How many coal plants are being disassembled each week and replaced with this new technology.

Why are utilities all over the world still building coal plants instead of using your proposed technology?

For 20 years the U.S. completed 5 nuclear power plants a year, at a time when fossil fuel was abundant and cheap.  France ramped up to 80% in a similar time frame, and has some of the cheapest electricity in Europe.  What conditions make that impossible now, and why don't those conditions apply to other technologies?

Show us a cost estimate for a 1.5 GW solar or wind array with reliable dispatchable power and a 0.90 capacity factor. Now show us a cost estimate for an array east of the Mississippi river with the same specifications. How many such arrays are in operation now? Where can we review their actual performance, construction cost, O&M cost, reliability, emissions, capacity factor, life expectancy and cost per kWh?

Show us a cost and reliability estimate of the required grid for moving the energy from where wind and solar sources are best to where most people live.

Do you support a $90 billion per year R&D program, paid for with a fee of 2.25¢ per KWH, to develop new sources of energy all the way through at least one commercial size demonstration plant?  Wouldn't that be cheap insurance to ensure that we get the best technology possible?

Do you support creating a totally level playing field by including all externalities and deleting all subsidies for every energy source, and allowing prices to rise as necessary to meet the Demand?

Denmark has been pushing wind very hard since 1979.  It has the most expensive electricity in the world at about 40¢ per KWH, and yet it gets most of its electricity from fossil fuel, and exports a large percentage of its wind production when wind conditions are good?  If wind power is so cheap and easy to build, why are kilowatt hours in Denmark so much more expensive and carbon intensive than kilowatt hours in France?

Why do you think that other technologies have enormous room for improvement, while at the same time claiming that our primitive hand built first generation steroidal submarine reactors can not be improved upon?

Things Everybody Should Know About Energy

   So, we need some major public education,least the moans about increasing prices lead to wrong policies being demanded.

David, how come you never talk about Jevons' paradox?

David, you might ask why some of Lovins critics accuse him him of cherry picking data, and say that their reading of Lovins data sources lead them to very different conclusions than Lovins.  You might ask Lovins what he thinks of the criticisms of Joe Romm's latest "Nuclear Bomb" post on Salon, and why so many Salon readers trashed Romm's attack on nuclear power.  

David you might ask ask Lovins how long ago he started to predict that co-generation was the waver of the future, and what percentage of electrical power was produced by co-generation last year.

You might ask Lovins why after two decades of his predictions of the demise of nuclear power, new nuclear plants are being ordered.      

You might ask Lovins why his degree from Oxord is an MA, rather than a MSc, and whether he has earned an academic degree.  You might also ask him how he justifies the title of physicist, mentioned in many of his biography, if he never earned a degree in physics,  

Of course I know you are not going to ask any of these questions.  During your interview, you are going to be far to busy kissing Lovins hind end to ask him any pointed questions.

Charles Barton

Also, I heard your degree from the mid-'60s is not actually in physics. Explain, sir!

That's good stuff.

grist.org

"A Humanitarian Critique of Winning the Oil Endgame"

http://msrb.wordpress.com/selected-articles-and-links/win ...

But it's not until page 44 that Lovins gets to the heart of the matter: the monstrously large and deeply corrupt billions in loan guarantees that the U.S. government has been giving away to the relatively moribund and trough-sucking nuclear industry. The ante keeps getting upped, year after year; lending standards keep getting loosened; we taxpayers become liable for bigger and bigger potential losses with each new giveaway.

And yet the numbers still don't work. The private sector refuses to step up. And in response, the industry is asking for tens of billions more in guarantees.

As Lovins notes, this story is unknown among the American public. One reason is that many media outlets are owned by conglomerates that also own nuclear companies. Clearly this conflict of interest serves the U.S. public poorly. Lovins says,

To be sure, some leading newspapers have described nuclear regulatory and construction complications, and a few have mentioned that financing may present challenges. Yet the broader story -- an industry that is failing and unfinanceable despite wildly escalating subsidies, has been massively outpaced by competitors it doesn't even recognize, and is unable even in principle to deliver its claimed climate and security benefits -- remains virtually untold.

Questions:

1) Lovins says a primary reason nuclear plant construction costs more than wind and micropower is because of a shrinking talent pool. The same dynamic is at work in the oil industry, where the pool of qualified geologists and engineers is aging, retiring and shrinking. Is it possible the youth generation has read the writing on the wall, years ahead of regulators and big fossil/nuclear interests, and has jumped into the efficiency/micro/renewable sector instead?

2)Lovin's says micropower still has many barriers to fair competition. Here at Gristmill Sean Casten has made similar arguments. What the the priority policy changes that need to occur to make the competitive field for micropower a fair one?

3) The nuclear industry may try to use shock doctrine tactics to leverage peak oil and global warming fears among the populace into a stampede towards additional nuclear subsidies and supports. What are the chances it will be successful? Will the fossil fuel lobby ally with nuclear in that struggle or will it be an enemy? How can a distributed industry have the same political clout as a centralized industry?

Ped Shed Blog

Are you an advocate of Rate Decoupling?

http://www.uberpulse.com/us/2008/01/pge_wants_you_to_cons ...
http://www.narucmeetings.org/Presentations/Risser.pdf

-David Ahlport

What does he recommend may be a quick enough solution to address the climate change concerns?

