As nuclear energy is getting an extensive discussion in the comments thread, I thought I’d repost this piece I wrote this more than a year ago. The only change since then is that the evidence for human-caused climate change has become even more overwhelming, though there are still plenty of people who combine global warming denialism (or a long track record of denialism, with no admission of error) with the claim that “nuclear power is the only solution to climate change.”
Repost
My column in yesterday’s Fin was about the option of nuclear energy as a solution to the problem of climate change, an issue that’s been discussed a few times here already. One point I didn’t make is that the availability of nuclear-generated electricity as a ‘backstop’ technology puts an upper bound on the costs of a strategy that would reduce CO2 emissions enough to stabilise atmospheric concentrations (this is much more than Kyoto which aims only to stabilise emissions from developed countries, as a first step to a solution).
Nuclear option premature
With the Kyoto protocol in force, and evidence of rapid climate change mounting up day by day, it’s not surprising that there has been renewed interest in nuclear energy as a source of electricity, free of emissions of greenhouse gases. What’s surprising is that so many of the participants in the debate seem to be restating positions that have been frozen in time for twenty years or more.
The debate over uranium mining provides an example. Labor’s ‘three mines’ policy was a grubby internal compromise reached in the early 1980s. It owed a lot to the interaction between geographical and factional alignments and almost nothing to a rational evaluation of the issues. It made no sense even at the time, yet it is still defended by some as an appropriate policy for the future.
The central reasoning underlying the anti-uranium campaign was rendered obsolete by the late 1970s. It was assumed that nuclear power was set for rapid growth, and that restricting the supply of uranium was the best way of constraining that growth. Meanwhile, nuclear proponents were looking at ‘fast-breeder’ reactors that would generate their own plutonium and thereby avoid the uranium shortage.
But the stagnation of nuclear power after the Three Mile Island accident meant that the shortage of uranium never developed. Releases from military stockpiles after the end of the Cold War have ensured a continuing supply. The availability of uranium is not a constraint on nuclear power and is unlikely to become one. Restrictive Australian policy might raise the world price, but that would merely benefit other suppliers at our expense. Similarly, the fast breeder reactor is commercially dead. France pulled the plug on its Superphenix reactor in the late 1990s, and Japan’s Monju has been mothballed for a decade.
If the opponents of nuclear power seem stuck in the 1980s, many of the supporters seem to back in the 1950s, still selling a dream of limitless clean power, ‘too cheap to meter’, and obstructed only by baseless fears. If the experience of the past thirty years has taught us anything, it’s that this dream is illusory.
Nuclear power can be clean (at least compared to the main alternatives), it can be safe and it can be cheap, but it apparently can’t be all three at once. In the aftermath of the Three Mile Island meltdown, it was pointed out by some that no-one had died, and it was suggested that nuclear power was being held to excessively tight safety standards, compared to those prevailing in the Soviet Union, which was forging ahead while nuclear energy stalled in the West. The Chernobyl disaster put paid to that claim.
In the ensuing decades, there have been repeated claims that the problems have been solved and that the stage is set for a renaissance of nuclear power. There has been much less in the way of concrete achievement.
It is hard to assess the costs of nuclear power because of its long stagnation. Large-scale construction has mostly been undertaken in countries where nuclear power attracts government subsidies, usually linked to military objectives, as in France. The main issue relates to capital costs. With the low interest rates prevailing currently, nuclear power looks marginally competitive with fossil fuels, but a complete analysis, including a proper allowance for waste disposal, would almost certainly yield substantially higher costs.
It would be foolish to foreclose any options, but a return to nuclear power looks premature at this stage. There are lots of conservation options, and alternative strategies such as tree planting, that could yield savings in emissions at significantly lower cost. Only when these options are exhausted would an expansion of nuclear power make sense.
In the meantime, it would be helpful if advocates of nuclear power could clarify their own position regarding climate change. While many are happy to score points against environmentalists by pointing to nuclear power as a solution to climate change, a surprisingly large number simultaneously push the claims of the handful of scientists (mostly not experts in the field, and many with glaring conflicts of interest) who deny the reality of human-caused climate change.
Not only does this undermine the case for re-examining the nuclear option, it undermines the credibility of its advocates. If an individual or lobby group disregards the massive body of evidence on climate change, often on the basis of a predetermined political or interest-group agenda, what reliance can be based on their claims about the safety and cost-efficiency of nuclear power?
John Quiggin 
Majoram – “As for the waste issue, the amount of waste that is produced by a nuclear reactor is tiny. It’s certainly nasty stuff in its tinyness, but its size does go toward the size of the problem. ”
The pro-nuclear crowd like minimise the amount of waste as therefore minimise the problem however the truth is very far from this. HLV (High Level Waste) is only part of the problem. First of all this ‘tiny’ amount of waste has to be stored in water for about 20 years to cool off after being removed from a nuclear plant. Loss of coolant at this stage can produce massive heating and possible damage. It is only after this that the product can be stored. Yucca mountain has taken so long because in testing unexpected water movement dissolved out radionuclides that made it into the water table. This is also a problem for Australia as even geologically stable areas still have ground water.
The current thinking is dry aboveground storage which raises questions of just how long can it be guarded for. Waste is not a small problem and should not be minimised.
Energy efficiency is not the whole answer and no-one thinks it is however it is the easiest, quickest and cheapest method. Do we want heaps of nuclear power just so we can waste as much power as we like?
Firstly, I think “barking mad” seems an apt description, in more ways than one, for one particular (non-)contributor to this debate.
Personally, if I was faced with the stark choice of, on the one hand, collapse of our civiliisation, or of risking more Chernobyl style disasters on the other, I would choose the latter.
