Nuclear power just doesn't make economic sense to people who actually want prompt and reliable return on investment.
(i.e. Pretty much the entire private sector.)
http://goliath.ecnext.com/coms2/gi_0199-5785236/Nuclear-p ...
http://manhattan-institute.org/html/eper_01.htm
http://nirs.org/factsheets/wallstreet.pdf
http://nwenergy.org/news/midamerican-withdrawing-nuke-pla ...

The only way it's survived at all is by massive amounts of federal pork.
http://thenation.com/doc/20080512/parenti
http://nirs.org/neconomics/utstatelegislativepresentation ...

Then again, John McCain is no stranger to hypocritical double-talk.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2s4Dv-Zkh8A
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cvCpFWzmP1Y
http://greyfalcon.net/mccain1
http://greyfalcon.net/mccain2

-David Ahlport

Has anyone provided this nukemonger with the measly savings totals his silly plan would bring?  Do you even think it occurred to him that encouraging people to drive their old inefficient cars further is a pretty bad idea?  Jeez, I could just keep going and going and going...

To exclude nuclear would be nuts. We currently get 16% of our energy from nuclear power, the majority from coal. There are many ways to improve upon nuclear technology using today's material science.
The last US nuclear power plant was built in 1970's.

That hardly means that Nuclear power deserves more R&D financing than the rest of the electric power sector combined.
http://greyfalcon.net/energyresearch.png

Or that it should continue to, considering it has gotten this disproportionate amount of R&D funding for the last half century.
http://www.citizen.org/cmep/energy_enviro_nuclear/electri ...

The Nuclear power industry can't even do R&D on conventional light water reactors without asking for 80% of it's initial financing to come from taxpayers.
http://www.inl.gov/featurestories/docs/inl_07-13543_08.pd ...

We currently get 16% of our energy from nuclear power

Direct Subsidies 1947 through 1999
__Nuclear $115~$145 billion
Wind+Solar $5.7 billion
http://www.citizen.org/documents/FatalFlawsSummary.pdf

______

If Nuclear power were so effective, then why is it unable to compete without near monopolistic support from the federal government?

-David Ahlport

http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf41.html

Americans paid $327 trillion for electricity in 2007.

http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electricity/esr/table2.xls

About 12% was taxes. Nuclear power paid $7.8 billion in taxes in 2007

The so called massive nuclear subsidy was $1.2 billion in 2001, page 28 of this PDF.

http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d08102.pdf

leaving a net government income of $6.6 billion.

R&D cost for wind solar and biomass is about $0.3 billion, with not much offsetting tax income, page 30 of the PDF.

Anti nuclear folks overlook the $4.1 billion in tax breaks for fossil and renewable fuels that nuclear does not get, page 31 of the PDF.

Coal emissions kill over 20,000 people per year in the U.S. alone, probably over a million per year around the world.

http://www.sierraclub.org/cleanair/factsheets/power.asp

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5174391/

http://www.earth-policy.org/Updates/Update42.htm

These deaths should be included in calculating the subsidy of coal technology.

The EPA assumes the value of a human life is $7.6 million, so the "death subsidy" for coal is $174 billion per year.

On a level playing field fission would do very well.

Unfortunately we have doled out R&D money with an eye dropper for several decades, so there are limited options to transition to. My recommendation is to raise $90 billion per year for R&D by adding 2.25 cents to the cost of each kWh. Perhaps 10% would be spent on basic research, the rest would go to improving existing technology.

Things Everybody Should Know About Energy

Yes nuclear provides a large amount of the US energy solution. Perhaps the most "HIGHLY regulated" industry we have, yet it still does this day and night reliably. Is the entire fuel cycle perfect? No, there are waste storage issues. But dealing with that risk should be weighed appropriately in 'context' with other risks we all face as a nation (and world).

One other factoid people often forget is the actual energy consumption picture for the US.
See this chart?
Energy Challenges in a New Era of Science Energy, Politics, Society, and Science from the DoE publication available on this web site: DoE http://www.sc.doe.gov.

Can some of the proposed 100% environmentally friendly "alternatives" replace these coal and gas figures quickly enough to make even a small dent in the energy picture?  Notice the large anount of energy we depend on here in the US from these sectors. This is a serious technological issue.

The biggest item on ths list is *WASTED* energy ..that's energy loss occuring in transport across the US grid essentially. This includes losses in motors (air conditioners in our homes, wires, water heaters, light bulbs...you name it).  Stopping these BIG losses is the quickest and easiest means to reduce our consumption of coal, oil and help alternatives like wind and solar power become viable (reduced losses in wires to transport their energy to grid and US homes). At the same time new materials science R&D will help improve the efficiency of these technologies.  Are oil companies investing in these areas with all their newly found profits?  Compared to the average percentage from other tech industries ..Hardly.

Nuclear *could* rapidly expand (using new technologies) to fill a big piece of that gap.
But of course, many folks still have an absurd idea about what nuclear technology is all about without becoming better educated. For starters ..a nuclear reactor is not a BOMB. Far from it. Many technology issues we see today in nuclear power are materials science issues designed into ssystems from 'old technologies' from three to four decades ago. Materials science has made great strides since then.

