Ontario Independent Electricity System Operator - IESO

I also note that the most recent hourly report Ontario Independent Electricity System Operator - IESO - (Select Hourly Wind Generator Output Excel Report) indicates that on Dec 14, 2008 at 24:00 (midnite) wind generation was producing 648 MW, so a lot more must have been added since last year. That makes the above stated percentages even worse. Yet for the entire daytime peak period of 10 hrs from 8:00 am to 6:00 PM the average output was only 31.34 MW, or 4.8% capacity. Dates just quickly randomly selected, no doubt several much worse.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/earthcomment/3347925/When-the-wind-stops---the-other-side-of-the-wind-turbine-argument.html

The article above is very worthwhile bookmarking. It shows the disaster waiting to happen in Germany from overuse of intermittant wind energy. Why use wind if it has a monthly average of 8% of capacity and has days with less than 2% of capacity.

The following shows daily output of Germany's wind farms. As you can see the intermittancy levels are huge. http://reisi.iset.uni-kassel.de/wind/reisi_dw.html

1. Change to the English Version

2. Select Operational Results

3. Select Electrical Energy Production -> Daily Produced Power from Wind Energy

If this doesn't convince you that wind energy in particualr is hopeless, nothing will.

Cheers

In considering the situation for Sweden, I don't see why it should be more than that, and neither do Swedish engineers - unless of course it makes personal financial sense for them to claim otherwise.

It is not a surprise really that large numbers of people believe nuclear power plants are dangerous and a threat to their safety....when we allow the dissemination of technical knowledge to watching multiple episodes of the Simpsons why would we expect anything different.

I accept that it is a very difficult technology to explain to the average person. But that simply means a much greater effort is needed on the part of nuclear plant operators to bridge the formidable knowledge gap that exists between reality (nuclear plants are by far the safest method of generating electriciity ever devised) and the perception (that nuclear plants are ready to explode any minute).

We are our own worst enemy in many respects. Our plants have now become security fortresses: we routinely practice elaborate emergency plans for events that have a near zero probability of ever occurring and we continue to cloak our operations in secrecy and surround ourselves with jargon that even experienced nuclear engineers don't understand sometimes.What do we really expect the public is going to think? We give every indication to the public that we have something to hide and I forgive them having that impression.

Of course we are hiding many secrets.

So I have decided to reveal the ten nuclear secrets we have been hiding.

Nuclear Secret #1 - Nuclear power can easily meet all the energy demands of the entire world. No new technology or fuel source is needed.

Nuclear Secret #2 - The fuel supply to operate thousands of nuclear reactors for hundreds of years is located in Canada and Australia and readily available. Using reactors operating on Thorium and/or plutonium fuel cycles can extend the nuclear fuel source for hundreds more years.

Nuclear Secret #3 - Nuclear power is the safest method of producing electricity in the world. A proven fact.

Nuclear Secret #4 - Combined with a desaination plant nuclear power can provide all of the fresh water the world requires - indefinitely.

Nuclear Secret #5 - Combined with a hydrogen production plant, nuclear power can provide all the fuels and lubricants required to operate our present transportation system and enough electricity for the next generation of Plug in hybrids or pure electric vehicles with zero emissions if you believe global climate change is real.

Nuclear Secret #6 - Nuclear waste is recyclable.

Nuclear Secret #7 - After 100 years you could place a used nuclear fuel bundle in your living room with no adverse effects to your health. Caution: You might get arrested for having one.

Nuclear Secret #8 - Nuclear power can prevent the flooding of picturesque river valleys. Note: Had Egypt built nuclear plants all the treasures drowned by the Aswan Dam would still be available.

Nuclear Secret #9 - Nuclear plant employees do not glow in the dark.

Nuclear Secret #10 - Nuclear power plants are 100% emissions free.

So now you know what we've been hiding all these years.

Wake up world there is NO energy crisis...just lack of knowledge and political stupidity.

Malcolm

Of your nuclear secrets the one that interests me most just now is the one about the fuel supply. If the potential fuel supply is exploited the way that it should be exploited, that will greatly simplify for me the calculation about the cost of nuclear as compared to the cost of...you name it. Of course, I have already suggested that this calculation should be carried out by the new president's energy team...or as I call it his environmental team. Even if they can't wake the towns and tell the people, they should pass this information around among themselves and their friends and neighbors.

As you may or may not know, I like to claim that nuclear is the most flexible of the energy resources. A couple of your points show that, although this is not the place to go into that matter.

Fuel supply costs are generally not large in comparison to capital costs of construction so they are often (almost) ignored in cost calculations. It is of course the very same reason why there is not much emphasis on the recycling of nuclear fuel as the new fuel is so cheap compared to the energy obtained. Transport costs for getting the fuel to the plant are also of no consequence. Other fuels (notably coal) this is larger.

But I do concede that down the road when there is a much greater demand on the Uranium mines the price (supply vs demand) will likely go up. there is also the question of energy security for countries like France and England which have limited indiginous energy supplies. France - in particular - has a very big incentive to reprocess used fuel to get the most out of it since it has no supply of Uranium of its own and therefore relies on Canada and Australia (mostly).

In Canada where there are vast untapped supplies of U3)8 fuel reprocessing makes little sense. There is no energy security issue and of course it is cheap.

Nuclear power is insensitive to the cost of fuel (much more sensitive to interest rates at the time of construction) so a doubling or tripling of fuel costs hardly has any impact on the cost of electricity produced. It could be the subject of a very useful paper on economics of nuclear power.

One of your comments in the article regarding France's perception of nuclear power -No gas, no oil, no coal no choice sparked a thought that - in the not too distant future - we will ALL be in that boat once our fossil fuel resources are used up.

Also implicit in the statement is that wind power and solar power are not considered choices for the French - perhaps the appalling CF these devices precludes them from inclusion in any rational decision making process.