The MIT paper (Deutch/ Moniz) The Future of Nuclear Power suggested the need for  a new reactor every two weeks from 2002 until 2050 to address the climate issue .. clearly this is not occurring. Decentralize... De corporatize.

Why does bill h insist on continuing the illusion that nuclear is a co2 free solution. Does he not consider the cfc 114 emitted in the enrichment at United States Enrichment at Paducah to be a far greater heat trapper and ozone destroyer than Co2?

Sure Co2 - zero. It must be great to externalize all the costs that serve as emissions sources.  Concrete and steel both are Co2 intensive to build, both are needed to create new reactors and to build ISFSIs (dry casks)

Enjoy your talk with him.

Are we still kicking a dead Brontosaurus?  Is there a concern that we may resuscitate this monster?

After which the winner would be compared on cost and safety to renewables, then and only then would new permits be considered.

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

How many coal plants are being disassembled each week and replaced with cogen and wind.

Why are utilities all over the world still building coal plants instead of building cogen and wind?

Show us a cost estimate for a 1.5 GW solar cogen or wind plant. How many such plants are in operation now? Where can we review their actual performance, construction cost, O&M cost, reliability, emissions, capacity factor, life expectancy and cost per kWh?

How many coal plants have been torn down and replaced by negawatts? (see, I read it).  

Things Everybody Should Know About Energy

Amory Lovins' numbers are deceptive because he insists renewables can scale just because his numbers show they're 'cheaper.'  That includes a crucial logical fallacy though of assuming that 1000MWh of delivered renewable energy is only 100 times as expensive as 10MWh, and just as reliable.  Otherwise (and so realistically), on a city-scale, his numbers are irrelevant.  

How Mr. Lovins accounts for this, and why he curiously implicitly assumes a flat marginal cost curve, are very fair and reasonable questions that you could ask as nicely as you like, David.  But we can go to Lovins' papers ourselves to just get his talking points.

-Max Epstein

After beating up on nuclear power with these articles, it would be a great time to introduce a moratorium on new nukes, along with throwing the industry (lobbyists, legislators, and shills) a nice, juicy bone.

A 10 year experimental reactor program.  It would be a cheap way to permanently retire nuclear power.

Flatly opposing all nukes is a loser politically, this compromise turns anti-nuclear into a winner in this election cycle and beyond, into the sweet spot for real energy policy reform.  The first 2 years of a Barack administration.

The jobs and economic growth impelled by a renewable/conservation energy stimulus package would give enough financial breathing room to quickly pass national healthcare too.  If these policies aren't finished before the next election cycle, a possible GOP majority in congress might block them for the first term.

And without that reform, would Barack's change message be believable in the second term election cycle?  Maybe not.

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

I just find it a little tedious that he endlessly repeats the same questions. Indeed it appears to be the only thing he comments on here. Fix the damned record!

His main question seems to revolve around the "why hasn't [insert renewable generation technology here] replaced any [insert conventional generation technology here] power stations?"

I can suggest an answer: it's mostly because the renewables industry is up against the largest, most deeply entrenched, heavily subsidised and well connected industry on earth.

And yet many of these entrenched industries aren't growing while renewables are seeing sustained double digit growth rates.  

And this is even before we've got even vaguely serious with these technologies.

It's my understanding that efficiencies of scale would generally mean that renewables would cost less per MWh the bigger the installed base got. Why would scale make renewables more expensive?

And on scale: there's no question that there's enough renewable energy available to power the entire U.S. (sunlight alone would do it). It's a matter of harvesting it and getting it to where it's needed (i.e., transmission). It may well be that the cost is prohibitive, but I don't understand why there would be the absolute limit on scale you and Bill seem to be implying. Perhaps you can clarify.

grist.org

The resource base is existing commodities of steel, concrete, and glass - worked with existing tooling and labor skills.  The speed of scale-up is just the time required for educational growth and such can spread virally around the world very quickly.  

The rising costs of historical energy sources are the drivers.  Jobs, income and profits are the motivators.  

RMI is not an environmental organization.  They look at numbers.  Their conclusions are not complicated by emotions and tribal loyalties.

You obviously haven't read their latest paper. The paper is filled with adjectives and adverbs like zealous, hopelessly uneconomic, grossly uncompetitive, and obsolete. And he accuses the nuclear industry of misleading everyone "into a sham." This is all on the first page. How is that not emotional? If facts were really on their side, then they wouldn't have to amplify their claims with so many adjectives and adverbs.

Lovins speak does seem the energize the nuclear base against him, with much emotion.

And yet there are 104 nuclear reactors operating in the U.S. and 439 in the world.

"Lovins speak does seem the energize the nuclear base against him, with much emotion."

You're telling me you wouldn't get emotional if Lovins accuses your industry of misleading the world. Why don't you read my post and then decide if you believe many of his numbers.

first, again, a disclaimer that I am by no means against wind power or renewables in general.  My only issue is that I think it is disingenuous or naive to ignore the issue of scaling up to deliver a large amount of power within a relatively small land area - which is exactly what you need to do to power a city.  And you couldn't get people to abandon cities even if you wanted to, which you don't, because cit-dwellers' carbon footprints are smaller.  So, on powering a city with renewables...