Of course, I'm also in favor of dealing with the waste issue even low level NORM( Naturally Occuring Radioactive Materials) generated by MANY industries (even coal and oil and medical industries) by the MILLIONS of tone world wide each year (not even including the stuff from reactors)instead of 'ignoring it' like most environmentalists would often do.  They tend to wrap all "waste" as nuclear reactor waste and stop any good efforts to deal with even the low level waste. NO ..not all waste should be treated the same. Period.

They want their cake and eat it too. A world full of peace and tranquility, no strife, no hard design decisions to trade off and of course ..absolutely 0% risk free world ..as if any engineering endeavor mankind has ever done could possibly live up to that. Even mother nature can't live up to that.  Risk is a fact of life. Live with it. Adapt to it. Find smart ways to manage it with the technoology brains we have as Americans and what the world still admires us for.

In a way, extreme enironmentalism without a weighing of risk (as James Lovelock would also agree with I'm sure) is doing a great harm to our nation and world ..even though many mean well.

They are also helping to delay the inevitable technological solutions and decisions we all need to make and implementing smart alternatives by their lack of *education* on risk and risk mitigation via other technological means.

Much like oil companies do by promises promises promises over many years to wean us all off oil, but instead walk away to 'bank money' instead of 'banking' on new ideas that they sell as their claim to justify why oil prices need to be so high to recoup investment in new ideas and drilling areas(even in foreign lands).  OK, where are their new ideas now at $120/barrel? they claimed when oil was $20/barrel they would have. There is no easy road. We can all see this blatantly now.

All *risks** have to be weighed appropriately in society and dealt with appropriately. Some more than others depending on what is more important for our national security.

Go ask a US soldier who he's fighting for. You and me to come up with good ideas and ways to get us off of oil. For God's sake let's honor their spirit and do it.


-JChan

"Electricity generation from coal in 2006 fell 1.1 percent from 2005 to 1,991 million MWh.  Coal's share of total net generation continued its slow decline over the past decade, from its peak of 52.8 percent in 1997 to 49.0 percent in 2006."

http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electricity/epa/epa_sum.html ...

Hmmm BILL, seems to be a huge rise in generation in 2007.  

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

Electricity generation from coal in 2006 fell 1.1 percent from 2005 to 1,991 million MWh. In the past decade, generation from coal declined only one other time, between 2000 and 2001. Coal's share of total net generation continued its slow decline over the past decade, from its peak of 52.8 percent in 1997 to 49.0 percent in 2006. Coal-fired plants continued to be the primary source of baseload generation. However, its share of total net generation decreased notwithstanding that total net generation increased by 0.1 percent. This was attributable to continued growth in natural gas and nuclear generation, reflecting the cumulative effects of the growth in natural gas-fired capacity and upgrades of nuclear power plants that emerged following 1997. It also reflects a reduction in net summer coal-fired generating capacity, with 967 MW retired or derated, only partially offset by 542 MW of new capacity.

see: Nuclear Power in Competitive Electricity Markets

Upgrades in existing systems, more efficient electric generator technology, fuel efficiencies etc are helping to improve generation output. There's a technological limit as to how far you can streatch efficiencies. Eventually with a growing populace new generation capacity will be needed. Coal, Natural Gas, Nuclear. They are all competitive these days. They all have environmental impacts.

-JChan

-JChan

As for the waste issue... it's not going away if we don't build new nuclear electric plants.  We have huge amounts of waste already and more being generated by the military... the nuclear Navy and weapons.  A storage solution needs to be settled at the political level and it needs ongoing funding.  A civilian nuclear program means more and better trained nuclear engineers and means more funding for the ongoing care of stored waste.  In all likelihood it would also mean the reprocessing of much of the waste at some point, as the cost of mining uranium increases.  Is having one central, well managed facility with more waste than we have now really less safe than having it stored the way it currently is?

The Nuclear industry would have to fight like mad just to maintain the status quo.

Since a large portion of the industry's trained staff is reaching retirement age.
http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/03/11/business/reactor.p ...

And the Nuclear power plants themselves are readying up for retirement.
http://www.greens-efa.org/cms/pressreleases/dok/206/20684 ...
http://greyfalcon.net/nuke.png

And as for production bottlenecks, they couldn't be any more severe than Nuclear power industry.
http://climateprogress.org/2008/03/18/look-up-nuclear-bot ...
http://www.news.com/Nuke-power-not-so-clean-or-green/2008 ...

Not to mention of course the scalability limitation that it can't get any private capital investment.

