nuclear plants
 

To not pollute other threads, here is my reply to these threads where nuclear plants invited themselves. I will not talk any more about that subject later.

In your HS Gym, how many times can you put the wastes that were released by the Chernobyl's reactor ?

For Hiroshima and Nagasaki there were less than 100kg of Uranium in each bomb (I know they are "not the same Uranium", but they are the same consequences !!!). If you look at people who survived the first days, 30% have irradiation sequels.

In France and Germany, around 50kms (30 miles) of each nuclear plant the rate of leukemias is 5 times more important than anywhere else in these countries. This is thousand of children.

Each military bomb encloses a "little" quantity of material in big bombs that are inspected very very very frequently. Civil programs will never have such a paranoia level.

Denis.

If you want to look at nuclear safety I think you should compare a range of diseases/deaths per kWh produced to other energy production methods. If nuclear power is dangerous because of nuclear weapons I'd hate to see the track record of combustion with all them there guns hanging around... ;)

Or consider the fact that, per megawatt generated, there's more radioactive material released into the environment from burning coal than from nuclear plants. Try looking at increased death rates around coal-fired power plants & coal mines.

The plain fact is that nothing in this world is absolutely safe, but by any rational measure, nuclear power is at least an order of magnitude safer than coal - before you start to even consider the effects of global warming.

My nuclear reservations do not stem from comparisons to coal per se, but from what it would take away from truly renewable efforts. Nuclear is a band-aid, and the guarding our used up nuclear poop becomes part of our legacy that we just pass off to the next generations as their problem.

Oops. I seem to have woken the nuclear monster a few days ago.

Let me qualify what I was saying. My original point was that nuclear power is a good option for the now time, but that more research, along with applicable processes must be made for clearing of nuclear waist.

The purpose of this is to disconnect, from the public, the erroneous conclusion that nuclear power = nuclear weapons = nuclear war.

This would pave the way, god willing, for the real golden egg. Nuclear Fusion!!

Take away from what?
I am definately for more wind power but what do you do when the wind is not blowing? If you have not noticed the sun doesnt shine at night either and isnt worth crap during the winter either. The grid needs a reliable base load supply and nuclear seems like it will be the best choice in a carbon depleted and climate change future.

We used to have a nuclear plant right here on my way to work (Big Rock).

Big Rock Point Nuclear Power Plant - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

In recent years they decommisioned it. In high school my physics class took a trip there. Its amazing the amount of safety checks and precautions need to be performed to do just about anything. It was safe to the absolute extreme. When done properly, I do believe nuclear power is a great way to go. Sure there is nuclear waste to store, but its certainly a lot less than if one were to bottle up all the carcinogens from all the conventional power plants.

Nuclear has a bad rep it doesn't deserve, you talk about radiation but coal plants put more radioactive material into the environment than a nuclear plant does.

The future of nuclear power is very interesting and much cleaner and safer than you can imagine, the new 3rd and 4th generation reactors are impossible to melt down, designed with the laws of physics in mind so they can't, google Pebble Bed Reactor. They'd probably be in service already if it wasn't for envirotards screaming chernobyl and 3 mile island every time nuclear power is mentioned and pushing back progress in the area for decades.

I'm not against solar, wind and other alternatives, but they are alternatives when it comes to large scale power generation, wind and solar aren't efficient or reliable enough yet to replace huge coal/nuclear plants. Though research in these areas and battery tech will reap rewards to make it viable. No country would put it eggs in one alternative basket, you need controllable and reliable energy generation like nuclear when the wind/solar isn't putting out enough to meet demand. I don't include hydroelectric as alternative as that is reliable and can store energy by pumping water back up the dam in non-peak hours.

Hopefully in the next 100 years nuclear fusion or something like it will be available and solve these problems once and for all, though mining for helium-3 on the moon would be interesting to see.

The problem with renwable energy generally is not generation....but storage. There is no huge battery that we can put any excess power into for when the sun is not shining/wind not blowing/river not having enough drop etc. If those batteies existed then electric cars would be feasable transportation now.

We use electricity on an as-needed basis. The electricity made (from whatever source) goes into a power grid....when there is not enough, another generator is powered up until they are all on. At that time, if more power is demanded, brownouts happen.

