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No aspect of the energy challenge is more polarized than that of nuclear energy. Both the pros and cons are very selective in presenting their arguments, and it is very difficult to get a balanced or objective view of the real trade-offs. While much of the opposition is emotional, deriving from fear of radiation, bombs, and Chernobyl, it is not unlikely that this polarization also arises from the fact that, at present, there may be as many real negatives as positives.
The Pros:
The main plusses presented in favor of nuclear are:
There is a limitless fuel supply.
It is non-polluting, particularly having no CO2 emissions.
It has very high energy density, requiring the least fuel for the energy provided.
It is inexpensive, the produced electricity being cheaper than coal.
It contributes to our national security.
New technology will make it 100% fail safe.
It already provides 20% of our electricity.
Nuclear generated electricity costs only 2 cents/kWh.
When these claims are examined in detail we find that:
The fuel supply is only relatively limitless, and then only if we use fast reactors, and their development was suspended in the USA in 1994.
Mining the ore, refining it, and concentrating it to make it fissionable are very polluting processes. If the whole fuel cycle is considered, nuclear produces several times the CO2 that wind energy does.
Concentrated ore is very rare, so huge volumes of waste are created in providing the fuel.
Curiously, because of the thin film technology (thousandths of an inch), solar photovoltaic has a higher energy density.
Costs quoted (1.8¢-2.2¢/kWh) are operating (i.e. marginal) cost only, i.e. fuel, maintenance, and personnel, and omit R & D, plant amortization, end-of-life decommissioning, and ultimate spent fuel storage costs.3 Fully costed, it is our most expensive electrical energy source, at 6-10 cents/kWh. New reactor designs are expected to come in under 5 cents/kWh.
90% of the uranium is imported, which is not consistent with national security. (We do have large domestic reserves that are not in large-scale production).
The new technology is still questioned under conditions like terrorist attack. Unlike other methods of generating electricity there is no totally fail-safe mode for radioactive material.
Nuclear-produced electricity is less than 3% of our total energy consumption.
Nuclear produced electricity cost of 2 cents/kWh ignores plant amortization cost.
A couple of the points are relatively true for us, because of the import share, i.e. we get to export much of the pollution, and the main suppliers, Canada and Australia, are secure allies.
The Cons
The major negatives presented by its opponents are:
Spent fuel storage will always be a problem.
Radioactive uranium hexafluoride, left over from the concentrating process in large quantities, also has to be stored.
Uranium 235, which is fissionable without concentration, is not abundant.
Plutonium can be used to make bombs, and therefore vastly increases the security risk.
Plutonium is an extremely hazardous and deadly poison.
Nuclear reactors are inherently unsafe, and if we have a lot of them, another Chernobyl will be inevitable.
A careful examination of these claims reveals that:
Technological advances have greatly reduced the amount of spent fuel relative to early days, and there is promise for accelerator transmutation to further mitigate the storage problem. “Integral fast reactors”, now forbidden, produce much less waste with a half-life of about 500 years vs. >10,000 yrs for conventional LWRs.
U238 is relatively abundant and the technology to concentrate it for reactor fuel is mature.
Using “fast” reactors we do not need U235.
There are three isotopes of plutonium, and the mix produced by breeder reactors, without complex and expensive further processing, is not “weapons grade.”
The “advanced fast reactor” consumes rather than producing plutonium.
Barring direct inhalation of particles (which are heavy), plutonium is about as poisonous as lead.
Modern reactors are safer than most things we do in life—much safer than flying, or mining coal, for example.
The Real Issues
On balance, probably the most telling issues are:
At the end of the day we are dealing with radioactive materials, which pose both short- and long-term risks, and which have to be stored for millennia.
Exporting our pollution to the fuel source countries is not a very nice way to solve a problem.
If fully costed, nuclear energy is not now cost competitive.2 (See section 4 below).
Greatly increasing the amount of plutonium around will inevitably raise security risks. Plutonium is already being smuggled.1 (Note, this point is a negative for conventional reactors, but a positive for IFRs4)
We have renewable alternatives that have none of these drawbacks.
Yucca Mountain will be full by 2020, and we will need to develop new storage, starting soon, or develop alternatives to long-term storage.
When full the storage facility becomes in effect a potential “plutonium mine”, and we can’t be sure it will be safeguarded for millennia.
Just to get to 10 quads of nuclear power for the USA, assuming 1,000 MW plants, would require about 350 new plants, including replacement of the present 104, or an average of 7 per state. The NIMBY prospect is considerable to say the least.
The proponents of new fail safe “pebble bed” reactors note that they are modular and could be built as 100 MW plants for local distribution. Does anyone want perhaps 2,000 or so sources of radioactive material to regulate and control?1
Resource depletion
Some people point out that there is not enough Uranium reasonably available in the earth’s crust to support much world growth in nuclear power, without facing another declining resource in a few decades. Again this is a false objection. There are 433 active reactors (excluding shipboard propulsion units) operating in the world today, with a combined capacity of about 350 GWe. They can generate about 10 quads of electricity per year. Argonne Labs estimates available Uranium as 3000 quads. If we tripled world nuclear capacity between now and 2030, (unlikely), and then ran flat, that would carry us to 2110. In addition we have 3 times as much thorium, which can be upgraded to fissile uranium in nuclear reactors, so even with major growth of present technology reactors we would be good for 2 centuries or so.
However present conventional reactors only consume about 1% of the fuel, or perhaps 2% after upgrading. The “Integral Fast Reactor” (IFR)4 would consume most of the fuel, and therefore stretch the available Uranium to 300,000 quads. Even with vastly expanded world consumption we have at least several centuries of fuel.
N. B. The IFR is also inherently safer in every respect than conventional reactors but IFR design was suspended in 1994 as a result of rather hysterical efforts by ill-informed anti-nuke activists who considered it to be a type of fast breeder reactor and open-ended source of near weapons grade plutonium. An even less informed House suspended development over the objections of a better-informed Senate.
Electricity Cost
Fully costed, nuclear generated electricity today costs from 6 to 10 cents/kWh, not competitive with coal or natural gas. However the main component of that cost is plant amortization at 5 to 7 cents/kWh. Most of our fleet of nuclear plants was built in the 1970s and is now approaching the end of the 30-year initial amortization period. About 7 plants have already been re-licensed for a longer useful life (now 50 years), and several more have applied for re-licensing. After amortization, the cost of electricity for these plants will drop to about 2 cents/kWh, a cost that makes electricity almost free, and that no other source of electricity can compete with. Experts feel that with sound maintenance, the lifetime of a nuclear plant can be near “forever”. Of course, this means that nuclear energy consumers, over the last 30 years have paid for very cheap energy for their progeny, an unusual and certainly unintentional act of altruism.
This point raises the question of cost for electricity from new nuclear plants. There are several ways of keeping such costs competitive. The first and most obvious is that operators of present plants will simply average their cost from new and fully amortized plants. Next, the high cost from numerous existing plants derived from huge cost overruns during construction, often due to regulatory delays. The initial cost of new plants can be expected to be lower, and indeed fully costed electricity from new plants is projected as <5 cents/kWh. If global warming is finally taken seriously in the USA (which now seems likely), and a carbon trading scheme is introduced, nuclear plants should be allowed to trade carbon credits, thus providing an income stream to offset amortization. Finally, if plant life is taken to be very long, as now seems certain, amortization can be spread over 50 or maybe even 100 years. With all of these possibilities, new nuclear power will certainly be competitive with fossil fuels even at today’s prices, and fossil fuel prices will only rise.