T Boone Pickens' much heralded planned 4,000MW (4GW) wind farm will take up 200,000 acres of some of the best wind real estate in the country, likely the world.  All news reports say 'expected to power 1.3 million homes,' which would be about an effective 1.3GW.  This is what you could get on 12 acres for a nuclear power plant.
http://www.mms.gov/omm/pacific/kids/Power-Your-City/bookm ...
(US Minerals and Management Service, Dept. of Interior)

The state of Connecticut, for comparison, is 3,211,520 Acres (5,018 sq. miles X 640 Acres per sq mile)
http://www.ct.gov/ctportal/cwp/view.asp?a=843&q=24643 ...

So for a little over an effective GW (w/ capacity factor) you need an area 1/15 the size of Connecticut.  So you'd need to cover most of Connecticut with windmills to be able to provide power to NYC in the summer.  Not NY, just the city and Long Island.

This is why economics of renewables aren't necessarily scalable - as long as you're just putting up a little project, you can find some pretty windy-sunny and undeveloped (cheap) land to build on.  If you want to carry a major load, you're just gonna run outta land - you're gonna find that you need to move onto land that isn't sufficiently windy-sunny, or onto land where people have built houses, which would make land acquisition costs skyrocket.  

The land factor is something that totally doesn't play in now but will in a big way if you ever try and scale up to a point where it would make a difference in energy contribution.  

-Max Epstein

There is an easy way to stop the record.  Just provide a serious answer to the questions.

Intermittent energy sources rely on existing power plants to provide free backup battery service and to cover seasonal variations.  For wind and solar to provide a large fraction of our energy these things must be included in the cost estimate along with a huge expansion of transmission capacity.

When all of these costs are included it becomes obvious that intermittent sources cannot do the job.

What I really do not understand is why anybody would be opposed to a massive R & D project to develop the best technology possible, followed by a totally level playing field to select the best energy supply system.

Things Everybody Should Know About Energy

The obvious problems with nuclear power are mainly overlooked with media and politicians using the same old false dilemna fallacy:  "It's nuclear or coal fired GHG disaster, renewables are impractical".

Then there's the concentration fallacy, it "takes up too much land".  Wind does not "take up" land, it occupies a very small footprint for the tower base, service roads and extra power cables.

All the solar power we need can be mounted on buildings, including solar furnace installations on factories with mirrors over parking areas.

How much land does uranium mining and processing, waste disposal and storage, nuclear plants themselves, and the leaking into groundwater from nuclear facilities take up?  As in render permanently contaminated.  That water travels outward underground flowing into rivers like the Ohio, Mississippi, Colorado and Columbia.

Those adjectives RMI uses pale in comparison to the ones I often feel like using when I read yet more dangerous nonsense like this from nuclear advocates.  

Whay say you on the compromise?  A moratorium on new nuclear power reactors, except for a 10 year experimental program to try and solve the many problems with the present state of nuclear power.  We would be willing to give it a chance, despite all the criminal negligence of past.  

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

Renewables other than windpower, not yet counted, also have immense potential. Solar
technologies aren't resource-limited nor even, in practice, area-limited. For example, on conservative
assumptions, just a 100×100-mile area of Nevada--less than one-fourth the nation's
paved road and street area--containing 10%-efficient photovoltaics in half its area could annually
produce as much electricity as the United States uses. In practice, of course, PVs would be
building-integrated, rooftop-mounted, and built into parking-lot shades, alongside highways, etc.
to avoid marginal land-use and to produce the power near the load, and PVs would be complemented
by other renewable sources (wind, geothermal, small hydro, etc.).

Nobody could object to that anodyne phrasing, could they?

Thing is, nuclear is a mature industry, over 30 years old now. It's been receiving massive subsidies for 30 years and has a record of massive cost overruns, safety violations, unexpected downtime, etc. Why, after 30 years, should we keep spending billions in public money on it?

I'd love a completely level playing field, but it would help if nuke proponents started admitting subsidies are subsidies. On a genuinely level playing field, nuclear would vanish with nary a trace. Private capital won't finance it, so without gov't support, it's gone.

But yes: level playing field. Please!

grist.org

First off, a truly level playing field would have to assume some sort of cap on carbon, or other non-trivial carbon price.  The lack of one is effectively a massive subsidy to fossil fuel plants for a free waste dump on the public commons.  

So, lets take Lieberman-Warner as an example, specifically because it imposed a substantial price on carbon without any sort of further support of nuclear (despite the current amendment push).  The "high cost" case of the EIA model (which is of the bill as reported out of committee - which assumes 50% extra cost for nuclear, coal with CCS, and next generation biomass - predicts over 80 new nuclear plants to go online by 2030.  Now if you look into the details, which I won't really go into now, even the "high cost" assumptions are fairly optimistic.  Maybe not in the long run, but definitely on not accounting for regulatory/industrial bottlenecks that will be inevitable in the short run.  But still, taking that number down to 30 or so would certainly be reasonable, and its hard to argue that any source that would provide 30 new GW of capacity (at very high capacity factor) over 18 years (2012-2030) is a marginal contributor or uneconomic.

But the model's methodology also was overoptimistic in terms of renewables for a crucial reason.  It assumed a flat 15% increase in cost of materials, for all power sources, over the life of the model (to 2030).  So solar and wind, which are very capital intensive per kwh (they just get built really small), and require way more steel, aluminum, copper per kwh, all of which would rise very much with a significant price on carbon, will run into that impediment not considered by the model.  This will affect nuclear more than coal/nat gas, but considerably less than wind/solar.  So obviously, that which hinders renewables helps nuclear's market share in a carbon-capped economy.    