If we had a way to store the energy produced during off peak hours, we would likely not be discussing this now....but we don't at this time.

So, we need do look at the on demand systems. Modern coal plants have about the same number of regulations as a nuclear plant, I would venture that A gas fired one does as well. At least the attempt is being made to be responsible with the byproducts of all of these. One way or another, we are going to have to produce more power someplace or use less someplace as the population increases and more conveniences are desired by that population until someone comes up with a better solution. Nuclear works, lets use it for now and keep looking for the way to build the better mousetrap.

Jim

Build a flywheel, pump water back up to the resivoir, compress the air in a salt mine, be creative if storage is the problem, or whatever the problem.

Dont settle for a half-a$$ed solution that will only buy us 50 years but leave a hazard measured in thousands!!!

Or maybe not. One of the inconvenient facts about hydrolectric power is that in practice it has proved to be far more dangerous than fossil fuels, which in turn are much more dangerous than nuclear. (That's just considering actual accidents, and leaving out environmental effects such as CO2.) A dam failure can kill tens of thousands of people, as here: Banqiao Dam - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

a hs gym sized chunk of waste would fit quite nicely 5km under ground in a shutdown diamond mine in the arctic circle 500km from the nearest human... just sayin.

I watched a doc on Chernobyl. There was home video of the control panel operators pouring vodka shots ON THE CONTROL PANEL and getting wasted when they should be watching... its pretty easy to run things better than that.

North Americans WILL NOT reduce their consumption. It will ONLY increase. Don't kid yourself. The only way for it to be reduced is for there to simply not be any more power to make waste affordable.

Attitudes like that seek to fufill themselves. Try this mantra, "Americans are proud and responsible and know they can do so much better".

I personally have shifted to a more conservitive outlook since becoming fiscally self-sustaining. Many people agree. But the population is rising and the people like their electronic gadgets and muslce cars. I'm sure everyone HERE can shift to conservitism, but I think the people here represent 0.0001% of north americans... if that.

BTW, i didn't mean as individuals, i meant as a whole.

I love the idea of nuclear power. Omaha has a nuke power plant on their grid and there have never been any issues.

As for chernobyl there were alot of design flaws in the reactor itself, Like using carbon instead of water to keep it cool for one. The commies had really no oversight over any part of the government because they were to busy trying to keep their people opressed.

There was a new power plant in Council bluffs IA that uses a power system made by hitachi that is suposed to yeild more power out put and release much lower emissions than the old style systems. Its such a promising system that suposedly warren buffet has taken interest.

I'll start by saying that I think we need better conservation efforts as well, but adding insulation and switching to CFL lights only do so much. It’s unfortunate that the greens out on the fringe spew out unreasonable propaganda on what can be done with conservation and renewable energy and at the same time get in the way of real solutions like nuclear energy. Renewables and conservation cannot solve our problems on their own as population growth and increases in the worlds standard of living more than consume any gains in efficiency we incur.

According to Wiki:
The World produced 17350 TWh of electricity in 2005 of which 16.71% was hydro and 2.13% was renewable.

Image:Electricity production in the World.PNG - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Have you looked into how many windmills it takes to replace one conventional power plant and how much space is required to site them? Just exactly how much conservation are you proposing?

I should have said reliable in energy production as water can be used to store energy by pumping it back to the top of the dam at off-peak hours, i forgot to cover the large environmental problem they can cause, like the building of the 3 gorges dam in china has displaced millions and killed much wildlife and destroyed ancient landscapes.

How much you got? :) Seriously I wouldn't be surprised to learn that we could live comfortably on 1/10 of our current energy consumption if need be. It would certainly make us reconsider what we would label a "need" now. Not a popular thought I'm sure though, but a few folks have pulled it off.

I'm curious, lots of comparisons are made to existing technologies without a lot of creative energy being put into the alternatives. What is it that folks want to accomplish by adding 50 years of nuclear power to the mix? Is it really to save millions of folks living near rivers and historic lands and prevent more coal pollution? Or is it to feed the ungoverned black hole that is consumption? If it is the former then I dare say that you are treating the symptom.