_

SolarThermal, GeoThermal, on the other hand, they really don't have any meaningful production bottlenecks to speak of.  Competitive in open markets, with the ability to get private investment in spades, a relatively fast return on investment, and can be cited and built quickly.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J_IMRLi8HdY
http://www.rasertech.com/uptospeed/uptospeed_07.html
http://greyfalcon.net/google

-David Ahlport

Some very promising, large contracts have been signed for solar thermal, but I don't see how one can say production bottlenecks don't exist when they are only just now beginning to construct the production scale factories for the hardware here in the U.S.  No bottlenecks in the production because there isn't any production yet.  It's very promising, but I wouldn't expect solar thermal to grow at a faster pace than solar PV did.  You can't build factories and train workers simply by wishing for exponential growth.

As for geothermal, there's a shortage of drilling equipment and trained operators and is a market which competes for both with the oil/gas exploration sector.

Find me the most optimistic projections from the solar thermal and geothermal companies themselves for how quickly they will grow.  I hope they succeed at those ambitious goals.  I'm sure they would still not come close to adding up to the rate of capacity additions needed to seriously start decarbonizing our supply in the near term.

One can talk about some grand command driven "WWII" style effort.  But it's simply not the case that the government is going to storm in and seize the blue prints from a company like Ausra and then force GM to retool their factories to start churning them out.  Companies like Ausra are constrained by how fast they can hire, train and build.

Global warming scares me far more than underground storage of nuclear waste.

" Hmmm BILL, seems to be a huge rise in generation in 2007.  "Americans paid $327 trillion for electricity in 2007." "

Glad to see that somebody is paying attention.

Actually Americans paid $327 billion for electricity in 2006.

http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electricity/epa/epates.html

" Coal's share of total net generation continued its slow decline over the past decade, from its peak of 52.8 percent in 1997 to 49.0 percent in 2006." "

Wow, the problem will be almost solved in 100 years if growth stops now, why worry?

" The Nuclear industry would have to fight like mad just to maintain the status quo....

SolarThermal, GeoThermal, on the other hand, they really don't have any meaningful production bottlenecks to speak of.  Competitive in open markets, with the ability to get private investment in spades, a relatively fast return on investment, and can be cited and built quickly. "

Here is my proposal.

Level the playing field and let the marketplace sort it out. Start by accessing the $174 billion per year death fee for coal. That adds 8.8 cents to each coal kWh, add in the non fatal health effects of coal and call it 10 cents per kWh. Add a CO2 global warming fee of 3 cents per kWh to coal making it a 13 cents per kWh. Assume coal now costs 4 cents per kWh at the buss bar, 8 cents per kWh delivered. With the new fees coal power will cost 21 cents per kWh.

Now let the utilities choose whatever they want to build that is less expensive than coal.

 They will start with natural gas turbines, driving the cost of natural gas sky high. Next they will build windmills and solar cells as fast as possible, but intermittent sources run into reliability problems when they become a substantial fraction of the total supply, and large scale storage is expensive and environmentally problematic.

Then they will build nuclear plants. At 16 cents per kWh our existing fleet of nuclear power plants will earn $126 billion per year. With that kind of income the nuclear industry can afford to build new foundries for large forgings and facilities to mass produce floating nuclear plants. Each new 1.5 GW nuclear plant can earn  $1.9 billion per year, paying for itself in just a few years. There are no limitations on nuclear scalability at that price.

If you really hate nuclear then join my call for a massive increase in R&D. It gives us the best chance of finding something affordable that is better than fission.


Things Everybody Should Know About Energy

What does that mean? How was that figure derived?

One other important fact with floating plant ideas would be the tremendous ease of of providing massive desalination (converting sea water to fresh water)..enough in fact to provide all the drinking water needs of large cities, besides providing power and reducing green house gases. Thus nuclear power provides three key benefits
1)Power, 3)Energy density beyond anything else(reducing logistical refueling needs), 3) Fresh water capabilities if suitably placed in areas needing fresh water.

People often forget that water is critical issue with a growing population and other sustainability issues. In fact, there have also been reports in the media (Physical Review and Design News) about using filtration systems while desalinating to extract and filter out various salts and metals, including believe it or not, dissolved Uranium.

The oceans have vast amounts (billions of tons) of dissolved uranium at very small concentrations. If such floating plants took hold and grew in number the issues of mining ore (and environmental mining issues on land) might become mute. Smarter passive and active sensor technologies, coupled with the fuel cycle would also safeguard waste disposal if designed into such systems from the get go(reducing a lot of risk in transport).

Risk vs reward. There are a lot of issues that come into play many often forget about and tend to toss out with their 'anti-nuke' sentiments. Unfortunately, the world we have down the road may need every solution we can muster.

Technology we can draw from in many areas is leaps ahead of what we had just three decades ago when the last power plants were built. Miniaturization on new scales is possible benefiting other 'side' industries and R&D initiatives along with it.

(enough of my soap box for now). Much enjoyed this thread of discussion.


-JChan

1. Repeal Price-Anderson act. Let nuclear industry complete buying its own insurance. (Other industries do.)

2. Make nuclear industry 100% liable for  waste disposal - including cost overruns. (Every other industry is.)

3. Repeal other nuclear subsidies offered for new nukes.

4. Assess all industries for deaths - coal, nuclear (mainly from uranium mining and exposure of populations to radiation, plus a little from construction), oil and gas (from drilling, explorati and solar and wind (low but not zero - various types of construction and maintenance accidents).

