels and won't be online soon enuf to make a dent in global warming. We'd need 100 plants.
Wind costs are plummeting as is solar as proved by First Solar, whose non-silicon solar panels are dropping in price by double digits each year.
Plus we could cut our energy use 30% by simply insulating all existing buildings better. those billions would be better spend doing this kind of thing, avoiding the need for as much new generation capacity.
Re: Nothing like the free market operating in all its glory
Licensing and construction times can be brought down a lot with practice. In japan and france they can turn out a fully operational plant in 5 years.
Nuclear power has the highest capacity factor of any power production method, around 95%. This means that in a given year the plant is producing its nameplate capacity 95% of the year. This accounts for maintenance. Wind has a capacity factor of about 33%, solar is about 20% at best.
A small nuclear power plant will produce about 1GWe, a large one will produce 2-3 GWe. This is a base-load power source with a 95% capacity factor. In order to compensate for variability for wind you have to construct roughly 3x the nameplate capacity in windmills to get a base-load power source. (This is even if they manage to work out the storage problem.) The upper bound on the time it would take to license and build a 2GW nuclear power plant is about 10 years. (it can be done much faster) To build the same nameplate capacity in wind it would also take about 10 years. But, when you bring in the fact that in reality it takes about 3x the nameplate capacity to make wind a base-load source, you end up getting about 30 years to build the equivalent of a nuclear power plant in windmills. At this rate you will be replacing the first windmills built before you finish the last ones.
As for safety, in the US nuclear power has resulted in fewer deaths than any other power generation method. You honestly have no idea how incredibly resilient these systems are. Reactors have survived earthquakes, floods, and category 5 hurricanes. If you do have a natural disaster that manages to completely destroy your reactor and the containment you likely have much much bigger problems on your hands.
Re: Nothing like the free market operating in all its glory
Actually, nuclear power plants achieve nowhere near 95% capacity in practice. (More like 80% or 85%) Furthermore, even if they could achieve 95% capacity, that wouldn't be as great as it sounds, because demand is variable. In particular, there is not as much demand at night as during the day in many places. However, you can't dial back the reactor for lower generation at night. It takes longer than that to cool down. Reactors have to run at full bore all the time. So that excess power generated at night has to be stored. The most common means of storage is to build hydro dams and use the electricity to pump water uphill at night. So, in addition to building a hugely expensive nuclear plant, you now have to build a hugely expensive dam which creates it's own environmental problems. If you're going to build the storage anyway for nuclear, then you can use the same storage system to mitigate the availability of wind, pumping water when the wind is abundant, and using the reserve when it's not. In any event, if you have enough wind generators spread out over a large area, statistically, the wind is always blowing some time.
Also, there are plenty of ways to increase generation capacity for wind and solar. Of course, geothermal has pretty constant capacity, as would tidal, salinity gradient generators, etc. Flying electric generators have shown much higher availability. Solar chimneys and even heliostats (power towers) can often operate far after the sun goes down.
Then there is PV. Photovoltaic is a semi-conductor technology, and, as some have argued, it is therefore potentially subject to similar effects to Moore's law. As semiconductor technology advances, we are finding cheaper and cheaper ways to manufacture solar panels and even integrate cheap storage right into the panels. Eventually, just like million dollar CPUs end up costing only a few hundred, PV can be expected to drop in price. At present, it would have to drop a couple orders of magnitude to be competitive with the cheapest generation sources out there, but that is conceivable in the world of electronics. It's true that the sun isn't always shining, but if PV panels were cheap enough, you would just get 4 to 5 times more than you need and store the excess for use when the sun is not out. (BTW, PV often doesn't need concentrated solar, so it can operate a bit longer than solar thermal).
One last point is that it seems that many of the current fossil and fissile generation systems do not really generate as cheaply as they claim. If you had to account for all the exacerbation of respiratory disease created by coal or gasoline combustion, for example, these sources would not be as economical as they sound. These costs are being externalized. Imagine if a solar panel aggravated people's asthma. There would probably be a crusade to outlaw their use on the spot. Yet, we tolerate this from the current fossil and fissile sources without challenge. As has already been pointed out, nuclear creates a lot of external costs as well that we would consider pretty unacceptable if it were coming from the wind industry, for example. People are up in arms if their view is spoiled by wind turbines, yet they happily accept living by a nuclear power plant that could be attacked 911-style and could spew radioactive materials over a wide area.