So a truly level playing field would actually see a clear surge in nuclear power by private industry.  This is why nuclear opponents, who really oppose the plants for other reasons, should try and lay off the Amory Lovins cool aid of  'incurable market forces' because it just makes them look foolish and lose credibility when the market turns to nuclear in a big way, once a price is put on carbon.  Which is what we all insist is a truly level playing field, right?    

-Max Epstein

And of course the land area needed by renewables is a lot less than coal. Some people asked in comments why I bothered comparing the land area of solar electricity to coal electricity. And here comes Max8806 invoking the tired old myth I just refuted.

Wind power is over 300 years old and operates close to maximum theoretical efficiency.  Our steroidal submarine reactors split about 1% of the uranium mined to fuel them.  When was the last experimental commercial nuclear power reactor built in the United States?  The evolution of technology is not measured by the passage of time.

Americans spend about $400,000,000,000 a year on electricity.  The R.&D. money spent over the last 30 years is just a token, far less than the tax revenues government earned on nuclear power and other energy sources.

The world is still running on an abundant supply of fossil fuel and will continue to do so for many years.  If we wait until we actually run out of fossil fuel the cost in dollars and human suffering will be tremendous.

" On a genuinely level playing field, nuclear would vanish with nary a trace. Private capital won't finance it, so without gov't support, it's gone. "

This statement assumes that there is some better technology that can produce enormous amounts of reliable high capacity low emission baseload power at an affordable cost when fossil fuel runs out.  What is that technology?

Nuclear will only go away if there is a better technology to take its place, and I would be happy with that.  So let's all agree to call for a big R.&D.  push to develop the best technology, and a totally level playing field.

Things Everybody Should Know About Energy

The land area requirements for coal and for solar are different in a crucial respect though.  Despite the huge land area requirements (as described in your post which I saw a while ago and liked a lot), coal can still transport its energy from far off cheap lands to the markets in the East far more efficiently than PV cells or wind turbines.  That's because coal is transported as a solid commodity with relatively little energy waste, while PV or wind turbines in Nevada/Kansas must transfer their energy one electron at a time.  This leads to real problems of efficiency/waste if you try and transport those electrons very far.

That's why the land requirements for renewables, even if on an absolute scale are less than coal, nevertheless are significant.  (This is not to deny that coal's effect on land use is devastating, and their waste dump of not just CO2, but solid waste into streams etc is a horrible distortionary subsidy they should not have).  But if you are going to power NYC by renewables, you have to actually set them up fairly near NYC.

And the point about my land use numbers are that even if you build right next to NYC, you end up stretching pretty far away.  And then the real point even then is that if you want to power not just one (albeit major) city, but the NE region, which has lots and lots of cities, you're talking about extending across such an enormous amount of land, that you end up really really far away.  Which leads to the same problems of waste in transmission and/or needs for incredible investment in super-efficient transmission that renewables' traditional advocates, for distributed generation, harp on as being so damning for the whole system of central generation.

So its worth noting that in one sense, as distributed generation (which should by all means be pursued, and a lot could be done by reforming net metering laws without even spending extra public money) renewables make a substantial contribution to this problem, renewables as baseload would exacerbate those problems.  

So the main point here is that the economics of renewables, if you're considering making any inroads into baseload power supply, have to be upfront about including massive overhaul of transmission.  This is like oh, just run a line to the offshore station, or the wind blows harder two towns over and there's no line.  No, if you want to contribute to baseload you need to tap resources so far away from markets that you need to fundamentally revolutionize those lines themselves, not just shell out a bit to lay down more of them.

-Max Epstein

Wrong again.  At least you are consistent.

Distributed generation and storage actually reduces the amount of transmission capacity needed, so much so that the present grid has up to 5 times the capacity a renewable distributed smart grid would need.

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

The two questions are different, and each environmental activist should ask himself the second question honestly.  

We will call a technology successful if it completely replaces our dependence on oil and coal, even before half the current reserves are depleted. Now imagine if such a technology exists, what would be the reaction of big-oil or big-coal towards it. It will be one of pure horror as this new technology will essentially lay waste their cash cows. Big-oil and big-coal will try their best to delay the adoption of such new technology, atleast as long as they can milk their cash cows, not withstanding the pain to humanity and the damage to the environment. Big-oil will try to subvert the minds of the population spreading FUD against such technology. If you look at the political and economic lobbying power of big-oil, you will soon realize that it is the largest in the world.

This is what we environmentalists are fighting against.

Now to the question of such an alternative technology to completely replace coal/oil, yes it exists, right now. It is called nuclear fission. Even the harshest critics agree that, with breeder reactors, this technology can serve humanity for several thousand years. Optimists put the figure at several million years.

This is not to say that nuclear fission is the best possible answer. It cannot be, and humanity will doubtless come up with ingenious answers, as soon as within a couple of centuries.

But, we cannot afford to burn oil and coal and pollute the thin film of our atmosphere with C02 in this period. Big-oil and big-coal want us to do that.

Let's use wind, let's use solar. But if there is still oil/coal getting burnt, it means we are not true to the challenge upon us.

It should be our dream to make coal/oil obsolete within the next couple of decades. This is why we need nuclear energy, and we need it right now.

Please ask Mr.Lovins how he thinks his numbers will scale up to this mammoth task, and how he can afford to avoid nuclear energy.