5. Assess all industries their carbon footprint by charging universal carbon taxes. (So coal gets its charge as described in the original deal, but natural gas and oil get their lower but still significant charges.) (Solar, wind, and nuclear also pay a little mostly indirectly built into the price of capital materials. Nuclear also pays indirect carbon charges based on energy used for uranium processing - depending of course on what kind of energy is used for that processing.) None of these indirect fees have to be assessed directly on solar or nuclear. With a broad based carbon fee, they are assessed upstream and passed along as materials cost.

" 1    Repeal Price-Anderson act. Let nuclear industry complete buying its own insurance. (Other industries do.) "

I support the repeal of Price-Anderson and treating nuclear power like other industries.

Imagine that the terrorist attack on 9-11 never took place. Instead, suppose that on a busy weekday morning at about 11 AM, a design defect in the floor attach fittings of a World Trade Center building caused a mid level floor to collapse on to the floor below it.

That started a chain reaction collapse that brought the building down. The upper floors tipped into the other WTC tower, triggering the same defect and bringing it down.

There is no evacuation because there is no warning, and 40,000 people die in 30 seconds.

A Boeing 747 takes off with a full load of fuel on a long international flight. One minute after takeoff it flies through the wake of another jumbo jet. The turbulence causes an undetected crack in the vertical fin to propagate, and the fin snaps off. The 747 yaws sideways, rolls onto its back and dives down through the roof of a giant sports arena holding the national championship basketball game.

200,000 pounds of fuel atomizes on impact with the floor and erupt in an enormous fireball inside the building, consuming all the oxygen and incinerating 40,000 people on live HD worldwide television.

In 1997 the EPA determined that a human life was worth $5.8 million.

http://yosemite.epa.gov/ee/epa/funding.nsf/ef8d219bc45f08 ...

Corrected for inflation, that is $7.6 million now.

The loss in each case would be $304 billion for human life, plus the property loss.

The WTC did not carry this level of insurance. Should they have been prevented from constructing those buildings without adequate insurance?

The airlines do not carry this level of insurance, should the airlines be grounded for lack of adequate insurance coverage?

Coal plants are killing over 20,000 Americans each year.

That is a $175 billion loss each year that the coal plants are not paying for, this virtual subsidy.

Dam failures have killed 8000 people in the U.S.

http://www.fema.gov/plan/prevent/damfailure/pdf/fema-94-i ...

In 1975 a single dam failure in China killed about 30,000.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banqiao_Dam

Dams in the U.S. are not insured for the maximum imaginable loss. Should we tear down all dams and give up our hydroelectric power?

Suppose that a biogenetics scientist in a major pharmaceutical industry accidentally creates a virus that is more contagious than the common cold and more deadly than the HIV virus. He contaminates himself and his family, the virus spreads around the world and kills half the population. That would be a twenty five thousand trillion dollar loss. All the money in the world would not cover that loss.

Should we shut down the pharmaceutical industry and go back to a world without medicine because it is not insured for the worst possible accident?

You are holding a wedding reception for 150 people in your home. An F5 tornado sucks your home and its contents up to 1,000 feet, grinds it into small pieces, and deposits the mess in a field 2 miles away, killing everybody.

The tornado loss is $1.14 billion plus the property loss. Are you carrying that much liability insurance on your house? If not, should you be denied the privilege of owning a home?

If we required every corporation and individual to obtain insurance coverage for the worst possible event no matter how unlikely, we would have no civilization at all.

The Price Anderson Act requires that the utilities provide $10 billion in insurance coverage without cost to the public or government and without fault needing to be proven.

http://world-nuclear.org/info/inf67.html

It covers power reactors, research reactors, and all other nuclear facilities.

It was renewed for 20 years in mid 2005, with strong bipartisan support, and requires individual operators to be responsible for two layers of insurance cover. The first layer is where each nuclear site is required to purchase US $300 million liability cover which is provided by two private insurance pools.

The second layer is jointly provided by all US reactor operators. It is funded through retrospective payments if required of up to $96 million per reactor per accident collected in annual installments of $15 million (and adjusted with inflation). Combined, the total provision comes to over $10 billion paid for by the utilities. (The Department of Energy also provides $10 billion for its nuclear activities.) Beyond this cover and irrespective of fault, Congress, as insurer of last resort, must decide how compensation is provided in the event of a major accident.

More than $200 million has been paid by US insurance pools in claims and costs of litigation since the Price- Anderson Act came into effect, all of it by the insurance pools. Of this amount, some $71 million related to litigation following the 1979 accident at Three Mile Island.

American Nuclear Insurers  is a pool comprised of investor-owned stock insurance companies. About half the pool's total liability capacity comes from foreign sources such as Lloyd's of London. The average annual premium for a single-unit reactor site is $400,000.

