You've some very interesting and very valid points. The use and nature of uranium is one of the reasons behind public discomfort with uranium-based nuclear power. However, there is research under way in the USA and India that involve Thorium-based nuclear power . . . . there is no such molecule as weapons-grade thorium. Developments are also under way that involve radiation-free, boron-fusion nuclear power.

Perhaps you may wish to comment as to the possible future application of boron-fusion nuclear power and thorium-nuclear power in California.

Harry

What's it going to be next, Tam - perhaps George W. Bush explaining why it was necessary to have a war against Iraq because Sadam Hussain had halitosis.

This business of nuclear in California has been taken up by a number of LEGITIMATE scientists in that noble state, Tam, and unfortunately they disagree with you. But let me tell you the way that I look at this. They can tear down every nuclear faility in Californa, and the ignorant editors of the LA Times could lead a dance around the wreckage, but in a decade or so they will be rebuilding them, and they will probably be breeders.

That is what you are going to get for your crank departure about nuclear. Why not stick to oil, or gas. YOU DONT KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT NUCLEAR. Or for that matter, why don't you study the subject, by which I mean study the economics of nuclear. If you did you would find out that WE DONT HAVE A CHOICE. I once took a lot of flak because I didn't want nuclear, I didn't think that our political masters could handle it, and that might still be true, but we are going to have to deal with it regardless of what I wanted.

California's market demand for electric power will likely increase quite substantially over the next few decades. California's reluctance to allow nuclear power within their state may create a business case to develop a nuclear power station in Northern Mexico, one that could sell to both California and to Mexico.

Thorium-based IFR sounds great to me, if it can be done. Is that what an LFTR is? Not clear to me.

The future of nuclear basically depends on if one wants to do something about carbon emissions or not. Note that even the worst nuclear power accident in history (Chernobyl) will probably be cleared up in 60-100 years. That sounds very bad, but much less severe than an altered world climate affecting billions of people permanently.

You also raise a good point about California importing electricity. If they really don't want nuclear power, then they shouldn't even be able to import it either. They should live the reality they wish to impose on others, not reside in a la-la land where they espouse beliefs but don't actually bear the consequences of them. (I ran into that when they were perfectly happy importing electricity from coal plants to charge their "zero emission" electric vehicles or produce their "zero emission" hydrogen. Ugh!)

a) If they oppose release of contaminating radiation, wouldn't it be more logical to ensure very strict regulatory oversight of generating plants, and cheer events such as discovery of the failing pipework at SONGS, especially since it will likely be repaired under warranty at no cost?

b) If they oppose nuclear power on the basis of proliferation of weapons-grade materials, doesn't that also carry a parallel responsibility to be equally opposed to the holding and maintenance of military nuclear weapons and nuclear-powered naval fleets, by anyone, including their own military?

c) If they oppose nuclear power stations operating on or near any earthquake faults, shouldn't they also specify, as well as shutting down any plants within their own jurisdiction, a refusal to import power from any other area with nuclear plants near a fault region such as Oregon, Washington State, Mexico, etc.

d) Is it possible for people who were so wrong about fuel cells and the "hydrogen economy" to be so self-confident about other issues? (BTW, I was also wrong on that, but am not afraid to admit that AND the possible utility of nuclear reactors, given rational constraints).

There is a rational way to handle this issue, and the thing now is to find it. Who is going to manage this noble task. One thing is certain: the present US Secretary of Energy will not make the short list. Quite frankly Tam, I would rather see you in the executive suite at the USDOE than Dr Chu.

Just sayin' ...

Five new generators are on track for completion this decade, including two reactors approved just a few weeks ago (the first new reactor approvals in the US in over 30 years). Those will add to the 104 reactors that are already in operation around the country and already produce 20% of the nation’s power. Those reactors will eat up 19,724 tonnes of U3O8 this year, which represents 29% of global uranium demand. If that seems like a large amount, it is! The US produces more nuclear power than any other country on earth, which means it consumes more uranium that any other nation. However, decades of declining domestic production have left the US producing only 4% of the world’s uranium.

With so little homegrown uranium, the United States has to import more than 80% of the uranium it needs to fuel its reactors. Thankfully, for 18 years a deal with Russia has filled that gap. The “Megatons to Megawatts” agreement, whereby Russia downblends highly enriched uranium from nuclear warheads to create reactor fuel, has provided the US with a steady, inexpensive source of uranium since 1993. The problem is that the program is coming to an end next year.