All of the above ignores the fact that nuclear R&D has been paid for by the taxpayer. R&D for e.g. gas turbines is paid for by the manufacturer and that cost is passed along in price to the customer. Historically, most of the nuclear R&D led to atom bombs and reactors for nuclear submarines so having the taxpayer pay was appropriate. That is no longer the case, but given the strength of the precedent nothing is likely to change. We can’t know the real cost of nuclear energy unless the industry pays its own R&D costs. We should consider such already “sunk” R&D cost as a gift to future generations, another little piece of altruism, that may offset some of the other problems we are leaving them.
No Nukes!
The anti-nuclear folk correctly point out that we can choose to phase out nuclear energy without any significant negative impact on our economy. We do not have a major American processing industry. The rest of the world will still provide a market for Australia and Canada. We will still be a small market for fuel for naval reactors and for medical and industrial isotopes. Since nuclear provides less than 3% of the energy we consume, since it does have some real drawbacks, and since there are better, lower cost alternatives, why bother with it? For sure it does not make sense to expand subsidization3 of a controversial energy source. With nuclear’s subsidies, wind/solar/hydrogen would be competitive, and is much more desirable.
Reality Check
That said, let’s consider reality. As natural gas and petroleum availability go into decline, and as the hydrogen economy develops, increasing electricity demand, nuclear will start to look more and more attractive. Resistance on the part of lawmakers is already dropping. The NEPDG, in their May 2001 report made this recommendation “In the context of developing advanced nuclear fuel cycles and next-generation technologies for nuclear energy, the United States should reexamine its policies, to allow for research, development and deployment of fuel conditioning methods (such as pyroprocessing) that reduce waste streams and enhance proliferation resistance.” They were referring to the IFR. In fact there is now a consortium of 10 countries, led by Argonne Labs of the USA, to define and develop the “fourth generation” nuclear reactor, dubbed the “Advanced Fast Reactor”, (AFR)6 a rebirth, with improvements of the IFR for which development was abandoned in 1994. It is expected that the first AFRs will go into service by 2030, and when petroleum does go into decline, that schedule is likely to be advanced. Argonne is also leading the Congressional Advanced Reactor Hydrogen Project, designing the Next Generation Nuclear Plant, and developing technology to prolong the working life of present reactors.
An alternative new reactor design, the helium cooled “pebble bed “ reactor (PBR)7 is also in development, with units expected to be in service in China8 and South Africa in the time frame of 2008 to 2012. Actually PBRs are not new. The first such reactor was operated in Germany for several years starting in the early 1980s. The PBR is claimed to be inherently fail-safe, in that overheating of the core forces passive shutdown, but there was a failure in the fuel feed to the German unit that resulted in the release of a plume of radioactive material, and led the German government to permanently shut the unit down. This specific failure mode could be prevented by design change. South Africa has plans to build at least 10 PBRs for domestic use, and to build up to 20 per year small modular “plug and play” units for export. China is targeting 300GWe of PBR capacity by 2050. South Korea is also in the planning stages of adding PBR capacity. Even Serbia has now announced plans to build a new reactor. Nuclear is at the beginning of a major comeback, especially in less developed countries (undoubtedly with USA involvement), but before long in the USA also, like it or not.
Sell the benefits.
What are the benefits and drawbacks of the new designs?
PBR: The major benefits claimed are:
They are operationally fail-safe by design.
Burn rate can be readily adjusted enabling accommodation of peak loads.
They are continuously fueled obviating periodic prolonged shutdown for refueling.
They are modular and can be built and operated in sizes as small as 10 MW.
They can be delivered as operational “plug and play” modules and put together like legos, making them practical even for LDCs.
They are low initial cost.
When prefab’d modules become available, time to commissioning may be as short as 2 years.
The drawbacks are:
They burn fuel inefficiently like conventional LWRs, meaning large amounts of long half-life radioactive waste production.
They are modular, and can be delivered in plug and play modules.
They don’t strictly require a containment housing.
Given the last 2 points, and inevitable delivery to countries with low levels of technology, controls and maintenance abilities, they will be disasters waiting to happen in some cases.
Only the inefficiency drawback is a problem in the USA.
AFRs: The major benefits claimed are:4
no production and build-up of plutonium - they are closed loop with an integrated fuel reprocessing (pyroprocessing ) stage, so the plutonium produced is ultimately consumed.
short-term management of plutonium – the in process plutonium produced is not accessible as it never leaves a highly radioactive environment.
disposition and long-term management of plutonium – they can burn existing plutonium stockpiles, especially that reclaimed from weapons.
other proliferation concerns – they ultimately eliminate the “plutonium mine”.
long-term waste management – they produce much less radioactive waste, burning the long half-life actinides and leaving short (<500 yr) half-life residue.
environmental effects – much less uranium ore processing per year.
resource conservation and long-term energy supply – >70x the energy recovery of conventional reactors.
safety – automatic shutdown with thermal sink reserve to ensure core cooling in case of failure in the heat exchanger cycle.
refueling shutdown – they are expected to run for up to 40 years on a single fuel charge.
constant output - base-load supply that wants to operate 24 hours per day and that provides a balance for variable renewables electricity generation. In the hydrogen economy this is a further advantage, because low priced night-time production can be used for hydrogen generation.
The drawbacks are:
high initial cost and therefore high electricity cost. This drawback can be offset for the first several reactors built by charging for disposal of existing plutonium stockpiles. They should be given credit for elimination of such hazardous waste. See also section 4) above.
The first IFR was designed with a liquid sodium cooling bath, and a sodium/water heat exchanger. Everyone knows about the danger of sodium-water contact, and a staged film of such large-scale contact would be a major selling point for anti-nuke activists. New designs are evaluating sodium/helium and lead-bismuth/water heat exchangers. Russia already has a lot of experience with the latter.
Conclusions
Declining availability of natural gas and petroleum are going to shift a major portion of our energy burden to electricity. In response we will certainly turn to coal, renewables and nuclear. If the decline is sharp, which is very likely for natural gas, we will not be able to respond quickly enough on the supply side, especially given the very long permitting, building and commissioning times for nuclear (up to 10 years today). PBRs hold out promise to reduce this time to perhaps 2-3 years before 2010. When nuclear becomes again acceptable, we are likely to build PBRs for some years, while we accelerate development of AFRs. Before 2030 AFRs will almost undoubtedly be the reactor of choice. While nukes will always have inherent danger, AFRs have the promise of eliminating plutonium stockpiles, and can thus, on balance, make the world a safer place. There is still a need to overcome poorly informed and emotional resistance.
References: 1 http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns9999782 2 http://www.antenna.nl/wise/uranium/ for a lot of info the nuclear industry does not want to tell you. 3Jerry Taylor, the director of natural resource studies at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, notes: “Were it nor for government subsidies, there wouldn’t be one nuclear power plant in this country.” 4http://www.anlw.anl.gov/anlw_history/reactors/ifr.html 5http://www.nationalcenter.org/NPA378.html 6http://www.aps.org/units/fps/newsletters/2002/april/a1ap02.cfm 7http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pebble_bed_reactor 8http://www.grist.org/news/daily/2004/09/03/china/index.html
For information on purchasing reprints of this article, contact Tim Tobeck ttobeck@energycentral.com. Copyright 2010 CyberTech, Inc.