Two teenage brothers are home alone. They break into the liquor closet and find a half gallon of tequila. The older boy challenges the younger brother, "Bet you can't drink the whole bottle". "Yes I can" says the younger boy, and proceeds to start chugging. He passes out without finishing it, losing the bet, and within the hour looses his life.

This establishes that 64 oz. of tequila is a lethal dose. The Linear No Threshold (LNT) model says that if 64 people each drink one ounce of tequila one of them will be dead within the hour.

This is how we calculate the risk of low level radiation.

60 years of studying the effects of radiation has still not proven low level radiation to be harmful or beneficial. We can say with absolute certainty that the health effects of low level radiation are very small compared to other risks we accept without much thought.

Google   "radiation hormesis"   for an interesting debate, or try this.

http://www.ajronline.org/cgi/content/full/179/5/1137

The Chernobyl accident exposed millions of people to a small dose of radiation. The estimates of the number of deaths from Chernobyl over the next 40 years range from 4,000 (IAEA), to 100,000 (Greenpeace), based on the LNT theory.

If radiation hormesis turns out to be valid the Chernobyl accident may prevent thousands of cancer deaths.

The Chernobyl reactor had design defects that, combined with gross operator error, allowed it to go rapidly to 100 times the design power level, creating a powerful steam explosion that tore the roof off the building and dispersed fuel. It could never have been licensed in  the US.

If it had an appropriately designed containment building for that reactor design, the release would have been minor.

Modern reactors have improved instrumentation and control systems, passive safety systems and strong containments designed to contain a full meltdown.

http://www.areva-np.com/common/liblocal/docs/Brochure/BRO ...

http://www.ans.org/pubs/magazines/nn/docs/2006-1-3.pdf

Nobody is going to build another Titanic, or a De Havilland Comet, or a Chernobyl reactor.

Authors of A Solar Grand Plan, published in Scientific American,

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=a-solar-grand-plan&am ...

propose a solar plan that could be used by terrorists to kill millions of Americans.

http://science-community.sciam.com/topic/Solar-Grand-Plan ...

Do you think this plan can get insurance? Nuclear does not have to be perfect, just better than any other practical option, which it is.

I cannot think of any industry that handles insurance coverage as well as nuclear power. I would be comfortable with the elimination of Price-Anderson, and treating nuclear power like other industries, with common sense.

Things Everybody Should Know About Energy

Please be more explicit.

Supposedly, more nuclear fuel can be bred in fast breeder reactors using depleted uranium and thorium but not even the russians or chinese are using these technologies to significant extent.

If nuclear power is such a great deal then why isn't' it being used in Russia and China? Why would they burn any coal if they could just use clean, cheap nuclear power from fast breeder reactors?

It's not the political opposition. They just don't care about that in those countries. Somethings holding them back. Could it be that the nuclear shills are just wrong?

Put the Carbon Back

Nuclear power is that it can't gain private financing, due to it's risky/slow returns on investment. And without healthy return rates, it can't plow returns back into creating more growth.

Giving Nuclear power a much more linear growth rate.  Rather than an exponential one.

_

Not to mention it has a very weak innovation process due to it's slow build speed, large increment size, high barriers to market entry, and it's tendency to focus on building the exact same type of plant over and over to overcome some of the citing difficulty.

-David Ahlport

China has 11 reactors running, 6 under construction, 29 planned, and 86 proposed -- over 100 gigawatts worth. Why would China use breeder-reactors when fresh fuel is cheaper, and there is a half-trillion year supply of it?

Pangolin wrote: Could it be that the nuclear shills are just wrong?

To whom are you referring?

Have an indisputable organization perform soil and water tests all over France and report back to me, while we're at it include a comprehensive independent cancer rate study too.

That's fine if the government give back all the money it has collected for this purpose and gives the industry the authority to implement a good solution.

"Repeal other nuclear subsidies offered for new nukes."

What would they be?

"Ever nuclear reactor built now has some sort of political opposition. "

Earth is still flush with fossil fuel, real shortages and sky high prices will adjust opinion.

I was brainwashed by Ralph Nader and his disciples into thinking nuclear power was a bad idea. I took my first course in nuclear engineering to get the facts to support my antinuclear position. I encourage everyone who is antinuclear to take a course in nuclear power. We would be much better off if energy engineering was included in every high school curriculum.

"Nuclear power is that it can't gain private financing, due to it's risky/slow returns on investment. And without healthy return rates, it can't plow returns back into creating more growth. "

No problem on a level playing field, why are you so afraid of a level field?

" Supposedly, more nuclear fuel can be bred in fast breeder reactors using depleted uranium and thorium but not even the russians or chinese are using these technologies to significant extent."  

At what price does uranium become expensive?

If all our electricity was made with coal, a years supply of coal (14,200 lb) cost $218 in 2005 and is much higher now and climbing. A year's supply of natural gas (115,000 cubic feet) cost $850 in 2005.

 To make all U.S. electricity with current reactor designs, we only need 0.72 pounds / year / person.

