Next Big Future: Update on Hyperion Power Generation mini-nuclear reactor
JLawson
· 1 year ago
Pressing work on the climate? Check out http://wattsupwiththat.com/ - things may be nowhere near as 'pressing' as you think.
Besides - wind and solar won't have enough to keep things going - biomass is gonna bump up CO2 like crazy, not to mention food prices zooming. Hydropower's pretty well maxed out - "and think of the little fishies!" - and hydrogen? You need power to crack H2O to get it - it's a net loss for power. Can't use oil or natural gas, that doesn't leave much to run a technologically based civilization on.
I'm glad YOU aren't in charge of energy in this country, Paxus.
Paxus
· 1 year ago
Oh i thought this would be a tough crowd. I did not know about the TRIGA technology, which appears to be research reactors, which are generally low power or even net negative power. As for climate change being pressing, the link JLawson sent appears to make this case, rather than refute it [Headlines include IPCC sez warming is taking place at a much faster rate, hottest Oct on record, etc - certainly no cause for relaxing on climate issues]. NextBigFutre writes " The unfinished plants were because of skyrocketing interest rates in the 1970s." Well, actually Three Mile Island was a much bigger factor in terms of cancelations. Forbes in 1985 seemed to think it was the managers fault:
“The failure of the U.S. nuclear power program ranks as the largest managerial disaster in business history, a disaster on a monumental scale. The utility industry has already invested $125 billion in nuclear power … only the blind, or the biased, can now think that most of the money has been well spent.”
But if you want to blame interest rates ...
Perhaps Los Alamos or the TRIGA core can push NRC approval along, but it seems like we are still being classically overpromising here. Production in 5 years, without a completed design and functioning prototype today.
And as you say, it is private money. Except for the waste of course, always that pesky waste.
Real renewables were almost 11% of the US electricity production in the first half of 2008 with nuclear just over 12%, And renewables are growing with private capital, while nuclear (except Hyperion perhaps) can not. There are lots of well designed plans to get us the rest of the way without nukes. See www.oilendgame.com and http://www.ieer.org/carbonfree/
nextbigfuture
· 1 year ago
Your real renewables figure includes mostly hydroelectric power (mostly built prior to 1970) and biomass (wood etc...) and ethanol. Solar is about 0.1% and wind is just about 1%. Hydro was built with massive government support. http://nextbigfuture.com/2008/03/big-energy-pic...
Energy subsidies of various forms are all over all types of energy. Renewables worldwide are mostly growing with feed in tariffs. In the US wind and solar are dependent on government subsidies. Until the recent renewal of the subsidies, the US wind and solar industries were warning of a collapse of their industry. No matter what energy it is, there is some form of government support. http://nextbigfuture.com/2008/09/us-energy-subs...
the total amount subsidized for solar and wind has resulted in less energy per money spent.
Nuclear waste is unburned fuel. The Hyperion reactor is ten times more efficient with fuel. There are molten salt reactors (Japan's Fuji MSR design) or accelerator driven reactors (under development in Europe) which should be built and would burn 99% of the fuel. That means uranium and plutonium burned leaving materials with less than 30 year half lives and many of those component elements with other uses. So the sensible plan wuold be to help push Hyperion and then develop the molten salt reactors in a factory mass produced format. Then within 40 years all of the nuclear energy downsides solved. the same cannot be said for coal or oil or natural gas which are the main alternatives.
Paxus
· 1 year ago
Lots of great info here. Thanks for that.
There are slightly different newer numbers for renewables. Out of 34 quads produced domestically ...
Biomass and biofuels combined presently constitute the largest source of renewable energy in the United States at 1.883 quads, followed by hydropower at 1.387 quads. Wind power saw the largest growth rate of any generation technology, increasing from 0.164 quads to 0.244 quads a jump of almost 49% from the first half of 2007 compared to the first half of 2008. Solar and geothermal’s contributions were at roughly the same levels in 2008 as they were in 2007, 41 and 172 trillion Btus respectively. Both however could greatly expand their market share in the near future as technology improves and states turn to the two technologies to meet Renewable Portfolio Standards.
so wind is more like 1.5%, but importantly increased at 49% from the same period last year.
And while there are government subsidies in energy everywhere, it is relevant that there was $71 billion in private investment in renewables in 2007 and $0 in nuclear
see tinyurl.com/forgetnuclear
which says something about Wall Streets excitement about nuclear energy.
There are lots of promising designs for new nuclear projects, breeder reactors for example, but when we look at what actually been built, not the promises of nuclear engineers employed to make new proposals we find nuclear comes in at $0.14/Kwh and new wind is half that (again tinyurl-com/forgetnuclear)
given the delays and cost overruns in both of the third generation french reactors you are excited about. Perhaps instead of listening to the sales pitch we should stick to the kniting.
And you are right we have a long way to go to get renewables and efficiency to take over for fossil fuels.
the average capacity factor of the USA's nuclear power reactors in 2007 was 91.8 percent, up from the previous record of 90.1 percent, set in 2004. The country's 104 operating nuclear power reactors generated some 807 billion kWh of electricity in 2007, exceeding the previous record-high of 788.5 billion kWh set in 2004.
The US 2006 wind power generation was 30 billion kwh. The 2008 wind power generation estimate is 48 billion kwh. The US generated 787 billion kwh nuclear in 2006 and 807 billion kwh in 2007 and is tracking to the same in 2008. So 20 billion kwh more nuclear in 2008 than in 2006. Which would be more than the 18 billion kwh increase for wind.
Utilities and nuclear construction companies are investing in building nuclear power plants worldwide. Areva, GE, Toshiba/Westinghouse, TVA, bruce power, etc...
Operating kwh price of nuclear power plants is a lot less. I support the production of wind but just looking at the traditional nuclear plants. Nuclear will add more kwh than wind from now to 2020. Just as nuclear power has added more kwh since 1970.
Paxus - the document that you quote from the Rocky Mountain Institute is NOT talking about costs from completed projects, but about cost projections using their own tortured assumptions for construction periods, interest rates, and material costs. (PS - I never trust anything with Amory Lovins name on it. I know that one can be a smart person without a degree, but you cannot be a trustworthy person if you label yourself as a "consultant experimental physicist educated at Harvard and Oxford" if you never bothered to finish more than a year or two of intermittent study at either institution.)
I will not dispute that there are delays and cost overruns with the first of a kind plant being built in Finland. I also will not dispute that there will be delays and cost overruns in the first few plants that are built in the US after a long hiatus. We are essentially going to have to start up a new industry.
That is one reason why small reactors intrigue me. One of the lessons I learned while running a factory is that you can really reduce the cost of production after you have learned what you are doing and you see opportunities for improvement. It is difficult to apply any lessons learned when you are building a large construction project where it is years between doing the exact same task.
Rod Adams Publisher, Atomic Insights
Paxus
· 1 year ago
Rob - lots of great information here, thank you for that.