I would be pleased to supply any additional information you need for your studies of nuclear power economics but sooner or later it will not be a matter of economics but of survival as our other fuel supplies diminish to zero. I would like us to be well ahead of that particular curve.

Thanks again for another lucid intelligent article. My apologies if this post has lots of spelling errors. I do not have my reading glasses and making out the small print here is impossible. So forgiveness in advance pleas.

Malcolm

I am about to take up residence in the Lake Tahoe area where we receive our evening news from a station in Reno, Nevada. That state has just appointed a new director of the state's nuclear project, also known as the Yucca Mountain Spent Fuel Repository. The new director is a journalist with no scientific or engineering background who thinks his job is to present the overwhelming evidence that putting a nuclear waste dump next to Las Vegas is a horrible idea. Backing him, of course, is US Senator harry Reid, who is also the Senate majority leader and an unalterable opponent of Yucca Mountain. Both of them are playing to the public's fear of nuclear energy.

Nuclear proponents must successfully complete several tasks before we can expect more than a token increase in the number of operating nuclear plants in the US. First, they have to develop and carry out a public information campaign that ordinary people can understand and that will also stand up to a withering attack from nuclear opponents. As part of this information campaign, proponents have to explain the economics in a simple, truthful, convincing fashion. Second, if the technologies for safely, economically and permanently vitrifying (turning into a glass-like substance) nuclear waste is, in fact, technically feasible, then industry needs to fund a pilot plant to provide proof.

The public is still afraid of nuclear power and until the last of those who have seen and remember the China Syndrome die off, there's a powerful institutional memory that won't easily be overcome, until and unless the cost and scarcity of alternatives to nuclear power lead to a public crisis..

Of course, statements like that dont mean much, because in the long run, as you suggest, the cost and scarcity of efficient alternatives will cause the public to come around...I think.

A little light reading for your edification and amusement.

http://www.utilitiesproject.com/documents.asp?grID=111&d_ID=4296 http://www.utilitiesproject.com/documents.asp?grID=111&d_ID=4646 (Registration required, but free.)

Enjoy.

Ed

I very much agree with what you say. Nuclear proponents have done an apallingly poor job of informing and educating the public. I was quite serious when I said we have left that all important transfer of information mainly to cartoon characters. But it is not just nuclear - the wider electricity production industry suffers from much the same blindness when it comes to public relations.

But there is hope to be drawn from the French experience. Towns and villages THERE clamour for getting on the list of selected nuclear sites. Why - because there is a huge net benefit to their community - and the people that live there. To the point where the often vocal but small opposition is effectively silenced for fear of losing an enourmous opportunity. The revers of what is seen in the US.

THAT is the way to position this in the US too. What exactly does YUCCA mountain do for the local communities....not much in the eyes of many local politicians.

But of course the US has no choice but to build nuclear unless there is to be a very large and rapid decrease in the standard of living there so I fear that public oppostion will eventually be steam rollered and that would be a veryt sad day.

Also - we are learning from past mistakes. Duncan Hawthorn - President of Bruce Power the private nuclear business in Canada is doing things the right way. If you plan to builld a nuclear plant the least you should do as VP is go and talk the the people yourself...FIRST. Not when the yelling starts.

Of course people will have concerns about a nuclear plant. I am fortunate to have worked in many of them around the world so I understand that the risks are extremely small compared to other risks in Society. Like driving my car. It is vital that the risks are placed in the right context against the benefits that a comminuity receives.

So the industry is getting better at it....but we need to do much much more. Taking a leaf out of Duncan Hawthornes book would be a great start for any would be nuclear constructor.

Malcolm

I had the opportunity to contribute to the Nuclear Waste Management Organisation in Canada to help develop their methodology for long term storage of nuclear waste. I had the privelige of meeting some of the opponents of nuclear power as well as the aboriginal peoples of Canada.

I learnt so much from them...and hopefully they learned about the technology from me. The concept that everything must eventually return to the land really intrigued me and that is the philosophy we should be striving for for nuclear waste. Not burying it. Not vitrifying it. But processing it so that it can be safely returned to the land. It is not an easy task - but neither is splitting the atom. I am sure we can do it.

Malcolm

Malcolm

On the other hand though many communities do not exhibit these tendencies - usually those that already host a nuclear plant and where good work has been done on the part of the nuclear operators to educate and inform the public.

In Ontario Canada both Ontario Power Generation and Bruce Power have really done a great job of reaching out to their local communities and support at these locations runs in the 60 to 70 % in favour range. Darlington has won numerous environmental awards for its stewardship of the lands surrounding the plant which has some of the best and most diverse natural habitats in the area....no three headed animals there. It is these types of programs that really put an end to the scaremongering of those who simply fear technology itself.

There is also a contingent of the NIMBY folks....but you get those people with windmills too and power lines.

Since the "China Syndrome" was raised by both you and Jack Ellis it does reinforce my point that the industry has largely left public education about a very important subject to movie directors, Jane Fonda and the cartoonists. So we should not expect any other response really. If the China Syndrome is used by very well educated folks like you then guess what comes to mind when the general public thinks of nuclear energy.

If I did not know better I would probably think that too. Good movie by the way just not very accurate from a technical standpoint - like most movies - but that is what make believe is all about. Make believe - not reality. M

CF is the magic number that drives the electricity production industry. High CF means you are making money from your assett. Low CF means you are not. For both wind and nuclear the cost of the fuel has little bearing on the cost of electricity. For wind the energy source is free...it's contribution to the cost is 0%. For nuclear the fuel is not free but it is very cheap compared to the value of the energy produced. A 1000 MW reactor will bring in 3 Billion dollars worth of revenue at 5c/Kw hour at 100% CF. The fuel cost is around 5 million - maybe a tad higher these days. So that is a nuclear fuel cost of about 0.5% - pretty much free. Even if the fuel cost was 10 times higher it still only represents 5% of revenue generated.