However, the evidence, as so well put in “Why Nuclear Power Cannot be a Major Energy Source�, as mentioned above, demonstrates that the widespread adoption of nuclear energy would only dig us deeper into the hole that those who, until recently, denied the threat of global warming, have dug us into.
As one who loves, as much as anybody, the benefits of modern technology, I see that we have no choice but to change from our current grotesquely wasteful use of polluting, climate-changing non-renewable resources.
It is going to happen sooner or later, whether or not we choose to do it, but if we act now, then we have some hope of preserving a decent form of civilization, hopefully, with telecommunications and the Internet intact.
JS, how have global-warming denialists dug us into any hole?
It is humanity’s penchant for progress that has dug us into this hole. If you think the way out of this hole is to halt that progress, then you’re mistaken: you and your anti-development brothers may go for that but the rest of us – RWDB or otherwise – will not.
And at the risk of repeating myself: it matters not one iota what Australians choose to do. We’re 20M people. What matters is what the Chinese and Indian peasants choose to do. And they surely are not going to be signing up to any reduced energy consumption agenda of the west.
If it makes you feel better, please go ahead and reduce your energy consumption. But don’t make me sign up to your “plan” on the basis that it is going to solve the global warming issue, because it manifestly is not.
Dogz
“this is easy: show me. If renewables and energy efficiency are are so cost-effective, why isn’t everyone doing it already? ”
Why? Easy, political, business and cognitive bias; a mindset that is adverse to change, is anti anything that could be seen as pro-environment and only cares about a profit bottom line.
Basically short term self interest will tend to win over long term common sense by those unable to overcome their bias.
Other who aren’t so fixed by their cognitive bias are changing, seeing that the old jobs vs environment as a false choice and that it is actually win win for both.
As I said before I welcome a full an open debate with all options on the table but if we go on the past objectivity of the AGW sceptics now nuclear supporters, no amount of evidence or science will sway them, they have their position come what may.
A good indicator of this is many pro-nukes’s lack of support for energy efficiency, I could take them seriously if it were otherwise.
BTW Majorajam I once read a Scientific American article about the billions it costs the US to decommission and manage their old plant and sites. So it isn’t just the nuclear waste you have to worry about.
Factor that cost in and let see how it shapes up.
gordon (and others), I agree with your view on conservation playing an important role in energy consumption. Stepping outside the position I have taken so far on this blog-site (using knowledge from analytical economics), I suggest that energy conservation (and other environmentally conscious decision making) may make life more interesting for a lot of ‘consumers’ and even ‘producers’, ie for people. Imagine the satisfaction of future generations of pupils and students to be able to use ‘stuff’ in their daily life. Unless, of course, the only information they get is this http://www.uic.com.au/ral.htm.
Oh, dear, Dogz. “Anti-development”, “halt that progress”! I would generally think that doing something more efficiently than it has been done before actually is a kind of progress. And doing something with less dangerous by-product than was produced before is also a kind of progress. In general, proponents of conservation and renewable energy are more progressive than the proponents of fossil-fuel-generated energy.
Dogz Says:
I was hoping to prompt you to actually check your own figures. Since you still seem disinclined to do so, it’s time to inject some reality.
Here’s the claim again:
There are four of the things in operation. The construction time for the first one, defined as the period from first concrete pour to first commercial operation, was 51 months.
The time taken for the planning and approval process is omitted.
Planning began in 1981, for a total time of 15 years.
That was the very first one, though, so you’d expect subsequent ones to be quicker.
The Tennessee Valley Authority started planning for an ABWR in 2002. The projected in-service date is in 2014, for a total time of 12 years.
As for the AP-600 and AP-1000, none of these things currently exist. I suspect that you already discovered this, hence your reluctance to answer questions about them. Just what we’d expect from a self-proclaimed “scientist” such as yourself.
SJ, why does planning take 15 years, do you think? Is that 15 years of problem solving, or 6 months of problem solving and 14.5 years of political and bureaucratic maneuvering?
It is almost certainly the latter. You don’t get to count that – it’s another circular argument: “I’m opposed to nuclear energy because it takes so long to get approvals because of opposition to nuclear energy”.
[I did not know that the AP-600 and AP-1000 had not been built, but I suspected as much: you telegraphed it with your cross-examination style. Nevertheless, they are designed to be built in 3 years, and last I checked 51 months was 4 years 3 months. I know 51 months sounds scarier than 4 years, but only to the same people who think radioactive babies are real]
Do understand English?
Planning, approval and construction took 15 years. What did you think was implied by the world total?
Sorry SJ, I was skim-reading. I’ll rephrase:
SJ, why does planning take 11 years, do you think? Is that 11 years of problem solving, or 6 months of problem solving and 10.5 years of political and bureaucratic maneuvering?
It is almost certainly the latter. You don’t get to count that – it’s another circular argument: “I’m opposed to nuclear energy because it takes so long to get approvals because of opposition to nuclear energyâ€?.
[I did not know that the AP-600 and AP-1000 had not been built, but I suspected as much: you telegraphed it with your cross-examination style. Nevertheless, they are designed to be built in 3 years, and last I checked 51 months was 4 years 3 months. I know 51 months sounds scarier than 4 years, but only to the same people who think radioactive babies are real]
SJ, as an aside and going back a few threads – are you gradually becoming sympathetic with me having writing one equation and refusing to enter any further verbal discussions?
The basic problem, demonstrated over and over, is that you haven’t got a freakin’ clue what you’re talking about.
Let’s look at the TVA project, which has a 12 year total time.