If he avoids giving a satisfactory answer, I have reason to suspect that his hands are wet with oil.  

If you tried to use renewables then as baseload (like massive wind or PV farms) for that amount of power requirement you would stretch so far away that you would introduce even worse transmission losses than we currently have.  Which again, can be helped by distributed generation micropower but that still doesn't make it the whole answer.    

-Max Epstein

The old "snapshot" fallacy.  Based on the notion that someone is suggesting that a renewable distributed generation and storage smart grid can majically replace the present centralized fossil and nuclear power grid overnight.  Or that plugin hybrid vehicles (bikes and cars), electric mass transit, and methane flex fuel trucks, tractors, and trains can replace gas guzzling next week.

No it will take the next couple of decades.  But that will be fast enough to save the economy and the human friendly climate of planet earth.

Because renewable/conservation energy re-evolution will take decades, is not a reason not to do it.  It's nice to have enough breathing room to get the job done.  

But that breathing room is running out, largely due to delay and diversion.  This sort of argument, namely the snapshot fallacy, is one of the most popular diversionary tactics.

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

Buildings provide the space for massive PV solar cogeneration.  Urban or rural buildings.  A study of San Diego County, for instance, found that 53% of grid power could come from PV installed on suitable roof space.  

This really works great with urban buildings, because as the surface area of a building increases, the volume inside the building increases exponentially.  Meaning that many more people can be kept comfortable inside a bigger building with less heating/cooling power use.

Add in geo heat exchange heating/cooling and conservation brings the power needs down, way down.

Use more efficient solar pV/heat cogeneration and the 53% increases to meet the lower demand, and even surpass it.  Making San Diego County a potential net renewable electricity exporting area.

This is without the huge wind and wave power potential in the area, and biogas backup power potential.  I think with these technologies, almost every county would be a potential het exporter of power.

Another thing, wind power is going up on tall urban buildings, making use of the wind stream way up there.  Chicago, the windy city, is getting a wind farm on it's roofs.

These wild green skyscrapers could power a city too.  Green power tower skyscrapers.

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog/_archives/2008/6/3/3 ...

(Hey Amory do you need a blogger at RMI?  I telecommute, hehey)

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

http://www.ucei.berkeley.edu/PDF/csemwp176.pdf
Even taking into account that solar cells produce power when it is most valuable (day as opposed to night, especially hot summer days), and that they produce power at the end user - reducing need for investment in transmission infrastructure and saving energy lost in transmission...

the benefit in greenhouse gas reduction for the California project of installing solar cells would have to be valued at $300-$600 per ton of CO2-equivalent averted to make it a worthwhile investment.  

I'm not preaching doom or abandoning renewables, but we don't do any good by exaggerating their promise either.  Especially when it means categorically rejecting an alternative clean baseload supply (nuclear).

-Max Epstein

There's enough land with plentiful sunlight and wind in the U.S. to provide us all the power we use, many times over. Cost may be a legitimate complaint, but land is not.

Oh, and the intermittency argument is bogus as well, but I'll leave that for the interview.

grist.org

1.b) There are advantages and disadvantages for every power source, and intermittency is likely to cap wind as an optimal source of power at somewhere between 20 and 40% of KWH market share.

1.c) Solar is about 10 years behind wind in ramping up, and is starting from a relatively small base, such that it will be some years before it can start displacing coal.  Further, it has an optimal market share limit, like wind.

2. Hansen says we need to move faster than that, and I think most climatologists agree that would be desirable (even if they disagree on the urgency).

3.  US Natural gas production is stagnant, and there is a real risk that it will fall in the coming years (conventional is falling fast, and unconventional is straining to replace it, at high cost).

4. Electrical demand is likely to increase for PHEV/EV's, heat pumps, and other electrical replacements for fossil fuels.

5. Nuclear is low-CO2, on the rough order of wind and solar.

6. Every KWH not displaced by wind, solar, nuclear, and other low-CO2 sources is likely to come from coal.

7. There is some overlap between the resources needed for wind & solar vs nuclear, but some resources do not overlap (especially personnel), and we are likely to get more low-CO2 generation if we include nuclear in our array of sources.

8. Diversity of power sources is desirable.

9) We need every low-CO2 source we can get, and we should not discourage nuclear.

David, where would we disagree?

So the first order of business is getting serious about efficiency, both upstream (in generating power) and downstream (in using it).

On renewables, intermittency is a red herring. First off, we're a long, long way from 40%, so it's academic. Second, we will have a diversified system -- on and offshore (and maybe high-altitude) wind, solar PV, solar thermal, geothermal, maybe some biomass -- so that when one source is idle another is producing. Add storage; add demand response; add intelligence to the grid. And remember, all power sources need backup, and indeed there's sh*tloads of backup for our current sources, already built and paid for. So intermittency, if it ever becomes a practical problem at all, won't do so for many years, and I'd bet dimes to dollars it never will.

The "we need everything" notion is plausible on the surface but doesn't survive close examination. Think of it this way: I have $1 to spend on carbon abatement. What's the maximum abatement I could get from that dollar? OK, that's where I spend it. Then I have another dollar. Same question. Same answer.

If, during the course of spending those dollars, the answer to the question is never "nuclear," then why should I spend any dollars on nuclear? The goal is not diversity, the goal is abatement. Diversity is almost certainly a means to abatement, but sticking an expensive, slow, subsidy-dependent source in the mix for diversity's sake makes no sense.