But...the CF is not 100%. For nuclear plants CF's of over 90% are quite do-able and many plants routinely attain these types of reliability. Not I use the term reliability because for a nucleat plant reliability of the machines and the maintenance of them is what drives CF....all under human control.

With wind the CF is just as important because it has to be high enough to repay the capital cost and land rental from farmers and maintenance. Much the same costs. We call it O,M & A...operations, maintenance and admninistration. Unfortunately CF's for wind are low...very very low. Not only do operators need to contend with the reliability of the machines - they do go wrong quite often...they also have to contend with the non-availability of the fuel source. Hence CF's for wind are optimistically 20% and frequently much less. Now bear in mind that these locations were selected for their WINDINESS. As more wind sites are built less favourable locations will be used and CF will drop still lower.

I very much doubt that with REAL CF's in the 20% or less range wind farms are not economic with out large handouts....hence the need for subsidy from the government.

But the really big problem with the capacity factor of wind generators is that the wind often does not blow in times of high demand and does blow in times of low demand. This mismatch of supply and demand cannot be overcome without large scale storage - which of course increases capital costs still further even if it was readily available and it is not.

If we are expecting wind generators to supply many megawatts of air conditioning on a still sultry summer's night......think again. We may THINK we have lots of wind energy available when we add up the nameplate ratings of the wind machines but what counts is the energy availability when it is needed.

Sadly wind energy falls far short of what is required bothe economically and practically...and I like windmills.

Malcolm

The truth is that I don't think for a minute that I am especially qualified to make the calculations that will show concerned persons that a somewhat larger resort to nuclear is the best thing for their health and welfare. Doctors Chu and Holdren and their colleagues should take charge of that assignment. A question is, what are they waiting for, and the answer to that question is the soon to arrive proof that wind and solar are capable of making American energy dreams come true, OPEC will collapse and thus motor fuel dreams will come true, and Russia will collapse and so the price of 1000 Btu of natural gas will sell for about the price of a cup of coffee. Ordinary, every day delusions like those about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The wind energy people are probably fuming after reading this and the comments above. Some have said on EnergyPulse in recent months that wind is not to be viewed as a "capacity" resource but as an "energy" resource, hence they tend to downplay or ignore the capacity factor (CF) arguments well made above by all.

Given wind (or solar) is not always on line, and there is no economical mass storage for large amounts of electrical energy yet, in my view it has been a large mistake for wind to compete as a source on our electricity grids. In essence wind and solar are better suited economically only for intermittent electricity needs that are discretionary.

I believe wind and solar have great potential but only on a micro scale - as widely distributed micro-generators that DON'T necessarily compete directly to supply our grids, but instead supply individual residential users.

The original wind mills of centuries ago were used only for mechanical work to do things that could wait until the wind blew. If one thinks about it, there are many electricity needs by residential consumers today that can be delayed until a lowest price electricity source is available for it. Laundry machines, dryers, ironing, dishwashers, and electric stoves, are typical significant discretionary residential loads that could in theory be planned to coincide with wind and solar availability.

My view of the perfect future is to see widespread nuclear stations supplying our public grids combined with widespread micro-generators of solar and wind owned and operated by individual consumers. These consumers would then choose to use their own cheaply produced power for discretionary loads, and access the grid's large central nuclear sources for their less discretionary needs. If this sounds much like an electricity system based around Len Gould's IMEUC market reform proposals tabled elsewhere on this website, well ... it is!

Keep up the great writing Fred, and great comments from Len, Malcolm, et al.

Bob

Melcom Your comment about Yucca Mountain reminded me of a comment attributed to Edward Teller during a Senate hearing on the long term security of the closed repository. I seems that some senators were worried about people digging into the repository in the future. Teller was asked how the repository should be marked to preclude this event. Teller reportedly said "If you weren't burying something valuable you wouldn't have to worry". Feel free to add the proper Gemantic accent.

Ken

To make things worse, in the past year demand for new nuclear plant construction projects planned around the world has in part driven these costs much higher, making them tougher to predict accurately by project planners. If the nuclear power station manufacturing industries had not been starved for so many years by not building any new plants, we could have avoided this predicament now. Governments should have nurtured them like any other industry, but instead the nuclear manufacturing industry has gone through feast and famine. They now cannot quickly ramp up when the feast returns.

If capital costs could be brought lower, there would be few political barriers for nuclear to vastly outperform any other source for large central generating stations.

As far as capital costs, the nature of the conventional nuclear plant means they will always be expensive to build. More advanced designs (e.g. high temperature gas reactor) would be less expensive to build but their commercial viability is unproven and therefore suspect. Remains unclear how many of the proposed new conventional nuclear facilities will actually get built. My hunch is that the steep costs coupled with the credit crunch, a deep recession and a hostile democratic administration will sink most of them.

Perhaps when reality rears its ugly head and the folly of over reliance on renewable energy becomes painfully obvious, then nuclear power will become appreciated for the economic and environmental miracle that it is. Hopefully, it will not be too late to recover at that point.

I also don't think enough can be said about the capital cost concerns that nuclear technology holds for the bankers of the world. Keep in mind most of them are in their 30s or early 40s, and probably have some innate fear of nuclear power, and a lack of understanding about energy issues.

I guess the German branch of Greenpeace needs to read Prof. Banks' article (fat chance - their minds are made up and they do NOT want to be confused by the facts).

Secondly, the waste. Sure, Malcom, you say it is recyclable. Partially it is. But think about this: Why do we spent billions of dollars for Yucca Mountain, which still has not even left the drawing board? Why is Yucca Mountain, should it ever come to completion, already full with all the waste currently stored at existing nuclear power plants, if there is no waste?

And lastly, how much fuel have we left for nuclear power plants. Will that last longer than coal, or oil?

Just something to think about.

http://home.comcast.net/~bpayne37/pnmelectric/altreport/altreport.htm#foil10

shows lead time for nuclear electric power to come on-line is11 years.