The Upside to a Natural Gas Downturn Marin Katusa, for The Daily Reckoning Monday April 2, 2012

correct or not?

Heat and drought force closures, reductions at nuclear power plants.

http://www.pennenergy.com/index/power/display/2368527679/articles/pennenergy/power/nuclear/2012/july/heat-and_drought_force.html?cmpid=EnlDailyPowerJuly302012

And their great hope -- thorium (or is it boron fusion this time?) has had 60 years to come to fruition -- NOTHING has been holding it back -- except its own inherent problems, which are legion.

Commentator Len Gould can't grasp the goals of the anti-nuclear activists because he doesn't realize they DO strive for better regulations --which keep not happening, and they oppose nuclear weapons too -- and so should he. He also fails to grasp, that they support renewables, not other people's nukes, and do so because renewables work fine. California could be a net green energy exporter, but not if we keep plugging up the nukes with toilet paper and spit and letting them run 'til the flow-induced vibration shakes them apart again.

Where Mr. Hunt's advocacy for renewable energy runs off the rails is in his enthusiasm for feed-in tariffs. They do provide certainty for developers and financiers and they have been used in many countries around the world, but Mr. Hunt has neglected to mention that in most cases, the tariff rate was set to absurd levels. As a result, German electricity users are facing sizable increases in the price of electricity. In Spain, utilities have been required to keep amounts paid out under feed-in tariffs as assets on their balance sheets subject to future collection rather than collecting those from consumers right away. While I have not personally examined the financial statements of the Spanish grid operator or the largest investor-owned utilities in Spain, accruing the cost of feed-in tariffs as high as 50 cents per kWh without any assurance they can eventually be collected probably isn't enhancing anyone's credit rating.

The anti-nuclear crowd makes an assumption that any exposure to radiation is innately harmful when in fact I suspect there is little scientific evidence to support that assumption. We know for a fact that too much radiation exposure can lead to death, but we don't really know the threshold above which radiation exposure places us at greater risk of dying than, say, driving a car or walking down the street or taking a bath or engaging in any other activity that has a finite risk of shortening our lives. In fact, as physicist Richard Mueller points out in his book Physics for Future Presidents, the incidence of cancer in Denver, an area that is somewhat more exposed to cosmic radiation than most parts of the US, has a lower incidence of cancers. There may be many reasons for that anomaly, and one of them could be that small doses of radiation are actually beneficial rather than harmful.

It'll be interesting to see how the German nuclear-free experiment turns out. I'm anxiously awaiting the results.

I am quite sure California will carefully consider their options, apply leftist thinking and then increase the price of power, thereby helping drive even more businesses out of the state.

As for nuclear, rumors as to its demise are premature. Never know when technology will pull a rabbit out of the hat.

That brings us to Mr Payne. Here is the advice I give my students: find out what you like and what you are good or fairly good at, and learn it perfectly. When it comes to the ECONOMICS of nuclear energy, I know more than ANYBODY I have ever encountered, which leads me to say that Mr Payne's opinion about the availability of nuclear fuel is worthless. Let's get something straight here though, Bill. I haven't encountered as many people as I would like to encounter, because since they are ignorant this topic is concerned, and I'm the real deal, they stear clear of me. You might remember that in case you walk into a classroom and see me standing in front of the blackboard with a piece of chalk in my hand.

I also take notice of the information about renewables provided this forum by Ace Hoffman. He is apparently a candidate for the Josef Goebbels truth-telling prize, and I respect him for his interest in this topic, but I am not sure that he is correct. I dont believe that renewables have achieved what many people think that they have, but when or if they do, they should be exploited as much as possible, even if subsidies are required.

In some countries nuclear closures are common, while in others they seldom take place. The reason they do take place is stupidity, or laziness, or greed or maybe a vodka bash in the control room. To know what nuclear can and cannot do you look at what has happened at nuclear facilities around the world, and the only thing that is relevant here are those plants with capacity factors in the 90s. The others are what Gordon Gekko called "dogs"..

I have a clipping which says that Swedish facilities have the highest (average) capacity factor in the world. That was in the l990s. Capacity factors are lower in this country now (and electricity prices are higher) because the money that should have gone into keeping up those capacity factors went to stone age countries in the Third World and adventures in places like Afghanistan. In a textbook world voters would notice this, and vote for political parties who worked to maintain living standards and the domestic quality of life, rather than ....