I am not, contra the cartoonish claims above in this thread, against nuclear on an ideological basis. If it ever becomes the answer to the question referenced above, then I'd be happy to go for it. But it hasn't. The real debate here is whether to dump many billions more of taxpayer money on it, which I would view as a horrendous waste that we can ill afford at this juncture.

grist.org

Like I said before, I acknowledge there's a ton of excellent land for wind in that belt going North from West Texas.  What I keep trying to point out is that that's not anywhere near the North East.  So if you want to power the region, with all its metropolitan areas, you can't do it by setting up wind farms right in the area.  They would stretch ridiculously far away.  So if you're going to rely on that wind belt, you have to admit that you need a major revolutionary change in transmission to allow for transporting power electron by electron halfway across the country without losing too much to waste.  In that sense, its not just adding a line, its revolutionizing the performance of that line, and many others.  And if you want to rely then on wind power as baseload for the North East, you need to internalize the cost of revolutionizing the grid in that way into the cost of relying on wind/solar for that baseload.

I'll be interested to hear how the intermittency argument is bogus as well.

-Max Epstein

What I keep trying to point out is that that's not anywhere near the North East.

Apparently the North East is actually one of the most ideal areas in the country for offshore wind.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_England
http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/rea/news/podcast;jses ...

-David Ahlport

I agree.  That seems to go to my question about parallelism, below.

"if it ever becomes a practical problem at all, won't do so for many years"

Well, I included that as one might ask if we could ramp up renewables well before the end of life for nuclear, and it seems to me that nuclear would still have some value even at that point.  It's a secondary question, I guess.

"What's the maximum abatement I could get from that dollar? OK, that's where I spend it."

Does that really make sense?  We don't do it that way now: we invest in efficiency, wind, solar, etc all at the same time.

Further, what about what I said about overlap in resources?  There is some overlap between the resources needed for wind & solar vs nuclear, but some resources do not overlap (especially personnel), and we are likely to get more low-CO2 generation if we include nuclear in our array of sources.

There is a limit to how much wind, solar, efficiency, etc we can do cost-effectively at any one time.  Exceed that maximum, and marginal costs will start rising very quickly.

I certainly agree that we can't rely on nuclear primarily - it would run into the same problems of marginal cost, and fairly quickly.  But leaving it out entirely seems like a mistake.

"sticking an expensive, slow, subsidy-dependent source in the mix for diversity's sake makes no sense"

Well, wind and solar can't eliminate coal before new nuclear would arrive, so "slow" isn't so important - the real question is cost. It's not clear to me why or if nuclear is so expensive.  If we got serious about a relatively large nuclear build (say, more than 10 plants) with standardized designs, wouldn't cost be likely to be reasonable?

16
 M. Wald, "Plan to Build Reactors Is Running Into Hurdles," N.Y. Times, 5 Dec 2007,
www.nytimes.com/2007/12/05/business/05nuke.html. So far, of three firms seeking U.S. licenses to build and run
five reactors, one firm wants more than a dozen significant changes to a preapproved design, and two propose de-
signs not yet finally approved. A fourth firm has ordered parts for a plant whose design isn't yet even submitted to
regulators. Regulators had hoped for just 2-3 standard designs, but there are already five with more on the way.

I would love to be proven wrong and have offshore wind power the NE.  Somehow I'm just a little skeptical.  What would be a great first step though would be if the very well off up at Cape Cod let the offshore wind farm go through up there, instead of fretting about how ugly it would be.  I think that would contribute a lot to our projections of offshore wind, not to mention that project's pretty crucial to Mass reaching its renewable portfolio mandate, as I understand it.  

To go back to the point that its worthless arguing energy economics without assuming some cap/price on carbon - every model of Lieberman Warner assumes reliance on nuclear.  Even the High Cost case from EIA (which is high cost for nuclear, and ccs, but not for renewables) assumes 88GW of new nuclear capacity by 2030.  Which is set against 232GW of new renewables, which I freely admit.  I'd also like to point out the EIA core case projects over twice as many new nukes as new renewables capacity, which I never quote because I think the assumptions going into that model are untenable.

I just don't get the argument that nuclear is hopelessly uneconomic, and always will be, when all evidence indicates that changes once you cap carbon.  Especially given the empirical evidence of the recent significant action by many companies on preparing new orders, just in anticipation of a coming carbon price.

-Max Epstein

The point is that nuclear's real competitors (micropower and efficiency) are already kicking its ass, and will be equally advantaged by a price on carbon, and thus will continue kicking its ass.

Also, there have been companies applying for licenses -- aka getting in line for subsidies -- but the thing to look at is whether any plants have been financed by private capital. Lovins says no, and I haven't seen anybody offering evidence to the contrary.

grist.org

But do we really want to do only micropower and efficiency, in the face of a AGW emergency?

"the thing to look at is whether any plants have been financed by private capital"

Loan guarantees aren't investments.  If a private company puts up it's own money, and gets a guarantee, it's still putting up private money, it's just reducing it's risk.  It still is risking very real opportunity costs - god knows how long it would take to get reimbursed by guarantees, and they're not likely to pay interest.

Price-Anderson and guarantees are similar - they socialize most of the risk - but the investments are still private.

For example, if a home buyer gets an VA guaranteed loan, this is still a private buyer.