The planning phase runs from 2002 to 2005.
This phase covers costing, transmission planning, seismic tests, development of a business plan, and obtaining (internal) board approval.
A design phase runs from 2005 to 2007, which covers the EIS preparation and site-specific civil design work.
The approval phase runs from 2007 to 2009, which provides for publication of the EIS, public comment, and appoval by the various regulators.
Site preparation runs from 2009 to 2010.
Construction goes from 2010 to the end of 2013. Full operation begins in mid 2014.
Why don’t you go and offer your services to the TVA? I’m sure they’d pay millions for an unqualified genius with no experience, such as yourself, who could explain to them how to cut the time down.
Dogz – “SJ, why does planning take 11 years, do you think? Is that 11 years of problem solving, or 6 months of problem solving and 10.5 years of political and bureaucratic maneuvering?”
No – a lot of it is safety and design checking not just political. A nuclear reactor is an extremely complex machine and because the consequences of an accident is so extreme ALL care is needed certifying and testing the design to avoid problems. I am sure that you would agree that these are necessary.
Ernestine, I still can’t understand your point with the equation. I agree that nothing compels you to argue with or listen to complete idiots, but to refuse to explain yourself at all is unhelpful.
Anyway, yes, I’m more sympathetic now than then.
Dogz says:
“this is easy: show me.”
I have given you some serious sources. It is up to you to rebutt them.
“If renewables and energy efficiency are are so cost-effective, why isn’t everyone doing it already?”
Well, in addition to the reasons given in other people’s responses, I would add that we are already starting to do it in some areas (ie improved building codes, solar hot water, compact fluoro light globes), but it can be taken a lot further, a lot faster, and should be as the first step in energy reform.
But you are avoiding the fundamental question, Dogz:
Is it better to produce a given good or service using less energy, and/or materials, and/or in a environmentally cleaner way, or not? And if not, why not?
I might also point out that one of the central justifications that the hardcore anti-government, pro-private property, free marketeer libertarians like yourself put forward for the superiority of such a philosophy is that it is (almost always) more efficient at allocating and using resources than any other system. But that sits rather uncomfortably alongside your dismissal of the importance of energy efficiency.
Now to Majorajam’s comments:
“Finally and most importantly, anyone that thinks we can cut carbon emissions globally over an extended horizon only with conservation is kidding themselves. This is similar to a company thinking it grow earnings by cutting costs- works for a short time but is ultimately unsustainable, (at some point, cost cuts require revenue cuts. This point, it turns out, is very short term). So, if your position is that we should shrink global GDP, and with it, the well being of billions, then by all means.”
No one, anywhere, is suggesting that efficiency is the only solution for all eternity. That is really ignorant straw man stuff. But efficiency is a big part of the ongoing solution, and the first we should implement, and this is already happening with the building codes, for example.
I don’t see the downside of cutting some kinds of business costs, such as the quantity of energy or materials used to produce a given good or service. If anything, it improves the immediate competitive advantage, and also frees up some extra capital (in the form of savings from increased efficiency).
Higher efficiency will not destroy the global economy, or the well being of billions. By definition higher efficiency is doing the same task with less energy and/or materials (or more tasks with the same amount). How does that make the situation worse? If anything it improves it by allowing more humans to benefit from the same amount of resources.
“…you should advocate instead a solution that uses heavier taxes on fossil fuels, (or in any case, policy measures that financially burden their use, e.g. cap & trade, etc.), as a catalyst for both conservation and energy production substitution into alternative energy sources and nuclear (with subsidies only for the former).”
We can agree here. I have considerable sympathy for the idea of adding an ‘environmental costs’ levy onto the price of fossil fuel, and using (all) that levy money to develop cleaner energy sources and more efficient use strategies. One component of such a levy could be to seriously increase the rego costs for passenger cars with an engine capacity above about two litres.
SJ, while I accept that one needs to be careful with a nuclear reactor, 11 non-construction years on any project is excessive. There are many areas in that schedule that could no doubt be streamlined if there was a will to do so.
So, for the sake of argument, lets suppose we want to replace just the Australian coal-fired power stations with nuclear. That’s about 30GW of capacity. So we’d need about 25 ABWR reactors (each one generates 1350MW). Let’s say we get really serious, and fire up all 25 within the next 10 years.
What would it take to get that capacity from renewable sources?
They’re building a new wind farm in SA that is supposedly going to be one of the biggest in the world. 53 turbines will produce a total of 159MW, so we’ll need about 200 times that, or about 10,000 wind turbines to replace the coal power stations.
Is that feasible? Are there good sites for 10,000 wind turbines in Australia? What are the maintenance costs on 10,000 wind turbines compared to 25 nuclear reactors? How do their useful lifetimes compare? What about capital costs (the turbines would cost about $80B)?
Seeker: “Is it better to produce a given good or service using less energy, and/or materials, and/or in a environmentally cleaner way, or not? And if not, why not?”
Cost. If the energy-efficient good costs more, or equivalently, if you have to artificially inflate the price of energy in order to make the energy-efficient good cost-competitive, then you have to justify why restricting energy consumption is a good thing.
“I might also point out that one of the central justifications that the hardcore anti-government, pro-private property, free marketeer libertarians like yourself put forward for the superiority of such a philosophy is that it is (almost always) more efficient at allocating and using resources than any other system. But that sits rather uncomfortably alongside your dismissal of the importance of energy efficiency.”
Not at all. In my system, energy efficiency is important only insofar as it affects my costs. No more, no less. If energy costs so little that it is cheaper to pay the extra to heat my house than it is to insulate it, then the best allocation of resources is to pay for the extra energy, because then I will have money left over to do other stuff.