The "hydrogen economy" obviously will not be based on reforming natural gas. The identified alternative hydrogen sources are electrochemical and thermochemical production from water. This implies a major increase in electricity production and ultimately generating capacity. This new capacity will certainly not be natural gas-fueled. If climate change becomes a controlling issue, it won't be coal-fueled either unless permanent CO2 sequestration technology becomes economically available. That leaves nuclear and renewables. However, CO2 limitations would exclude biomass, so we're down to geothermal, solar and wind plus existing hydro. I can't wait to see the reaction to the proposal to install ~12 million large wind turbines nationwide.
It may actually be time for the US to get serious about the future energy supply. It would be a refreshing change!
Len Gould 10.8.04
Nice article. re. "There is still a need to overcome poorly informed and emotional resistance.", 2 points:
1) The only logical choice for at least the first 10 or so new (old-technology) units is to build the containment in a hardrock excavation 800 meters underground. Placing condensers and turbine at surface enables gravity to replace feedwater pumping, giving unlimited and totally reliable cooling. Also excavation is cheaper than present containments, and completely safe from eg. aircraft. Spent fuel permanently stored in adjacent excavation. If it tries to pull a TMI just pour the shaft full of borated concrete. With this technique I can't get the cost of a new e.g. CANDU (like Quinshan) above 3.3 cents / kWhr. v.s. clean coal at 5++? see http://www.ecologen.com
2) By what logic can anit-nukes oppose power reactors but say nothing about military nuclear-power fleets? In my estimation, to eliminate power nukes you'll enforce dependence for a long time on imported fossil fuels which can only be reliable with a powerful high-seas military.
Anyway, I've given up on logic and am developing novel solar / fuel powered generation which is going into prototype now. Actually by the math it'll generate cheaper than the above anyway. Who would have thought?
Len Gould 10.8.04
And before the windpower advocates get going I'd like to see them deal with this data http://www.vanderbilt.edu/radsafe/0405/msg00051.html. In summary, a large east-coast wind farm with 5 years operating record indicates reliability factor of 18%, with summer months often much worse.
Victor Bush 10.8.04
Murray –
Very well researched articles written for the layman. The four articles you have submitted to this forum so far come at a time when we, as a nation, need to look very closely at the role energy costs play in our economic well being.
Your articles should be required reading in Political Science 101.
Michael McCarthy 10.8.04
Dr. Claudio Filippone, director of the Center for Advanced Energy Concepts, a branch of the U-Md Aerospace Engineering Dept., claims to have developed an "active neutronic moderator" capable of fine-tuning a nuclear reaction using simple films of steam. He explains, “This is the heart of CAESAR (Clean and Environmentally Safe Advanced Reactor). With it, thermodynamic efficiency has been enhanced due to a dramatically increased heat transfer coefficient. Cooling of the fuel is achieved and enhanced by films of steam. And because water has been thinned into steam, even not-so-energetic delayed neutrons can now travel between different rods, causing fission." Nuclear fuel stays in a conventional nuclear reactor for 2 – 3 years, after which the U-235 is depleted and delayed neutrons have insufficient energy to pass through the water. Then it is known as spent fuel and becomes nuclear waste. “But CAESAR can use spent fuel,” continues Dr. Filippone, “so no one should need weapons-grade uranium any more. What’s more, we can go back to the environment and say ‘We dumped this stockpile of spent fuel here. We’re taking it back because we can get electricity out of it for several centuries.’” Go to http://www.caesar.umd.edu/ for more.
Rodney Adams 10.8.04
Murray:
I just read your Energy Challenge - Nuclear piece. Although you make some reasonable points, you have quite a few of your facts confused. Here are a few examples: The first German pebble bed reactor, the AVR (Arbeitsgemeinschaft Versuchsreaktor) began operating on August 26, 1966, not the 1980s. It was decomissioned in 1988 after more than 20 years of experimentation and operation. Nuclear O&M (which even includes fuel storage and decommissioning allowances) range as low as 1.13 cents per kilowatt hour (Duke Power's Catawba) and the average in 2003 was 1.72 cents per kilowatt hour (Nucleonics Week Sep 2004) which is below the range that you quoted. Gas turbine R&D is and has always been largely funded by governments in the form of development programs for jet engines for combat aircraft and gas turbine engines for ships. In addition, there a plenty of DoE subsidies for development of advanced power production gas turbines. I would be very interested in seeing a calculation with stated assumptions that supports your contention that thin film solar has a higher energy density than uranium. I would also be interested in just which fossil fuel technologies are "totally fail safe". The last time I checked, all of the involved fuels (coal, oil and gas) are flammable and all have been responsible for deaths within the past few months. Oil and gas have definitely been involved in more terrorists attacks, some of which resulted in pretty spectacular events - like enormous sky scrapers collapsing on themselves. I think I will save my other comments for a rebuttal article. Rod Adams
www.atomicinsights.com
Jack Ellis 10.11.04
I generally agree with your conclusion that nuclear power is an option worth developing. However it's going to be a tough sell unless thought leaders, government and industry can convince the voters that it's safe enough. Most people don't understand the technical details and they don't want to understand them, either. Images of disaster at Chernobyl and the accident at Three Mile Island are still fresh in the public's mind and anti-nuclear activists will exploit those images for maximum effect. Effective rebuttals of the disaster scenarios begins with substantial agreement among industry and government that new nuclear development is in the national interest, followed by an extensive public education campaign that carefully dismantles the scare tactics environmental lobbyists will undoubtedly use.
I don't believe for one minute that nuclear power is our energy savior. It needs to be part of a menu of options that helps insulate us from the adverse consequences of technical failures (TMI, inability to vitrify wastes), unrealistic projections for construction and operating costs (electricity too cheap to meter) and lack of political will. In short, we should never put all of our energy eggs in a single basket.
Rodney Adams 10.12.04
Jack:
I believe that it is part of nuclear power's amazing potential that the public can still remember an incident at TMI that happened more than 25 years ago and resulted in zero deaths. On the other hand I would bet a fair sum of money that even most of the readers on this forum cannot recall much about the natural gas pipeline explosion in Belgium in July 2004 that killed at least 20 people and injured more than 100. Nuclear accidents are exceeding rare; fatal fossil accidents happen with so much regularity that they are not even news.
When someone tells me that waste is the reason that nuclear power has no future, I ask them to please explain where the deadly waste from coal, oil and gas goes. I also ask them to tell me of just one incident somewhere in the world where a person was hurt by nuclear power plant waste.
While I believe that atomic fission is the only viable alternative to fossil fuel for many applications, I understand that the transition from fossil to atomic based energy will take a very long time and that there will be plenty of new fossil projects during that transition.
The Stone Age did not end because we ran out of rocks, and even though it ended a few millenia ago, people still use stones for a lot of applications. There were simply a lot of other alternatives developed that proved to be more useful.
In energy, what will change is that fossil fuel will lose its present status and fossil fuel producers will lose some of their wealth and power. Of course, I expect that they will continue to fund the efforts of anti-nuclear groups to try to slow that trend, but the tactic is going to be less effective in the future.
Rod Adams
www.atomicinsights.com
James Hopf 10.12.04
As one may expect, I have mixed feelings about this article. Indeed, different sections of the article seem to disagree with each other, in tone if not in substance. I’m not sure if, in the various sections, the Mr. Duffin is trying to present the different points of view, or whether all sections represent his own point of view. If the latter is the case, I would say that his own views on nuclear are somewhat conflicted.
