Re: Nuclear Power

On Wed, 19 Jul 2006 00:23:09 GMT, William Morse <wdmorse@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:

Josh Hill <usereplyto@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in
news:gpjob2hf9g4js5i8agujfmaq9tncr63l1e@xxxxxxx:

On Tue, 18 Jul 2006 01:52:47 GMT, William Morse <wdmorse@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:


The costs of grid expansion will be just as great for nuclear as for
wind, since you will not be able to site nuclear power plants
remotely near demand centers. And nobody wants anything built in their
back yard, regardless of whatever other beliefs they may hold.

I suspect you're right, although I just read about an apparent
exception:

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/16/magazine/16nuclear.html

I don't understand why they don't just build the things where they'll
do no harm. A lack of leadership on the part of the Federal
Government, perhaps.

Thanks for the article reference - apparently I was too busy doing the
crossword puzzle to notice it :-) The energy companies obviously want to
build new nukes on existing sites, especially if as in the case of the
Vogtle site it was originally set up for two more plants. But close to
Augusta and Atlanta? Is Homeland Security going to look at this? And if
it is where I think it is, it is not that far upstream of Savannah.

They don't seem to be thinking that way at all: the energy companies
are thinking of profits, while the Dept. of Homeland Security seems to
be nothing but an ineffectual pork-doling machine at this point. I
thought that one of the most chilling things in that article was the
fact that so many nuclear plants failed to block simulated terrorist
attacks.

Things like this make me doubt the feasibility of nuclear power, not
because I don't think we could safely accommodate it, but because I
have no faith that we will -- that we'll situate the plants properly
and take reasonable precautions to safeguard waste. Not to mention
that the world doesn't seem to be very serious about proliferation.

What with costs dropping as they are, I wonder if it doesn't make more
sense to rely more heavily on wind, storage, biofuels, and
conservation. Unfortunately, I'm having trouble finding figures, in
part because the studies seem to focus on the effects of relatively
low penetrations, e.g., the IEA report on variability at

http://www.uwig.org/IEA_Report_on_variability.pdf

But -- as a worst case -- suppose we aimed for a mix of existing
hydro, nuclear, and minor renewables -- that brings us to roughly 25%
of current capacity -- and wind with nuclear only in areas such as the
southeast that have poor wind resources? The wind power itself would
be no more expensive than the nuclear power, and probably less
expensive than coal with sequestration. Then use pumped hydro and air
storage where you can. To accommodate remaining variability, rely at
first on existing fossil fuel plants, then shift to biofuels or
biofuel-derived hydrogen as supplies are freed up during the
transition from biofuel-fueled vehicles to hydrogen FCV's, with any
shortfall in biofuel production made up by flow cells, hydrogen from
wind, or whatever technologies are most efficient at that point.

Intuition suggests that the additional electricity costs wouldn't be
astronomical, particularly when the extrinsic costs of the other
options are taken into account. Forex, even the least efficient
option, the fuel cell one, is about 40% efficient, meaning that even
if fuel cell generation accounted on average for 50% of grid power --
a figure which is I think much too generous -- on a base price of 4
cents/kW-hr, the efficiency loss would raise the average wholesale
price of the electricity to only 5 cents/kW-hr, plus capital and
operating costs.

Just guesswork without more hard figures and studies, and only one
possible scenario, but at the very least, I wonder if in areas that
have good wind supplies we shouldn't focus on adding wind capacity up
to the 20% or so penetration that can be accommodated without storage
rather than building nuclear plants.

--
Josh

"I love it when I'm around the country club, and I hear people talking about the debilitating
effects of a welfare society. At the same time, they leave their kids a lifetime and beyond
of food stamps. Instead of having a welfare officer, they have a trust officer. And instead
of food stamps, they have stocks and bonds."

- Warren Buffett
.

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