View topic - Cost of "clean" nuclear energy

The United States' electricity demand graph extending till 2036 doesn't match the outlook here in Canada:





http://www.nrcan.gc.ca/eneene/sources/e ... p#domestic

For America I thought the outlook was the same... increasing electrical demand, and much of it because of increasing dependence on electronics and telecommunications. Finding those sources... well, I've got to go.

PS... predicting what will be the next big trend in electrical generation is never certain... could be solar, could be clean coal, could be next-generation nuclear. One thing seems to be somewhat certain in Canada... coal is on the way out.

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Another thing certain here in Ont is energy shortages in the future unless the govt's (This 1 as well as the past 2 or 3) gets off the proverbial pot. Hamsters on treadmills, perhaps?

Oh, yeah, forgot one other "solution"---the economy goes into a big recession. Yeah, yeah, that's the ticket!!

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Old canoeists never die---they just smell that way.

Caldicott at conference in Nunavut on uranium mining issues. Covers the full range of long-term radiation, economic, proliferation concerns … and specific dangers to caribou and long term risks to populations who subsist from locally available foods. I'll post this to Kiggavik thread as well (once more information is available, and possibly video).

Also on panel: Isabelle Gringas, one of 23 doctors at Sept-Îles Hospital who threatened to resign when Provincial government ignored research on dangers of uranium mining, and 14,000 signatures from local residents calling for a mining moratorium. Controversy started when Terra Ventures began exploring for uranium at Lake Kachiwiss, 20 km north of Sept-Îles. And Gordon Edwards, long time president of Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility and author of numerous articles on health risks of power generation, mining, and disposal of radioactive wastes.

Please … If you're interested in meeting small increases in energy demand at home (1.3% per year is historically very low), why not export less energy to the US? You're currently running about a 9% surplus in country? Anything above that can certainly be handled by rising energy costs and consumer habits around efficiency (cost savings), and a buildout of wind farms and other renewables. Canada absolutely does not have an energy supply problem. It does, however, have an energy pricing problem.

And FT ... if you can't see the next big trend in electrical generation (private investors are certainly finding it), I really don't think you are looking hard enough?

I suppose this is how our media works these days. A few very interesting news stories and editorials on Port Hope radiation clean-up concerns. MP Norlock stands up for area businesses and real estate developers and goes on the attack for comments made by visiting speaker Caldicott (which he describes as "'outrageous stories' not backed by science or studies, but whose message wreaks havoc on local economic prosperity and jobs"). The Toronto Star isn't sure what to make of it: sue the government, toxic smear, or drive-by hit job. And the Northumberland press talks about a siege mentality, a community held hostage by anti-nukes, and Mayor Linda Thompson being "mad as hell and not going to take it any more" (referencing a 1976 film classic "Network," which I highly recommend!!).

Plenty of letters to the editor as well. Retired worker for Cameco (22.5 years) is in good health, and wants to let Caldicott know: "she can stick her comments and false concerns wherever." Another reader recommends Caldicott read obituary announcements for Port Hope ("not many deaths under 75 and 80"), and calls her "narrow-minded" and "nearsighted." One reader contends that the countless peer reviewed studies (that Solomon and others contend have never been done for the community) "are a far cry from the 'medically corrupt' conspiracy theories peddled by Caldicott." There are also numerous accusations of careerism, and profit motives (even for FARE and Ontario Waterkeepers, who are apparently receiving terrific windfalls of reputation bending cash for their invitation to Caldicott). No shortage of stories on the profit motive. One long time supporter of FARE and bringing greater attention to long-standing cleanup concerns at Port Hope sees the Caldicott invitation as a final straw: "I can no longer offer them the comfort of credibility."

And my favorite for it's creative approach: "cry baby defender of Cameco" (YouTube) … for a related Cameco mining issue.

On the side of gentleness and giving equal representation to opposing views, one reader considers free speech the victim of the Caldicott visit, and speaks out against hyperbole in the media, from anti-nuclear advocates and elected leaders. Another wants to remind readers of the long history of mishandling radiation concerns by local and federal governments. And a third looks at recent uranium spills into Lake Ontario in 2007 and wonders if Caldicott has a point.