I disagree with almost everything that is said in the “Real Issues” and “No Nukes” sections, and I may give specific responses to several specific points in later posts. On the other hand, I am happy to see many other points that were made, including the fact that the total overall costs for new nuclear will be somewhat less than 5 cents/kW-hr (an estimate I agree with). Mr. Duffin also seems to agree that nuclear will need to provide at least some fraction of our power in the future, although he has no enthusiasm for (current) LWR technology, or the once-through fuel cycle. That nuclear will be a necessary PART of our future energy needs is really all that nuclear advocates have ever really been saying. Perhaps our disagreements are not as large as we think.
I do confess to being confused specifically about the statement (in the “No Nukes” section) that we have “so many better, cheaper alternatives”. I’m not sure what he was referring to. I think he meant renewables, but he may have also meant gas and clean coal as well. Later, in the “Reality Check” section the fact that gas and oil are likely to run out fast is seemingly offered as the reason why we would pursue nuclear despite is relative “undesirability”. Does this mean he meant gas? If he meant renewables or coal, why would gas depletion matter? Unlike gas or oil, there is no limit on fuel supply for renewables, and not much of a limit on coal.
Either way, I would take great issue with most of what was said. As Mr. Duffin said, new nuclear should be around 5 cents or less (including any and all subsidies and/or external costs, which BTW are all extremely small for nuclear). Without subsidies, wind power is roughly that much, or more, and all other renewables just get more expensive from there. More importantly than cost, however, is the fact that renewables are intermittent, and for that reason, no one believes that they will be able to provide all, or even most of our power for the foreseeable future. In that sense, renewables are not an “alternative”, in that they are not practically capable of replacing nuclear (or coal). Gas will be similarly limited in the future. The only thing that nuclear is not economically competitive with is conventional (i.e., dirty, as opposed to clean) coal. However, ALL studies show that if coal’s external (i.e., environmental and public health) costs were added in, it has a much higher overall cost than nuclear. Thus, coal is not a “better” alternative than nuclear either. Gas also used to be cheaper than nuclear, but as everyone at Energy Pulse seems to agree, that era is over. Finally, there is clean coal technology. These technologies have external (environmental) costs that are closer to those of nuclear, but low and behold, their economic costs are also ~5 cents/kW-hr, very similar to nuclear.
Here’s how I see it. Future gas supply is very limited, and gas will only be able to contribute a small fraction of power generation (baseload generation anyway). I don’t have to spend a lot of time convincing the EP audience of this. Renewables can play a significant (and growing role) but intermittantcy will prevent them from providing most of our power. Thus, a large fraction of our future power will have to come from coal and/or nuclear (something which most people here seem to agree on). It just comes down to which one of these is preferable.
Yes, dirty coal is the cheapest option, if nobody cares about the environment. Also, such a playing field would be ridiculously unfair to nuclear, which is basically held to a zero pollution (and virtually zero overall external cost) standard. If we were to require clean coal technology for all new coal plants (IGCC at a minimum, but preferably zero-emission, “future-gen” plants) then the playing field would be close to fair. Just think, with “future-gen”, coal would no longer emit any pollution into the air and water. It would only have solid waste that is confined, and sequestered from human contact, hopefully over the long term. Sound familiar? This is where nuclear has been ever since the beginning. No emissions allowed, and it must even show that no significant releases will occur at any point in the future, to a high degree of proof. Even with future-gen, I doubt coal could match this level of performance, since its toxic solid waste stream is generated in thousands (perhaps tens or hundreds of thousands) of times the volume, and contains toxic elements that NEVER decay away. Thus, although it may surprise
James Hopf 10.12.04
continued.....:
.....Thus, although it may surprise people, coal (even future-gen or IGCC coal) has a solid waste problem that is GREATER, not less, than that of nuclear. I am utterly convinced that the long-term health risks from buried coal sludge will exceed those of nuclear waste (spent fuel). That, along with the greater mining effects, is more than enough to compensate for the (negligible) accident and proliferation risks associated with new nuclear plants.
Thus, if one passed a law requiring future-gen, or at least IGCC coal (albeit with a CO2 emissions tax), then I would consider the playing field to be finally fair between coal and nuclear. At that point, I’d be happy to let the “best technology win” strictly on the basis of economic considerations. (Note that, low and behold, when coal is finally held to anywhere near the same standards as nuclear has always been, it costs as much (IGCC) or even more (in the case of CO2 sequestration) than nuclear.) At that point, gas will be mostly confined to peaking duty, and back up duty for renewables. We will also get as much power from renewables that we can from a practical and economic perspective. Cost would then determine the market shares of clean coal and nuclear for the rest.
There actually seems to be quite a bit of consensus on this position. I now hear most people talking about combinations of renewables, clean coal, and advanced nuclear (along with some gas). Note that they generally say “clean coal”, not just “coal”. If that’s what they really mean, once again, we do not have much disagreement. I’m just waiting for someone to propose some real legislation; legislation that will ban conventional (dirty) coal, for good. Continuing to allow conventional coal is utterly irrational, is completely inconsistent (vis-à-vis the total intolerance of nuclear risks) and is a travesty of justice. Even the cleanest conventional coal plant has overall public health and environmental risks, per kW-hr produced, that are greater than those of a nuclear plant with no containment and no safety systems. Would anyone allow that?? Why the inconsistency!?
James Hopf 10.13.04
Nuclear Costs/Subsidies:
The costs situation for new nuclear relative to other sources was largely addressed in the previous post. The only thing new nuclear is (or was ever) not competative with is gas back in the days of the (now passed) supply glut, and dirty (conventional) coal, but only if external costs are completely ignored. Otherwise, conventional coal is much more expensive.
Clean (IGCC) coal is roughly as expensive as nuclear, and still emits CO2. Under any serious CO2 reduction program, the cost of a CO2 credit WILL be sufficient to render IGCC coal (or any CO2-emitting coal) more expensive than nuclear. To work, it simply has to be (since we can not reduce CO2 while relying on emitting coal to any significant extent). All indications are that CO2-sequestration coal will be more expensive than new nuclear.
Currently all renewables are at least as expensive as nuclear, if subsidies are not considered. Unsubsidized wind is ~5 cents, similar to nuclear, and other renewables are at least that expensive or more. On top of that, renewables output is intermittant, which will limit their overall contribution (to 10-20%, probably). Basically, at best renewables deliver intermittant power at about the same cost as nuclear delivers steady, reliable power.
In terms of subsidies, nuclear is by far the LEAST subsidized energy source today. The idea of heavy nuclear subsidies is a myth. While nuclear did recieve large subsidies in the distant past, nuclear has received virtually nothing for the last 20-30 years (the last 10 years, at the absolute least). Subsidies that have long-since disappeared are not relevant to discussions of future energy options. Even Price Anderson, which SOME consider a subsidy (even though the industry must pay $1 billion in annual premiums to the govt. for the coverage, and has never gotten anything in return) only amounts to a "subsidy" of ~0.03-0.3 cents/kW-hr, even by anti-nuclear organization's calculations.