Production of unranium may not meet needs for electric power generation, I have read on Internet.

It may be too late to avoid electric power shortages within several years?

The study, "Lights Out In 2009?" warns that the U.S. "faces potentially crippling electricity brownouts and blackouts beginning in the summer of 2009, which may cost tens of billions of dollars and threaten lives." ...

http://www.utilityproducts.com/display_article/341270/129/none/none/Indus/The-U.S.-Faces-Serious-Risks-of-Brownouts-or-Blackouts-in-2009,-Study-Warn

The new building construction industry may have serious problems soon because of electric power limitiation?

how much fuel have we left for nuclear power plants. Will that last longer than coal, or oil?

Of course it will; thousands of times longer. Why would the coal, oil, and gas interests be so afraid of it if this were not so?

The IAEA publishes, every year or two, a "Red Book" report on uranium mining's progress. It is impossibly expensive, but one number that usually is abstracted and freely published is the expected reserves up to various price limits, typically 80 cents and $1.30 per thermal barrel-oil-equivalent.

Oil and gas enthusiasts often seize on each number as it comes out and say, "That's only a few decades worth! Only a few years' worth, if oil and gas and all their delightful tax revenue were replaced by it!"

OK, they don't say the last part, but it explains everything they do say.

They also don't seize on the rate of change between reports. The estimates in recent years have been increasing at ten times the rate at which all the world's existing nuclear power plants could burn the stuff.

The real U inventory of the Earth is discussed at arxiv.org/PS_cache/hep-ph/pdf/0501/0501111v2.pdf. Much of this is within drill range; the Earth's deep interior has very little U. It bubbles towards the continental surfaces.

Virtually all of it would have a high net-energy fraction if extracted.

--- G.R.L. Cowan (Read my new paper

I just wanted to point to a couple of potentially useful resources.

The Anti-Nuclear Game Gordon Simms ISBN: 0776602853

Discusses the techniques used by anti-nuclear groups and commentators to twist the facts and/or side step the facts as they attempt to put their own agneda across. It saddens me to see so many of the blatant untruths repeated as commonly accepted wisdom by the news media. Currently 4 or 5 used copies available on Amazon for $15. Highly reccommended, even though it deals largely with the Canadian scene, the tactics are very similar. Many of the players are well known international anti-nuke figures.

http://www.magma.ca/~jalrober/

An online book, freely available, by a retired AECL employee. Archie has assembled most of the arguments for nuclear power in a very clear and accessible format. Unfortunately he was unsuccessful in finding a publisher, so elected to put his book online for anyone to read.

I also reccommend "The Power to Save the World" by Gwyneth Cravens and Richard Rhodes. Available from Amazon in paperback for about $10.00. Us orientation. Well put together.

Paul

I find this article, and the comments, to be remarkably nut-free, and I hope that you will consider that to be unchanged after reading this comment...

This entire discussion takes place within a certain "assumption box". The box is sealed with "no new technologies" tape, and prevents seeing a more complete set of solutions available outside the box.

To me, the missing technologies are storage, and recovery, using non-thermal technology. First, the storage problem - conventional pumped hydro storage, or hoped-for compressed air storage, is at best mid-60's% efficient - BUT they allow for easily synchronizable recovery of the stored energy.

The efficiency of nuclear and fossil-fired boiler electricity generation is limited by thermodynamics to below 40%. You can do better by going to supercritical or ultrasupercritical temperatures and pressures, and approach 50+% thermal-to-electrical efficiency. Nuclear cannot go here, at least with a water-steam cycle. So advanced gas cooled reactors and gas-driven turbines are required, yes?

In parallel with our investments in new, cleaner capacity, we should aggressively fund programs to develop storage systems which are scalable to the multiple GWhr capacity. We would have to add/replace far less peak capacity IF we were able to run nearly ALL generation as base-loaded, and "fill" the storage during low demand, and "empty" it during high demand, in a cost-effective manner. Cost-effictiveness is given a different and more generous meaning when we look at adding nuclear or renewable capacity at $4M-$7M per megawatt of capacity, as opposed to coal-burners at less than $2M per megawatt.

Perhaps one answer lies in the solar-powered conversion of seawater to hydrogen (oxygen released locally), and that hydrogen is pumped about the land as we now distribute natural gas. Conversion back to electricity at the consumption end would be done in the best suited cogen facilities (preferably in fuel cells as opposed to thermal conversion).

Regards to all, RWVesel

PS - I liken fear of nuclear power to xenophobia, where integration and long term benign coexistence is the only real solution. I am not sure how to solve this in a meaningfully short time frame, given that the parties who must advocate, i.e. industry and government, are among those least trusted by the democratically empowered public. Perhaps a (hoped for) restoring of the public trust in the next 4-8 years will help the picture - maybe...

Also, programs to encourage "negawatt" investments (i.e. demand-side reductions through efficiency improvements), structured to be profitable for both consumers and utilities, can fundamentally reduce copious amounts of energy wasted by how we have gotten used to doing things with cheap energy.

My point, it is not the incapability of building such a machine, rather than the ownership and responsibiltiy of having one! I am very proud to have been in the arena with many responsible people who delivered the 102 US Nukes and performed with integrity pre and post TMI eras, lordy, that will soon be twenty years ago! All things considered, we are behind the eightball twenty years now.

An energy generating station is just that, "stationary". It does not move, it moves something to the next station, eventually to YOU the user, wherever you are stationed. Beginning with horsepower, horses had energy stations (water, rest and fuel)...horses were not driven every where, what ever the load they pulled, they were driven through corridors of the least resisitance to the animal. Relatively, energy must get from station to station, and on a crowded environmental concern that's what we have. Unless alternative forms of energy can get from station to station, they are lumped into forms of energy conservation, because at least they can reduce "load demands".

Thank you for the opportunity to make remarks.

What is required is national committments to build a series of 10 or 20 plants having exactly the same components and exactly the same design. Then industry can do what it does best - mass produce equipment at low cost.

