Here is my full disclosure - I founded Adams Atomic Engines, Inc. in September 1993 with the mission of designing and developing pebble bed reactor heated closed cycle gas turbine power plants.

We believed that the time was right to build plants that could compete in the markets that were being served by large diesel engines and combustion gas turbines - specifically the commerical shipping market and the market for distributed power plants.

By 1996, we put the company to sleep - with oil at about $10-12 per barrel and natural gas at $1.80, our economics were not compelling enough for anyone to take a chance with an "unproven" technology. Our protestations that oil and gas prices were in a temporary slump fell on deaf ears. You can find some of the articles on the subject that we published during that period on our web site at www.atomicinsights.com. The team focused on other employment opportunites, but kept a watchful eye on the energy markets.

In the past three to four years, the market has begun to turn and we have begun the process of waking up our tiny little company.

The Chinese, South Africans, the French and even some Americans believe that the technology has great promise. The conventional nuclear plants have a place, but they cannot serve all needs.

Rod Adams
Founder and President, Adams Atomic Engines, Inc.

Thus, one likely hallmark of a truly forward step in power supply will be that many voices are raised against it, not because it threatens the privilege of those living off existing methods -- this will never be mentioned by those objecting, they may not even understand that the money which would go away if they stopped is their price -- but for numerous other plausible-sounding reasons.

--- Graham Cowan, former hydrogen fan
boron as energy carrier: real-car range, nuclear cachet

Saskatchewan!  

The world's Number ONE storehouse of deadly uranium.  

Check it out at www.sasknuclearfuture.ca.

And, don't forget to check out that ohhh-soo balanced Speakers' List.

I live in this beautiful province and I am ashamed!

According to the discussion at the Rocky Mountain Institute (RMI) link that you provided to "prove" that nuclear power is more expensive than solar, I found the following statement:

"True, nukes don't produce carbon dioxide--but the power they produce is so expensive that the same money invested in efficiency or even natural-gas-fired power plants would offset much more climate change."

Accoring to reliable statistics used by the financial community, the average cost of operating a nuclear power plant in 2004 was about 1.67 cents per kilowatt hour that costs includes all operating costs - fuel, personnel, decommissioning allowance, and fuel storage fee.

At the prices listed on the New York Mercantile Exchange yesterday, natural gas costs more than $14 per million BTU which translates to a FUEL cost of more than 11 cents per kilowatt hour in a modern natural gas fired power plant. That price ignores all of the other costs of operating and maintaining a power plant.

As an investor, I would consider that RMI's advice is suspect. As a critical thinking, I wonder if the support that the natural gas industry has provided to RMI over the years has anything to do with their number free statements that sound a bit more like marketing than fact.

Oh, BTW, gas fired power plants still emit 2/3 of the CO2 that is produced when burning coal. Nuclear power plants are clean enough to operate inside sealed submarines - something that the US has been doing for more than 50 years. I ought to know - I have spent more than 2 years underwater within 150 feet of an operating plant. I was even in charge of the department that operated the plant for 6 three month periods.

Therefore, as a very concern environmentalist, I challenge RMI's advice that gas is cleaner than nuclear power. I would like to ask Amory Lovins (RMI's founder) to live for three months sealed inside a small ship powered by gas!

Rod Adams

Could you post the source for your figures so that we all can examine them?

As someone who happens to think markets work at least somewhat efficiently, I'd be incredibly surprised to learn that nukes do electricity at $.0167/kWh vs. $.11+/kWh for gas because if that were really the case, this country's entire base load would be nothing but nukes.  

Of course, wasn't that the argument made back in the 50's, that "Hey, it'll be so cheap we won't even meter it!"  Aren't those same investors that you mention the same ones that have stayed away from nukes for 25 years?

Count me skeptical...

Unless the US government outlaws lawsuits against it, these devices will never find a home.

As with other reactors, the damage from an accident is uninsurable.  The cost of compensation for permanently contaminating a whole region, like happened from Chernobyl is so large as to be incalculable.

That is why investors would not have funded present nuclear plants unless congress agreed that the US government would assume that risk.  And given the response to natural disasters like hurricanes, no one should trust the government to guarantee to make the victims of a nuclear disaster whole again.

And given the record of contamination at government sites all over the US, why would anyone trust government regulation of these new supposedly safer designs?  The underground contamination from Hanford is creeping towards the Columbia River right now!

The fact is that wind power is far cheaper and safer than nuclear power, and due to the easier siting of wind machines..it is in fact the real solution to global climate disaster.

Getting a new nuclear plant approved and litigating a site would take decades  if it is possible at all.

In a decade wind could replace enough fossil fuel power to halt global climate disaster.  The same argument you use for cost effectiveness your nuclear engine, mass production, works even better for wind.

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog John Schneider, Northern Wisconsin

For nuclear power:

http://www.nei.org/documents/U.S._Nuclear_Industry_Production_Costs_1981_2004.pdf

Here is another source that provides the same information, just in case you completely discount the NEI:

http://www.cameco.com/uranium_101/electricity_sources/

Full disclosure, it appears that I was incorrect in my initial post. I put the O&M cost of nuclear at 1.67 cents, the above two put it at 1.68 and 1.69 respectively.

For the NYMEX price of natural gas (updated each day):

www.bloomberg.com/markets/commodities/energyprices.html

My calculation included a CCGT heat rate of 8,000 BTU/kw-hr.

You might also be interested in a fuller development of my idea that nuclear power is, indeed, cheap enough so that meters are not really necessary.

http://www.atomicinsights.com/AI_03-09-05.html

It nuclear plant economics would actually work better if people could simply pay a monthly fee for a certain amount of capacity to use electricity and then use as much as they wanted - if all of their power came from nuclear plants.

Think of it more like paying for a high speed internet connection. The capital cost is pretty high, but the variable operating cost is pretty darned low.

Rod Adams

I think I mis-read what you were saying before.  You were saying O&M costs and I thought you were talking about total costs.  My mistake.

While O&M costs are technically accurate, they don't reflect the real costs which includes the high upfront costs, often pegged at $1200-1500 kW to build, if not more.  (For instance, see http://www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/archive/aeo04/assumption/pdf/tbl38.pdf)

When you include the "all-in" costs (upfront costs + O&M), nukes aren't much of a bargain...especially when considers the subsidies nukes have received over the past 50 years