Japan also operated seawater-cooled nuclear power stations . . . . the exhaust heat of which could thermally desalinate seawater. A nuclear power station that provides power to California in the future, could be located either along the Pacific Coast (of Mexico) or at the northern end of the Gulf of California.

Obviously you consider yourself witty, sophisticated, and well informed.

I think you are an arrogant, conceited twit.

I think you owe Bill Payne an apology

FYI, he is correct.

The basic cause of the Fukushima disaster was lack of water circulating to the reactor cores, and the stored fuel rods---which caused the heat buildup that led to the destruction and explosions.

"Unlike the use of the fast reactor, the Thorium-cycle CANDU does not need the development of a new type of reactor. With little or no modification to the present CANDU Reactor system, it is possible to introduce the thorium fuel cycle." --

Two ways you receive the information .

1 MSM 2 What you observe first hand.

MSM is suspect for promoting their agenda.

Goolge embedded contorller for forth for the 8051 family machine, assember, and systems programminf for the IBM 301 AND IMPLEMENTING BASICS HOW BASICS WORK

Wwe gurantee this!

:-)

Fred Linn - Your conclusion is incorrect. The units in Japan had plenty of water.

The problem was the absence of power to drive pumps. Seawater was ultimately pumped into the cores of several of the reactors. If the diesel generators had been operational (they got swamped), the cores would not have melted.

And I repeat Mr Linn, WE HAVE NO CHOICE where nuclear is concerned. The point is to keep it to a minimum. The problem is that the Chinese won't keep their nuclear assets to a minimum, and so they will end up producing every roll of toilet paper that we use.

DanP1966 | Aug 2, 2012 02:18 PM ET This was no accident.

This was no glitch.

This was intentional.

It was either a hack or an employee.

It was either to just hurt the firm or it was a theft.

Key, High Risk, applications do not just go haywire on an upgrade and completely reverse their logic and override any checks.

This algo was buying at the offer and selling at the bid.

NO WAY that happens by accident. ...

Smart grid? Microcontol;lers in nuclear generation of electricity plants? And nuclear aircraft carriers?

My conjecture is the that Fukushima incident was caused more by inaction than anything else. Nuclear employees are so regimented to follow detailed instruction and procedure they cannot act efficiently when anything not planned for in detail occurs. I fear the US fleet is the same.

Even after being submersed in saltwater me and two mechanics could have had those diesel pumps back in service in two hours, long before the batteries died. Drain the water out change the oil remove the kill sov from the injector spin them off and fire them up and let them eat.

It was a catastrophe driven by inaction. They had hours to implement dozens of other solutions. The Japanese had the resources to do a battery relay. Construct a battery bank and jumper it in before the other one is exhausted and repeat as needed. They failed to act in timely manner. I believe Fukushima is a human performance issue and a result of excessive regimentation.

Of course, it doesn't make any difference what gets into the discussion. If we are to maintain our standards of living - such as they are - then nuclear is here to stay, and everywhere. The point is not to go overboard with them.

They should have added more redundancy to the generators, obviously.

"Jeff Immelt, the chief executive of General Electric, revived the debate about the cost of nuclear power this week when he said building reactors was so expensive compared with other forms of energy it had become “really hard” to justify."

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/bd975d10-dd59-11e1-8fdc-00144feab49a.html#axzz22uJECXlQ

But I say OK. They can stop building them tomorrow morning if they want. But please remember what Abraham Lincoln said: you cannot make fools of the voters all of the time.

In a technical and economic sense, is GE's boiling water reactor inferior to say Westinghouse's pressurized water reactor? Looks that way to me. I suspect that is a major driver behind his remarks.

Jerry's earlier observation on the "group think" in Japan likely explains why the generators were never moved higher, in spite of a number of studies that showed the probability of very large tsunami was much higher than originally calculated. Neither Diablo Canyon and San Onofre have that particular problem.

As for solar replacing nuclear in CA, I've not argued that solar can by itself replace nuclear. Rather, solar can replace peak supplies and could, with storage or baseload renewables like geothermal (which supplies 5% of CA's power currently) or biomass, replace nuclear. "The people in California who have the numbers" are the people like CAISO who I cite and discuss in my articles.