For uranium to match the price of coal or natural gas, using current reactor technology, the uranium price would be $303 or $1,180 dollars per pound respectively.

Using breeder reactors we need 0.35 pounds / 80 year lifetime.

For uranium to match the price of coal or natural gas using breeder reactors, the uranium price would be $51,500 or $194,000 dollars per pound respectively.

The average American paid $1,100 for electricity in 2005. Uranium cost is a small fraction of what we pay for nuclear electricity, about 0.2 cents per kWh. Uranium price spikes have little effect on our bill.

These numbers come from this paper

http://www.nuclearcoal.com/ENERGY%20REV%20X1.pdf

based on calculations and references from this spreadsheet.

http://www.nuclearcoal.com/ENERGY%20CALCS%20REV%207.xls

My thanks to Jim Holm for hosting my paper on his site.

http://www.nuclearcoal.com/

Reports in the 1970's estimated the cost of extracting uranium from sea water at $1,500 to $2,000 per pound. R&D has reduced that to about $200 per pound, of uranium.

http://npc.sarov.ru/english/digest/132004/appendix8.html

http://www.taka.jaea.go.jp/eimr_div/j637/theme3%20sea_e.h ...

http://jolisfukyu.tokai-sc.jaea.go.jp/fukyu/mirai-en/2006 ...

The oceans contain 4.6 billion tons of uranium, half of which is sufficient to support 10 billion people at the U.S. level for 400 years using first generation reactors and over 30,000 years with breeders. In reality the oceans are continuously supplied with uranium by the erosion of land, so the uranium supply is effectively unlimited.

We do not need breeders for a long time but we should move forward with breeder R&D to reduce mining and waste volumes.

Why are there no sea water uranium extraction plants?

Historically price has been under $60 / pound with a few big spikes.

http://www.uxc.com/review/uxc_g_hist-price.html

http://www.uxc.com/review/uxc_g_2yr-price.html

U3O8 is 85% uranium by weight.

Would you bet your life savings on uranium staying above $200 / lb? I don't think so, and neither do professional investors, however if sea water technology keeps improving the cost may drop enough to make it happen sooner than most people think.

Sea water uranium is very important because it puts a cap of $200/pound on the maximum sustainable cost of uranium for thousands of years.

Sea water uranium does not have to supply all of our uranium in order to cap the uranium price at $200/pound. It only has to replace the percentage of land based uranium sources that cost more than $200/pound, and that percentage is zero for the foreseeable future.

Things Everybody Should Know About Energy

Just 11 reactors to supply a billion people with power? 18 if you count every reactor with cement poured. How many reactors could they have built with the resources they dumped into Three Gorges Dam?

So a country with modern computers, access to materials, brigades of engineers, no political opposition and an unlimited budget is building.....

6 reactors.    For a billion people.

We can't count planned or proposed nuclear reactors since they have a nasty habit of vanishing into the shredder.

That's a massive investment for a nation shrouded in choking clouds of coal smoke. What is it that they know that we don't?


Put the Carbon Back

And it is a huge exploding export market.  We the people are beginning to suspect this, but "we" as in our government and industrial leaders haven't realized this yet.

Wind machines being erected here are mainly imports.  Some foreign wind companies are setting up shop here too.  Once again, america is ceding another huge manufacturing sector to foreign competitors.

But we are big in the scrap export business!  Well not so much us, as it is operated by agents for chinese scrap metal buyers.

It was a great economy for a couple hundred years, oh well.  Welcome to the scrap heap of history america.  Drive those SUVs right onto the pile headed to the ships.

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

What would you expect would be found?

Morganmghee wrote: include a comprehensive independent cancer rate study

What would you expect would be found? Are members of the French public exposed to ionization radiation from the French nuclear-power industry? If so, are there any reasons to believe that these levels of exposure are high?

Here is an abstract from a 2007 study on cancer and mortality rates among French nuclear workers:

External radiation exposure and mortality in a cohort of French nuclear workers.

Institut de Radioprotection et de Sûreté Nucléaire
[...]
METHODS: A cohort of 29 204 workers employed between 1950 and 1994 at the French Atomic Energy Commission (Commissariat à l'Energie Atomique (CEA)) or at the General Company of Nuclear Fuel (COmpagnie GEnérale des MAtières nucléaires (Cogema, now Areva NC)) was followed up for an average of 17.8 years.
[...]
RESULTS: The mean exposure to X and gamma radiation was 8.3 mSv (16.9 mSv for exposed worker population). A total of 1842 deaths occurred between 1968 and 1994. A healthy worker effect was observed, the number of deaths in the cohort being 59% of the number expected from national mortality statistics. Among the 21 main cancer sites studied, a statistically significant excess was observed only for skin melanoma, and an excess of borderline statistical significance was observed for multiple myeloma. A dose-effect relationship was observed for leukaemia after exclusion of chronic lymphoid leukaemia (CLL). The relative risk observed for non-CLL leukaemia, n = 20, was 4.1 per 100 mSv (90% CI 1.4 to 12.2), linear model and 2.2 per 100 mSv (90% CI 1.2 to 3.3), log-linear model. Significant dose-effect relationship were also observed for causes of deaths associated with alcohol consumption: mouth and pharynx cancer, cirrhosis and alcoholic psychosis and external causes of death.
[...]
CONCLUSION: The risk of leukaemia increases with increasing exposure to external radiation; this is consistent with published results on other nuclear workers cohorts.