Perhaps some of the newer designs for reactors, such as PBMR can address some of these concerns. However, in general, we are still talking about massive expenses, and still plenty of safety concerns, not to mention concerns about fuel supply. It is interesting that nuclear, for all the money that has been pumped into it and all the special privileges that it has been extended by government still can't compete in the "free market".
Re: Nothing like the free market operating in all its glory
Nuclear power has a capacity factor of 92% (http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/nuclear/page/operation/statoperation.html)
No, there is no way to increase the capacity factor of wind and solar. The capacity factor is
(Energy Produced per unit time)/(Sticker Generation Capacity)
For wind and solar this is fixed by local conditions. The wind doesn't always blow and the sun doesn't always shine. Wind capacity factor is 30%-40% solar varies (about 12%-15% in Ma). Increasing your efficiency etc of generation isn't going to change this, you still can only produce power a certain amount of the time.
Nuclear plants can be cycled down, or excess production can go to producing hydrogen for transportation fuel. In fact if you are truly worried about excess power production the situation with wind is far worse than nuclear.
(http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6V2S-4F490FK-2&_user=501045&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_sort=d&_docanchor=&view=c&_searchStrId=1122234871&_rerunOrigin=scholar.google&_acct=C000022659&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=501045&md5=354e2ce7dd5d3555d9932e9302c7a2d6)
If you are going to start factoring in additional things into the 'cost' of generating power from nuclear or fossil fuels you have to account for the land cost of wind and solar as well as the other things.
Also if you are concerned about a nuclear reactor being attacked 9-11 style I recommend watching this video of a test of the strength of the containment dome. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rWdcVo6zIYI)
Once again I rest my case that all of nuclear's problems are political not technical. Wind, solar, geothermal however have many many technical challenges to overcome before they become viable large scale base power sources.
Re: Nothing like the free market operating in all its glory
It is false that capacity factor cannot be increased for wind or solar. The most obvious example of how you could increase capacity factor for solar would be to put your solar panels in orbit, where the sun would be available around 99% of the time. Of course, until space launch becomes cheaper, this is not a viable option. However, there are plenty of other ways of increasing the real generating capacity of solar and wind terrestrially. I find that most people who are knowledgeable about nuclear are not particularly informed about the host of other new technologies that are coming along.
Flying electric generators (FEGs), for example, as the link below shows, do in fact have much higher capacity because the wind at high altitudes (30,000 feet) is almost constant as well as much faster than at lower levels. Capacities as high as 90% are cited.
http://energy.probeinternational.org/alternative-energy/renewables/flying-windmills
For that matter, offshore wind turbines have higher capacity because the wind blows a lot more frequently and more strongly offshore than it often will on land.
Solar capacity can be increased by things like solar chimneys because they operate based upon convection. Air is sucked up a tall chimney, with a turbine at the bottom. It's a solar and wind hybrid system that relies upon the earth's surface being heated by the sun to power wind flow, but creates its own wind, so to speak, via the chimney.
See:
http://seekingalpha.com/article/14935-enviromission-s-solar-tower-of-power
I also mentioned heliostats, which heat a central receiver that usually contains something like molten salt. At the risk of hearing the standards objections, I will list a wiki reference that quotes its capacity factor, as well as those of a number of other technologies. BTW, it quotes capacity factors for nuclear as low as 60% but does confirm your average figure of around 92%.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacity_factor
I am not making these points merely to quibble. Nuclear proponents often attempt to dismiss all other technologies by claiming that they can generate enough baseload for long enough time frames. However, all the technologies I've cited, including geothermal, tidal, as well as FEGs, solar chimneys, heliostats, do have improved generation capabilities.
The point I was making about the high capacity of nuclear was that, since demand is variable, its excess capacity ends up being for naught anyway, and you end up having to build storage. If you're willing to build massive storage for nuclear, then you're admitting that its high capacity factor is an illusory benefit. If you built the same storage system to support renewable systems, the final output would not look that different than what you get from nuclear, because the load would be leveled.
It's true that we have to draw a line somewhere in what costs we assign to the generation of power. My point was that fossil fuels traditionally benefit from having their fairly pronounced external costs excluded from the price calculations for production, whereas many renewables are costed far more broadly. You mentioned that we could charge for the land use. But wind turbines take up a tiny footprint. You can often grow crops around them, or graze cattle with almost no disruption. Solar power plants are in the middle of the desert where the land wasn't being used for anything and is now being made productive. So we can play lots of games, but we need to play them fairly when comparing different options.