SJ, I would not use your categorisation because there are other plausible explanations. As for the instance in question, one person understood sufficiently for the purpose at hand and this person never pretended to have subject specific knowledge. Anyway, I am happy if we have cleared this one up without much fuzz.
Dogz – “So, for the sake of argument, lets suppose we want to replace just the Australian coal-fired power stations with nuclear. That’s about 30GW of capacity. So we’d need about 25 ABWR reactors (each one generates 1350MW). Let’s say we get really serious, and fire up all 25 within the next 10 years.”
That is not possible. There are only so many engineers, construction workers, inpectors etc that are experienced on nuclear reactors. Building 25 reactors at once would double the cost as you would have to pay these people premium rates and compete in the global market for them. I realise that it was for the sake of argument however it is not releastic to imagine that this could happen easily.
Also nuclear power is base load. You would still need peaking power plants. Most of these 25 reactors would be idle at off peak times.
“They’re building a new wind farm in SA that is supposedly going to be one of the biggest in the world. 53 turbines will produce a total of 159MW, so we’ll need about 200 times that, or about 10,000 wind turbines to replace the coal power stations.”
Wind is not the only renewable resource. Solar Thermal plants can be built very large and are working producing power. Read this for the list
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_power
A combination of wind + solar thermal plus connecting geographically spaced power plants raises the capacity factor of the whole renewable system as it is very very rarely both still and cloudy over a very large area.
As we speak 5 MW wind turbines are being installed.
http://www.c-power.be/applet_mernu_en/index01_en.htm?windturbines/index_wit.htm~right_frame
A combination of solar thermal and large turbine wind farms means that your figure of 10 000 wind farms is way off. A base load of 30% IGCC coal will cut our greenhouse emissions to acceptable levels. Replacing transport with Plug In hybrids and battery electric cars will allow electricity storage on a vast scale in our cars and trucks and solve the Peak Oil problem. Transport is a major greenhouse emitter.
To solve the problems ahead does not need nuclear power stations only a bit of imagination and putting 19th century ideas behind us.
Those worried about increased future greenhouse emissions from China, India and Brazil might like to check out this report from the Three Country Energy Efficiency project (UNEP). Thanks to Seeker for the clue in his long comment above. And thanks to the much-maligned UNO.
Majorajam
“Point being, you can’t draw conclusions about risks from the extent of coverage the insurance industry is willing to market (or its price). This requires additional information.”
Not correct.
Some conclusions are water-tight. Here’s one: insurance companies don’t want to insure against personal and property damage caused by negligent operation of nuclear facilities.
Consider the following. You have mentioned, without categorising, three major causes of harm.
1. Acts of War (terrorism)
2. Acts of God (earthquakes)
3. Human acts.
The first two categories of harm are regularly and legitimately excluded from insurance policies. As long as the insured party understands this there can be no legitimate objection.
Were al Qaeda to have flown their planes into some nuclear reactors rather than the WTC (for my money a much more cost-effective use of AQ resources), this act of war, so declared, would vitiate normal insurance coverage.
Were a smallish meteor to strike a nuclear reactor (a remote but statistically feasible possibility) then this act of God would vitiate normal insurance coverage.
Were an employee of a gas distribution facility mistakenly to push the wrong button, sending poison gas into the homes of consumers, this is no act of war and no act of God, but an act of negligence, for which the gas company, through its insurance company, would be liable. And rightly so.
But insurance companies are unwilling to grant coverage to nuclear generators even against that quite restrictive class of harm-causing conduct.
Thus, for risk coverage purposes, all conduct by and for nuclear generators is taken out of the category of “human acts” and recategorised under “acts of War” or “acts of God”.
Doesn’t this strike you as a rather apocalyptic way of assuring that Dogz continues to enjoy cheap air conditioning?
Thus I have proven that it is normal practice for insurance companies to exclude certain risks. But evidently, even given these normal exclusions, insurance companies are still unwilling to insure against Homer Simpson falling asleep on the job and banging his forehead against the wrong button.
Therefore, insurance companies’ grounds for deep scepticism about nuclear safety ought to remain powerful grounds for questioning the good policy of nuclear power.
Katz,
Insurers will also tend to reject window cleaners, police and soldiers as risks for life assurance. We still need clean windows, safe streets and an ability to pursue diplomacy by other means, though.
The problem for the insurers is pricing and laying off those risks through re-insurance. If the risk is such that, no matter how remote it is, any call on it will wipe out the insurer it is difficult to calculate the appropriate premium. After the asbestos (and other similar claims in the US and here) for example, the insurers have become even more unlikely to take on risks that are difficult to quantify. That does not mean that we should not be looking at nuclear power – but perhaps US tort law reform would be a good place to start.
“Insurers will also tend to reject window cleaners, police and soldiers as risks for life assurance.”
Prove it. (And I don’t mean demonstrate that they are compelled to pay higher premiums)
And the broader point is that even if what you say is true we still have all of the above because they are willing to self-insure.
And consider the following point taken from a discussion of insurance and the nuclear industry at this site;
http://www.ippnw.ch/content/pdf/Sympo_26042002/VandenBorre.pdf.
“Due to the possible magnitude of a nuclear incident, the consequences of the terrorist attacks on nuclear installations or on transport of nuclear material can be even more troublesome than in the “conventionalâ€? insurance industry. In the nuclear industry, the position of both the insurance industry and the nuclear operators is quite difficult. As indicated, the nuclear operator is liable if a terrorist attack on a nuclear installation (or on a transport over land) causes a release of radiation and if this release causes damage to a third party. Should the nuclear insurers cancel terrorism risk in the existing liability policies, than (sic) the nuclear operators are in principal obliged to provide for another mean (sic) of financial security (bank guarantee, State guarantee,….), otherwise they would violate the congruence principle of the Paris Convention (and of the domestic law provision implementing this principle).”