If we continue to design one off plants then of course the cost will be high. We appear to have learnt nothing from Mr. Henry Ford.

The lowest cost electricity will be produced from mass produced nuclear generating plants using recycled fuel running at high capacity factors. All easily achievable....if we want to.

Malcolm

He is, after all, a politician, and one of the Chicago school. The largest operator of nuclear power plants in the US is based in Chicago - Exelon. Obama and family members of the former chairman of the predecessor company have long standing ties (Bill Ayers) as do the mayor and Exelon and the mayor and Obama. Current Exelon employees gave heavily to Obama's campaign.

To these ties, add the behavior of Exelon prior to the election - they tried to buy the company who had submitted the first new application for a nuke in decades and who owns several operating nukes in the US - NRG Corp. While rebuffed due to the low ball bid that was supported by recent stock market aberations, Exelon claimed that they would be back and are separately considering building new nukes on their own. with a friend in the White House, they can make an offer that NRG can't refuse.

Tieing this together, I expect that the Obama Administration will provide plenty of low profile support for the continued expansion of nuclear power in the US and for export. I don't expect much slackening of verbal support for alternatives and they will continue to blow taxpayer money on showcase projects but that won't stand in the way of helping their friends building new nukes.

At least, I HOPE this is true!

The major limitation of most published, comtemporary nuclear cost estimates is in predicting the commodity costs above over a 10 year forecast. What will boilermakers earn in 2019? How much for 100 pounds of portland cement, delivered, in 2018?

Yes, the price tags appear high, but apply the same planning assumptions to the competing sources and they will look even worst.

I agree with you that storage is the solution to intermittent sources of electricity but the great benefactor from storage is of course nuclear. With large scale storage nuclear can escape from the restrictions of base load and provide power at full capacity all the time with peaking loads provided by storage. This is in fact done in the UK with a pumped storage system (in Wales) of about 2000 MW. But those sites are hard to find (one needs a convenient mountain with a lake at the top and another at the bottom that people do not mind being drained dry twice a day). People tend to get VERY upset when their boats disappear into a big waterless hole twice a day. Really wrecks your vacation plans.

There have been numerous schemes proposed but none that really are practical. I would like to see that but in all my many years in this business none has yet been built that comes anywhere near the size necessary. lots of promising technology but as yet very few operating plants.

Not only are they difficult to build they are also very costly which of course needs to be added to the costs of the power produced. Suddenly windmills and solar plants become extraordinarily expensive when these capital costs are added to the "free" fuel and maintenance costs.

I like Michael Pinca's idea of using waste heat from a nuclear plant for industrial uses. Unfortunately if you use an industrial plant as the "condenser" to take out the latent heat of the steam (540kcal/gm) you lose in electricity production. The steam is less valuable than the electricity so the plant operator generally is in a losing proposition. Utilities are designed to sell electricity and their business model will not allow the use of the plant for process steam. Not that they could not but unless you build a very big plant that uses ALOT of process steam then the economics are really not there.

Another very big problem with this approach is matching outages in the generating plant with outages in the industrial plant. Since they are now linked together by a common element (steam production) shutting down one means shutting down the other....also not very good for business in either operation.

Combined heat and power projects have been built over the years but none has really stood the test of time. Look good on paper but practically speaking mostly non-starters. Nuclear plants that produce more steam than their generators can consume might be one way but it is the difference in cost between process steam and hot water and electricity that makes it not very viable.

Malcolm

Now what WOULD work is to convert the hydrogen to methane using any carbon source and then use the methane infrastructure to move it about. No infrastructure change is required. Using base load nuclear to do that would be cost effective I think but the economics are more in Fred's area of expertise than mine.

Malcolm

Of course, things have gone downhill since then, because the opinions of the nutters and liars became more valuable to the media, but such happens in the real world. As for *Wir werden...", the Germans changed their mind about marching for reasons I suggested, and they will change their mind about nuclear - or 'electricity fascism' as I once heard it called - in due course...I think.

Where this increased cost of nuclear capacity is concerned, which seems to be real, I've decided not to worry bcause that doesn't have to be. It wasn't inevitable, just as the growing shortage of engineers in e.g. Sweden wasn't inevitable, but came about anyway. I hope that I don't have to tell you why.

That's about it for me, Andre. I*ve got some opinions about a number of other things too, but it's best for all of us if you find out about those from the nuclear engineers in this formum. I'm sure that they will tell you what you need to know if you ask them.

Yes, the less said about Ms O'leary the better, since she referred to the energy policy in Pakistan as the best in the world. As for Bill Clinton, I decided a few years ago to blame him for the present fiasco in Irak, and the more I think about it the more certain I am that I was right.

About those lovely financial district/banking boys and girls. Unfortunately - unlike you and I - they are human, and being human they cant avoid making lots and lots of errors. Other humans in the picture here are the guys and gals in the corner offices, who haven't tuned in to this forum or compiled some relevant newspaper and magazine articles on the present subject, and pass it to those lovelies.

You know, in reading the comments above, I'm actually amazed at how little I know/knew, and how easy it is to learn important things about nuclear.

Me too Fred. And this website's forums are great places to learn about many other energy subjects as long as you can weed out the occasional propaganda from intelligent opinions or facts. The engineers, and professors ? that post comments here tend to write the latter, so we should try to attract more of them to comment here.

(If this were an electronics industry website forum, I could spend hours writing about new technology. And in spite of technology driving advanced metering and Smart Grid initiatives, it appears to me the majority of the audiences of this website tend not to be involved electronics industries.)

I think Obama is progressive enough and in touch with voters enough that he will do whatever it takes, read spend as much money and change regulations and policies as is necessary, to get America’s electricity grids and the American economy back to respectable health again. His only frustration will be it wont and can’t happen overnight. Building many new nuclear plants will part of his agenda soon, especially when the lights start to go out with rotating power outages in some parts of the US reportedly beginning as early as this summer when supply cannot keep pace with growing peak demand.