And a bunch of things to reply to. What first jumps to mind is that Lovins is somehow untrustworthy for not having completed his degrees. It currently quite fashionable to quit Harvard and get on with the real work with Gates and Zucherberg leading the charge. I think what we care about is how smart he is. He has 9 honorary degrees, a MacAuther "genius" award and designed the soft energy path which lead to DSM (demand side management). You would rather be seeking energy policy advice from an average PhD? Lovins is the ultimate pragmatic, his Winning the Oil Endgame has a forward by George Shultz, hardly a radical.
This TES company which is placing the first 6 orders has me interested. I lived and worked in the Czech Republic for a while, so i asked my friend to check the records. There are 6 listed companies in the CR with the name TES, only 3 of them have basic capitalization on the same order (or larger) than this proposed initial order. They are:
* TES a.s. - located in Ceske Budejovice, its portfolio includes butchery, construction of mechanical engines, engineering / basic capital 40,000 EUR
*TES Praha a.s. - located in Prague, dealing with software, economic consultancy and organizing trainings / basic capital 180,000 EUR
Which one do you think is placing a $150K order for new reactors ?
You want to believe the nuclear sales people, we have a lot of bad experience with them. I am happy you admit Olkiluoto 3 "first of a kind" plant is behind and overruning. I assume you do as well for the Flamanville, France is also. Curiously they are both basically as delayed as they were supposed ot be complete to date - no temporal progress.
But Hyperion is going to be different and if it is overrun it is private money. Okay.
But a number of classical nuclear problems still plague the Hyperion design:
The company says they plan to reprocess and re-use most fuel: “…there are known ways of dealing with it [the waste]. For security reasons, we're not disclosing what will happen to it, but it's not going to just sit in some bucket somewhere. Recycling was ‘baked in’ to our reactor design from the beginning.”
Would these known ways be like the flooded salt domes at Asse http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1... Where the German nuclear industry promised protection huge quantities of time, but they did not function for a single generation? They are basically asking us to trust them. I trust them like i trust TES to come thru with their purchase orders.
Reprocessing means new larger waste streams, in harder to handle forms.
Similarly, they are dismissive about proliferation risks, and while burying these reactors will protect during operation, there is all this transport needed and both production and refueling facilities pose new proliferation risks.
And burying them is not completely without risk. In case something does go wrong, there is not a lot that can be done to prevent spreading of contaminants. If the containment is damaged for example due to an earthquake, it might not even be detected, and if it is, the whole installation needs to be dug out to prevent leakage to the environment
The fact that this technology was discovered 50 years ago and is only proposed to be used now, shows that it is not as easy as it sounds. The system that is proposed uses what seems a rather delicate equilibrium between neutron energies, temperature and hybride-hydrogen dissociation reactions. Configuration, pressure, hydrogen concentration, temperature, impurities all influence the process and it seems complicated to get the right parameters to make it work. The claim is the right configuration has been found, however it is unclear how critical the different parameters are.
So that is enuf for todays entry. Thanks for hanging in there with me.
Paxus in Am*dam
RodAdams
· 1 year ago
Paxus:
It is one thing to be a proud dropout like Steve Jobs or Bill Gates. It is quite another to market yourself with a blurb like this from the RMI web site - "Chief Scientist, is a consultant experimental physicist educated at Harvard and Oxford. He has received an Oxford MA (by virtue of being a don)".
That phrase has a lot of parsing in it; it is designed to deceive. In the modern world, you should not call yourself a scientist or a physicist without any degree. You should not tell people you were "educated" at prestigious schools when you were a dropout - twice. You should not try to fool Americans into thinking that you have a degree by telling them that you received an MA - which is a degree that has some meaning here, when at Oxford it is simply a recognition that you have attended.
Being smart and even being accepted by the establishment does not mean that you have intellectual integrity and are someone who should be trusted.
As a guy who has operated three nuclear power plants - I have a fundamental disagreement with Lovins's ability to perform realistic computations and provide reasonable information about that energy source. I have read his "Soft Energy Path" and also believe that his ability as a predictor of the future is suspect.
I have no specific information about TES.
I do know that there is a tremendous store of technology in the nuclear field that has been well proven and yet not applied. Part of the reason is that its development and commercialization is extremely threatening to established fossil fuel company profits and power.
Best regards,
Rod Adams
Paxus
· 1 year ago
Deaest Rod:
Dont you think there is something of a problem with the nuclear industry marketing? If you are so strong on precisely honest representations, i would think this would really bug you. Avera knew that Finland EPR was not going to cost 3 billion Euros. They promised it at a fixed price to close the deal and as soon as the overruns started coming in, as they knew they would, they went to Finland and said "good partners share loses" In direct contradiction to the manner in which they sold the project - does not this type of deception bother you?. This strategy has been employed by virtually every reactor construction company, because they know once a billion dollars has been spent, it is extremely hard for the utility to quit the project.
You seem to have this double standard here, were it is deeply problematic for you that Lovins does not represent his educational experience the way you would like it. In fact technically he was educated at these institutions even if he did not complete his degrees. But you seem happy to let the Avera, GE an other nuclear salespeople create these huge problems by almost always misrepresenting what these facilities costs.
I think you would do the nuclear industry a great service if you would go thru Lovins Forget Nuclear or better yet the longer Nuclear Illusions and point out the failings of his analysis. Rather than saying "i have operated 3 plants, and he does not say he dropped out of Harvard, so i can dismiss him." I for one would read your critique and i am sure NEI would pay you for it if there was any merit to it at all.
I am sure you have no specific information about TES. But couldn't you as the publisher of a nuclear periodical ask Hyperion who the president of this supposed company is and where their headquarters is, so you could ask them where they are going to use these new reactors? You seem strangely uninterested in what others journalists might find a scoop. I've read all the online news stories about Hyperion's proposed reactor. No one is covering the TES story. Interestingly, when the press release was quoted in the Czech media, the section about TES was the only piece left out.
It would appear that pro-nuclear deceptions are forgivable. My experience with journalists is if they think a company is misrepresenting themselves, they go after the story. Are you only a promoter/cheerleader or are you critical of these companies as well (and i am not talking about design disagreements and other tech stuff)? I am confident the answer to this question is "no".
What about my concerns about the Hyperion reactor (and i recognize that i certainly have not responded to each of your points, some of them excellent)? Waste, reprocessing, earthquakes, proliferation.
And i am certainly not convinced that big oil is doing anything to stand in the way of nuclear profits, but perhaps this is an area where you can enlighten me as well. From where i sit, it seems like almost every wild idea nuclear folx want to try - reprocessing, fast breeders, fusion, MOX, nuclear airplanes, PNEs, whatever - some government is willing to fund, often leading to losses and more complex waste streams. yes, there are lots of "proven" nuclear technologies out there, it just seems that many of them dont work as advertised.
Amory Lovins wrote the nuclear illusion which looks at the data from 2000 forward or 1990 forward but he claims a decades long (plural so at least two decades and Lovins has been claiming nuclear collapse since the 1970s) collapse of nuclear energy.