Thus you can see that the problem is much deeper and more intractable than that favourite old bogie man “US Tort Law”.
I freely admit that I’m learning stuff as I’m going along. As you can see, however, coping with the consequences of accident or act of terrorism is much more fraught and more complex than the nostrums commonly pedalled either by the Right or the Left.
This stuff strikes at the heart of civil society and the rule of law worldwide and not just in the US. The above-mentioned Paris Convention appears to be a cornerstone of the worldwide network of insurers and reinsurers. No single country, not even the US, can ignore the financial clout that this network represents.
Katz – you ask me to prove it and then say it does not matter? Thanks for the exercise in (self defined) futility. Well, why then do we not accept self insurance from nuclear plant owners?
Dogz Says:
So now 11 out of 12 years are “non-construction years”.
Your demonstrated inability to understand the actual published schedule of a current project doesn’t do you much credit.
AR,
“Well, why then do we not accept self insurance from nuclear plant owners?’
Don’t forget that personal risk is quite different from third party risk.
If you’ve been following this thread at all (which is a continuation from a previous thread) you may recognise that that is precisely the question that I began with.
The answer to this question is that nuclear generators in the US refused to build nuclear plants without third party coverage. Commercial insurers refused to provide coverage adequate to the needs of the generators. In 1957 the US government enacted the Price Anderson Act that indemnified nuclear generators at taxpayers’ expense.
So you can see it wasn’t a case of allowing the plant owners to self-insure. They refused to move without insurance.
Thus nuclear plant owners acted differently from window cleaners and all other risky businesses that may self-insure in the face of personal risk. The third party risk faced by nuclear plant owners dwarfs damage done to plant and equipment owned by the nuclear generators.
Gordon, you are welcome, and thanks for chasing up the report and giving us a link (I should have done it myself). I also agree about the unfairly maligned UNO.
SJ,
“Your demonstrated inability to understand the actual published schedule of a current project doesn’t do you much credit.”
You quoted two projects, one of which had a 4 year reactor construction time out of 15 years, for a total of 11 years non-construction time. The second had 8 or 9 years non-construction time. Once again, your insults are unwarranted. In future, please don’t bother responding to my comments, or at least don’t expect a response from me because I won’t be reading your comments.
Ender, you have many unsupported claims in your response. Personally, I am interested in understanding what is the most cost-effective large-scale replacement for our current CO2-producing generating capacity. Unssupported claims don’t help, because we just end up arguing about them, rather than the main point.
For example,
“Building 25 reactors at once would double the cost as you would have to pay these people premium rates and compete in the global market for them.”
Where’s your evidence for that? Double the cost? Why not 3 times the cost? Or 1.4 times the cost? Saying “double the cost” makes me suspicious that you have no basis for that claim.
As a counter, China intends to bring online 40GW of nuclear power in the next 14 years and an extra 150GW by 2050.
You then go on to refer me to the generic wiki article on solar energy. That doesn’t help either: I know what solar energy is. To make a decision regarding the best method of replacing CO2 generating capacity, we need to know the costs involved in the alternatives. I put up a back-of-the envelope calculation for wind energy, and asked for information regarding other aspects of the costs (since there are so many alternative-energy advocates around here, I figured someone would have those numbers at their fingertips).
If you have a proposal, please put forward a cost analysis. In my opinion,pointing us at the wiki article on solar energy does not constitute such an analysis.
Dogz Says:
The post you were responding to only mentioned one of them. My criticism is perfectly warranted.
It wasn’t that hard. When I said:
that should’ve been a pretty clear hint that a response like:
was going to bring nothing but scorn.
Oh, boo hoo. It’s obvious that even when you do read the comments, you can’t understand them.
Dogz – “Where’s your evidence for that? Double the cost? Why not 3 times the cost? Or 1.4 times the cost? Saying “double the costâ€? makes me suspicious that you have no basis for that claim.
As a counter, China intends to bring online 40GW of nuclear power in the next 14 years and an extra 150GW by 2050.”
Simply the law of supply and demand. China are building their own reactors and presumably have the expertise. THey also have non-tranparent safety standards that possibly lower the cost. We do not have this and will rely on other countries to supply the reactors.
For evidence of skills shortage look no further than this:
http://www.nei.org/index.asp?catnum=3&catid=1295
“Nuclear Energy Industry Initiatives Target Looming Shortage of Skilled Workers
February 2006
Key Facts
n The nuclear energy industry expects a significant number of experienced workers to retire over the next five years and has undertaken a comprehensive program to recruit, train and educate new workers.
n The availability of health physicists, for example is expected decline over the next five years, as will outage workers.
n University, community college and vocational training programs are critical to meet future staffing needs, and companies are pursuing initiatives to prepare a new generation of workers.
n Training of skilled technicians and craft personnel, such as operators, electricians, pipefitters and other maintenance workers, is essential to sustain the highly qualified work force needed to continue efficient, reliable electricity production.”
I said double where I should have said greatly increase the cost as you would be bidding for workers in a competitive market.
“You then go on to refer me to the generic wiki article on solar energy. That doesn’t help either”
Well obviously you do not if you calculate that 10 000 wind turbines are required. Demand side is the absolutely most cost effective method of reducing emissions.