It LOOKS like Atomic Energy Canada is developing a super-critical design beyond the Gen III ACR.

"The paper will show how the ongoing expansion of the CANDU knowledge base has led to the development of the Advanced CANDU Reactor. The ACR is a Generation III+ reactor with substantially reduced costs, faster construction, and enhanced passive safety and operating margins. The ACR is also the basis for the Generation IV Super Critical Water Reactor, which extends operation to higher temperatures and pressures."

Science Direct - CANDU technology for Generation III+ and IV reactors (Unfortunately not a free article. Wish I could afford access.)

The anti-nuclear crowd has been passing around the stories that there is only 30/40/50/60 years worth of uranium available based on current (circa 1970's) use rates, current technology, no reprocessing, current reserves, and low costs for the fuel. Kind of like saying there is only 15 years worth of oikl left, assuming $10 a barrel, no unconventional field extraction, no new exporation, no off-shore drilling and no resort to tar sands.

Reprocessing all by itself will extend the supply by hundreds of years, even allowing for expansion of nuclear power generation. At 20 times it's current price (still economical considering the energy density) it is worthwhile to extract it from seawater. That extends the supply out several hundreds of years further.

Paul Stevens

"Now you're cooking with gas!" A great out-of-the-box idea...

I absolutely love the concept of moving hydrogen around as methane, relieving us of having to build a separate infrastructure. IF we used "bio-coal" or "eCoal" as the carbon part of the input for syngas, along with desalinated seawater steam, we would be in business. Energy for the methane creation could come direclty from nuclear, solar or wind energy sources, appropriately located. There is sufficient carbon in our agricultural, municipal and industrial waste streams to displace a lot of coal. The same energy sources would, of course, be producing electricity as well, displacing the rest of the coal. Would have to do the numbers to figure out the waste carbon gigatons available - yes we burn gigatons of coal every year just to produce electricity.

Production of syngas is an almost 200 year old technology which can be updated for our 21st century needs... Chemical storage of energy is certainly the densest known to date, especially if you liquify the methane for temporary storage. We know very well how to turn gas back into electricy, at almost 60% efficiency and <2ppm NOx with the latest gas turbine technologies (shown at Power Gen International last month). If cogeneration is used, the recovered energy can exceed 85%.

As for pumped storage, man made versions are also available (Ameren's Taum Sauk for example), but it would take a lot of those to provide the requisite storage. If they would be built along the coastlines, one would only have to build the upper reservoir, and never have to worry about problems of evaporation. Not sure if timing pump-ups with high tide and draw-downs at low tide would gain a few percent more efficiency, but it might be worthy of a graduate student project somewhere...

As for building the nuclear "one-offs" v. "standard plants" - I was on a standards committie of the American Nuclear Society about twenty five years ago, working with a group to develop environmental qualification standards, such that you COULD build a standard plant qualified for multiple site locations. The idea was to not have to meet site-specific seismic, wind, and other environmental factors, if you qualified the standard plant to a well specified environmental envelope. Any site that fit within the envelope would be covered by the documentation and equipment testing that came with the plant. Believe it or not, environmental qualification was a major contributor to plant costs - far more than the 10% suggested above - as EVERY structure and EVERY piece of equipment had to demonstrate that it would operate in the site-specific environmental envelope...

Regards to all, RWVesel

Specifics can be found in a DOE document DOE/EIS -0396, "Global Nuclear Energy Partnership Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement" available off the Department of Energy's website.

BUT, in addition to these comments I have received a lot of mail about this article, and there seems to be a general annoyance and/or disgust with the opposition to nuclear. I don't see why. Without that opposition I wonder if it would be possible to trust our friends and neighbors to build and operate safe plants. Living in Sweden I'm tempted to say that the nuclear sector here is the safest and most reliable in the world, but this country is changing, and I suspect that the same is true of many other countries. I remember once using the expression 'a psycopathic hatred of technical excellence' which applied to some party animals I once taught or encountered socially, but when a reasonably intelligent politician like the former boss of the Swedish government calls nuclear "obsolete", I think that there is a serious problem among the rank and file that must be addressed, because that gentleman would never have employed that terminology if he believed that it would be held against him.

Of course, if this macroeconomic and financial mess had not taken place, and the talk about a possible oil price of $200/b increased in volume, our political masters would have been more aggressive in informing their supporters of the advantages of nuclear.

Besides price issues, the Russian gas cutoff to Europe can not be ignored: not in Washington, not in Bressels, not in Sacramento. He who controls your energy supply controls your people. Politicians who make bad decisions in democracies need to be removed.

That's a bit broadbrushed. Within a LARGE country like the US or China, transportation costs for coal and easily make nuclear competitive (barring government intervention) with coal.

Even a medium sized country like the Republic of South Africa sees this effect - that's why the Koeberg nuclear plant is located near Capetown even though there is plenty of coal on the other corner of the country.

Other factors are transport bottlenecks and labor unions. A large coal plant needs a 100 car unit train every weekday. Some railroad lines can't handle that plus other traffic.

At the landed price of LNG, nuclear is competitive too - I did an earlier article on EP showing the details.

--- G.R.L. Cowan (How fire can be domesticated)

I guess I said that to stir things up a bit, but it's largely true. A 1500 MW coal plant costs what? 2-3 Billion to build? Versus 8-10 Billion for a similar sized nuclear plant? True, over the long term, the fuel costs may make coal more expensive, but no one seems to want to think about the long term. The hard reality is that you still need to scrape together 2 or 3 times the capital to get a nuclear plant built and running versus a coal plant.

Agreed that natural gas for power generation makes little sense except maybe for small scale CHP, which is really an offshoot for home heating, for which it is great.

But with the economic slowdown, building new power plants seems academic anyway. At least for the time being.