Since 1980, nuclear power TWH has increased by over 400%. So Amory Lovins is wrong about nuclear energy being a collapsing industry.
The "micropower" is mostly diesel, biomass and natural gas of small and big sizes. Natural gas has 4 deaths per TWH (Externe source). So 2500 Twh (to displace nuclear power) would be 10,000 deaths per year. The diesel (oil) portion is 35 deaths per TWH. The biomass about 10 deaths per TWH (35,000 deaths per year if diesel was the main source). The blended rate of deaths per TWH from micropower is over 12 deaths per TWH. Far higher than the 0.65 deaths per TWH calculated by Externe for nuclear power. Even if the micropower deaths per TWH was cut in half for lower distribution losses the number is still far higher. Diesel and natural gas are not renewable. Over 75% of the power that Lovins is talking about is diesel, natural gas and biomass.
Lovins advocating an increase of more than double the US military deaths of the 5+ years of the Iraq war every year from more natural gas air pollution and other causes ?
All energy build costs went up with the increase in commodity prices (steel, concrete, oil)
There are wind turbine shortages and backorders for several years for the large efficient turbines.
T Boone Pickens just indicated that costs have gone up too much for his big wind proposal.
Paxus
· 1 year ago
Dearest Rob:
> T Boone Pickens just indicated that costs have gone up too much for his big wind proposal.
This is not what i have read. Pickens says that the credit crunch has slowed the project. He is still planning on taking delivery of the first 1000 MW of wind turbines in 2010, he is just not planning on installing them as fast. He has hardly stepped away from plan.
Interestingly, the Arizona Republic report you maybe referring to is no longer available online, since he has contradicted it's report. Though that article did not claim prices had gone up too much, but rather gas prices had dropped too low for it to be currently economical. Pickens has since corrected this assertion.
And i think the credit crunch is going to hit nuclear power much harder than wind, dont you?
Thoughts on Lovins in a bit.
Paxus in Am*dam
RodAdams
· 1 year ago
Paxus:
You are right to question any marketing message - including those of reactor vendors. I have a special distrust of salesmen - perhaps that is why I have not had tremendous success in business.
I am not a journalist trained to seek balance, but a writer with some technical education and deeper practical experience in energy generating and using systems than most other commentators in the field. I recognize the difference between theory and practice. I also have some breadth of experience as an investor, I have been buying and selling individual stocks since 1977, so I have seen some ups and downs.
Not only have I spent about a dozen years involved with the direct operation of nuclear power plants, but I spent some time as the GM for a small plastic products manufacturer based in Florida. We produced toys, medical supplies, and boat parts in direct competition with suppliers from around the world. I both bought and sold commodities on a daily basis throughout the time I was in that business, so I learned to pay attention to how supply and demand works and how the various materials competitors went after each other - sometimes with untrue FUD (fear, uncertainty and doubt - to try to control the balance in their favor.
That is a lot of throat clearing background for what I say about Lovins. He is an intelligent man who can spin a good story and has a facile way with words. In other words, he is a fast talker. I have listened to him speak in person at least twice in the past couple of years and had the opportunity to ask him questions in a public forum. I have also read dozens of his books and articles over a long period of time.
He makes saving energy sound easy. Experience tells me it is hard. He makes system designers who put in safety margins seem stupid and wasteful; my experience tells me that a pump, an air conditioning unit, or a piping system designed by Lovins standards is destined to be undersized and inadequate for the job. People who follow his prescriptions have often ended up with "sick buildings" that do not have sufficient ventilation to remove harmful indoor pollutants.
One can also find a thread running through all of his publications that ANY energy source is better than nuclear fission. He has, for example, been touting "clean coal" since the mid 1970s. He is either a liar or someone who is incapable of recognizing the world as it exists. I have "been there and done that" when it comes to nuclear power operations and simply cannot be dissuaded from recognizing a few facts about nuclear fission that continue to amaze me.
Uranium has 2 million times as much energy per unit mass as hydrocarbon fuel. Fission does not require any input from the atmosphere - unlike combustion. That allows engineers to fit a lifetime fuel supply into a submarine. That fuel supply takes up a tiny portion of the interior volume of the ship. The waste from the submarine power plant that I operated as the Engineer Officer would fit underneath my office desk, even though it provided all of the heat that the 9,000 ton, 425 feet long submarine needed to power its engines and generators for 14 years (that was 1970s vintage design, the lifetime cores are what we buy now.) That fuel did not produce any measurable air pollution. All anyone has to do to be safe from the waste products is to apply simple principles of "time, distance and shielding". NO ONE has ever been hurt by exposure to used nuclear fuel - that is not to say that the fuel is not potentially hazardous, but that we know how to handle it.
Energy is a commodity business - the largest in the world. Many of the articles published about energy are, in fact, marketing messages. I never dispute the fact that I promote nuclear fission power. It is superior to all other energy sources for many reasons. Critical thinkers need to recognize, however, that windmills, solar panels, coal, gas, oil, biomass, geothermal, batteries, fuel cells etc. also have their promoters. Lovins has worked as a consultant/promoter for all kinds of energy suppliers. (He himself has admitted that he has worked for major oil companies for more than 30 years.) Other energy system promoters have logical motivation for trying - like the Lilliputians - to tie down the giant in the field. It could put them all out of business.
Clean, cheap reliable energy is a wonderful boon to humanity, but for people that currently make a lot of money selling an inferior product, it is a hazard to their prosperity.
Note: there were cost overruns with a lot of multi-year construction in the seventies. Montreal Olympics, coal plants, bridges etc.. Delays in a time of high interest rates.
Summarized: http://nuclearinfo.net/Nuclearpower/WebHomeCost... * Design Flaws. There were significant design flaws which led to the reactor leak and operator confusion that caused the Three Mile Island accident. After these were exposed, the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), undertook an extensive review of Nuclear Plant designs and in many cases ordered changes. These changes were both expensive and time consuming to fix. They led to extensive construction delays at a time of very high interest rates and so significantly increased the cost of the Capital required to build the plant. * Two hurdle licensing. Up until the mid-1990's developers of nuclear power plants had to obtain both a license to build a Nuclear Power then a subsequent license to operate the plant. This also delayed the start of plant operation which significantly increased the cost of the plant. The worst situation was that of the Shoreham Plant which was completed on Long Island in New York State at a cost of 5 Billion dollars but was never allowed to operate. * Non-uniform designs. The US Nuclear Power Industry never achieved economies of volume because every reactor design was different. Each developer put in their own tweaks and much of the equipment was custom built for each plant. This compounded the difficulties of obtaining NRC licensing approval since the NRC had to evaluate each individual design.
In contrast the French Nuclear Power program settled on a standard design which satisfied the French Regulatory Commission. Industry was able to achieve economies of volume in the production of plants and to complete construction on time.
======== However, the plants built over the last thirty years internationally have had far fewer problems. France was successful with their build. Recent plants in Asia are mostly on time and budget. == The US reactor completion of Browns Ferry One in 2007 was one cost and budget after the work was restarted. I have heard of no problems with the Watts Barr plant restarted work and scheduled completion in 2013.