Here is one of the best studies of comparative costs:
“Arguably the best and most current economic comparison of nuclear and fossil-fueled plants is by Professor Paul L. Joskow in a recent interdisciplinary MIT study, “The Future of Nuclear Power.”4 As seen from the following table from the MIT Study, in the United States today new nuclear plants are far from being competitive with new natural gas or coal-fueled power plants. The levelized cost of electricity5 generated by a new nuclear plant is estimated to be about 60 percent greater than the cost of electricity from a coal plant or a gas-fueled plant assuming moderate gas prices.”
The table I cannot publish:
Wind power is rapidly decreasing in cost:
http://www.awea.org/faq/cost.html
“The cost of electricity from utility-scale wind systems has dropped by more than 80% over the last 20 years.
In the early 1980’s, when the first utility-scale wind turbines were installed, wind-generated electricity cost as much as 30 cents per kilowatt-hour. Now, state-of-the-art wind power plants at excellent sites are generating electricity at less than 5 cents/kWh. Costs are continuing to decline as more and larger plants are built and advanced technology is introduced.”
From the table I could not publish a new light water reactor will cost about 6.7c per kWh whereas wind is now at 5c and dropping. Wind turbines are an couple of orders of magnitude simpler than a nuclear power plant, do not have the same consquences if accidents happen and do not have to be guarded 24X7.
Solar thermal costs are here:
http://www.physics.usyd.edu.au/apphys/ste.html
The best of these are 7.5 cents per kWh and these are dropping also.
Nuclear power in Australia is very unlikely to compete with IGCC coal base load and renewable power. It would need to be very heavily subsidised and I am not prepared to pay it.
I got here from Tim Lambert’s blog. I’m an American who was never much of a warming skeptic and isn’t one now. I think nuclear should be an option; whether it’s the most cost effective solution is something markets should figure out, helped by governments making sure all costs are accounted for — waste for nukes, CO2 for fossil fuels, battery manufacturing and disposable for solar and wind, etc.
Uranium mining may produce greenhouse gases, but does it have to? Electricity or biofuel can replace fossil fuels, CFCs can be captured. As for efficiency of the process, 100x more energy can be produced if all the uranium is burned via breeders, not just the U-235. This also reduces the volume and half-life of high-level wastes; “tens of thousands of years” are needed to store plutonium, not the final fission fragments. The impulse for conservation should militate against burying fuel as waste. The fission fragments are said to decay to below the radioactivity of the original ore in 500 years, and the waste from powering a family for 500 years would be a few liters.
On another thread, someone mentioned needing 2000 nuclear plants to power the world. I’ve seen that before. I don’t know why: what’s the point? That it’s a lot of plants? We have a lot of plants now, of coal and gas. It’d be tough to replace them all quickly, certainly, but so what? I could also rephrase the number: one reactor per three million people. Though for full energy use from electricity it’d be more like 10 gigawatt plants per million people.
Efficiency is good, definitely. But I would like to move beyond cutting CO2 emissions to eliminating them, so we’d need more than efficiency. I also think in terms of long-term sustainability, so anticipate fossil fuels running out anyway. Again, whether a zero-emission world would be wind+solar or nuclear or something else is something to be found out in a market. But I’d guess such a world might have both: nuclear for baseline power, solar for peak and for heating.
The reluctance of insurance companies to insure nuclear does worry me, and I don’t have much answer to it. I would note that if market failure (laziness? lack of information?) prevents people from adopting efficiency measures which would pay for themselves, market failure (insufficient data, fear of the unknown, fear of nuclear) might also give us spooked insurance companies.
The resistance to input shocks of nuclear is an attractive feature. Renewables aren’t immune to input shocks, as natural climate change could increase cloud cover, change wind patterns, or (via volcanic particulates) cut sunlight (for a few years).
Another option might be geothermal. Total heat flux is less than what 10 billion people at US consumption levels would use, so it’s technically not renewable. The heat stored in molten rock might last a really long time (millions of years) anyway though, at least with (rather speculative) deep drilling. As a bonus it might be possible to tame vulcanism (cooling off magma chambers, controlled venting of geological gases).
Oops, forgot one point: a comment on a previous thread claimed that it would take carbon taxes of $100/ton-Carbon to let nuclear fully compete with coal, and that this was really high. I’d just note that $100/ton is 10 cents/kilogram, or about 10 cents/liter-gasoline or 40 cents/gallon-gasoline. Not trivial but doesn’t seem prohibitive, compared with recent price fluctuations or the gas taxes used by many non-US countries.
Damien – “Both conventional reactors and fast breeders produce large quantities of high-level nuclear wastes that stay dangerous for at least 100,000 years.
Breeder reactors are more dangerous than conventional reactors, because:
(1) they produce more plutonium-239, with half-life of 24,000 years, which can be used to make nuclear weapons;
(2) they use as a coolant liquid sodium, which is a very dangerous metal: e.g. it explodes when it comes into contact with water.
The major pronuclear report by MIT (2003), “The Future of Nuclear Power” — see http://web.mit.edu/nuclearpower/ — considers that fast breeders will not be a significant part of the nuclear industry for several decades, because they are even more expensive than conventional nuclear power stations. One of the reasons why they are more expensive is that they are more dangerous.
– Dr Mark Diesendorf, Institute of Environmental studies, UNSW”
Perhaps breeders are not the be all and end all of nuclear fuel cycles. Of all countries only France uses breeder reactors. They still have a waste problem. PU239 is so highly toxic and does not have to be in a nuclear bomb to be dangerous – a dirty bomb will do.
“On another thread, someone mentioned needing 2000 nuclear plants to power the world. I’ve seen that before. I don’t know why: what’s the point?”