By contrast, fossil fuels recieve very large subsidies for almost every phase of their operation. In addition to the Energy Bill, even the just-passed corporate tax bill makes several mentions of taxbreaks for oil and gas companies. Fossil fuels get all sort of relief in terms of low royalties, tax breaks and writeoffs, loan guarantees, and direct production subsidies, on top of large amount of govt. R&D. The Energy Bill also includes loan guarantees for a gas pipeline from Alaska, and for new clean coal plants, as well as a huge amount of govt. funding for "clean coal development". Kerry wants to give even more ($10 billion over the next 10 years) to coal, basically to pay them to build clean (as opposed to dirty) coal plants. Why not just require it (go figure)? Similar loan guarantees for the first few new nuclear plants were rejected in the Senate as "too expensive" (all of the sudden) and were removed from the bill. Note how, yes, gas plants have low capital costs, but other parts of the overall gas operation (i.e., pipelines, LNG terminals, etc...) are indeed very capital intensive, like nuclear plants are. Notice, however, in THEIR case, the govt. is always there to help out with their capital-intensive infrastructure.
And renewables, of course, have by far the greatest subsidies of all, on a per-Kw-hr basis. In addition to the 1.8 cents/kW-hr direct production credit, many states pay for 50% of the cost of solar PV (which works out to over 10 cents/kW-hr, since solar PV is over 20 cents). For wind, there are large costs associated with necessary grid upgrades that are expected to be largely picked up by the govt. or utilities, which are in addition to the tax credit. If one counts the costs of fossil stations having to be on ready standby, the costs are even higher. When all these costs are considered, it is doubtful that winds overall costs are lower than the costs of advanced nuclear (i.e., ~5 cents/kW-hr).
In terms of govt. R&D spending, nuclear once again recieves the least help. The fossil and conservation dept. of DOE gets $500-600 million per year of funding (I think). Renewables also recieve several hundred million (300 or 400, I think). Nuclear only recieves ~$100 million in funding for research that is at all involved with (or beneficial to) new commercial nuclear power. One word to the wise. Most of the money that is budgeted under what is euphemistically titled "Nuclear Energy R&D" (almost a billion dollars) actually goes to cleanup activities at our nuclear WEAPONS sites. Look at the budget in detail. See for yourself. Why they named/structured things this way is beyond me. The only programs that are in any way involved with, or are any benefit to, commerical nuclear power are the Nuclear 2010 initiative, the advanced (Gen IV) research, and the Advanced Fuel Cycle Initiative. I may have missed some minor programs, but the overall budget for all ACTUAL nuclear energy R&D is ~100 million dollars, far l
James Hopf 10.13.04
continued......:
far less than any other energy source. In any event, even if one took all the annual govt. R&D expensitures and divided it by the ~750 billion kW-hrs of annual nuclear generation, the resulting "subsidy" would be less than 0.2 cents/kW-hr, not enough to significantly affect overall nuclear competativeness.
Roger Arnold 10.15.04
Len suggests building nuclear plants in deep hardrock excavations. That's an interesting idea. Would it really cheaper than a containment building, however?
It's a little hard to imagine that pouring a large dome of steel and concrete is more expensive than carving and sealing a comparably sized dome in deep bedrock. It's true, however, that hardrock excavation has become efficient and far more economical than it was in the past. I found some reports from the Colorado School of Mines that measured the efficiency of mini disc cutters of the design now used on small tunnel boring machines. The figure was about 12 kWh per cubic meter, which translates to about a dollar per cubic meter for energy costs.
The report was from 1996 or 1997, I believe. Since then, stronger and harder alloys for cutters have been developed. That probably doesn't change the energy cost of tunneling by much, but makes the equipment more durable.
AS Karanth 10.16.04
It is an interesting article, posing some issues for the improvement and also to trying shut all the opposition. Thanks I really liked the mentioning the different challenges like predicting the future winds, at close intervals ahead of present, so that the power dispatching issues are addressed when the percentage of the wind energy content increases amongst all the energy sources into the system. Other subjects like technology adaptation for maximum power generation at least costs for the different wind regimes, turbine cost – optimization, last but not the least – awareness and spreading the right image about the Non conventional energy and wind power’s role in the present scene is also important. AS Karanth Poona, India
James Hopf 10.16.04
As opposed to expounding philosophically on several more points, in this last post I will try to make corrections and clarifications to several points in the article as briefly as I can.
Concerning net CO2 emissions, as shown in analyses presented at the IAEA website, at:
the overall net emissions from nuclear's entire fuel cycle are similar to those of wind, actually significantly lower than those of solar, and only ~1% or so those of coal. One of the biggest energy/CO2 users in the nuclear fuel cycle is enrichment, and with new, soon-to-be-deployed technology, power usage for enrichment is about to drop by over a factor of 10, thus removing most of nuclear's net CO2 emissions.
But even this is moot, and comparisons of net CO2 emissions between nuclear and renewables are not the point, and serve to obscure the issue. The fact that they are all only a percent or so of fossil fuels (coal) IS. Here's all you really need to remember: The emissions for gas are about half those of coal, and emissions for all non-fossil sources (nuclear, and all renewables) are negligible, period.
Concerning the "no fail-safe" statement, I agree with Rod. The only real issue is overall risk, per kW-hr generated, for various energy options, as compared to others. Some sources, inflict risk under normal operation (e.g., coal), some inflict risk with a steady stream of smaller accidents (e.g., gas fires, explosions, and pipeline ruptures), and some (such as nuclear) have a risk of large-scale but low probablity events. Once again, it all boils down to overall risk, and ALL scientific studies, such as the analyses done for the European Commission's ExternE project, show that nuclear's overall risks are much smaller than those of fossil fuels, and even smaller than some renewables. Only wind is lower. Nuclear isn't even capable of accidents that cause as many deaths as fossil fuels do EVERY YEAR. As Rod points out, even the gas mine explosion in China is on the same scale as Chernobyl in terms of deaths, and these gas events occur far more frequently. The main issue is the difference in how these events are covered, and how they are reacted to, as opposed to differences in actual risk or consequences. Yes, it's mostly perception. In fairness, the Mr Duffin acknowledges the low risks from modern reactors elsewhere in the article.
Concerning nuclear energy production, nuclear does NOT contribute only 3% to our energy consumption. As shown on the EIA site, it contributed 8% of all energy consumed in the US, and 11% of all energy produced (the difference being due to imported energy, i.e., oil). IMO, getting rid of nuclear would indeed have a large impact on our economy. Can you imagine the price of gas if we tried to use gas to make up the difference? Even coal costs would go way up if coal were used, not to mention the unmentionable environmental costs. Foreign energy dependence would also go WAY up.
Concerning uranium supplies, as I've argued before (see the comments to the EnergyPulse "Renewable Fraud" article), we will not run out of U-235 for centuries, even if we stick with the once through (non-breeding) cycle, and even if we double or triple our nuclear capacity. If we go to breeders (i.e., use the U-238), the fuel supply is essentially infinite. Because the cost of uranium ore is only ~0.1 cents/kW-hr (a few percent of the power price) nuclear can afford MUCH higher ore costs before its competativeness is significantly affected. Since we've barely even started looking for uranium, and because a much higher ore price will allow the vastly large quantities of uranium locked up in lower grade ores to be used, it will be a very long time before even our U-235 supply runs out. In short, this is not an issue or limitation for nuclear.