=== So how have renewables done in displacing coal ? Coal is still the fastest growing energy source. So if renewables cannot do the job of displacing coal by themselves then we definitely still need nuclear. OR there is the pesky air pollution [particulates, smog and millions of dead per year) and the CO2 (that pesky global warming.) or those pesky oil wars. France has 70% nuclear for electricity, where are there extra deaths from radiation ? Why is it the most popular tourist destination ? Aren't people afraid of all that nuclear waste that is lying all over Paris ?
Paxus
· 1 year ago
Oh and Browns Ferry 1 was completed for $1.8 billion (this is money to repair a plant that was already completed) and then did not comply with the fire safety standards that the 1975 fire at that plant inspired.
Browns Ferry 1 $1.8 billion upgrade will pay for itself in 2.5 years instead of 5-8 years because of the increased cost of natural gas.
The Chattanooga Times Free Press reports that in the past year, the restart of TVA’s oldest nuclear reactor at the Browns Ferry Nuclear Plant helped the utility save an estimated $800 million. http://timesfreepress.com/news/2008/nov/04/tenn...
The TVA board also voted last year to finish a second reactor at its Watts Bar Nuclear Plant near Spring City, Tenn., by 2013 at a projected cost of $2.5 billion. TVA projects that another Watts Bar unit will generate power for less than the continued costs of buying power from other generators or building new coal- or gas-fired plants.
The rising cost of construction materials is causing the agency to reconsider restarting the mothballed reactors, one of which is nearly 90 percent complete, the other about 58 percent complete, according to a letter submitted Tuesday by TVA to the NRC.
RodAdams
· 1 year ago
Paxus:
Where did you get your figures for "real renewables" and nuclear electricity generation? They certainly do not match those provided on the US Energy Information Agency web site - http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electricity/epm/ta....
That page provides 2008 year to date numbers that equate to 19.3% nuclear and just under 10% renewable - if you include traditional hydroelectricity and "Wood, black liquor, other wood waste, biogenic municipal solid waste, landfill gas, sludge waste, agriculture byproducts, other biomass, geothermal, solar thermal, photovoltaic energy, and wind."
You also mentioned the 1985 Forbes article quoting an investment of $125 billion. Considering the fact that nuclear power provides approximately 20% of our current electric power supply and that the total sales of the electric power industry last year were $300 billion, I would say that turned out to be a pretty darned good investment. That is especially true when you realize that the capital investment is essentially paid off for most of the plants and that nearly all of them either already have or will have a renewed license extending their operations for another 20 years.
I know there are a lot of people in the business who would love to have completed a few more plants or perhaps even kept some of the ones shut down when gas cost $1.80 per million BTU and it looked like license renewals would never happen.
nextbigfuture
· 1 year ago
Paxus you did not respond to the problems that I pointed out about Lovins and his nuclear illusion write up. Nuclear dieing industry a complete lie. His micro-power actually a push for diesel and coal. Nuclear would save far more lives than diesel and coal use with more air pollution and more deaths. Fossil fuel costs also rose a lot. Same as those FF power plants
======== Wind Costs rising and consistent overestimation of wind resources. [Point being that all energy costs are rising] If you have to borrow most of your project money then you have more of a problem. http://www.edmontonsun.com/News/Canada/2008/11/...
Gifford said the Canadian industry has also provided European investors with a series of unpleasant surprises as projects experience cost overruns, delays and lower-than-expected energy output.
In the case of EarthFirst’s Dokie project, costs went to $360 million from $325 million, according to Windpower Monthly, a leading industry publication.
In addition, said the magazine, the Canadian company was one of a number of projects that saw a “general revision” of its energy output by industry consultant Garrad Hassan.
“The firm decided to change the wind energy estimation method it applies to North American projects after it found a consistent pattern of overestimation of wind resources compared to actual operating results,” said the magazine.
the problem facing Canada’s independent wind producers is they are often heavily reliant on debt, raising between 70 to 80 per cent of their financing by borrowing.
Independent wind producers are facing big hikes in debt costs, raising doubt on whether ambitious construction goals will be met over the next few years, say financing experts.
The legislation extending the PTC provides a one-year extension (through December 31, 2008) of the 1.5-cent/kWh credit for wind, solar, geothermal, and "closed-loop" bioenergy facilities (Adjusted for inflation, the 1.5 cent/kWh tax credit is currently valued at 1.9 cents/kWh).
== Equivalent for a 8 billion kwh/year nuclear plant would be $120 million/year for ten years.
I do support the tax credit and continuing to build wind power because both wind and nuclear are better than coal and natural gas.
=== Paxus
Paxus
· 1 year ago
Re: Hyperion mini-reactor:
So if you go to there website you can see that they are in the dvelopment stage, no prototype exists. The NRC has already said it has no capacity to license "exotic" reactor designs. So what do you think the chances are that they will really be in production in 5 years?
Perhaps they have the same marketing people who promised the new Finnish EPR for 3 billion Euro (it is upward of 4.5 billion now after its 4th delay).
Yes the little diagram has some small water containers in it. My guess is that some of our serious physicists out there will point out that water is going to be a huge issue for these plants, if they ever get off the drawing boards. Just like they are for commercial plants operating today.
AND does this announcement not sound familiar to folx, we get one of these ever half dozen years or so. Big promises from the folx who were not able to finish half of the plants they started in the US and the ones they did finish were on average 300% overrun and over 4 years late. Let's not waste our time on nuclear fantasies, we have pressing serious work to do on climate.
nextbigfuture
· 1 year ago
Hyperion is in discussions with the NRC, however, reactors in the Bahamas and eastern europe or China do not have to be licensed by the NRC. If the NRC licensing was well advanced and only had final paperwork and some open questions that the foreign buyers deemed irrelevant then the production and sales would continue (some countries may have fewer qualms about things that the US get tied up in knots about). So they can be in production and selling foreign units before NRC licensing. NRC licensing could be streamlined for this since they are leveraging Triga safety systems and the reactor core is Los alamos technology. Los Alamos has people familiar with licensing issues. The unfinished plants were because of skyrocketing interest rates in the 1970s. This nuclear fantasy is privately funded, so what they do with their time and money is their business. Since you do not think they will succeed then what difference does it make to you. Why not complain about tax money being inefficiently spent for failed energy projects or banks or something where tax dollars are being used ?
From the CEO: TRIGA reactor. There are 60-something of those reactors around the world. They are the only reactor that the NRC has licensed for unattended operation, meaning it's so safe that you can literally walk away from it. It's walk-away safe. Those people—and virtually every country in the world, to some extent—rely upon United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission licensing as a basis for their own licensing. So we are seeking a design certification and a license from the U.S. NRC, even if we never install one in the U.S. [Other countries] won't rely on [NRC licensing] completely, but they will leverage that work.
Nuclear energy is very traditional, it's very well known. Word about this kind of reactor—a uranium hydride reactor from Los Alamos—it was first talked about 20 years ago. This is not a new product; this is a new product coming out to the market.