Nuclear's competitors will not be equally advantaged from a price on carbon for a couple reasons.  First, the increase in cost of steel, aluminum, and copper (being emissions intensive themselves) will hit renewables way harder than nuclear.  This is not taken into account by the EIA model btw.  Second, renewables currently need some quickly adjustable backup to provide the balance of their contracted power sale when they're blowing/sunning below what they've contracted to deliver.  For the foreseeable future this will be supplied by fossil fuels, mostly gas, which will also go up in cost considerably under a cap.  Both because of the price of carbon, and supply tightening as fuel switching from coal to gas occurs.

Amory Lovins drinks too much of his own kool aid.  I always temper this with praise for whatever interest he gins up in efficiency and renewables, which is definitely good.  But his analysis is consistently skewed.  David Bradish's link to his post was new but hardly surprising information.

But considering you just linked to an article on         the renewed interest in nuclear, I don't get how you stand behind this 'death by incurable market forces' nonsense he pushes.  And the issue of lack of regulatory staff to oversee new plant designs is largely attributable to the political opposition by greens themselves.  So congratulations, I guess.  You create the same ills you complain about.  Same thing with loan guarantees.  Price-Anderson was from the beginning, but loan guarantees (and correct me if I'm wrong, though on a more authoritative source than Amory Lovins if you're gonna) are a relatively new addition(EPAct2005/7), due to the cost and schedule overruns of the last batch that went up.  Which were in many cases as due to excessive litigation/protesting as any engineering issues, though there were of course issues of that as well.  

-Max Epstein

Your harping on nuclear's subsidies is not because nuclear is subsidized more than renewables (per energy delivered, which it is most certainly not)

What you're saying would only be relevant if the entire nuclear power industry was built in the year 2007.

Comparing the kWh capacity built up over the course of a half century, to ONLY the money it received in 2007, and using that as your benchmark for subsidies is completely dishonest.  And you know it.

-David Ahlport

I can't keep making this argument to you, I keep doing it and you just keep ignoring it.  Just because the subsidies aren't as warped as that one figure would suggest (which I keep saying they are) doesn't mean they're warped the other way either.  I didn't say in my post to David that renewables gets 13x more subsidies than nuclear.  I made a qualitative assessment based on a heavily appropriately discounted number, along with a lot more reading than I'm sure you've done further into those numbers.

Price-Anderson doesn't kick in until 10 billion in private insurance is exhausted (at least by now), I would be surprised if its ever been invoked, certainly not more than a couple times.  Even for TMI, which was what, a few billion?  Loan guarantees are a recent addition.  1.7 Production tax credit is only for the next few plants that go up, and wasn't available to any of the past ones.  And loan guarantees are as much due to the green lobbyists/obstructionists as anything.

You keep insisting that because I gave the caveat that the 1.4 to 24 number wasn't perfect, that it must be off by greater 13x.  You give no evidence that it is, just, its not perfect therefore we must draw the exact opposite conclusion.  Furthermore, most of nuclear's subsidies are R&D, whereas for renewables (though I wish they got more R&D) the numbers are more direct payments/tax credits.

If you're not gonna listen to what I write ever, the least you can do is stop hounding me to answer your same old tired accusation.

-Max Epstein

Global warming is being used as an excuse
for many agendas. The longest lived polluting
agent is nuclear power. Comparing mortality
will not make you less dead! Don't be fooled
again!

The aim of nuclear power is to make plutonium
239 for atom bombs and create the BIG STICK
of political might. Electricity is made from the
heat which makes steam and turns the electric
turbines. The trick is to make you pay for your
own doomsday!

Nuclear terms are designed to confuse the
public mind. Nuclear waste...is not waste!
Spent fuel....is not spent,  but actually more
radioactive coming out then going in as fresh
fuel. Depleted uranium ordinance is illegal
under the Geneva Convention and etc.

There is 'off the shelf' science that can reduce
plutonium 239 to zero radioactivity and produce
electricity from the heat. In 1979, after the Three
Mile Island accident, Dr. Radha R. Roy invented
the Roy Process for neutralizing nuclear waste .
It became an AP world wide news story.

Then president Ronald Reagan signed,  "The 1982
Nuclear Waste Policy Act" which made geologic
isolation federal law! This put alternatives like  
cost effective photon transmutation in limbo.

All one can do now is stop nuclear power from
getting worse. Albert Einstein once said, "Nuclear
power is one hell of a way to boil water!".

Regards,
Dennis F. Nester

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

NEW VIDEO - YouTube - The Roy Process
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_v7030VAeLA

Web site & blog
http://members.cox.net/theroyprocess
http://nuclearwaste-theroyprocess.blogspot.com/

SCOOP NEWS Web Site:
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0308/S00219.htm
 

With the money needed for one new nuclear power plant one can purchase 15 turnkey high tech and highly automated thinfilm solar module factories with a yearly output of 160 MW per factory from Oerlikon. So, with these 15 Oerlikon solar module factories one can produce solar modules with a total peak power of 24'000 MW in 15 years, which is actually 15 times more peak power than what a new french EPR nuclear reactor delivers.
http://www.solarserver.de/news/news-6200.html
(And the main costs of thinfilm modules are indeed the capital costs of the factories since the substrates are inexpensive.
Besides new homes need roofs anyway. Nowadays they protect from rain in the future they also generate electricity.

The power consumption during day time is three times higher than at night - a power source that only generates during day time reduces load leveling capacity required and improves the overall system efficiency.