2000 plants? Starting with Iran perhaps. I am sure the world will be falling over itself to build a breeder reactor in North Korea.
“Another option might be geothermal. Total heat flux is less than what 10 billion people at US consumption levels would use, so it’s technically not renewable.”
Another option us just about everything else – solar thermal, wind geothermal, biomass. Just about everything else is both cheaper, easier and faster to implement. In the time taken to build one nuclear plant we could have thousands of wind turbines, solar towers, solar thermal plants and implement IGCC coal.
It seems to me that there are some unnecessary and irrational goals being inserted into the debate.
In his/her comment of June 4, Dogz says: “Personally, I am interested in understanding what is the most cost-effective large-scale replacement for our current CO2-producing generating capacity.” I’m not sure what Dogz means by “large-scale”, but if he/she means “big generating plants” I’m not sure that that is an inevitable or even desirable structure for a future generating system. I tend to think such a system would be very much a hybrid, including many smaller-scale renewable generators suitable to their purposes and closer to end-users. Nor would I necessarily eliminate all fossil-fuel generators, though many (including the most polluting) would have to go.
And Damien says (June 5): “But I would like to move beyond cutting CO2 emissions to eliminating them, so we’d need more than efficiency.” It seems unnecessary to totally eliminate CO2 emissions. What we need to do is get them back down to a sustainable level. We might best be able to do that with a combination of efficiency measures, renewables and even, as I mentioned above, continuing to use some fossil plants.
Let us not waste time with the biomass of straw men.
Yes, the lack of third party insurance for nuclear accidents is a crucial problem. Without third party insurance data, the commercial costs of nuclear power cannot be calculated.
Economic cost estimates may involve other than market data. I’ve been searching for applications of the ‘state contingent valuation methods’ but so far without success.
I agree that the absence of third party commercial insurance is an instance of ‘market failure’. However, I can’t agree with the suggestion that ‘market failure’ is due to lack of data or laziness or fear.
An introduction to the topic ‘market failure’ is given in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Market_failure
Both, CO2 emissions and nuclear fall-out are examples of ‘externalities’ that cause market failure. An introduction to the topic ‘externalities’ is given in
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Externalities
The type of ‘externality’ matters. For example, a person is eating an apple in a public space and the crunching sound irritates someone. Technically this is an externality. So is drinking and eating in a lecture theatre. The latter is usually prohibited. In all countries where I have been, eating an apple in a public space is not prohibited. This illustrates that societies develop a consensus on what are significant externalities – about which something has to be done – and what are negligible externalities.
Both, global warming and nuclear pollution are internationally agreed to be non-negligible externalities. Both, global warming and nuclear pollution do not respect national boundaries.
In some sense, nuclear pollution is more difficult to deal with then global warming because the former involves both, immediate and long term negative effects on people and the environment on which people depend. This is not to say that therefore CO2 emissions should not be reduced. It merely indicates that substituting a more difficult problem for an existing serious one is not obviously a good idea.
The data provided by Katz in an earlier post on this thread on the probabilities of nuclear accidents in the US illustrates it is neither lack of some data nor fear that is the source of the difficulty.
The 2005 report by the Chernobyl Forum, which involves the World Bank, gives a telling account of the range of pollution problems, the time horizons and the geographical dispersion of the pollution caused by the Chernobyl nuclear accidents. To name only one international and intergenerational externality of this accident, the economic resources of indigenous people who live in the north of Finland were found to be adversely affected.
http://www.iaea.org/Publications/Booklets/Chernobyl/chernobyl.pdf.
But Chernobyl is not the only non-military nuclear accident which had international negative side-effects in Europe. The nuclear power plant in Sellafield, UK, is another example. Only France, as a major user of nuclear power for electricity generation, does not get a mention on the list of nuclear accidents on the site provided by Katz. However, I suspect one would have to study the definitions of a reportable accident and its publication channels to get clarity.
Ernestine,
I also suspect that what defines a reportable accident in France is different to a reportable accident elsewhere. I would think that the French government would not be reporting accidents that do not make it into the published media – and vice versa.
It would be interesting if we could trust the French (lack of) data on accidents as it would go some way to reducing the fears we have of accidents. I, for one, am not convinced that they have never had a significant incident.
gordon,
“I’m not sure what Dogz means by “large-scaleâ€?”
I mean replacing large amounts of our current CO2 generating capacity with non-CO2 capacity, and enabling continued growth in energy consumption from non-CO2-generating sources.
I would like to preface this comment by saying that while I have worked on one type of externality (transport noise), I am learning about externalities associated with nuclear power as I go. Apologies to the specialist commentators if I post something which is an old hat.
As a casual observer of the USA and Europe, it struck me that neither France or any other EC country indulged in the otherwise frequently observed ‘healthy competition of national chest beatings’ in matters of technological superiority in this or that when it came to the Three Mile Island nuclear accident in the USA and Chernobyl in the former S.U. The dog which doesn’t bark….
The response of France and other EC countries to the Three-Mile-Island nuclear accident in the USA and the Chernobyl accident in the former S.U. included the SAGE project (Strategies And Guidance for a practical radiation protection for Europe in case of long term radio active contamination after a nuclear accident). The web-site http://66.102.7.104/search?q=cache:T1_CVjnFq4UJ:www.ec-sage.net/D04_01.pdf+%22Nuclear+accidents+in+France%22&hl=en&gl=au&ct=clnk&cd=1 contains one article from this project. It deals with changes in the regulatory framework in France, Germany and the UK after Chernobyl.
Incidentally, in this article it is mentioned that France distributes stable iodine tablets to the population living within 10 km radius of a nuclear plant. A non-specialist may be forgiven to consider this akin to someone being on permanent medication.