Re: Nothing like the free market operating in all its glory
First the technologies you are describing for improving the capacity factor for wind and solar are far from being deployable. Orbital solar stations are incredibly far in the future if they ever will be developed as the losses associated with beaming power to earth from space are huge.
Second, geothermal, tidal, as well as FEGs, solar chimneys, heliostats do have improved generating capacities, but are not scalable. They are geographically limited and have a low power density compared to nuclear.
You seem to miss the point of a high capacity factor, which is that the power output is controllable. Wind, Solar, Tidal, you can't control when they are producing power, you can predict, but with these sources your generation won't necessarily line up with your demand causing huge issues. Renewables are a pain when it comes to load balancing. You need huge amounts of storage for renewables because you have to be able to control the release of power to the grid. With nuclear you can cycle the output of the power station. You can drop the output of a nuclear power plant by about 50% without shutting it down.
If you are isolating your wind and solar generation to specific geographical areas such as deserts of farmland you lose out on the padding that distributing them over say the entire nation gets you. While true you can use farm land for wind turbines this presents the problem of having your power source a long ways away from where it is needed. This leads to even more losses in transmission, increased cost because more transmission lines are needed, etc.
Re: Nothing like the free market operating in all its glory
Losses are not actually that high at all for beamed power, if you use appropriate technologies. The cost of cheap access to orbit may drop pretty quickly if nano-technology ramps up. I was only making a technical point that capacity factor on these devices can be improved.
I'm not sure why you think that FEGs, and similar technology can't be scaled. In point of fact they are one of the most scalable, since they can be used almost anywhere, as opposed to just areas with high surface wind.
The same applies with photovoltaic. It can be used almost anywhere. We just need cheap enough manufacture.
Even with geothermal, technically, it can be used almost anywhere, if wells are deep enough. Of course those are more expensive right now. But air and ground heat pumps can be used in many places and can displace energy use that would otherwise require fossil fuels.
Transmission losses are a fact of life, but we are clearly working on technology from HVDC to superconducting that will mitigate those losses. Nuclear often has similar issues because it must transmit such huge amounts of energy from a central source over a wide region.
Nuclear can be part of the answer, but these other sources can be very economical compared to the cost of constructing a huge nuclear plant as the one-size-fits-all "answer" to all energy needs. Renewable is far more *appropriate* for local needs, in many cases.
Re: Nothing like the free market operating in all its glory
I've always liked solar and wind, but they just cannot scale in time or practicality. We are simply never going to cover immense chunks of remote desert with solar panels nor completely revamp our grid to handle it. Wind is nice, but pretty ugly, very loud, kills birds absorbs immense space.
Nuclear is dense and it can scale. Particularly if we look into Thorium thermal breeders which don't have melt down or containment issues. But, even with nuclear, there are better technologies to bring down the toll of zero public deaths in the history of the industry.
Re: Nothing like the free market operating in all its glory
Much of Europe and Japan gets a high percentage of their domestic electrical power from nuclear power. France itself uses nuclear for over 75% of their power generation.
What are you afraid of that the French aren't?
You don't think the contractors that built the French plants would be interested in government-subsidized US contracts?
how we can argue over the practicality of nuclear power when it has been working for decades just across the pond
and how we can worry about the dangers when even the ridiculously unsafe Chernobyl plant will ultimately shorten the lives of fewer people over decades than die in coal mining every year?
Re: Nothing like the free market operating in all its glory
Insurance for these plants is subsidized by the government; always has been and always will be. No private utility or insurance company could possibly pay for the risk of a possible catastrophic $1Trillion+ accident. Indeed that probability is small but it is there; these are complicated, intricate systems with equipment and human factors interplaying. Industry track record: 4 decades, several hundred plants worldwide: 1 catastrophic failure leading to permanent evacuation of all urban areas and farms for miles around (Cherynobyl) and one near miss (3 mile island) I'm aware of, perhaps more. The reality is that if one of these things had another catastrophic problem, the utility/ insurance company couldn't pay the remediation costs, they'd file for bankruptcy, and you and I would pick up the tab to relocate those cities and for the chemotherapy. Perhaps it's a better risk than coal, but let's honest and call it what it is: subsidized.
Why is the government picking winners? If a bunch of 'smart' people could run a planed economy then the USSR would have kicked the free market to the curb.
Divide the money up for levels of meeting decentralized energy at 5 to 10 cents per kwh for a home based energy system.
Solar, Geothermal, fuel cell, let all go for the tax free prize! The energy X prize supercharged with Billions of tax free dollars.