So yes, the deflection of blame and responsibility appears to be alive and well in Port Hope. I think it's worth saying that all of these statements point to a single concern in the community, even though you have to go looking for it among the wild accusations, faulty claims, defensive attacks, and counter assurances offered by local representatives. But there it is looking everybody in the face, and is hard to ignore, the remediation of toxic and radiological wastes first identified as a danger to the community in the early 1970s was NEVER COMPLETED! You'd think it was the will of residents to have it this way, but this has been far from the case. It's been a constant battle, even to the point where opponents of Caldicott have to admit to the frustration and stress it has brought to the community (and adverse economic impacts). After 35 years of inaction, says Norlock, the 10 year clean-up plan (with CNCS oversight) is "finally moving forward [and] is a tangible sign of this government's commitment to uphold a long-standing promise to the people of Port Hope and area." Yea for this! Somehow, I am sure residents and supporters of industry will find a way to blame Caldicott for this as well (a promise 35 years in the making … lingering concerns about long-standing wastes … and 10 additional years of budgeting, unflattering news stories, and bulldozers).

Dr. Helen Caldicott, pediatrician



http://www.waterkeeper.ca/2010/11/17/mo ... ntario-ca/


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Idylwyld, earlier on you wrote that an increase of 1.3% in electricity demand per year is low... over twenty years, that figure represents an exponential rate of increase resulting in 30% more electricity needed. That's not what's suggested in that predicted trendline in the demand graph in your earlier post.

A thirty percent increase in total demand across an entire nation will be the thing that results in more greenhouse gases affecting climate. Intensity-based graphs and predictions can be misleading since they don't indicate total emissions of GHGs. This is something that the oil sands producers have spun, eg. claims of 20% lowered intensity in GHG emissions while remaining silent on total oil production increases of 200-300% along with correspondingly higher total GHGs.

Ontario recently announced plans to add to existing electrical generating capacity.... while there will be new hydroelectric, solar and wind generation, nukes will get the biggest bucks while old coal-fired generation is being phased out. IIRC, all the existing nukes will be upgraded and two new ones will be built... Ontario's spending plans are a response to political promises to green power generation and the dollar allocations do show a clear vote for nuclear as a replacement for coal. I'll find something in the news later on.

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There are always plans … but once a site is proposed and new engineering plans are drawn up … cost curves, supply burdens, regulatory challenges, and public concerns rise almost as fast as our greenhouse gas emissions from the burning of coal. The question is how often do they ever get built (I had another source that brought these numbers up to date, but can't find it)? A great many proposed plants never get built (and taxpayer subsidies get sunk into utility companies as a result with no benefit to consumers or environment).

This speaks to me of a boondoggle, and not an energy solution.

I've provided information that nuclear does not represent an effective carbon reduction strategy. Please suggest otherwise if your defense is going to be based on GHG mitigation. The next generation of CANDU reactors require large energy inputs for heavy water, but also enriched fuel. With high grade ore on the decline (this picture of a sustainable and long term solution looks incredibly bleak and financially reckless). This doesn't mean that no new plants will be built, there are many other reasons why governments want nuclear for baseload generation (20% or so) and an enrichment industry within their borders.


Perhaps Caldicott was also thinking in terms of the Manhattan Project, and the ongoing use of Canadian uranium for non-peacetime and military applications, see Harding's book (and the harm this has brought to civilian populations and returning soldiers over last several years in Iraq and Afghanistan in particular).

The first thing that needs to change is how we as a society use electricity. This includes not only residential use but more importantly commercial and industrial. Until we can change our usage habits, solar and wind can not compete on a utility scale. Both (and to a much larger extent, solar thermal) are very viable and excellent options for residential use, but can not and will not fill the needs of business. They are just too unreliable, and unknown to most people is that fact that the vast majority of wind turbines on the system are induction machines. This means that they require reactive power from the system to produce a voltage and therefore push power. They can not exist without traditional means of generation connected to them. While they do produce usable power (watts), they are tremendous users of reactive power (vars) and have significant effects on voltage levels and system stability, as well as create a demand (and a rather significant one) on traditional sources which still need to provide the current to set up and maintain the magnetic fields required for making power.

On a utility level, for every megawatt of installed alternative energy (wind/solar) there must be a megawatt of traditional sources to back it up. That's just how the market works, and one of the places where the "change in usage habits" and changing regulation standards needs to be addressed. These may be easy to work around, I have no idea, but is still a definite roadblock. I mentioned before, but it's worth mentioning again, that as a technology for displacing RESIDENTIAL use, they are very viable and effective, only because no one (besides you) really cares if your lights go out. Business, industry, hospitals, etc are either unwilling or flat out unable to tolerate service disruptions.

Nuclear is definitely an "evil", but stacked beside some other evils like coal or oil may (or may not) be a lesser evil. Technologies have changed dramatically and nuclear now is in no way, shape or form the same as the nuclear back in it's hayday.

Artificially cheap oil and electricity is definitely keeping us from exploring other alternatives, but many many people have come to rely on both. Imagine what will happen if/when transportation becomes a significant user of the electrical resources.