I'm not sure how much more I could really save. I've changed all my lights to flourescent (and probably should crank them up higher to prevent hibernation mode). I've restrained myself pretty well with AC (pretty much only a week or two in July) [don't ask about using a heat pump during the winter]. I've been moving more from the microwave to the stove (doesn't help efficiency, but usually involves cooking better). I think the biggest area left for improvement is my computer: I use a freebie 21" CRT from work, and am starting to think that plunking down the money for an LCD would have been cheaper already.

I had given this a bit of thought already due to a discussion on another site between Texans. One guy had just gotten power back after Ike (as in yesterday) and couldn't stand that his house was designed assuming that electricity and AC would always be there (he wasn't a native Texan...). One thing that came up was solar power. The Austinite claimed that solar panels would pay for themselves in 8 years (I wouldn't expect that here in semi-sunny Maryland). I got to thinking, how much could I build a house to use less power (I'm in an apartment, thus the heat-pump only winter).

Assuming Texas style heat (kind of goes with efficient solar), I'd want a ground-based heat pump. I'd like to know why they aren't popular in Florida (you should hit water in a few feet, pump it up and through the heat exchanger, then back into the muck). Maybe the ground isn't as useful a temperature as it is just south of the Mason-Dixon line. As long as I have a "cooling pipe", I'd also try to run it to the refrigerator (and probably an extra freezer, efficient freezers mean buying big sales). This should drop another huge bump in power usage. Skylights, efficient lighting, checking the ventilation/air flow before construction (CFD is typically computationally expensive because you are modeling turbulence: computing laminar flow should be cake - as long as I don't have to write too much of the code myself).

One elephant that recently deposited himself in the room is the Chevy Volt. Try checking residential power usage and then compare it to the kWs listed next to horsepower. Scary stuff, try to draw as much into your house as a Geo Metro can pump out and you'll blow all your breakers. Since the thing will be charging over many hours, this isn't quite as bad (and presumably when the AC is off/low), but this type of thing will take a lot of power, especially if you think you can somehow run the hydroelectric plant backwards an night.

Finally, as far as a stop-gap thing, I'd say that a well designed (presumably not by a committee hand-picked by Enron) nuclear power plant would be closer to a long term solution. There are some breeder systems that put out pretty small amounts of waste (anything really reactive gets consumed by the reactor) and what's left has a remarkably short half-life (I have visions of 22nd century miners swearing as they try to break into Yucca mountain to get that 5% used uranium).

That's just from an outside observer. Try asking someone who's been without power for a week or two.

We need to use renewable energy!

Nuclear power plants put out about 1/3 the carbon that a natural gas plant does:

mining the uranium
processing the uranium
building the power plant (concrete is very costly in terms of carbon!)
storing the spent fuel and other radioactive items
decommissioning the power plant

"I'm T. Boone Pickens, and this could be further from the truth. We need to line my pockets... I - mean reduce the largest transfer of wealth by building wind-power generators and allow an easement for my natural gas pipeline -- I, mean clean energy, blah - blah." :thumbup:

RH77

Says a study that's probably from the same think tank that "proved" that a Hummer has less environmental impact than a Prius :-) Which shows that the intellectually dishonest can "prove" anything they want by careful selection of facts, and the gullible will believe, because it's what they want to believe.

Try thinking about some of those claims. Seems to me that the amount of concrete needed to build a nuclear plant isn't all that different from what it takes to build a coal-fired plant of the same size (or for that matter to pour concrete footings for enough wind turbines to generate the same amount of power), and in either case is utterly trivial compared to lifetime generation & emissions. (Otherwise, it wouldn't be profitable to build the plant.) Likewise, t takes about the same effort to mine one ton of coal as it does to mine a ton of uranium ore, but you have to mine maybe 0.001 times as many tons for the same amount of power. Then there's the transport: the fuel to run a nuclear plant for a year can be hauled on a few semis, while your coal plant will have long trains pulling in every damn day...

Hiya,

Renewable energy is easily the best way to go. If solar, wind, wave, geothermal, biomass & biofuel all could split the funds that we've spent on nuclear -- we would not even need to be discussing it! We would be sitting pretty -- warm and well lit, in a secure economic situation, with a lot fewer wars, and the environment would be a lot healthier, too.

Renewable energy is everywhere, and no company or country can control it. It doesn't burn a fuel at all, carbon or otherwise. There are no smokestacks, much smaller (or no) tailpipes, and no radioactive wastes at all.