I can't handle those numbers. They make my head spin. A nuclear plant that goes from ground break to grid power (using Len Gould's terminology) in 4 years, and has at least a 70 year life, and probably most important is constructed by people who know what they are doing - rather than people like myself - has got to cost less than 8-10 billion. I mean, it took the Japanese 4 years to construct a plant 30 years ago, and so if push came to shove they have got to be able to construct the same plant in less time today. Even the Wall Streeters must understand that.

Yes, the plant in Finland will probably end up costing that much, but the Finns probably know how to think about the long run - or at least they did, But I don't live in Finland and so my conclusion here is that if they cant do something about that cost, I'll just have to buy myself a shovel and prepare to do the same thing I did when I was a boy in Chicago confronting a pile of coal at the beginning of the coal burning season.

The Sabatier reaction is fairly efficient. About 80% of the hydrogen bond energy remains with the methane as C-H bonds. The rest is emitted as heat. You are trading 4 H-H bonds for 4 C-H bonds, which have about 80% of the energy of the H-H bonds. You are also trading 4 molecules to store for 1.

Since the reaction is exothermic, one only needs to heat the reactor once to get it started, and then it is self-sustaining.

If you want to evaluate the economics, you are paying a 20% overhead to be able to store your energy as methane instead of hydrogen. (Compare this to the 30% overhead (70% efficiency) of storing energy as hydrogen vs. electricity.)

Based on a study I did, the question really is: How long after the energy was harvested (from wind or solar, etc.) are you going to use it? If you are going to use it in a day or so, it makes sense to just store it in batteries or ultra-caps. If you need it in the next 1-2 weeks, hydrogen makes sense, after that, methane is the best choice. (One could carry the notion further to synthesizing, propane, butane, etc. but the economics are not so great in practice given our extant NG infrastructure.)

Not wishing nuclear reactors to cost that much does not make it so. DTE Energy's estimate on Fermi III was $10 Billion, providing 1500 MW or thereabouts. And Fermi II is up for license renewal after 40 years (2025). At the least, it will need a rework then.

I really think they are building them wrong. They need to agree on a design, and build many of them. Average cost would go down. The anti-nuke advocates would cite high prices due in part to nuclear plants that were partially built and canceled. Not really appropriate, I think.

I wish I knew what the price of nuclear power really should be, but I don't.

What would $10 Billion for a 40 year 1500 MW plant mean to us? Given 8000 working hours per year, that equals about 2 cents per kilowatt hour. If you add the interest, it might be close to 3-4 cents. I don't know if that's bad or not. With operating expenses, this makes nuclear power cost about 7-8 cents per kW-hr, a number that keeps popping up with respect to nuclear power costs.

The Severance study concludes that the levelized cost of nuclear power is between 25-30 cents per kWh.

That's good enough for me - for the time being that is.

Study Author Severance Responds

On Climate Progress. He (Severance) explains that his kwh cost numbers were so much higher than the $KW capacity numbers would suggest because he is referring to future nominal (and so inflated) dollars. Even if it was mentioned in the report, the only reason to refer to relatively far out future costs in nominal as opposed to real terms is to be disingenuous. Its hard to even give him the benefit of the doubt and just call it foolishness. Apparently he forgot to tell Romm, who compares the $kwh number to current electricity rates in the headline above. I have to think even Romm wouldn't do that if he knew it was future nominal, not real dollars.

After this, it hardly seems worth even bothering to go into all the other issues with the report. Keep up the good work Joe.

Max Epstein

Here are two attempts to throw a little "bensin" on the fire:

1. The 12/2008 edition of the "Electrical Power Annual" with the 2007 actuals for the U.S., including that wonderful Table 8.2, should be available in the next two weeks. This was volunteered yesterday by Mr. Schnapp at .

2. As a service from CSPAN, that redoubtable cable television station, Jed Babbin interviewed one Christopher C. Horner yesterday. Horner has authored a new tome, "Red Hot Lies", directed at all "believers" and "deniers".

Of course, for less incendiary material, there is always www.nrc.gov/reactors.

REPOWERING CLOSED STEAM PLANTS FROM NATURE. The facts of 5 size structures alows it to be built where needed not just where the wind blows, This systems do not requeir the wind to blow. Get the facts, Informational disc are from it's creator, 40 years of energy researcher from around the worlds top PHD's in this combinations proven by their self and now combined from natures best. Kenny Magers Energy Researcher AIRKEN Entreperneur inventor

But we in the nuclear business are not sitting idle. A huge amount of work is going on in Canada to refurbish our fleet of nuclear plants for another 35 - 40 years of operation making them the best value for money around. Plus we are in the advanced planning stages for 2 new reactors in Southern Ontario. Bruce Power (the private nuclear operator in Canada) is also planning for 2 new reactors in Saskatchewan, 2 in Alberta and 2 at an existing coal plant in southern Ontario.

Add to that our efforts to increase the reliability of our plants and train a younger work force and I think you will see an industry that is very much alive and well and waiting for the opportunity to demonstrate the enormous potential of nuclear energy.

As far as I am concerned we haven't scratched the surface yet.

As I said earlier in my 10 nuclear secrets, nuclear is the only energy source that can provide ALL of the energy required today and meet the growth demands of tomorrow without destroying our environment. As far as I am concerned millions of windmill towers all over the place is about as bad as the concrete jungle gets. Don't know how any one with even a miniscule concern for the environment could support such a technology when one or two inconspicuous nuclear plants could replace all of them many times over.

But as far as Obama is concerned. We'll see. If he is as smart as people say we will see dozens of new nuclear plants started during his Presidency and a resurgence of real (not paper) prosperity. If he is not as smart as we think then the US will rapidly degenerate into a third world country.

After tomorrow the talking stops and the doing starts.

We will see how he does.

Malcolm

GET RID OF YOUR ENERGY TEAM - WHICH IS ACTUALLY AN ENVIRONMENTAL TEAM - AND REPLACE IT BY PEOPLE FROM INDUSTRY! People like Mitt Romney and Jack Welch.