The very low ore cost (as a fraction of power cost) also relates to the foreign energy dependence question. Mr. Duffin mentions that friendly countries produce most of the uranium, and that is a good thing, but the tiny ore cost is an even more important factor. Due to this tiny cost, nuclear power is virtually immune to price spikes or variations in ore cost. If ore costs go up a factor of 10, nuclear power costs go up ~ 1 cent/kW-hr, a lot less than gas-fired power costs have gone up recently. Can you imagine the effect of $500/barrel oil or $60/MBTU gas? At ore prices MUCH smaller than this, huge numbers of marginal suppliers/veins become economic, including a huge amount of US reserves. Also, due to the tiny volume of nuclear fuel, relative to that of other sources, it is very easy and cheap to stockpile years worth of supply. It even takes several years for a given batch of fuel to work its way through the fuel cycle (and for an ore disruption to be even noticed). The fact that the ore is such a tiny fraction of the power price also means that uranium imports do not add much
James Hopf 10.16.04
continued.....:
.....do not add much at all to trade deficit, as they have a very low value (or cost).
Almost none of the "value" in nuclear electricity comes from the raw ore (i.e., the natural resource). About 98% of the value comes from good old domestic labor. Even most of the fuel processing operations are done here at home. Nuclear power is for the most part energy that is produced from labor. For all intents and purposes it can be considered a fully domestic source of energy. None of the issues associated with foreign energy dependence (like those that exist for oil) really apply for nuclear power. There is no real vulnerability.
On Yucca Mountain, the repository will not fill up in 2020. They will be shipping fuel until almost 2040, under the current plan. Mr. Duffin may mean that enough fuel to fill the repository will be generated by 2020. The basic scoop is that Yucca Mtn.’s legislated capacity is enough to handle all the fuel from our current reactor fleet, assuming they all close after their original license term of 40 years. This was completely arbitrary, and not based on any engineering considerations. Yucca can actually physically hold all of the fuel from the current fleet, even with life extension to 60 years. If we build new reactors, we will not have to bury (or reprocess) any of that fuel until ~2050 or later, plenty of time to site a 2nd repository, or to develop effective and economic reprocessing options (under the AFCI program).
James Hopf 10.16.04
And finally, proliferation. Simply put, buried spent fuel does not represent a proliferation risk. Indeed, proliferation experts often refer to the "spent fuel standard". Its meaning, and application, is that when nuclear materials are converted into a form that is no more weapons-useable than spent fuel, the proliferation threat is considered eliminated. For example, when we burn weapons grade Pu or U in reactors, converting them into spent fuel, the material is considered eliminated, with respect to proliferation.
The reason for this is clear, it is much more technically difficult to obtain spent fuel, and then process it to separate out the plutonium, than it is to simply dig up and enrich raw uranium ore from your home country. Indeed, most experts believe that, especially for the high-burnup fuel that will come out of new reactors, the plutonium isotope distribution renders the plutonium non-useful anyway. Plutonium in spent HTGR fuel will be even less useful, since HTGRs achieve very high burnup. Obtaining spent fuel from a single repository, sealed and buried one mile beneath the Nevada desert, getting it out w/o detection, and THEN processing out the plutonium and using it for a bomb (which may not even work) is an even more preposterous scenario; one which is CLEARLY vastly harder than just enriching uranium ore.
Also silly is the notion that, over hundreds or thousands of years, humanity will not have moved past the current nuclear proliferation situation, one way or another. Our current situation, with some nations having nuclear weapons, and many other slightly-less-advanced nations/groups not quite having them yet, mainly by trying to not let them get their hands on the nuclear materials, is clearly a (contrived, unnatural) situation that isn't gonna last that long. Who can imagine the technologies, and weapons we will have 1000 years from now? Is it clear that nuclear weapons (as presently understood) will still be THE big thing even then, with access to these materials STILL being the main constraint? Can you think of any 1000-year-old weapons that would be a BIG problem if Osama bin-Laden were to get his hands on them today? Trebuchets perhaps? Catapaults? The long bow? Of course not. This is clearly not a problem today, and I'm inclined to believe that (thoroughly buried) plutonium will not be a significant problem/threat 1000 years from now either.
Both Kerry and Bush recently discussed the nuclear proliferation problem. Their dialog followed the thoughts and recommendations of all the non-proliferation experts out there today. The issues identified were Russia's lack of security of their weapons stockpiles, the Pakistan situation, research reactors that use highly enriched fuel, and lack of ability (and backbone) to enforce the non-proliferation treaty in countries like N. Korea and Iran. Nuclear energy programs in developed countries (which already have a nuclear power program), and the spent fuel that arises from those nuclear plants, are NEVER mentioned as a source of proliferation risk. That is because the spent fuel is not a significant risk, especially if reprocessing (which involves plutonium separation) is not performed. If we shut down every commercial nuclear power plant down tomorrow, the risk (or rate) of nuclear proliferation wouldn't even be affected at all, and all experts know this. All the risk comes from the existence of weapons-grade material, and their lack of security, their trafficking, etc... Low-enriched fuel and spent fuel are not a real problem.
Who knows, these potential issues may even be a reason to avoid having nuclear power be used in every small and/or undeveloped country in the world. I am actually receptive to this. However, one must note that if we restrict nuclear power to the larger economies (and/or countries that already have it) then it is even more imperative that the developed nations use more nuclear, in order to save fuels like gas for the less developed nations that are not able to "responsibly" use nuclear.
This leads me to my final point. One thing that IS clear, is that using a larger or smaller amount of nuclear power in a developed country clearly has NO impact on proliferation. Indeed, even if one were worried about repositories being "plutonium mines", it should be clear that if someone wanted to dig up some plutonium for a weapon, it won't matter if there is ~70,000 MTU of spent fuel in there or ~120,000 MTU of spent fuel. They only need a small amount of it. And the fact is that we already have a large amount of spent fuel. Using more nuclear, and thus creating a little more, will not measurably impact this issue in any event. Given this, I say we use more nuclear, to help solve REAL environmental and public health issues like air pollution deaths, global warming, and depleting oil and gas supplies.
Len Gould 10.16.04
Rodney: re "Would it really cheaper than a containment building, however? ", perhaps, or perhaps not. I can't say because I've not been able to find figures on costs of current containment technology. What I can say is that using modern robotic mining technology such as INCO at Sudbury uses in their nickel mines makes the cost of the excavation insignificant to the overall cost of the installation. And, since huge high-power, redundant, generator-backed feedwater pumps are no longer required (gravity now does that work), both the capital and operating costs would be lower than a conventional installation.
Finally, and most important, it is probably the easiest if not only method of calming current public fears regarding the technology.
Economics gets really interesting when several reactors share the same access shaft systems.
Len Gould 10.16.04
Roger: Sorry, got the wrong name. In my detailed estimations i've budgeted the excavation costs/ reactor at $20.83 / cu meter for 134,000 cu m + 10,000 rockbolts + 4000 cu m grout + 1200 cu m concrete (turbine base etc). Just under $7million / reactor . Then an added $4 million common access shaft and fuel storage excavation costs shared among a group of 4 reactors brings total cost / reactor to $8 million.
Even if doubled, it's not significant to the $3,415 million total capital cost of eg. 4 x 730 mW CANDU 6 reactors.