On page 8 of this PDF, the NRC is estimating 2008-2011 for hyperion pre-application work and then 2012-2015 for license review. Hyperion is shooting for June 2013. So Hyperion needs to helpt he NRC accelerate by 18 months to meet their schedule. The NRC has indicated that the schedule is tentative pending the actual application.
the NRC strategy is to use the licensee generated work for the licensing. ie. NRC will make Hyperion do the work to answer NRC questions. NRC just needs to have a few people who understand what to ask and understand prepared answers. this is the same as building code licenses at cities. The city department building people depend upon the builders, architects and engineers highrises, buildings and buildings to prepare the proof of safety and reliability.
All Comments
Besides - wind and solar won't have enough to keep things going - biomass is gonna bump up CO2 like crazy, not to mention food prices zooming. Hydropower's pretty well maxed out - "and think of the little fishies!" - and hydrogen? You need power to crack H2O to get it - it's a net loss for power. Can't use oil or natural gas, that doesn't leave much to run a technologically based civilization on.
I'm glad YOU aren't in charge of energy in this country, Paxus.
“The failure of the U.S. nuclear power program ranks as the largest managerial disaster in business history, a disaster on a monumental scale. The utility industry has already invested $125 billion in nuclear power … only the blind, or the biased, can now think that most of the money has been well spent.”
But if you want to blame interest rates ...
Perhaps Los Alamos or the TRIGA core can push NRC approval along, but it seems like we are still being classically overpromising here. Production in 5 years, without a completed design and functioning prototype today.
And as you say, it is private money. Except for the waste of course, always that pesky waste.
Real renewables were almost 11% of the US electricity production in the first half of 2008 with nuclear just over 12%, And renewables are growing with private capital, while nuclear (except Hyperion perhaps) can not. There are lots of well designed plans to get us the rest of the way without nukes. See www.oilendgame.com and
http://www.ieer.org/carbonfree/
http://nextbigfuture.com/2008/03/big-energy-pic...
Energy subsidies of various forms are all over all types of energy. Renewables worldwide are mostly growing with feed in tariffs. In the US wind and solar are dependent on government subsidies. Until the recent renewal of the subsidies, the US wind and solar industries were warning of a collapse of their industry. No matter what energy it is, there is some form of government support.
http://nextbigfuture.com/2008/09/us-energy-subs...
the total amount subsidized for solar and wind has resulted in less energy per money spent.
Nuclear waste is unburned fuel. The Hyperion reactor is ten times more efficient with fuel. There are molten salt reactors (Japan's Fuji MSR design) or accelerator driven reactors (under development in Europe) which should be built and would burn 99% of the fuel. That means uranium and plutonium burned leaving materials with less than 30 year half lives and many of those component elements with other uses. So the sensible plan wuold be to help push Hyperion and then develop the molten salt reactors in a factory mass produced format. Then within 40 years all of the nuclear energy downsides solved. the same cannot be said for coal or oil or natural gas which are the main alternatives.
There are slightly different newer numbers for renewables. Out of 34 quads produced domestically ...
Biomass and biofuels combined presently constitute the largest source of renewable energy in the United States at 1.883 quads, followed by hydropower at 1.387 quads. Wind power saw the largest growth rate of any generation technology, increasing from 0.164 quads to 0.244 quads a jump of almost 49% from the first half of 2007 compared to the first half of 2008. Solar and geothermal’s contributions were at roughly the same levels in 2008 as they were in 2007, 41 and 172 trillion Btus respectively. Both however could greatly expand their market share in the near future as technology improves and states turn to the two technologies to meet Renewable Portfolio Standards.
from http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/rea/news/in...
so wind is more like 1.5%, but importantly increased at 49% from the same period last year.
And while there are government subsidies in energy everywhere, it is relevant that there was $71 billion in private investment in renewables in 2007 and $0 in nuclear
see tinyurl.com/forgetnuclear
which says something about Wall Streets excitement about nuclear energy.
There are lots of promising designs for new nuclear projects, breeder reactors for example, but when we look at what actually been built, not the promises of nuclear engineers employed to make new proposals we find nuclear comes in at $0.14/Kwh and new wind is half that (again tinyurl-com/forgetnuclear)
given the delays and cost overruns in both of the third generation french reactors you are excited about. Perhaps instead of listening to the sales pitch we should stick to the kniting.
And you are right we have a long way to go to get renewables and efficiency to take over for fossil fuels.
the average capacity factor of the USA's nuclear power reactors in 2007 was 91.8 percent, up from the previous record of 90.1 percent, set in 2004. The country's 104 operating nuclear power reactors generated some 807 billion kWh of electricity in 2007, exceeding the previous record-high of 788.5 billion kWh set in 2004.
http://www.nei.org/filefolder/Nuclear_Performan...
Browns Ferry 1 generated 6.87 billion kwh YTD as of Sept, 2008
98.1% capacity factor
http://www.nei.org/filefolder/Nuclear_Performan...
It generated 4.51 billion kwh last year at 48.3% capacity factor.
This was twice the 2006 solar electricity power generation of 2.1 billion kwh.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_use_in_the_...
The US 2006 wind power generation was 30 billion kwh.
The 2008 wind power generation estimate is 48 billion kwh.
The US generated 787 billion kwh nuclear in 2006 and 807 billion kwh in 2007 and is tracking to the same in 2008. So 20 billion kwh more nuclear in 2008 than in 2006. Which would be more than the 18 billion kwh increase for wind.
Utilities and nuclear construction companies are investing in building nuclear power plants worldwide.
Areva, GE, Toshiba/Westinghouse, TVA, bruce power, etc...
Operating kwh price of nuclear power plants is a lot less.
I support the production of wind but just looking at the traditional nuclear plants. Nuclear will add more kwh than wind from now to 2020. Just as nuclear power has added more kwh since 1970.
http://nextbigfuture.com/2008/08/nuclear-power-...
I will not dispute that there are delays and cost overruns with the first of a kind plant being built in Finland. I also will not dispute that there will be delays and cost overruns in the first few plants that are built in the US after a long hiatus. We are essentially going to have to start up a new industry.
That is one reason why small reactors intrigue me. One of the lessons I learned while running a factory is that you can really reduce the cost of production after you have learned what you are doing and you see opportunities for improvement. It is difficult to apply any lessons learned when you are building a large construction project where it is years between doing the exact same task.
Rod Adams
Publisher, Atomic Insights
And a bunch of things to reply to. What first jumps to mind is that Lovins is somehow untrustworthy for not having completed his degrees. It currently quite fashionable to quit Harvard and get on with the real work with Gates and Zucherberg leading the charge. I think what we care about is how smart he is. He has 9 honorary degrees, a MacAuther "genius" award and designed the soft energy path which lead to DSM (demand side management). You would rather be seeking energy policy advice from an average PhD? Lovins is the ultimate pragmatic, his Winning the Oil Endgame has a forward by George Shultz, hardly a radical.