Everywhere I turn these days I hear about how difficult it is to constuct nuclear plants because of this or that shortage. I'm surprised, but not really surprised, because I want to believe something else. Eventually I hope to look into this matter more closely, but today is tuesday, and paraphraseing the words of a great American song, TUESDAY MIGHT BE OUR GOOD NEWS DAY.

Fred: Re the "environmental team", I wouldn't worry too much. Experience is that the Jack Welches et all. will get all the input opportunities they need.

Ambitious - certainly, and it clearly indicates the Obama administration will play a big if not central role in doing it. Support for renewable sources of solar and wind, and mined energy resources, supposedly nuclear and / or coal, are clearly on his radar screen.

It is also clear that the political nature of the electricity system is not going to disappear anytime soon. Much to the disliking of other authors on this website like Warren Causey et al, I wouldn't bet for a minute that free markets will prevail in our electricity industries. On the contrary, Obama promises strong government interventionism, and he calls for efforts from all Americans on a scale not seen perhaps since WWII. It eerily reminds one of the call to Americans to pull together after Pearl Harbor, and the Japanese fleet command who feared they had awakened a sleeping giant.

Time will tell. - Bob

With that being said, I ask myself "how do we get there (to the solutions) from here?" (one trillion in debt). We have successfully downsized to micro and nano, time to swing back the other way, just slightly, get 35 to 50 new units available and/or on line, NOW, simultaneously. Our fathers and mothers did something very similar to win W W II, when America knew you can't build one battleship, sub or destroyer or aircraft at a time. Example, one US Battleship took three and a half years. If we won WW II in four years (1941-1945), we would have never won anything, one at a time. So you see, part of a solution is to launch construction, very soon, simultaneously. Cost? what concern should that be now? or later? we're reportedly 1-3 Trillion dollars in debt! One way to make money is to spend it wisely, something we haven't done so well in twenty years, while not thinking ahead clearly. Governance is only a part of solution. Overall, we are a sleeping giant now, and we were then in 1941 because we tire, we're human we just came through the Great Depression. In the future PJM (grid operators) will tire also, the grid is closer to fatigue than ever. So, I simply wish to encourage decision makers to get on the same team, freedom hasn't been free, hello? energy is not either. If electric deregulation diluted the responsibility and accountability to our nations energy sources, then maybe it would be best behavior to re-regulate. It is of grave concern, when the military hiring age limit is 42 for God's sake and an industry can't afford to hire someone 50 or over, because of what the health care industry claims. The jobless rate is like a Mt St Helens! Must we buy so much stuff 24/7 when we manufacture less and less? You know that impacts energy system development! No manufacturing, No major capital investment projects in energy generation , transmission or distribution equals no energy investors. I only hope, with every new transmission line, every energy company, goes 24/7. Just because, we've gone from analog to digital doesn't mean that it must equate to less jobs. Many of the youth of today is starving for direction, something important to be doing, education is not a goal, it's part of a career pathway, applied education must and will succeed outside the classroom. We need the knowledge of PHD people. But their value is less when we do not make anything. We need both manufacturing and educators to succeed. That comes from an article written by an industrial electrician. Industry needs both, skilled trades and PHD types. Not one without the other. Solid collaborations, and communication with legislators all the way up the line to the White House, we will solve much, together. Those people in Washington don't have all the answers, the best ones will tell you they don't. They are in dire need to hear from us, collectively and intelligently. If everyone is talking, no one is listening, how can we decide? Don't get me wrong here, I know, I've been back to the tools three times now in my career and currently, I am involved with community and economic development. And for three years now, speaking one on one with owners and presidents of global, national, regional and local businesses (not retail) they are doing the best they can to hold the current fabric of the economy together, and it is major challenge. Investing in energy will cause energy, and will cause wealth from infrastructure projects to energy plants, then we can make stuff, rather than just buy stuff all the time. Oh I don't believe no one is doing nothing in the area of work force development, we are, but skilled trades are scarce, because they have to survive and feed their families doing so many other things. And or the numbers of them simply have not been grown from generations prior. Thank you for reading, I hope it makes some sense, I appreciate this entire active discussion, I hope it continues, I don't mean to sound like a blogger, but maybe the new President elect should be in the loop, what do you think? Or is he in it already and we are all in anticipation of the results of his yet to be implemented action plan? I suppose. Michael Pinca "Blest is that nation whose silent course of happiness furnishes nothing for history to say." Thomas Jefferson

It's so true Malcolm, we expect far too much from legislators. It's the non-government entities that run the free enterprise system. Our government is interested in one thing - tax dollars.

I feel that most Americans will continue to pay taxes, if they can. Not so easy if you are not working.

I just read an article about a new comany start up, in the first sentence, the words..."knowledge is currency"... hmmm, I believe "energy is currency".

Then I think, there never was a goose that laid a golden egg, what a fable... The geese are being cooked, one by one, in very move we make to satisfy the numbers game.

I get so frustrated, I admit, because I don't understand why an enterprise like the oil companies, do not invest in nuclear energy. Why aren't they interested in helping the auto manufacturer's?

Wait - there's a FLAG! Too many players on the field, the opponents of nuclear power are challenging the call (made twenty years ago!)

Michael

I would think, maybe there are at least a 100 other priorities? With all due respect Professor Banks did accomplish one major thing here. And it comes to me relative to many good, correct things we do...and that is to "begin". From the first notion to climb Mt Everest, to the Umpire in a baseball game saying, "playball!" The key word is "begin".

I thank all of you for "engaging" in this active discussion, let us keep it going, What do you say? I will try my best as well, to minimize opinion, refer to facts, and if we think about about it, there's a great deal we can accomplish, to help educators like Mr. Banks, to teach, and to implant, instill in the minds of young folks, how to get where we are going, and to free our independance from the grasp of those who would like to take us down.

Michael Pinca