If there was some better storage technology other than batteries, you would see renewables really take off, but as it exists today, all electricity produced must match, exactly, with the amount being used. There is no such thing as "surplus" electricity, there is always, at every moment, perfect balance between source and load. For that reason, it is said that the North American power grid is the most complex machine in the world (although I would add excluding the human body). Renewable technologies, as they exist today, simply aren't at the point where they can meet the instantaneous demands on the system.

Idylwyld,



The IPCC recommends nuclear power as a mitigation measure to GHGs. Two orders of magnitude means significantly lower GHG emissions. All those scientists do add up to some credibility, wouldn't you say... the Obama administration has made similar statements although their statements may be more politically motivated.

IPCC:



http://www.ipcc.ch/ipccreports/tar/wg3/ ... hp?idp=128




Here's the breakdown in planned spending costs in Ontario's freshly-greened power generation. It remains to be seen whether the buildout actually occurs on the ground, time will tell. From the news reports I've included here earlier on, Canadian GHG reductions will match those in America, more or less. There's always the possibility of political upheaval on both sides of the border resulting in these green measures not materializing.

nuclear - $33 billion, 38%

wind - $14 billion, 16%

conservation - $12 billion, 14%

solar - $9 billion, 10%

transmission lines - $9 billion, 10%

hydroelectric - $4.6 billion, 5%

biomass - $4 billion, 5%

natural gas - $1.9 billion, 2%



http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-11-2 ... nergy.html

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Good points in the above post, Low1... some of Ontario's new non-nuclear generation is planned to be wind and with those shortcomings, one has to ask what the actual costs are.

One way of overcoming the storage problem with excess electricity generated by alternatives may be to produce hydrogen and then use it in fuel cells when needed, or to add it to natural gas for vehicle use.

Some of the cost predictions for solar suggest that there is a steadily declining cost per megawatt and it's only a matter of time before the costs are low enough for solar to be competitive with other forms.

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I basically see us twiddling along, spending lots of money, making small adjustments, and ending up exactly where we are now (more carbon emissions, radioactive wastes piling up, buying renewable energy technologies overseas from our competitors, and burning lots of oil and gas from oil sands and shale). This is not a particularly thoughtful energy policy: it's unsustainable, it doesn't lead to greater economic prosperity or growth, it pollutes our rivers and communities, and makes time and finite resources our biggest obstacle (and financial burden for the future). The status quo is the biggest impediment to real change in our energy sector, and business as usual proponents want to continue to give the same arguments about keeping energy costs low, rising demand as far as the eye can see, so called "clean" nuclear, and industrial use of non-renewable resources as the only option for utility level electricity. All I can say is that they haven't kept up with current research and trends. Thanks for this helpful summary and discussion of important key technical concerns. But grid managers have been dealing with variable power sources from the very inception of the grid. Nuclear, coal, hydro, and gas plants are also variable sources, and are not always running at peak efficiency (drought and low water levels can often dramatically impact the amount of electricity generated at hydro power stations). As far as I can find, the "hot-button" issue of back-up power has largely faded out of the literature on wind-integration studies on a utility scale. Doubly-fed induction generators or full-effect converters are used to match the frequency of the current from a variable wind source to DC and back to AC (matching the line frequency and voltage). This means some energy is lost, and adds to the expense of wind farms, but it appears to me to be an effective workaround to the issues you describe.

Many large wind farms are connected to transmission lines through a dedicated substation. I don't see where there needs to be a 1:1 relationship of back-up power to generating capacity, but we do need a way to actively maintain the system, match supply to demand, forecast for supply interruptions, and get real-time numbers (which are done with a series of control signals sent out to wind farms and other sources). Advanced weather forecasting is one way to more effectively match supply and demand to variable wind sources. And there are other approaches too: co-ordinated wind farms and power system operation, reactive compensation and voltage control systems, fault ride-through systems, energy storage systems, current limitation devices, directional protections, and more. From a 2001 study, "Advances in wind-turbine technology and results of nearly two decades of research mean that the integration of wind turbines and wind farms into electricity networks generally poses few problems." Other, more recent studies, look at operation of electricity grids with large amounts of wind power (up to 55 or 65%), and dealing with excess capacity "by transmission to neighboring areas, storage (e.g. thermal) or demand side management." Utility level solar and wind are here and are being used now … we know how to do this using current technology (even with our aging 20th century circulatory grid system, which makes best use of large centralized sources and certainly has a lot of room for improvement).