This TES company which is placing the first 6 orders has me interested. I lived and worked in the Czech Republic for a while, so i asked my friend to check the records. There are 6 listed companies in the CR with the name TES, only 3 of them have basic capitalization on the same order (or larger) than this proposed initial order. They are:
* TES a.s. - located in Ceske Budejovice, its portfolio includes butchery, construction of mechanical engines, engineering / basic capital 40,000 EUR
*TES Praha a.s. - located in Prague, dealing with software, economic consultancy and organizing trainings / basic capital 180,000 EUR
* TES Electronics a.s. - merchandise distributor, Prague, basic capital 100,000 EUR
Which one do you think is placing a $150K order for new reactors ?
You want to believe the nuclear sales people, we have a lot of bad experience with them. I am happy you admit Olkiluoto 3 "first of a kind" plant is behind and overruning. I assume you do as well for the Flamanville, France is also. Curiously they are both basically as delayed as they were supposed ot be complete to date - no temporal progress.
But Hyperion is going to be different and if it is overrun it is private money. Okay.
But a number of classical nuclear problems still plague the Hyperion design:
The company says they plan to reprocess
and re-use most fuel: “…there are known ways of dealing with it [the waste]. For
security reasons, we're not disclosing what will happen to it, but it's not going to
just sit in some bucket somewhere. Recycling was ‘baked in’ to our reactor design
from the beginning.”
Would these known ways be like the flooded salt domes at Asse http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1...
Where the German nuclear industry promised protection huge quantities of time, but they did not function for a single generation? They are basically asking us to trust them. I trust them like i trust TES to come thru with their purchase orders.
Reprocessing means new larger waste streams, in harder to handle forms.
Similarly, they are dismissive about proliferation risks, and while burying these reactors will protect during operation, there is all this transport needed and both production and refueling facilities pose new proliferation risks.
And burying them is not completely without risk. In case something does go
wrong, there is not a lot that can be done to prevent spreading of contaminants. If the
containment is damaged for example due to an earthquake, it might not even be detected,
and if it is, the whole installation needs to be dug out to prevent leakage to the
environment
The fact that this technology was discovered 50 years ago and is only proposed to be used now, shows
that it is not as easy as it sounds. The system that is proposed uses what seems a rather
delicate equilibrium between neutron energies, temperature and hybride-hydrogen
dissociation reactions. Configuration, pressure, hydrogen concentration, temperature,
impurities all influence the process and it seems complicated to get the right parameters
to make it work. The claim is the right configuration has been found, however it is
unclear how critical the different parameters are.
So that is enuf for todays entry. Thanks for hanging in there with me.
Paxus in Am*dam
It is one thing to be a proud dropout like Steve Jobs or Bill Gates.
It is quite another to market yourself with a blurb like this from the
RMI web site - "Chief Scientist, is a consultant experimental
physicist educated at Harvard and Oxford. He has received an Oxford MA
(by virtue of being a don)".
That phrase has a lot of parsing in it; it is designed to deceive. In
the modern world, you should not call yourself a scientist or a
physicist without any degree. You should not tell people you were
"educated" at prestigious schools when you were a dropout - twice. You
should not try to fool Americans into thinking that you have a degree
by telling them that you received an MA - which is a degree that has
some meaning here, when at Oxford it is simply a recognition that you
have attended.
Being smart and even being accepted by the establishment does not mean
that you have intellectual integrity and are someone who should be
trusted.
As a guy who has operated three nuclear power plants - I have a
fundamental disagreement with Lovins's ability to perform realistic
computations and provide reasonable information about that energy
source. I have read his "Soft Energy Path" and also believe that his
ability as a predictor of the future is suspect.
I have no specific information about TES.
I do know that there is a tremendous store of technology in the
nuclear field that has been well proven and yet not applied. Part of
the reason is that its development and commercialization is extremely
threatening to established fossil fuel company profits and power.
Best regards,
Rod Adams
Dont you think there is something of a problem with the nuclear industry marketing? If you are so strong on precisely honest representations, i would think this would really bug you. Avera knew that Finland EPR was not going to cost 3 billion Euros. They promised it at a fixed price to close the deal and as soon as the overruns started coming in, as they knew they would, they went to Finland and said "good partners share loses" In direct contradiction to the manner in which they sold the project - does not this type of deception bother you?. This strategy has been employed by virtually every reactor construction company, because they know once a billion dollars has been spent, it is extremely hard for the utility to quit the project.
You seem to have this double standard here, were it is deeply problematic for you that Lovins does not represent his educational experience the way you would like it. In fact technically he was educated at these institutions even if he did not complete his degrees. But you seem happy to let the Avera, GE an other nuclear salespeople create these huge problems by almost always misrepresenting what these facilities costs.
I think you would do the nuclear industry a great service if you would go thru Lovins Forget Nuclear or better yet the longer Nuclear Illusions and point out the failings of his analysis. Rather than saying "i have operated 3 plants, and he does not say he dropped out of Harvard, so i can dismiss him." I for one would read your critique and i am sure NEI would pay you for it if there was any merit to it at all.
I am sure you have no specific information about TES. But couldn't you as the publisher of a nuclear periodical ask Hyperion who the president of this supposed company is and where their headquarters is, so you could ask them where they are going to use these new reactors? You seem strangely uninterested in what others journalists might find a scoop. I've read all the online news stories about Hyperion's proposed reactor. No one is covering the TES story. Interestingly, when the press release was quoted in the Czech media, the section about TES was the only piece left out.
It would appear that pro-nuclear deceptions are forgivable. My experience with journalists is if they think a company is misrepresenting themselves, they go after the story. Are you only a promoter/cheerleader or are you critical of these companies as well (and i am not talking about design disagreements and other tech stuff)? I am confident the answer to this question is "no".
What about my concerns about the Hyperion reactor (and i recognize that i certainly have not responded to each of your points, some of them excellent)? Waste, reprocessing, earthquakes, proliferation.
And i am certainly not convinced that big oil is doing anything to stand in the way of nuclear profits, but perhaps this is an area where you can enlighten me as well. From where i sit, it seems like almost every wild idea nuclear folx want to try - reprocessing, fast breeders, fusion, MOX, nuclear airplanes, PNEs, whatever - some government is willing to fund, often leading to losses and more complex waste streams. yes, there are lots of "proven" nuclear technologies out there, it just seems that many of them dont work as advertised.
Thanks for hanging in there with me
Paxus in Am*dam
http://nextbigfuture.com/2008/06/amory-lovins-d...
Amory Lovins wrote the nuclear illusion which looks at the data from 2000 forward or 1990 forward but he claims a decades long (plural so at least two decades and Lovins has been claiming nuclear collapse since the 1970s) collapse of nuclear energy.
Since 1980, nuclear power TWH has increased by over 400%. So Amory Lovins is wrong about nuclear energy being a collapsing industry.