Murray Duffin 10.17.04
E. Reid, - Why 12 million large wind turbines? See my paper on wind. One million is more like it and seems pretty doable. Len, - I hadn't thought about the underground idea, but I like it. Seems to make a lot of sense. M. McCarthy, - first I have heard of CEASER. Thanks. I will review it. R. Adams, - have I been damned with faint praise? I find most of your objections immaterial or misleading. Right on the German PBR dating. I typed an 8 instead of a 6 (typing is not my strong suit), but what difference does it make? It does raise the issue of why there was a failure after 20 years of successful operation. Or were there other failures that were covered up, and then they finally got one they couldn't cover up, leading to a shut down? An old management rule is not to add decimal places unless they will change the decision. For my purposes there should be no difference between 2 cents and 1.73 cents, so why raise the issue. But again you may have touched an important point. Could we be pushing for too much up time and short changing maintenance? See Salem and Hope Creek. Let's get the O&M back to 2 cents! Subsidies for gas turbines haven't been 1% of what the government has spent on nuclear research since about 1940, and commercial jet engines woiuld have been developed without any subsidies. Your analogy is invalid, and typical of the unbalanced advocacy I started my article with. Also on the issue of fail safe - it should be clear that I am talking about impact on the community or society. A boiler failure in a coal fired steam plant cannot be compared to radioactive release from a nuclear plant. Why is Delaware providing anti-radiation pills to the Hope Creek neighborhood? (I know. They are overreacting.) Conventional utilities have minor failures all the time, that are repaired with routine maintenance and without incident. Nukes cannot be allowed to function that way because such routine failure would not be similarly fail safe. Your caveat is just dumb. J. Ellis, - I agree on all points. Most anti-anythings base part of their objections on the (often unstated) assumption that the solution being discussed is the only answer. Nuclear, as you have noted, is only one piece of the answer, albeit a very important piece. J. Hopf, - WOW! Why not right your own article? Yes I am conflicted on the subject of nuclear energy, and yes I am presenting different points of view. Read the intro again, and read my other submissions. Clearly you are one of those people who is so focused on his own advocacy, and on faulting others that he can't read clearly the material he is faulting. I won't begin to respond beyond a couple of points, but I do wish you would not make assertions that are not evident and that you do not back up. Also try to get your thoughts in order and write concisely rather than rambling all over the place. Your material is very hard to follow, let alone digest and evaluate. Did you achieve catharsis? Please provide data that nukes are less polluting on a total system basis than wind or solar. Who but you raised an issue of "hundreds of thousands of years"? I worry about decades. Nuclear provides about 20% of our electricity which is about 12 quads out of 100 quads. ie nukes provide about 2.5 quads. The EIA considers nuke primary energy as 3x the output, or about 8 quads, which is where you get your 8%. Take out the nukes and you take away 8 quads from nearly 100 and 2.5 quads useful from about 90 toatl still consumed or my 3%. To put it another way, 3 quads of renewable energy would replace all of our nuke energy and would be about 3% of total energy. Why get your nickers in a twist over such a point? Yes we would fill Yucca by 2020 if we store all of the waste (not fuel) that we already have plus what we will generate in the next 10 to 15 years. The fact that we may not get it all into storage only makes the issue worse.
Len Gould 10.17.04
Can't resist one further "out-of-box" point re my underground concept. It is fair to assume these installations would be built a long distance away from the points of load (eg. at the uranium mines of northern Saskatchewan, or in the whiteshell part of the cdn shield where canada is building it's permanent waste storage), and therefore it is logical to design them from the outset for DC power transmission. Given DC transmission, there is no longer any need to restrict the turbine generators to 60 hz power. Building the generators for eg. 400 hz power as now used in aircradt means the generators can be a lot smaller. The higher shaft speeds then possible (eg. 24,000 rpm) also mean that a given turbine blade cross section can process a lot more steam than at 3,600 rpm therefore the turbines will be a lot smaller (and, after initial development, a lot cheaper). Not worrying about power factor and reactive VARS etc. anymore means the generator can use an inductive rotor (much stronger and cheaper) or perhaps even a PM mixed rotor system for useful efficienct gains. 400 hz instead of 60 hz means the station transformers used to bring the voltage up to transmission level need only 1/5th the amount of iron, which means one can afford to use a lot more efficient e-steels like honeywell's glasteel, a useful efficiency gain.
Putting in a group of small 400 hz turbine-generators which can be fed from different underground reactors according to maintenance schedules and load requirements gives the operators a lot more flexibility in operation while still remaining safe. Designing the 400hz turbines to exhaust steam at eg 50 psi or less into a redundant group of small 60 hz station power turbine generators would let the fast turbines avoid erosion from condensation and could be organized for complete safety of power and likely even blackstart capability. Providing sufficient condenser capacity to sink the entire power of the reactors if necessary would give the operators a lot more flexibility for safety during eg. load rejection events etc.
It's different, but there's no reason it can't be done and would be a lot more economical.
Rodney Adams 10.19.04
Len: Interesting technical comments regarding your out of the box concept. How about taking it even further out of the box and make the system a direct cycle gas turbine heated by a high temperature reactor with graphite structures and moderation?
Gets rid of water and its attendent chemistry problems altogether. Makes it possible to adapt conventional turbocharger type gas turbines - similar to Capstone's machines - so that there is essentially a single moving part. No condensate to worry about.
I do like the idea of many small machines doing the work of large machines. If each machine is simple, the overall complexity is greatly reduced with the added benefit of load following, redundancy, small incremental capacity increases, etc.
Rod Adams
www.atomicengines.com
Len Gould 10.20.04
Rodney: Problem is it then looses the safety / efficiency advantage of using gravity to pressurize the feedwater, though possibly by moving the turbines underground also you might enable use of a free boiling-water-cooled final sink for the helium circuit with steam rising to the surface to reject heat to the atmosphere. Otherwise, I don't see how to economically reject the necessary waste heat.
Agreed though, the efficiency advantages of the Brayton cycle over the Rankine cycle (not having to throw away the heat-of-vaporization all the time) might make it worthwhile.
Len Gould 10.21.04
Interesting article at http://www.e4engineering.com/story.aspx?nid=rg4sn&id=218649 Discusses a multi-lab project in the US to develop "small portable nuclear power reactors". 10 to 100 MWe , 100 Ton units designed to be moved in a standard shipping container. Lead-bismuth cooled, or perhaps sodium cooled. Non-refuelable. Rankne cycle, I presume separate turbines?
Seems like a bit of a silly project. Apparent argument is it enables installing of nuclear power in risky countries without possibility of proliferation of weapons-grade materials. What's to stop a rogue country from simply refusing to return the entire reactor for decomissioning? Bogus argument.
And why, with many existing military naval reactors already fitting this specification, is it necessary to pay a project to develop something completely different? Seems dumb, and a waste of money.
This is one R&D project for nuclear about which I'd have no argument if the greens killed the financing. The nuclear power industry should do it themselves to indicate their responsibility.
Roger Arnold 10.22.04
Len, the project you're referring to makes very good sense to me. You've missed the key feature: they are sealed units that will run for 20 years or more without refuelling. That means that they must have a very high fuel burn-up, and can probably consume nuclear wastes. I think that qualifies as pretty significant!
Rodney Adams 10.23.04
Len: There are no existing military reactors that meet the specifications that you mention. Rod
Len Gould 10.24.04
Roger: I'd have thought, if reduced waste was a significant benefit, it might have been mentioned by the PR flaks? Either it is not a fact or the PR is terrible.
Rodney: Actually the latest generation of military naval reactors sound a lot like this one. The manufacturers are claiming one of the most significant benefits is "no re-fueling for the life of the vessel, which significantly reduces potential for exposure of shipyard workers".
eg. "Fuel life spans depend on how much the ship is operated, and how accurately one can predict reactor performance. Current cores for the NIMITZ Class aircraft carrier, LOS ANGELES Class SSN, and OHIO Class SSBN last on average about 20 years. Efforts to extend the lives of operating reactor plants are resulting in longer ship lifetimes; NIMITZ-Class carriers are now expected to last 50 years, and OHIO-Class submarines 40 years, versus their original design lifetimes of 30 years. " at http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/ship/eng/s8g.htm
The kWt ratings are within the band, the fuel life is at just as long, and they are portable enough to at least be placed in ships. How many of the requirements does that serve?