Why would we NOT use renewable energy? It's a no-brainer...

Someone suggested pumping water back up during the off peak hours....

It would actually take more power than would be made...this is very inefficient.

Not all dams are the "holding water type"....many are roller dams that allow most of the water to continue to flow down a river and only bring what is useable into a forebay that flows through the turbines and then on downstream. There is a lot less initial environmental impact in this sort of dam. (no flooding out thousands of homes)

The largest hurdle facing large scale power changes, whether they be nuclear, renweable or conventional is the NIMBY issue. people want them built, but always "somwhere else". I live in a state that produces a lot more power than it's population uses, and we have and are putting in more windmills, have several high power dams (flaming gorge, fontenelle) as well as conventional power plants. They are bringing in a lot of money to the state. Even then, we have people that do not want them built, but they still seem to want the power.....

People even complain about the noise of windmills (noise polution) and that they might injure or kill birds and bats.

Basically, something has got to give someplace....

Any one item is not the answer...it is going to have to be a combination of them all.

Jim

Typical piece of anti-nuclear propoganda, do you think you can snap your fingers and windmills and PV panels appear and errect themselves. Do your homework before spewing this crap. Here are 2 refs that show nuclear is better than wind and 3 that it is better than PV on a lifecycle basis.

Energy Balances and CO2: WNA
http://www.iaea.org/Publications/Mag...2/article4.pdf
On Global Warming: Is nuclear power carbon-free?

Also the manufacture of PV panels is an enviromentally ugly process as well.

You need to look into the reliability aspect of wind and solar as well as baseload vs peak generation.

Not so easily. Sometimes it makes sense, sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes the side effects (which the proponents like to sweep under the rug) are so serious that a particular application ought not to be considered. But of course the proponents won't see that: they're stuck with an "Omigawd it's nuclear, we're all gonna DIE!" meme which they can't get out of their heads long enough to consider the possiblity that that meme might be just another big lie.

All you really need to do is switch one little word: it shouldn't be a question of nuclear OR renewables, but nuclear AND renewables. We need all of them: nuclear and solar and wind and geothermal and whatever else we can come up with, so we can start shutting down some of the coal-fired plants while we still have a chance of keeping this planet liveable.

Hello,

I'm well aware of the issues surrounding renewable energy sources. Solar heat plants do not have the issues with silicon PV panels, and there are thin film panels that do not require silicon. The materials to make a wind turbine are all recyclable.

There can be heat storage with a solar heat plant -- molten salt in insulated underground tanks work very well. Also, with high voltage DC transmission, electricity can be efficiently moved (~10% loss coast to coast) and so solar and wind can be gathered over a wide geographic area (for diversity) and/or it can be gathered where it is very consistent to where it is needed:

southwest USA for solar -- Scientific American released a study recently saying that 70% of all our electricity could come from 10% of Nevada.

northern and central midwest USA and the coasts for wind -- 33% for the whole country of all out electricity could be generated in South Dakota alone.

coasts for wave and tidal -- the moon is always orbiting the earth, and wind is almost always blowing over some parts of the oceans

geothermal where it naturally occurs close to the surface or where ever a deep hole is drilled

biomass and biofuels can be done anywhere they are produced -- this can be methane, alcohol, biodiesel, biofuel cells, etc.

heat can be extracted from the ground, or from sewage pipes, or even from composting plant material. Heat and electricity can be gotten from compost and plant trimmings.

Fertilizers can all be organic.

There is so much energy available from all renewable sources, it is staggering. Please read Guy Dauncey's book "Stormy Weather" or watch his DVD "The Great Energy Revolution".

I am aware of heat plants, they are a great technology, they supply electricity during the summer peak load times of day. But they are only good in Desert regions with low latitudes around the equator, there are a garbage solution anywhere else.

Wave generation IMHO is currently a theoretical pipe dream technology. There is a multitude of offshore windfarms but diddly for tidal, I don’t know why but it just is that way.

Wind is good, but wind cant stand on its own, there is not a grid in the world with more than 20% wind supply (Germany and Denmark) and they have very real issues with reliability of supply and end up importing power from Nuclear Powered France (80%), plus their costs are significantly higher than those of France.