PMID: 17522135

Do you believe that members of the French public are exposed to more ionization radiation than are French nuclear-industry workers?

Call the LA Times !!....Even clean Geothermal is radioactive !!  TENORM and NORM (naturally occuring radioactive materials) are being extracted in Imperial Valley !! Stop the press.
TENORM and Geothermal in Imperial Valley, CA

Millions of tons of NORM created worldwide in mining industry, oil and gas !!!...
NORM - What is it?

Run for cover !!..we're all going to die !!!

Radon Gas in thousands of US Homes ..Oh no !!(thousands of cancer related deaths all over the US yearly)
Radon: a radioactive gas, but do you want it in your home?

Lesson learned:  Even God doesn't create a perfect world ..Risk needs to be weighed appropriately in any human endeavor.

Radiation surrounds us. Live with it. Develop sensors to protect us and feel safer(even in cell phones if it makes you happy). Create new industries to help do so.  We do have the technology and brains to do it smartly.

-JChan

Put billions of gallons of scarce fresh water down deep wells into cracks in hot rocks and the water is contaminated.

Geo heat exchange can eliminate 36% of GHG by heating and cooling buildings without combustion.  And it doesn't use up our water supply doing it.

Forget water inttensive energy like nuclear or coal too.  Just no way to make it work.  

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

Why no data to back this up drx?

The average American lifestyle uses 1,550 watts, 37.2 kWh / day / per person.
If all that power came from nuclear with an average consumption of 0.5 gal / kWh (page 38)

http://www.netl.doe.gov/technologies/coalpower/ewr/pubs/D ...

 it would evaporate 18.6 gallons per day, 6,790 gal / year.

In year 2000 the U.S. used 408 billion gallons of water per day.

http://pubs.usgs.gov/circ/2004/circ1268/

Assuming a population of 295 million that is an average of 1,380 gal / day / person, of which the electrical share would be about 1.3% if it all came from nuclear.

Contrast that with corn ethanol which needs 10,000 gallons of water to produce the energy equivalent of  8 gallons of gasoline, page 54 of the pdf.

Filling a 20 gallon tank with E-85 one time consumes enough water to make all of your electricity for two years with nuclear power.

But, many nuclear plants are located on coastlines and use the ocean as a heat sink which is effectively unlimited and consumes no fresh water. Plants located near the discharge of rivers don't count since the water discharges into the ocean before it has time to evaporate. So the average evaporation rate for our nuclear plants is significantly less than calculated above.

If we mass produce floating nuclear plants they will use sea water for cooling and they can desalinate sea water. Also note on the chart, page 38 of the pdf, that dry nuclear is an option.

Drx, your really a pro nuclear guy who just says these things to bring out nuclear's advantages, right?


Things Everybody Should Know About Energy

You wouldn't happen to be using Open Loop Cooling for those evaporation numbers, now would you?

-David Ahlport

"
http://greyfalcon.net/nuclearwater.png
You wouldn't happen to be using Open Loop Cooling for those evaporation numbers, now would you?
"

Middle of the page, 400-720 gal/MWhe. I used 500 gal/MWhe, 0.5 gal/kWhe, for a cooling tower. Of course I could have used 0.4 gal/ MWhe for open loop or 0.0 gal/MWhe for dry nuclear just below it. Thanks for the excellent reference.

When a nuclear plant withdraws a million gallons of water from a river, a million gallons of warm water goes back into the river, actually a little more since water expands when heated, but the same mass.

When a farmer withdraws a million gallons of water from a river to irrigate his corn, none of it comes back hopefully, because any runoff will be contaminated with fertilizer, salt and insecticide.


Things Everybody Should Know About Energy

Waterless nukes would take deaceds to test and would be much more expensive than other cleaner sources like wind and solar backed up with hydro and farm/waste biogas distributed generation.

You nuclear advocates have already lost the race in terms of water, safety, cost, financing, NIMBYism...  and on and on.

You now need to beg for a chance to build a few experimental reactors to try and come up with a miracle waste eating, proliferation risk free, earthquake, terrorism risk free, easily decommisioned...on and on,  type of reactor.

Good luck convincing tax payers to finance that.  It's gonna be rough.  eventually midnight pork projects will do the trick though.  Nuclear pigs (lobbyists and regulators)are the biggest porkers in DC.

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

" You nuclear advocates have already lost the race... "

Lost to what? What is your grand plan to replace all fossil and nuclear power? Show us a cost estimate for reliable, dispatchable, affordable, 365 day per year power.