Eric
You over simplify things. Someone merely made a deal with the devil behind closed doors. It's business as usual. And this devil works in $$$, not brimestone.
Don't worry, the "Free Market" will kick itself to the curb, its already happening . Nuclear is just too expensive, Areva is building Finland's Olkiluoto reactor that is now 10 year running and overbudget at $8 -10 Billion with more to come.
A new Nuclear plant here, will cost you a minimum of $12 Billion and 12 years to build. Why when you can already buy solar panels from China for $1/watt, Solar is following the same trajectory as Computers with a modified Moor's law curve: as more plants and technologies come online, it is getting cheaper and cheaper really fast.
Solyndra (Milpitas CA) just got 500 Million and is building a 500 MW plant, ie 500 MW every year of production.
on november 17, 2009, i read this article in, drum roll, techreview{http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/arxiv/24414/} which states, seemingly backed by the authority of the renowned experts in this field, the swiss federal research institute in zurich, that by 2013, the world will be basically out of uranium...
when i then read in the new york times on december 15th that the obama admin is giving $18.5 to the industry to build more nuclear power plants... i did my civic duty and phoned and emailed my congressmen and sent letters to the editors of the washington post, times – all . getting nothing published and hearing nothing about this matter from congress and no letters printed; i repeated the process several times to exactly no effect.
googling, i saw that the CFR (council on foreign relations, which i regard as a cabal of powermongers dating back 60 years and many presidents, etc.), is saying that there is at least 70 years of known reserves of uranium available.
now both of these estimates cannot be correct and one is in error by miles off. so i added this to my correspondence, suggesting that perhaps a debate is in order to establish which authority is correct. response nil.
i'm reminded that in 2003, i was given an 'official use only' copy of the 'US naval study for an ice-free arctic' which states that by 2015-2020, the polar ice cap will be so melted that the pole will be passable without icebreakers in summer. however, that point was briefly reached in the summer of 2008 and greenland is now melting at 5x the rate of 2001; triple the expectations of melting. the report also validated global warming thesis in no uncertain terms and attributed this certainty to the navy's overview of the seas. meanwhile, in that same year of 2003, with this government research in hand; president bush stated, verbatim of what his father had said in 1992, that "global warming is not a certainty and needs more research."
so just because the government is pushing ahead with plans to spend $18.5 billion on new nuclear power plants doesn't at all mean that there will be uranium to run those plants. candles and blankets, anyone? or is there plenty of uranium and the previous techreview article and swiss report in error?
never mind the fact that the IAEC stated flatly in 2001 that with over300 aged plants, that the great likelihood is we will have more chernobyls. while we're told that the new plants are soooo safe and clean; that is what we were told in the 1950s, too. if they're that safe, why not build one on capitol hill or out under NSA-A, NIMBY. even the wall street journal in 1999 said that nuclear energy was by far the most expensive and that far from clean, that there isn't enough money on earth to fully clean up every existing site. furthermore, not a gram of nuclear power plant waste has ever been safely or truly disposed of, even after the expenditure of billions of dollars in the attempt.
why do i get the feeling i might as well be banging my head against a wall? does anyone at techreview or elsewhere know for a fact what the real scoop is about whether or not there is a shortage of uranium looming? last i heard, nuclear plants can't be converted to coal? if you have solid info on this, please email me plexflux@nyc.rr.com. thanks. taz delaney
Please tell us about all the bad nuclear accidents in the US and Europe.
More people were killed in Teddy Kennedy's Oldsmobile than at Three Mile Island.
There is no uranium shortage. Current reserves can supply the world for the next 70 years or so using only a once through fuel cycle. However, this is based only on the reserves that were found about 30 years ago, since then no one has really been looking for or developing additional sites because there is no economic reason for doing so. The paper you are referring to accounts for only currently operational mines, neglects recycling of weapons grade material, and dismisses any and all reprocessing.
Once you get into the realm of reprocessing, fast reactors, and thorium reactors the amount of fertile fuel on the planet is far from running out.
And with breeders, you multiply the supply many fold and end up with far far less waste.
I'm afraid that blog of ours was a bit misleading. No, we're not running out of uranium in 5 years, although it looks like one source of uranium will run out. There are others, however.
comparison of investments in forms of low carbon energy
Has any one seen a chart that states the total dollars put into various forms of energy?
Total funding for solar, clean coal, nuclear, wind, biofuel, wave power, battery, fuel cell etc. It would be interesting to see the life-cycle cost of energy for each of these sources today and projected into the future along with the life-cycle carbon intensity of each technology.