HVDC is very much real and a good technology. Doing what you propose is not without problems. First the infrastructure will be costly. Second when you generate your power away from where you use it you run the risk of interruption of supply. Do a search of the “Quebec Ice Storm”. When the power goes out for long periods of time, people can die after being overcome by nature.

Storage solutions are more garbage solutions. Cost rises dramatically, storage on the scale to supply millions of people is not realistic and efficiencies go into the toilet when converting energy.

I am not against using renewable energy, its a great supplement to Hydro and Thermal/Nuclear baseload but that is all it is and all it will ever be. Really these alternatives wont take off because they are very costly and ultimately when we flip the switch, if the power doesn’t come on it isn’t worth a dam.

"One guy had just gotten power back after Ike (as in yesterday) and couldn't stand that his house was designed assuming that electricity and AC would always be there (he wasn't a native Texan...)."

I think most Texans assume their homes have been designed and built to use electricity. This concept isn't unique to Galveston Island.

In Texas heating the home is not the primary concern. It's cooling. While a water well-heat pump system is very economical to operate. This system requires two water wells, one for pumping and one for injection. There is a required spacing between the two wells. You don't just drill two wells. Permits are required and drillers are licensed. Injection wells must meet state standards to protect the ground water. I live on a lot 50' x 150'. No way could I receive permission to drill one water well let alone two wells. Home owner associations rules, city ordinances, county and state laws must be met.

I wonder if the good folks in Maryland would consider no air conditioning in August.:)

And what does covering that large an area do to the environment? You don't know, and neither does anyone else.

And what do that many wind turbines do to the environment? You don't know, and neither does anyone else.

And what do those tidal energy systems do to the ocean life? You don't know, and neither does anyone else.

OK, I'll give you this one :-) It makes perfect sense, where you have appropriate geothermal resources (even if it means I can't go soak in the hot springs up the road 'cause they built a geothermal plant there). Problem is, unless you live in Iceland, there aren't enough geothermal areas.

Which is fine as long as you're using biomass that would have been waste anyway, but there's not enough of that to come anywhere close to meeting demand. Start growing crops for energy... well, look at the reaction to the little bit of US ethanol production :-) In this case, we DO know what the effects could be, and they're scary. Just consider how large parts of Africa have been deforested by the most basic biofuel use - wood for cooking fires.

Sure, and a lot of those things are worth doing. Add them all together, though, and you still don't get anywhere close to meeting demand without running the risk of serious environmental consequences.

So you want to DEPEND on this mixed bag of sources, with limited efficiency, using unproven technology, and having unknown environmental effects? And all because you're afraid to face a few anti-nuclear superstitions?

Again, what problem are you trying to solve with Nuclear power? And does it really solve anything or will it simply be assimilated?

I have every confidence that we could gobble up the supply of deuterium/tritium in short order with the present mentality, if we did figure out how to use it.

To whoever wrote that wave gen is a pipe dream, I believe last summer a full scale wave generation plant was opened for operation in... New Zealand? I may be wrong about where, but it is up and running. Waves have incredible power, generated by the moon's gravity... that's big stuff. Can't run the whole world on it, i'm sure, but it is a viable addition to a system.

edit, it was portugal and it was 2008. They have 3 units producing 2.25MW and will be installing 28 more units in 2009 targetting 525MW. I don't know how many people are sustained by a MW, but I imagine it is significant. ZERO pollution. Hopefully they aren't a maintenance nightmare.

Hi James,

We had peak oil discoveries in 1961 -- 47 years ago.

We had peak oil production around 1980 -- 28 years ago.

Natural gas will also run out -- and most of it will come from Iran & Russia.

Coal is quite dangerous at many levels, and it is the dirtiest energy source we have, by far.

Nuclear is extremely capital intensive, centralized, high tech way to boil water. The plant that we have poured an enormous amount of money into wears itself out, and needs to be disassembled. Plutonium is extrememly poisonous, and it's half life is ~24,000 years -- it takes at least four half lives for it to come down to a reasonable level of radiation -- so, we need to safely store it for approximately 10X longer than recorded history. The plutonium and all the other radioactive waste needs to be stored in a extremely stable and secure location -- when this problem is solved, come talk to me.