Don't like PV?
What about solar thermal: 8% of the area of Nevada (desert) is enough to power the entire US with solar thermal power:
http://www.ausra.com

Don't like solar thermal?
What about wind: Germany has already 22 GW of wind-power installed, is much more densely populated than the US and the area of Germany covers only 3% of the area of the US (or equivalent to over 700 GW of wind-power).
A wind-turbine produces more power per area than a nuclear power plant and the cows love the shade of the wind-turbine mast.
Last year Europe installed 8554 MW Windpower and got rid of -1203 MW of nuclear.
http://www.tinyurl.com/6hvxhy

Don't like wind?
There's still: Wave, tidal, hydro, geothermal, biomass and biogas.

Don't like any of those?
What about efficiency:
China installed 75.4% of the world's solar thermal roof collectors in the year 2006 (without subsidies as opposed to nuclear).
It's way cheaper than building new, inflexible nuclear plants to power wasteful electric heaters and the US imports 84% of its uranium today.
http://www.tinyurl.com/67dtcl (The US on the other hand only installed 0.4%)

Between 1974 and 2002 60% of all OECD-energy-research subsidies went into Nuclear. Only 8% went into Solar, Wind, Biomass, Tidal, Wave, Hydro and Geothermal.
What's the result?
Renewable produces more power than nuclear. There's still no affordable breeder reactor in sight. There's definitely no working fusion reactor insight.

77 billion dollars for nuclear waste repository:
http://www.tinyurl.com/3tssvh

50 billion dollar safety net for nuclear industry:
http://www.tinyurl.com/4logv8

24 billion dollar for 2 new nuclear reactors and consumers have to foot the bill in advance:
http://www.tinyurl.com/6c6osk

Lovins claims about micropower and efficiency is based on some interesting assumptions. One is that "micropower" includes power plants up to 50 MW in capacity. That may sound like a small plant in the utility world, but 50 MW is enough power to push a 15,000 ton ship at speeds of 20 knots or more.

If supplied by diesel fuel 50 MW would burn about 67,000 gallons per day.

A lot of "micropower" machines are being installed in both the developing and developed world. For the developing world, they are the work horses, for the developed world, the fill in places where the grids are not strong or where the grid needs some help during peak hours.

They are often quite polluting and certainly contribute to overall greenhouse gas emissions. I think that RMI is lying by including them on a graph titled "Low or No Carbon World Wide Electrical Output" (http://www.rmi.org/sitepages/pid467.php)

Look hard at that graph and notice the dividing line between "projected" and actual. In the part of the graph based on actual performance, before the guesswork takes over, look at the very thin line for wind, the complete absence of solar, and the inclusion of biomass and waste (which are often very dirty incinerators and wood burning power plants at lumber yards and paper mills.)

Private capital is certainly putting money into companies focused on nuclear development. Take a look at the recent stock performance of British Energy, EnergySolutions, Toshiba, Constellation, and Curtis Wright. Look at Mitsubishi's recent announcement of investing half a billion in a plant to produce heavy components. Even VC's are getting into the act with recent initial financing rounds for NuScale and Hyperion.

Lovins has a 30+ year history of advocating a path of "anything but nuclear" (my words). In his famous "The Road Not Taken" article from Foreign Affairs in 1976 he spent several paragraphs extolling the virtues of new coal plant technology! (http://atomicinsights.blogspot.com/2007/12/blast-from-pas ...)

If you want to know more about Lovins, please visit the Atomic Insights blog and do a search on his name. You might think that the view is slanted, but I try to back up my commentary with verifiable research.

One phrase that you use demonstrates the weakness of your argument. You stated that "there's sh*tloads of backup for our current sources, already built and paid for."

The problem with that statement is that most of the quick response back-up power is made up of simple cycle gas turbines or diesel generators. In both cases, the cost for the fuel used when the back up must be turned on represents in excess of 90% of the total cost of the power. When the primary sources fail, the cost of replacement power is considerable.

That is why we nukes harp on the capacity factors that nuclear plants regularly achieve - the average for the US is in excess of 90% and the rate of unplanned outages is extremely low. That means that the need to purchase replacement power is also very low and reasonably predictable. If you have a weather dependent source - like a wind turbine - you are often left at the mercy of the market if you have to purchase power right away to make up for a drop in production.

A very current case in point is the electricity supply situation in Texas, where there has been a well publicized increase in the amount of wind and gas fired generation in the past 15 years. Unfortunately, the existing grid does not handle or distribute the variations in available power very well. At times, in order to stabilize the grid, ERCOT is buying power for as much as $2-$4 per kilowatt-hour! (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121279439094653563.html?m ...)

Ironically, if France couldn't depend on all the electric heaters running at night and all the powerful energy storage lakes in the Alps, it would not know what to do with all its inflexible nuclear power plants.
Nowadays the energy storage lakes store nuclear power, in the future they store renewable power:
Last year Europe installed 8554 MW wind power and got rid of -1203 MW nuclear power.

Last year Germany net-exported 14TWh of electricity even though 6 of their nuclear power plants were not running.

A Swiss nuclear power operator is currently running an ad against renewable power, claiming the sun is not always shining - eventhough PV and solar hot water works even on cloudy days. Ironically the same operator just had a plant not running for 6 month providing almost 20% of the electricity of the entire country. When was the last time the wind didn't blow or the sun didn't shine for 6 month?

And the power consumption