Regarding nuclear … I've been following closely the issue of mining and community opposition to uranium development in the North. There are two videos for the Iqaluit meeting on Kiggavik posted so far (here and here). They also intend to post video for the panel at Baker Lake, so there is more to follow. Two candidates in upcoming NTI elections are running on an anti-nuclear platform: Niko Inuarak (for President), and Marius Tungilik (for Vice President). As Tungilik writes: "I cannot support the uranium mining policy as it stands.  I would like to see economic growth in Nunavut as we need a strong ecomonic base to maintain our livihood, but certainly not at the expense of our environment and our health as a people.  This is our homeland.  I say NO.  It is not worth it!"

It's the same for the Mistissini Cree in Quebec (in a recent policy statement opposing development of Matoush uranium exploration project in their homeland). This was later backed by the Grand Council as a whole:Who does this leave as an advocate for uranium mining in the North … "exploration" projects are being opposed and shut down from Nova Scotia, Quebec, Labrador, NWT, and Nunavut. And unlike solar and wind, which show ongoing and continuous technological development, the process for uranium mining has largely remained the same: open pits, crushing large volumes of rock, treating materials with chemicals, deposing slurry and effluent in pits, rivers, and lakes (where they remain exposed to elements for 15-25 years, during the life of the mine), and decommissioning. It's an old approach that leaves behind a legacy of waste and emissions, and few people are willing to do it anymore. I don't blame them, the legacy of contamination isn't worth it, southerners need to take a greater responsibility for their own wasteful consumption, and there are better alternatives for local jobs. There are also better alternatives for southerns in population centers looking for cheaper (in the long run) and less environmentally destructive sources of energy (utility scale or otherwise).

Regarding IPCC statement on nuclear … interesting that they consider it a cost effective solution only with "the lifetime extension of existing plants." Because this is the reality of where we are now. Nobody wants to build new plants, we have huge challenges if we take existing plants off-line, so we simply extend their lifetime beyond their safe and recommended life cycle. This is another reason, in my mind, not to go down the nuclear road. France is faced with huge challenges with an aging fleet and little "to back it up." Seems like back up power is more a concern with nuclear than with other smaller sources that can be added rapidly to an existing system to make up for cycling of technologies and an aging infrastructure. We also need to look at world's dwindling capacity for mining high grade ore (which changes 2:1 picture of nuclear viz a viz existing fossil fuel technologies)? The IPCC is also proposing waste storage practices for nuclear that have become highly impractical, costly, and unpopular.

It's the new gas. And I seen it coming for the past 15 years. They will jack the prices up and up as no average people will change their consumption style, making the new price acceptable. I can care less really, my days of grid living is numbered.

I honestly have to say Ontario is way to conformist based it seems. Aside from a few radio talk shows not many people actually do anything to voice their concerns.

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These storage issues with "intermittent" sources such as solar and wind keep being raise and I think they are overstated. A large part of Ontario's power is generated by hydroelectric dams. Many of these dams can be open and shut at the press of a button. They are therefore built-in storage: if there is lots of wind, just reduce the flow or close the dam. The water backs up and can be used to generate power on another day. So I think that we are in a great position to make use of these sources.

Kinguq

FT … are you following the news story in the States regarding WikiLeaks, and the unauthorized release yesterday of 250,000 classified State department documents and diplomatic cables pertaining to Iraq and Afghanistan wars. It's a huge showcase of what is involved with nuclear espionage, the high stakes gambles and risks of rogue states (Iran, Pakistan, N. Korea, and Libya) trading in nuclear technologies and long-range missile capabilities. It's pretty much a primer on what can go wrong even with the best of intentions and so called peace-time use of technology, and how so much international harm, danger, and risk surrounds proliferation. Just today, Israel likely targeted two nuclear scientists in Iran and blew them up with suitcase bombs attached to their cars (killing one and injuring a second).

This just looks like a far more dangerous world to me than one where people can buy an inverter from Home Depot, a solar panel from your neighborhood clean energy company, a battery from China, and a power strip to turn off your appliances at night when you aren't using them (and nobody is creating wastes that have to be guarded for the next 100,000 years with the most sophisticated and expensive of national security, global espionage, and state sponsored policing and surveillance networks). It's the stuff of John Grisham and John le Carre, but it's absolutely NOT fiction. Oppenheimer warned of these risks and dangers over 60 years ago. Uranium mining and refining purely for peacetime use … I think it's a far more complicated world than this (and Cameco recently signed a deal to provide China with uranium through 2025, and Saskatchewan is looking to ease rules on foreign ownership of uranium mines and outside investments). Ugh … when are we going to put the breaks on this stuff?

Don't know what to recommend as the best source on WikiLeaks … NYT, UK Guardian, Germany's Der Spiegel, France's Le Monde, and Spain's El Pais each got advanced previews. This article on Iran I found most troubling.

I'll give the Wikileaks a look... for now the TV and radio news reports will have to do.

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