Rodney Adams 10.24.04
Len:
According to the Navy fact file - http://www.chinfo.navy.mil/navpalib/factfile/ships/ship-ssn.html - the Virgina class SSN displaces approximately 7800 tons.
I would guess that its power plant is considerably larger than the 100 tons that you mention in your description of the small, portable reactor.
The same reference states that the crew size of Virginia is 134 people. I would also guess that more than a few of those are assigned responsibilities related to operating and maintaining the power plant.
Does that answer the question?
Rod Adams
Len Gould 10.25.04
Rodney: Ok, I give, on the grounds that military reacors are not intrinsically safe and require significant highly trained operating staffs. However, with China already demonstrating a pebble-bed reactor which has approximately the same size / ratings specifications and is completely "walk-away safe" according to the project leader, what are the odds there will ever be any market for the outcome of this project? Risky?
Rodney Adams 10.26.04
Len:
I would bet that there is close to a zero percent chance that the project that we have been discussing with ever have any market potential. It is definitely aimed at providing a specific set of government employees with continued employment. ANL has been advocating and occasionally building new versions of liquid metal cooled reactors for almost half a decade.
I think that you interpreted my comments as support for the project when all I was trying to do was to share some information that contradicted a statement that you made about there already being military plants like the one described. (Thanks for the compliment about being highly trained.)
I like the gas cooled pebble bed concept that the Chinese have copied from the Germans - and that the South Africans are also busily copying. That is not a dig against the Chinese or the South Africans, merely a comment that the high temperature pebble bed reactor is not a new idea; the first one began operating in the early 1960s.
Hook that simple heat source to a simple cycle gas turbine, and you have a power plant that can take markets away from diesel engines. My company is certainly not adverse to appropriating good ideas from others
Rod Adams
www.atomicengines.com
Rodney Adams 10.27.04
Oops, I goofed in the last comment. ANL has been advocating and occasionally buliding new versions of liquid metal cooled reactors for half a century (50 years) not half a decade (5 years). I hate it when I make a power of ten error during a discussion.
Rod Adams
www.atomicinsights.com
Roger Arnold 10.27.04
The project described in the article at the URL Len referenced above is a U.S. counterpart to a similar project in Japan. The Japanese team are looking at a liquid sodium cooled reactor, whereas the U.S. team is focusing on lead-bismuth. But their target specs are essentially the same. Toshiba is apparently the prime contractor for the Japanese work. They've had discussions with state officials and locals to install a demonstration unit to supply power to the village of Galena, Alaska. The village currently relies on diesel-electric generators, which are expensive to run. (The fuel is presumably flown in from Ankorage.)
An article on the Japanese effort can be found at: http://www.imdiversity.com/villages/native/business_finance/pns_native_alaska_nukes.asp
AFAIK, there's no relation between the proposed reactor type and any U.S. military reactor. It's possible that the Soviets, however, have military reactors of this sort. U.S. military reactors are--or used to be--pressurized light water reactors. They were the prototypes from which U.S. commercial power reactors were developed. What distinguishes them, and allows them to be very compact, is that they burn highly enriched fuel. But they're slow spectrum reactors, and could not burn nuclear wastes. Fast spectrum reactors can. And both the Japanese and U.S. versions of the transportable reactor would be fast reactors. They would have to achieve a very high fuel burn-up. That's the only way they could operate for 30 years without refueling. That means they breed fissile material from fertile U238 or Thorium, and burn it in place.
Malcolm Rawlingson 3.4.05
Murray, I read again your article on nuclear energy. A balanced approach to a subject often misrepresented on both sides.
There are some concepts not well discussed by your article that to me are key questions that all energy intensive societies must answer.
1. Limitless fuel supply: You question (rightly so) the assertion that nuclear fuel is in limitless supply. It is not limitless and no one in all my 35 years or so in the nuclear business has ever stated that. The media have often portrayed that notion but no person with even a half ounce of engineering savvy would state that and expect to be believed. Even solar power is not limitless in engineering terms because we know at some point in time the fusion reaction powering our sun will stop. But who cares over that span of time? I sure don't. And that is the real argument. Nuclear fuel supplies will last for several hundreds of years even if we only use U235 and do not reprocess the (so-called) waste fuel. But U235 is not the whole picture. Thorium is more plentiful than Uranium. Fuel cycles using thorium are already developed and can extend nuclear fuel availability to many centuries. After the first couple of hundred years I could really care less whether the fuel is limitless or not. As far as the average person on the planet is concerned we have enough raw materials available either directly from the earth's crust or from reprocessed "waste" or from weapons plutonium to keep a very large number of nuclear rectors operating for a very long time. Are they limitless - no way. Are they going to outlast me and the next couple of generations - absolutely they will. The technology of fast breeder reactors has been proven in the UK with the reactor at Dounreay operating on its own "waste" for years. If you add the breeding of Plutonium from a breeder blanket of U238 then the fuel supply will then last for thousands of years with technology we have already proven and developed. I do not know of any other energy source that displays that potential with the exception of renewables and I'll get to them later.
2. Nuclear safety:China kills 5000 coal miners EVERY YEAR. Another 200 died in an underground mine explosion in February 2005. The public and media does not flinch. Thousands more miners die every year throughout the world including the USA from black lung and other mining related diseases. Methane gas explosions occur with predictable regularity routinely killing workers and members of the public. The public and media accept it...makes the headlines for maybe (if you're lucky) a day. How many oil rig disasters have we had - dozens - how many killed - thousands. The public and the media accept it. And here is the point: nuclear energy is orders of magnitude safer than EVERY other method of producing energy and yet it is PERCEIVED to be the most dangerous. It is high time the truth was properly presented to the public. Even your article presents radiation as this great deadly evil. It is not. By that logic the most dangerous material on earth is water. It kills people by drowning every day - but we understand water so it must be OK. 3. The radiation bogeyman: Large coal plants emit more radioactiveity into the atmosphere that a nuclear plant is permitted to do. If coal plants were regulated by the same authorities that regulate nuclear power (USNRC - USA, CNSC-Canada, NII - UK) coal plants would not be permitted to operate. If coal plants were required to meet the same radiological emissions standards that a nuclear plant is required to the capital cost would put coal fired electricity in the DOLLARS per KW-hour range. That nonsense imposes huge additional costs on nuclear power plant construction than is necessary for the risk that is it represents. The nuclear industry reduces radiation exposure to the lowest level that is reasonably achievable (ALARA - as low as reasonably achievable - as it is called). However essentially that means as close to zero as you can get it without bankruptcy. The point is that if the same extraordinarily high standards of safety were placed on the coal, oil and gas industries to prevent loss of life from their operations the cost of those products would be far far higher than they are now. There has not been one single fatality from radiation exposure in a commercially operated nuclear plant in North America a safety redcord unmatched by any other industry. Over the same time period the number of mining, oil and gas related fatalities is in the tens of thousands of people. The fact that nuclear plants can deliver electricity at low prices AND meet these incredibly high standards of operational excellence is a first class reason for building hundreds more. We will save thousands of miners lives in the process. I would much rather work in a nuclear plant than a coal mine or coal fired electricity plant. The safest place to be. 4. The renewables: The point that is often lacking in all this discussion of renewables is