Things Everybody Should Know About Energy

1. No Price Anderson, no limitation on liability. Let the financial markets determine how much insurance they want to require before lending in such circumstance and the insurance markets determine what they are willing to insure.

2. No "start-up" costs subsidies, no "you turn over the waste to government in return for a fixed fee" subsidies. Make the nuke industry assume liability for all waste costs - no trust fund, with government guarantees that costs won't exceed that.  Any other power industries with their waste disposal currently subsidized gets that eliminated too.

3. The nuke industry and all  industries pay fees covering worker and community deaths. If uranium mining and radiation leakage and waste disposal and so on is safe compared to other fuel sources, or you can use better doesn't devastate communities, well - then that is a competitive advantage for  you.

5) Because we want to transition to a low carbon economy as quickly as possible I would replace th current 2 cents per kWh subsidy for renewable electricy with a 2.5 cents per kWh subsidy - but make it technology neutral. 2.5 cents per kWh for any electricity generated with net emissions less than 5% of the most efficient natural gas plants. This must be demonstrated on a net energy basis - including uranium processing and waste disposal for nukes, enegy in embedded steel, glass, copper, plastic, silicon, rare earths and so for solar and wind. (Net energy would be considered in the natural gas case too, though I don't think it would make much difference.)  Guarantee this 2.5 cents per kWh for 20 years. (Such a guarantee is not absolute of course, but at least it has to be repealed to get rid of it rather than automatically expiring.)

If you are confident that nuclear can beat solar and wind and renewables in a fair competition you ought to jump to endorse this.

How could or would the "deaths" causation assessments be made? Are you referring to LLE calculations? To whom or toward what would the fees go? What effects would the fee-payments have on the costs of electricity and on worker wages/salaries?

With the human/social/political factor playing a major part, prediction is problematic, and really unecessary anyway.  The proper incentives will allow the whole scenario to play itself out given a leveling of the energy playing field.

But I do know it is a much better alternative than nuclear power in it's present state.  on every level, financial, environmental, GHG, economic revival, whatever metric you want to examine.

If nuclear power could make some huge brealthrough over the next 10 years fine, but that would have to be demonstrated and tested before rolling it out.  putting us 10 years down the GHG climate disaster path.  What if it doesn't pan out?  No solution?  that is unacceptable.

We have all the technologies needed for this energy revolution now, we must get on with it.  Energy storage grid backup can be taken care of with distributed biogas power generation.

The nuclear industry/government revolving door leadership has had decades to fix the problems with nuclear energy, but they haven't even aknowledged there are any.  So how can these problems be fixed by these denialists?

You apparently see no problem with nuclear power either.  So there it is.  A fine mess nuclear power has gotten itself into.  You need to convince wall street, the public, and politicians.  That will take more wool pulling than we have seen so far on the part of nuclear advocates.

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

Institut de Radioprotection et de Sûreté Nucléaire appears to be as politically effected as our own EPA and other regulatory agencies, I did request an indisputable organization. From this I would expect facts unhindered by political manipulation. http://www.euradcom.org/2005/irsn.htm

From this: "comprehensive independent cancer rate study" I infer and expect the same.

From the study you cite, and the response I read to a study from the same source, I expect that if they say there is 'slightly higher risk' they really probably mean considerable risk. Something like the Chinese insisting that a collection of hundreds of scientists wanting to state they were 99 percent certain global warming is caused by humans instead state they were 'more than 90 percent certain'. (Kyoto negotiations 2007)

If people are sick and tired of breathing, eating and drinking in pollution from fossil fuels, I don't think you are going to get them to agree to breath, eat and drink radioactive pollution from nuclear energy once they have the actual facts.

I expect what will be found are insufficient methods to contain waste, a human error factor too high considering the risks and a total monetary cost that could fund other, cleaner forms of energy.  I expect that yes, People in France are subjected to higher than average radiation levels, that in fact that does result in higher than average cancer levels and that in fact they have not been given the full facts on the matter to determine if the benefits are worth the risk.

Denmark and Germany are paying 20-30 cents per kWh

http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/international/elecprih.html

due to subsidies for impractical technology, and get most of their electricity from fossil fuel.

At 20 cents per kWh a 1.5 GW nuc plant will earn $1.8 billion per year. If the plant cost a whopping $10 billion, it would pay itself off in less then 10 years, and then produce power for about 2 cents per kWh.

http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electricity/epa/epat8p2.html ...

Show me a cost estimate for a 1.5 GW solar or wind plant with reliable dispatchable power and a 0.95 capacity factor. Now show me a cost estimate for the same plant east of the Mississippi river.

Power Point technology is almost always better than proven technology, but in this case, 1970 nuclear reactor technology is a bargain even at the highest cost estimates.


Things Everybody Should Know About Energy

theoildrum.com/node/3188#comment-259648

Eggplant on November 5, 2007 - 3:53pm
[...]
I think nuclear energy coupled with coal based synthetic petroleum is a meaningful short term response to Peak Oil. [...] We should have been converting over to nuclear energy and synthetic petroleum when President Carter first proposed it.