----------------------------

Solar PV can be used on every roof top. This greatly reduces the transmission losses, and it could meet a very large chunk of our needs, since A/C is needed most when the sun is shining. This "democratizes" the production of power, which makes it far more secure, and lowers the risk by several orders of magnitude.

Solar heat can be on every rooftop, too. Vacuum tube collectors are all over China, and many other places, too:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v7...orsInChina.png

Solar heat and solar PV can be located in the sunniest places and distributed efficiently. It shades the ground underneath the collectors for part of the day. I seriously doubt this is a big problem.

Offshore and land-based wind is spread out as well, and with a good grid, power can be spread around to where it is need, from where it is being produced.

Geothermal can be done anywhere you drill a deep hole. An MIT lab has developed a method of drilling 7-8 miles down -- pump water down there, and you get steam for generators; just like nuclear, but without the radioactive downsides.

Wave and tidal power are real and viable -- there is an Australian company that makes buoys that in small arrays, set up ~10 miles offshore that can continuously generate power. And tidal energy systems are installed in at least three locations around the world -- the moon will keep orbiting around the earth for quite a long time, and the tides will keep moving huge amounts of water back and forth...

There is a 93 unit housing group in England, that is completely self-sufficient for heat and power, and they get everything they need from efficiency, PV on the roof, solar heat collection on the roof, and from composting household waste and the landscaping trimmings.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v7...inSuttonUK.png

It takes just 1 1/2 meter length of sewer pipe to produce the heat needed for a house.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v7...werHeat-01.png

Yes, it is. But do you think solar is not capital intensive? Current solar panel prices are over $3/watt just for the panels: Cheapest solar panels! Free Solar Panel Price Survey. $3/W solar panels A typical nuclear power plant will generate 1000 megawatts. To get the same generating capacity would cost $3 billion for the panels alone. Now remember that while the nuclear plant is generating 24/7, solar panels only generate full power when the sun is falling directly on them. So you need to double the number of panels to account for night, and double them again if you don't have some sort of (expensive) tracking mechanism to keep them pointed at the sun.

So that's $12 billion just for the solar panels to generate the same amount of electricity as a nuclear plant. Now you have to add in the cost of installation, plus the control electronics (inverters and such), plus some sort of storage so you can have electricity at night... All of a sudden, solar doesn't look so cheap any more :-)

So you're claiming solar power doesn't wear out, or break, or need maintenance?

So are many of the byproducts of solar cell manufacture poisonous, as is the lead &c used to make storage batteries, and they don't HAVE half-lives. Plutonium is relatively easy to separate from spent fuel, and can be used to make more fuel rods. The half-life is not a problem, because it gets "burned up".

Safe storage of nuclear reactor byproducts was demonstrated about 1.5 billion years ago, at Oklo: Natural nuclear fission reactor - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Of course an economic nuclear cycle will reprocess all its wastes into new nuclear fuel, thus eliminating the problem.

And I'm still waiting for you to get back to me on the safe storage of solar photovoltaic waste :-)

But even simpler is to design houses that don't NEED A/C.

What you don't consider is that residential electric use accounts for only about a third of the total. Sure, most houses could get most or all of their power from solar (and water & space heat, too), and that would be a good thing. That leaves the other two thirds, a lot of which goes to run energy-intensive industrial processes (including the factories that make your solar cells, and the materials that go into them, and the tools that make them...) Then you need reliable baseload generation to keep the grid up & running, so that when Joe's house in Arizona is producing more power than it needs, the excess can be used somewhere else.

Well, back to the capital-intensive thing again. Just for some ballpark numbers, I found a figure of $150K per 1000 ft for drilling an oil well, so that's about $5.5 million per well. The geothermal plant up the road generates about 100 MW, and has dozens of wells. Assuming sustained generation of 1 MW per well, you'd need 1000 wells to equal one nuclear plant, and there's $5.5 billion just in the drilling costs...

But where did the energy come from to build all the equipment they use? That's the real problem. It would be fairly simple (in principle, anyway) to design & build housing that got all its energy from renewables. But where do you get the energy to run the industrial base that makes all the things that go into building these houses?

I apologize for going on at such length, but I want to make a point. You, like many people that advocate purely renewable power, never seem to think through all the implications. You seem to think that your solar panels, geothermal wells, and all the rest are just magically going to appear out of nowhere, at no cost, and that's simply wishful thinking. Making anything has costs: up front and ongoing financial costs, and environmental costs that are often not fully appreciated until you've built so many X-type power systems that the process is irreversable.