The "micropower" is mostly diesel, biomass and natural gas of small and big sizes. Natural gas has 4 deaths per TWH (Externe source). So 2500 Twh (to displace nuclear power) would be 10,000 deaths per year. The diesel (oil) portion is 35 deaths per TWH. The biomass about 10 deaths per TWH (35,000 deaths per year if diesel was the main source). The blended rate of deaths per TWH from micropower is over 12 deaths per TWH. Far higher than the 0.65 deaths per TWH calculated by Externe for nuclear power. Even if the micropower deaths per TWH was cut in half for lower distribution losses the number is still far higher. Diesel and natural gas are not renewable. Over 75% of the power that Lovins is talking about is diesel, natural gas and biomass.
Lovins advocating an increase of more than double the US military deaths of the 5+ years of the Iraq war every year from more natural gas air pollution and other causes ?
All energy build costs went up with the increase in commodity prices (steel, concrete, oil)
There are wind turbine shortages and backorders for several years for the large efficient turbines.
T Boone Pickens just indicated that costs have gone up too much for his big wind proposal.
> T Boone Pickens just indicated that costs have gone up too much for his big wind proposal.
This is not what i have read. Pickens says that the credit crunch has slowed the project. He is still planning on taking delivery of the first 1000 MW of wind turbines in 2010, he is just not planning on installing them as fast. He has hardly stepped away from plan.
http://greeninc.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/11/12/li...
Interestingly, the Arizona Republic report you maybe referring to is no longer available online, since he has contradicted it's report. Though that article did not claim prices had gone up too much, but rather gas prices had dropped too low for it to be currently economical. Pickens has since corrected this assertion.
And i think the credit crunch is going to hit nuclear power much harder than wind, dont you?
Thoughts on Lovins in a bit.
Paxus in Am*dam
You are right to question any marketing message - including those of
reactor vendors. I have a special distrust of salesmen - perhaps that
is why I have not had tremendous success in business.
I am not a journalist trained to seek balance, but a writer with some
technical education and deeper practical experience in energy
generating and using systems than most other commentators in the
field. I recognize the difference between theory and practice. I also
have some breadth of experience as an investor, I have been buying and
selling individual stocks since 1977, so I have seen some ups and downs.
Not only have I spent about a dozen years involved with the direct
operation of nuclear power plants, but I spent some time as the GM for
a small plastic products manufacturer based in Florida. We produced
toys, medical supplies, and boat parts in direct competition with
suppliers from around the world. I both bought and sold commodities on
a daily basis throughout the time I was in that business, so I learned
to pay attention to how supply and demand works and how the various
materials competitors went after each other - sometimes with untrue
FUD (fear, uncertainty and doubt - to try to control the balance in
their favor.
That is a lot of throat clearing background for what I say about
Lovins. He is an intelligent man who can spin a good story and has a
facile way with words. In other words, he is a fast talker. I have
listened to him speak in person at least twice in the past couple of
years and had the opportunity to ask him questions in a public forum.
I have also read dozens of his books and articles over a long period
of time.
He makes saving energy sound easy. Experience tells me it is hard. He
makes system designers who put in safety margins seem stupid and
wasteful; my experience tells me that a pump, an air conditioning
unit, or a piping system designed by Lovins standards is destined to
be undersized and inadequate for the job. People who follow his
prescriptions have often ended up with "sick buildings" that do not
have sufficient ventilation to remove harmful indoor pollutants.
One can also find a thread running through all of his publications
that ANY energy source is better than nuclear fission. He has, for
example, been touting "clean coal" since the mid 1970s. He is either a
liar or someone who is incapable of recognizing the world as it
exists. I have "been there and done that" when it comes to nuclear
power operations and simply cannot be dissuaded from recognizing a few
facts about nuclear fission that continue to amaze me.
Uranium has 2 million times as much energy per unit mass as
hydrocarbon fuel. Fission does not require any input from the
atmosphere - unlike combustion. That allows engineers to fit a
lifetime fuel supply into a submarine. That fuel supply takes up a
tiny portion of the interior volume of the ship. The waste from the
submarine power plant that I operated as the Engineer Officer would
fit underneath my office desk, even though it provided all of the heat
that the 9,000 ton, 425 feet long submarine needed to power its
engines and generators for 14 years (that was 1970s vintage design,
the lifetime cores are what we buy now.) That fuel did not produce any
measurable air pollution. All anyone has to do to be safe from the
waste products is to apply simple principles of "time, distance and
shielding". NO ONE has ever been hurt by exposure to used nuclear fuel
- that is not to say that the fuel is not potentially hazardous, but
that we know how to handle it.
Energy is a commodity business - the largest in the world. Many of the
articles published about energy are, in fact, marketing messages. I
never dispute the fact that I promote nuclear fission power. It is
superior to all other energy sources for many reasons. Critical
thinkers need to recognize, however, that windmills, solar panels,
coal, gas, oil, biomass, geothermal, batteries, fuel cells etc. also
have their promoters. Lovins has worked as a consultant/promoter for
all kinds of energy suppliers. (He himself has admitted that he has
worked for major oil companies for more than 30 years.) Other energy
system promoters have logical motivation for trying - like the
Lilliputians - to tie down the giant in the field. It could put them
all out of business.
Clean, cheap reliable energy is a wonderful boon to humanity, but for
people that currently make a lot of money selling an inferior product,
it is a hazard to their prosperity.
Rod Adams
http://www.phyast.pitt.edu/~blc/book/chapter9.html
Note: there were cost overruns with a lot of multi-year construction in the seventies. Montreal Olympics, coal plants, bridges etc..
Delays in a time of high interest rates.
Summarized:
http://nuclearinfo.net/Nuclearpower/WebHomeCost...
* Design Flaws. There were significant design flaws which led to the reactor leak and operator confusion that caused the Three Mile Island accident. After these were exposed, the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), undertook an extensive review of Nuclear Plant designs and in many cases ordered changes. These changes were both expensive and time consuming to fix. They led to extensive construction delays at a time of very high interest rates and so significantly increased the cost of the Capital required to build the plant.
* Two hurdle licensing. Up until the mid-1990's developers of nuclear power plants had to obtain both a license to build a Nuclear Power then a subsequent license to operate the plant. This also delayed the start of plant operation which significantly increased the cost of the plant. The worst situation was that of the Shoreham Plant which was completed on Long Island in New York State at a cost of 5 Billion dollars but was never allowed to operate.
* Non-uniform designs. The US Nuclear Power Industry never achieved economies of volume because every reactor design was different. Each developer put in their own tweaks and much of the equipment was custom built for each plant. This compounded the difficulties of obtaining NRC licensing approval since the NRC had to evaluate each individual design.
In contrast the French Nuclear Power program settled on a standard design which satisfied the French Regulatory Commission. Industry was able to achieve economies of volume in the production of plants and to complete construction on time.
Next generation plants are discussed
http://www.phyast.pitt.edu/~blc/book/chapter10....
========
However, the plants built over the last thirty years internationally have had far fewer problems. France was successful with their build. Recent plants in Asia are mostly on time and budget.