The response of France and other EC countries to the Three-Mile-Island nuclear accident in the USA and the Chernobyl accident in the former S.U. included the SAGE project (Strategies And Guidance for a practical radiation protection for Europe in case of long term radio active contamination after a nuclear accident). The web-site http://66.102.7.104/search?q=cache:T1_CVjnFq4UJ:www.ec-sage.net/D04_01.pdf+%22Nuclear+accidents+in+France%22&hl=en&gl=au&ct=clnk&cd=1 contains one article from this project. It deals with changes in the regulatory framework in France, Germany and the UK after Chernobyl.
Incidentally, in this article it is mentioned that France distributes stable iodine tablets to the population living within 10 km radius of a nuclear plant. A non-specialist may be forgiven to consider this akin to someone being on permanent medication.
EG,
Thank you for your discusion of market failure.
“neither lack of some data nor fear that is the source of the difficulty [for insurers setting a market for third party insurance for nuclear reactors]”
So if neither lack of data nor fear is the source of the difficulty, what other possibilities are there?
Katz,
Thanks for your reply. The data in question consists of probabilities of nuclear accidents in the USA. But this is not all that is of interest (hence my qualification ‘some data’). As you know the consequences of all conceivable events need to be known with a high degree of confidence before liabilities from insurance can be estimated. Ignoring here the additional requirements for private insurance markets, it is in the consequences of one or several events (ie the nature and extent of the externalities) where the difficulty lies.
To the extent that the public sector (ie the tax payer) subsidises the third party liabilities arising from negative externalities of nuclear power production, the costs of nuclear power, as recorded by private or public nuclear power plants are under-estimated. This amounts to a resource misallocation (too much investment in nuclear power).
But it gets more complicated. There does not seem to be an agreed upon economic method for estimating the future public liabilities – at least I have not found any evidence to the contrary. A recent paper by Professors Faure and Fiore discusses some of these economic issues and their relationship to legal frameworks from the perspective of France.
Click to access DR_35_0506_faure&fiore.pdf
PS: Having followed this and one preceding thread, it seems to be much more profitable to establish a futures market for post-modernist ‘views’.
Moderating this blog site must be a time consuming job even with the aid of a program. My post at 3:25 was in the moderation loop. I sent an email to JQ saying all my posts which get caught in the moderation loop can be deleted – I wanted to be helpful. I assumed my 3:25 post was too long. So I submitted a shorter one. This went into moderation and stayed there at the time I read Katz post. I replied. All three posts went through.
Thanks for that Fiore and Faure reference EG.
This extract should give pause to nuclear apologists:
“[In the context of nuclear energy a serious question] is why the international community accepted this favourable regime for the nuclear industry 40 years ago and more particularly why this is still accepted today, now that the argument to protect a newly developing industry does not seem to justify any longer the financial cap. … Given limited assets of nuclear operators and a limited insurability of the nuclear risk the question arises whether alternatives could be developed in order to make nuclear operators internalize their entire risk costs.”
Fiore and Faure present a portrait of the nuclear industry as one based upon a permanent state of emergency in which many individual, property and civil rights have been suspended.
Moreover, for 40 years the entire economies of nuclear states have subsidised the costs of operating nuclear facilities.
In other words, fossil fuel users have cross-subsidised nuclear generators. And now nuclear apologists have the gall to assert that their industry is competitive with those competing industries. And why not? The nuclear industry has had its fangs in the necks of their competitors for 40 years.
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The coal industry is fighting back.
FTA:
“Reserve Bank director Warwick McKibbin warned that the federal inquiry would be a “lost opportunity” if it failed to compare the economics of nuclear power with other energy sources.”
Hear hear. I for one don’t want this inquiry to be a pro-nuclear whitewash. It can’t be that hard to do an across the board comparison of today’s technologies and put down some scenarios of how the technologies are most likely to progress in the next 5 or 10 years.
Dogz on this one I couldn’t agree more.
I caught a snippet on the 7.30 Report that it was put to the PM that he wasn’t serious about nuclear power generation, that this is just a cynical ploy to soften the electorate so we can export more uranium.
Given that study has such a limited terms of reference, no comparisons and again nothing about energy efficiency I see nothing but a cynical ploy.
BTW the other night on the 7.30 report at least one energy consultant basically said with out major government subsidies it’s a not economically viable and investors won’t touch it.
My guess he will try to look good when the study comes out ‘in favour’ nuclear power generation, by canning the idea and pointing the finger at the states saying that they aren’t helping GW by not allowing nuclear power stations in their backyard and that he -as a champion of the environment- will do his bit combating GW by selling more uranium overseas so others can do their bit to combat GW.
“I for one don’t want this inquiry to be a pro-nuclear whitewash.”
Genuinely glad to hear that, Dogz. Now if only we could convince you about this efficiency thing. Ahh well, one step at a time. 🙂
One more comment and we crack 200!
“FTA:
“Reserve Bank director Warwick McKibbin warned that the federal inquiry would be a “lost opportunity� if it failed to compare the economics of nuclear power with other energy sources.�
“Hear hear. I for one don’t want this inquiry to be a pro-nuclear whitewash.”
And I second that Dogz.
The questions I’ve raised in this and a previous thread about the real costs of nuclear generation and how they have been hidden and redistributed were designed to cause proponents of nuclear power to look beyond the narrowly technical aspects of nuclear power generation.
I believe that Dogz would endorse encompassing a broader perspective.
If an enquiry were conducted along the lines proposed by McKibbin, sceptics of the nett benefits of nuclear power should be happy.