Just consider the environmental consequences of hydroelectric dams: did anyone realize beforehand that one consequence of all those dams in the Columbia River basin would be the near-extiction of salmon? Yet that's what's happening.

Neil, I am not going to rehash what James has said as he covered it pretty well but I will supplement it.

Nuclear is costly?
The Economics of Nuclear Power
Only compared to coal and don’t even talk about solar, it is not in the ballpark.

PV panels are only good for about 20-30 years whereas nuclear plants are 40-60. Wind Turbines do not have an infinite life either.

England is on the warm side of the Atlantic, good portions of China don’t get snow and we have seen how warm Beijing was during the Olympics. Solar is a good technology for certain regions and is terrible in others. Solar power isn’t going to power our industries.

I don’t disagree with what renewables can do but you still seem totally resistant to recognise any of their limitations. Where I live peak demand comes in the winter not the summer. Mid December we get about 8 hours of low intensity sunlight that gives us daily highs averaging -20C. Solar is a total waste of time where I live. When it hits -40C for a week on end, the power must be there when you need it, PERIOD.

As others have pointed out Nuclear puts out less radiation than coal. Obviously radiation is not an issue. Safety is not an issue either. The only legitimate argument that the anti-nuclear crowd can stand on is the waste. Plutonium is a fuel and can be reused. I don’t know if the High school Gym reference stated earlier is correct, but it is not off by more than a factor of ten, which is really small. Like renewable technology, nuclear technology is progressing as well. Look into Breeder reactors and thorium reactors, fission still holds much potential.

Why do you oppose a technology that we have today, that works, is a reasonable cost and has a low environmental impact and doesn’t require us to re-engineer our society to implement it?

@Cobra Bell

I was well aware of the issue of cooling (what do you think the primary rant of the source was about, and I've dealt with Oklahoma heat: I don't want to try to handle that plus gulf humidity.

The permit hurdles for the wells look nasty. If low power use was popular, it wouldn't be too hard to get developers to dig a few as a utility in a development. Of course, you would need to still be building developments. I was quite irked to see condos going in nearby and *knowing* that nobody would think of doing anything like that.

I got through most of August (but not July) without AC. I think the good people of Maryland can forgo AC if we can roll back one of the worst disasters in US history: AC in DC.

Hi guys,

Oil prices will go way up when it gets more scarce, as will natural gas; and I don't think that the supply of uranium is infinite.

I'm not just talking about solar PV. And not all solar PV has the same dangerous materials. Thin film PV roofing is far less energy intensive to make, and the payoff time is only part of the return.

I am including a broad range of renewable energy sources. I encourage you to read the Scientific American proposal called "A Solar Grand Plan":

A Solar Grand Plan: Scientific American

And I encourage you to watch Guy Dauncey's DVD called "The Great Energy Revolution":

http://www.earthfuture.com/publications/default.asp

Another good resource book is "Plan B 3.0" by Lester Brown:
http://www.earth-policy.org/Books/PB3/index.htm
http://www.earth-policy.org/Books/PB3/pb3book.pdf

If you generate electricity locally to where you use it, you only need to produce what you use -- the transmission losses are sometime quite high. Solar heat can be stored efficiently, and as the SA article suggests, other means like compressed air storage underground might be possible.

Wind keeps blowing at night, and if you spread out the turbine over a large enough area, you'll get power all the time; and avoid localized lulls. Offshore winds are pretty darn consistent in many places.

Wave and tidal power is always going to be there.

Methane from sewage (human and animal) and plant waste and trash is a constant we can rely on. This produces a high quality (non-water soluble) nitrogen rich fertilizer, than can replace chemicals that we get from carbon fuels.

Biodiesel from jatophra or algae or soybeans etc. can be developed. Jatophra is a scrub bush that grows on marginal land in drought conditions, and produces oil in a non-edible fruit. Wood alcohol from fast growing willow trees.

Small scale hydro is always possible. Cogeneration within a building is extremely efficient way to make electricity and heat.

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Nothing is perfect, and there is no single solution. Diversity and distribution are key -- as is efficiency! We could easily cut our energy use in half by efficiency alone.