==
The US reactor completion of Browns Ferry One in 2007 was one cost and budget after the work was restarted.
I have heard of no problems with the Watts Barr plant restarted work and scheduled completion in 2013.
===
So how have renewables done in displacing coal ? Coal is still the fastest growing energy source. So if renewables cannot do the job of displacing coal by themselves then we definitely still need nuclear. OR there is the pesky air pollution [particulates, smog and millions of dead per year) and the CO2 (that pesky global warming.) or those pesky oil wars. France has 70% nuclear for electricity, where are there extra deaths from radiation ? Why is it the most popular tourist destination ? Aren't people afraid of all that nuclear waste that is lying all over Paris ?
See http://www.nirs.org/press/06-20-2007/1
Browns Ferry 1 $1.8 billion upgrade will pay for itself in 2.5 years instead of 5-8 years because of the increased cost of natural gas.
The Chattanooga Times Free Press reports that in the past year, the restart of TVA’s oldest nuclear reactor at the Browns Ferry Nuclear Plant helped the utility save an estimated $800 million.
http://timesfreepress.com/news/2008/nov/04/tenn...
The TVA board also voted last year to finish a second reactor at its Watts Bar Nuclear Plant near Spring City, Tenn., by 2013 at a projected cost of $2.5 billion. TVA projects that another Watts Bar unit will generate power for less than the continued costs of buying power from other generators or building new coal- or gas-fired plants.
The TVA is looking at reviving two expired licenses for partially completed plants in Alabama (bellafonte site)
http://nextbigfuture.com/2008/08/tva-may-restar...
http://www.knoxnews.com/news/2008/aug/28/tva-co...
The rising cost of construction materials is causing the agency to reconsider restarting the mothballed reactors, one of which is nearly 90 percent complete, the other about 58 percent complete, according to a letter submitted Tuesday by TVA to the NRC.
Where did you get your figures for "real renewables" and nuclear electricity generation? They certainly do not match those provided on the US Energy Information Agency web site - http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electricity/epm/ta....
That page provides 2008 year to date numbers that equate to 19.3% nuclear and just under 10% renewable - if you include traditional hydroelectricity and "Wood, black liquor, other wood waste, biogenic municipal solid waste, landfill gas, sludge waste, agriculture byproducts, other biomass, geothermal, solar thermal, photovoltaic energy, and wind."
You also mentioned the 1985 Forbes article quoting an investment of $125 billion. Considering the fact that nuclear power provides approximately 20% of our current electric power supply and that the total sales of the electric power industry last year were $300 billion, I would say that turned out to be a pretty darned good investment. That is especially true when you realize that the capital investment is essentially paid off for most of the plants and that nearly all of them either already have or will have a renewed license extending their operations for another 20 years.
I know there are a lot of people in the business who would love to have completed a few more plants or perhaps even kept some of the ones shut down when gas cost $1.80 per million BTU and it looked like license renewals would never happen.
Nuclear dieing industry a complete lie.
His micro-power actually a push for diesel and coal.
Nuclear would save far more lives than diesel and coal use with more air pollution and more deaths.
Fossil fuel costs also rose a lot. Same as those FF power plants
========
Wind Costs rising and consistent overestimation of wind resources. [Point being that all energy costs are rising]
If you have to borrow most of your project money then you have more of a problem.
http://www.edmontonsun.com/News/Canada/2008/11/...
Gifford said the Canadian industry has also provided European investors with a series of unpleasant surprises as projects experience cost overruns, delays and lower-than-expected energy output.
In the case of EarthFirst’s Dokie project, costs went to $360 million from $325 million, according to Windpower Monthly, a leading industry publication.
In addition, said the magazine, the Canadian company was one of a number of projects that saw a “general revision” of its energy output by industry consultant Garrad Hassan.
“The firm decided to change the wind energy estimation method it applies to North American projects after it found a consistent pattern of overestimation of wind resources compared to actual operating results,” said the magazine.
the problem facing Canada’s independent wind producers is they are often heavily reliant on debt, raising between 70 to 80 per cent of their financing by borrowing.
Independent wind producers are facing big hikes in debt costs, raising doubt on whether ambitious construction goals will be met over the next few years, say financing experts.
===
Expiration of the production tax credit in 1999, 2001, 2003 dropped wind build numbers by 80%+ in 2000, 2002, 2004
http://www.awea.org/pubs/documents/Outlook_2008...
The legislation extending the PTC provides a one-year extension (through December 31, 2008) of the 1.5-cent/kWh credit for wind, solar, geothermal, and "closed-loop" bioenergy facilities (Adjusted for inflation, the 1.5 cent/kWh tax credit is currently valued at 1.9 cents/kWh).
==
Equivalent for a 8 billion kwh/year nuclear plant would be $120 million/year for ten years.
I do support the tax credit and continuing to build wind power because both wind and nuclear are better than coal and natural gas.
=== Paxus
So if you go to there website you can see that they are in the dvelopment stage, no prototype exists. The NRC has already said it has no capacity to license "exotic" reactor designs. So what do you think the chances are that they will really be in production in 5 years?
Perhaps they have the same marketing people who promised the new Finnish EPR for 3 billion Euro (it is upward of 4.5 billion now after its 4th delay).
Yes the little diagram has some small water containers in it. My guess is that some of our serious physicists out there will point out that water is going to be a huge issue for these plants, if they ever get off the drawing boards. Just like they are for commercial plants operating today.
AND does this announcement not sound familiar to folx, we get one of these ever half dozen years or so. Big promises from the folx who were not able to finish half of the plants they started in the US and the ones they did finish were on average 300% overrun and over 4 years late. Let's not waste our time on nuclear fantasies, we have pressing serious work to do on climate.
From the CEO: TRIGA reactor. There are 60-something of those reactors around the world. They are the only reactor that the NRC has licensed for unattended operation, meaning it's so safe that you can literally walk away from it. It's walk-away safe. Those people—and virtually every country in the world, to some extent—rely upon United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission licensing as a basis for their own licensing. So we are seeking a design certification and a license from the U.S. NRC, even if we never install one in the U.S. [Other countries] won't rely on [NRC licensing] completely, but they will leverage that work.
Nuclear energy is very traditional, it's very well known. Word about this kind of reactor—a uranium hydride reactor from Los Alamos—it was first talked about 20 years ago. This is not a new product; this is a new product coming out to the market.
http://www.techrockies.com/story/0017490.html
On page 8 of this PDF, the NRC is estimating 2008-2011 for hyperion pre-application work and then 2012-2015 for license review. Hyperion is shooting for June 2013. So Hyperion needs to helpt he NRC accelerate by 18 months to meet their schedule. The NRC has indicated that the schedule is tentative pending the actual application.
the NRC strategy is to use the licensee generated work for the licensing. ie. NRC will make Hyperion do the work to answer NRC questions. NRC just needs to have a few people who understand what to ask and understand prepared answers. this is the same as building code licenses at cities. The city department building people depend upon the builders, architects and engineers highrises, buildings and buildings to prepare the proof of safety and reliability.