Maybe some expansion of nuclear energy is a reasonable compromise if it is part of a larger strategy for carbon reduction, job growth, and clean energy abundance. What percentage expansion of nuclear capacity would this investment result in?
We Are Immersed in Clean Energy, Lots of it
I am not faulting President Obama's energy policy but nuclear power will soon fade away. But then again, so will coal, gas, oil, wind, solar, wave, tidal and hydroelectric power. In the not too distant future, they will all become obsolete overnight.
It will happen when we truly and fully understand the nature of motion. Then, suddenly, it will dawn on us that we are immersed in an immense field of clean energy, lots and lots of it, more than we'll ever need.
Physics: The Problem with Motion
A step towards energy independence
Even with the long lead time for plant construction, the notion that this is a bipartisan effort is encouraging. The nuclear industry can train 1000's or workers very easily by the time the plants near their activation dates. The $10 million price tag is much less costly than say - sending thousands of troops over seas to protect other fuel sources.
Move the troops home, save billions securing oil, redirect the funds to other domestic programs and keep the tax dollars cycling through our domestic economy. The US lost it's ability to make the reactor vessels already, but if we're serious about this we can purchase or license technologies from other countries with broader nuclear programs in place and hire and train US workers to build them. Otherwise hire those resources to work in the US for a while to build us what we need. Japan has a lock on reactor core's from what I have read. What can we learn from them and other nations to speed things up?
Obama should integrate the Nukes into some part of his Exit Strategy Planning for getting out of the Middle East. By doing so, he ties the Energy Policy to the Foreign Policy a little tighter and makes it an ongoing issue for future presidents and cabinets. If we're prepared to spend hundreds of billions annually in one area, why not shift the funding to more urgent matters here at home.
We can use that clean electrcity to power our nation. I spent three years with Bectel and Fluor during the 80's at S.O.N.G's in San Diego County and the technological improvements since then have got to be much better and safer.
Aimed at replacing aging nukes
Let's not lose sight of the age of the 103-104 commercial nukes that produce 19% of our electricity today. I believe it's likely that incentives aim at replacements to many of those power plants that are nearing the end of their useful lives. Utilities are not very happy with their NPPs, and it takes incentives to even get their interest in replacing them. Even if we were to replace 30 plants over the next 30 years, that's one per year - a huge investment. To further grow electrical output from nukes significantly would require construction of several NPPs per year for several decades. This just isn't going to happen.
MIT's own multidisciplinary study of future nuclear power makes the case for continued reliance on light water reactors and puts the cost of electricity of new nukes at nearly 7 cents/kWh, which is double the cost of wind power or coal, and about on par with natural gas and CSP. Nukes are large, centralized power plants at a time when utilities prefer smaller, distributed generation. Nukes are difficult to dial back when the power is unneeded as opposed to other generation. And the product is expensive compared to output from other generation.
I don't think that Obama favors growth in nuclear power as much as he and others want to preserve its contribution going forward until nuclear fission power runs its course over the next few decades.
Nuclear fuel is increasingly difficult to obtain. The U.S. relies on Soviet-era bomb-grade uranium for almost half of what we use. We use a third of the world's uranium production already. In this decade, high-grade uranium ores will deplete significantly, leaving the industry to resort to low-grade ores. When fuel stockpiles and converted bomb fuel run out, mining capacity can be upgraded to a point where it can supply only 80% of demand. That chronic shortage is expected to last for decades.
I fear that short-term greed drives some of the political bias toward nuclear incentives. When high-ranking politicians like Bush, McCain and Obama make statements and take actions to promote nuclear power, this helps to prop up the price of uranium, which has spiked 800-1000% over the past few years. Mining companies in New Mexico and Arizona want to bring in uranium at those high prices if they can. Not that it will do the U.S. much good. All the uranium within our borders is only enough to power our existing needs for 17 years. We import 95% of what we consume.
Re: Aimed at replacing aging nukes
I'm not sure where you are getting your numbers when you figure that nuclear at $.07 per kWh is double that of wind. This is completely opposite in Europe where electricity in France (80% nuclear) costs half that of electricity in Denmark (20% wind).
As already stated if you are worrying about the world running out of uranium, don't. Most of the doomsday predictions are based on two facts:
A) we have discovered all the uranium on the planet;
B) we are going to continue using a once through fuel cycle until the fuel runs out;
Both of these assumptions are ridiculous. No one has gone looking for uranium in about 30 years, and in that time prospecting and processing technologies have advanced greatly. They said we were going to run out of oil in 20 years 40 years ago, apparently not... They have been saying the same thing about uranium for just as long.