We need to grow and eat locally grown, organic food -- both because it is much better for you, and tastes much better -- but it also doesn't use natural gas to make fertilizer, and diesel to produce and ship it! An average food item travels 1,500 miles before we eat it -- we think it's bad when fuel gets scarce, but if it also affects out food supply, it'll really get bad.

We also need to cut down on the amount of water we use. Did you know how much electricity is used to pump water up from very deep wells?

Guys, I'm so ready for this discussion -- it is my passion and I am pretty knowledgeable about it. Carbon based fuels are "so yesterday" in terms of their long term availability and their huge effects in the global climate.

And nuclear is a no go for me, too -- if only for the huge security threat of plutonium in the wrong hands. We're messin' with the strong force, and we do not need to! There is a huge excess of renewable energy, just sitting there for us to collect and use.

We have our brains, and we need to use 'em to do the right thing.

It’s close to.
World Uranium Reserves

It’s actually only around 10% and I can link you to my provinces utility report if you want it.

You talk about efficiency but do you comprehend the efficiency cost of storage? To get electrical energy and convert it to compressed air and then go back to electricity would require 4 conversions, electrical to mechanical, mechanical to compressed air and then reverse the procedure. Good generator and motors are about 90% efficient, I don’t have compressor and air motor efficiencies handy but saying 90% would be generous. 0.9 to the power of 4 is 65% efficient, that is a third of your stored energy lost to the conversion, it’s a bad road to go down before even considering costs.

I have done my homework on this issue as well, if you have any questions just ask, I have no problem sharing what I have found.

It appears you are ideologically opposed to nuclear regardless of any argument we put up here. The purity of fissionable material used for weapons is so much greater than that used in power generation. Any country that wants to pursue a road to nuclear weapons will have them 30 years from now no matter what we do. If isolated N. Korea can do it then anyone with enough determination can. Dumping nuclear power will have no effect on weapons proliferation but we will lose our power source that has the best combination of reliability, cost and carbon footprint.

What is? The sun's going to burn out one of these days, too :-)

No, they have different dangerous materials. And it seems that when the solar cells are cheaper to make, they're also less efficient.

Big if, there. Lots of times you can't: how do you run e.g. the very energy-intensive processes needed to refine the silicon for solar panels off locally-generated electricity? You're still ignoring the gigantic gulf between "I can build a solar house and live off the grid", and running the whole industrial society that makes the tools & components that go into building that house.

No, the heat can't be stored efficiently, unless your criterion of efficiency is a whole lot lower than mine. And while there are a lot of ways to store electricity (high-speed flywheels are my favorite), none of them come for free, and that just adds to the capital cost of your "free" solar power system.

In the process incurring those transmission losses that you were avoiding just a couple of paragraphs back :-) Not to mention that if you pay attention to the weather, you'll find that the wind quite often doesn't blow at night. A usual pattern in many places is for the morning to be calm, with winds picking up into the afternoon and evening, then dying down near dawn.

Maybe, though it'd be more accurate to say that the waves and tides are always going to be there. Getting power from them is not quite there yet. Even when & if the bugs get worked out of the technology (and we need replacements for fossil fuels NOW, not "someday"), how is it going to affect the environment? What are the side effects of e.g. damming a tidal estuary?

Sure, but that's only a small fraction of energy use. What do you do for the rest?

Sure, but again, it's only going to produce a small fraction of what's needed, at an unknown cost to the environment.

But there's only enough of it to generate a small fraction of the electricity needs of the country, and - once again - at an environmental cost.

Just what I've been saying. Yet you want to leave out one important factor in that diversity, and the one which (because it provides reliable baseload generation to run the grid) allows all the rest to piggyback on it.

Which is a fine and good thing if you're lucky enough to live in a small town in say New England or the Midwest, but not exactly practical if you live in midtown Manhattan, downtown LA, or any other major urban area.

Err... Has anyone disagreed with that? Not me, that's for sure. It's exactly what I've been saying all along. We need to start getting off of fossil fuels ASAP (we really should have started in the '70s). The problem is that we have a perfectly viable, economic, proven technology that can replace a lot of fossil fuel - certainly all coal-fired electrical generation, for a start - which some people don't want to use because of sheer superstition.