On energy security: We get most of our uranium from friendly nations such as Canada and Australia, and about 10% of the fuel comes from dismantled Russian nuclear weapons.
Former EPA chief Christine Whitman on CNN Money
In this interview, Whitman suggest the cost of nuclear being $8 billion compare to $12 billion for an equivalent windmill power plant.
I am hoping the knowledgeable reporters at tech review can check if this figure includes the costs of disposing of the nuclear waist in a save way (my intuition says she left that out of the equation). I like nuclear power, but the nuclear waist seems to be a problem that needs basic research before commuting to full scale nuclear.
With reprocessing, waste is not a significant issue. The quantities are several orders of magnitude lower that the CO2 and ash produced by fossile fuels.
Re: Former EPA chief Christine Whitman on CNN Money
Neither does the windmill cost include the expected cost increase for rare earth elements. Windmills each require hundreds of pounds of neodymium. China has a monopoly on REEs, and has stated that in 2012, China no longer will export raw REEs, but rather would make the finished products.
That means much of the $12 billion would be transfered to China, whereas the $8 billion for nuclear still would remain in the US.
So, it isn't just a matter how much something costs, it matters where the money is spent.
www.nytimes.com/2009/09/01/business/global/01minerals.html?pagewanted=2&_r=1
Nuclear Powerplant Construction
Nuclear Power Plant construction in 1980 dollars was from 3 - 4 billion to 7 billion for a 2 Unit Plant. We are now 30 years along with all the associated inflated costs of materials and Labor.
I would say get out the slide rule for a simple proportionate increase of total construction costs except there has been a significant advancement in Nuclear Power Technology. However, the 4 to 7 year length of construction time will also have been significantly shortened. Also for all the Thorium proponents, Old style Power Plants can be started immediately and although Thorium has many advantages with equal benefits, construction technology is still lagging and more experimental small yield plants need to be constructed to finalize standardized construction methods.
This is a ploy to get Cap and Trade passed. Obama's supporters don't want nuclear power.
If he were serious, he'd open up Yucca Mountain for waste storage.
What you see is not what really is happening. Read between the lines to see the machinations of a ecopolitical move to seize more control.
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kenbarnettpt
1 Comment
Thorium, already?
Given all of the entrenched parties, is there any chance that some of these dollars will go to thorium reactors, free of the proliferation/terrorism risks or the waste disposal issues of uranium?
Reply
GaryB
119 Comments
Re: Thorium, already?
I was thinking that $36B would go a long way to establishing a self sustaining Thorium breeder reactor industry. These are loan guarantees and so will go to established technologies that they can build today.
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paul randall
6 Comments
Re: Thorium, already?
Do you think that maybe you are overstating the safety of Thorium reactors by just a tad?
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AndyN
1 Comment
Re: Thorium
according to www.itheo.org the money is for commercial power plants and the Blue Ribon Commission is for the "back end" of the fuelcycle.
We need thorium energy now!
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dnapolitano
1 Comment
Re: Thorium, already?
The Thorium fuel cycle,i.e. Th-232 to U-233 is an interesting alternative to the current U-235/Pu-239 once through fuel cycle. However, there is no economic advantage so long as the price of uranium is low. The differences in the Pu buildup and waste performance also do not provide a significant advantage. However, it should still be investigated as an alternative.
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MakeSense
99 Comments
Re: Thorium, already?
There is about three times as much Thorium as Uranium available. However, Thorium is not fissile. It requires extra steps to convert it to U-233, which is toxic and a proliferation threat, before using the U-233 as nuclear fuel. India invests significantly in means to use Thorium because they have large reserves. To date, no one has come up with a viable commercial reactor. The extra steps are too costly and produce too many hot byproducts.
A company called Thorium Power has developed a way to supplement uranium fuel in conventional nukes with Thorium to extend fuel. That seems like a viable way to use Thorium, provided that utilities could be convinced to use it.
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spad12
58 Comments
Re: Thorium, already?
The process of converting Thorium-232 to Uranium-233 occurs in the presence of a neutron flux. The most viable and already tested design is a molten salt reactor where you start with a U235 core that is cooled by molten thorium salt. As the thorium salt cools the reactor it is converted to U233 which slowly replaces the U235 as fuel. The U233 never has to be processed outside the reactor.
This reactor design has already been tested and the fueling process worked. As someone stated above the biggest hindrance to a thorium reactor is the low cost of uranium.
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