Climate Change(d)?

[bleubird]

Nuclear financing remains a major hurdle for new plants | Reuters Events | Nuclear

“Countries around the world have made the decision that nuclear is part of their future. The question today is whether nuclear is accessible to them in the near term because of the issue of financing,” the Director General of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development Nuclear...

www.reutersevents.com

It's not the science or technology, it's the financing.

 

[Angra Mainyu]

Nuclear financing remains a major hurdle for new plants | Reuters Events | Nuclear

“Countries around the world have made the decision that nuclear is part of their future. The question today is whether nuclear is accessible to them in the near term because of the issue of financing,” the Director General of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development Nuclear...

www.reutersevents.com

It's not the science or technology, it's the financing.

That depends on the case. For example, countries are not phasing out nuclear due to the financing, but due to activists, Green politicians, etc. And nuclear is also made expensive by excessive regulations.

In any case, industrialized countries do have the financial means to build the reactors they need, even at a high price. If making them locally is too expensive, they can buy them from France or another friendly country.

 

[bilby]

Nuclear financing remains a major hurdle for new plants | Reuters Events | Nuclear

“Countries around the world have made the decision that nuclear is part of their future. The question today is whether nuclear is accessible to them in the near term because of the issue of financing,” the Director General of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development Nuclear...

www.reutersevents.com

It's not the science or technology, it's the financing.

So we keep hearing.

But the financing is only a problem because of massive political opposition since the 1960s.

And even if it were a legitimate problem, it would be a self resolving one. You don't need to ban unprofitable activities, they fail to get off the ground without intervention, and harm nobody but their investors.

The 'it's too expensive, and cannot be financed' argument is almost always paired with an admission that the other arguments were always bullshit, and is the last desperate straw to clutch for people whose opposition was never reasonable or rational from the outset.

Nuclear power, like gas power, can produce electricity when the wholesale price is high (because intermittent renewables aren't producing); But unlike gas, it is also constrained to selling when the wholesale price is low. And subsidies and price guarantees given to wind and solar mean that wholesale prices are often negative. Nothing can compete against a heavily subsidised competitor.

You might as well argue that Usain Bolt can't compete in the 100m, because he's regularly beaten by the guy you gave a car to.

On a fair assessment, nuclear excels - its so strong financially that even with the massive hurdles not imposed on other generation technologies, and even with the massive subsidies routinely given to other generation technologies, it is still profitable.

 

[Swammerdami]

IIUC, the insanely huge amount of steel and concrete used in containment structures is a major cost. Do your sources show how thick sane containment structures need to be? (I'll admit that the present U.S. standard — "strong enough to withstand the impact of a fully loaded passenger airliner without rupture" — might seem high. But ...)

I don't mind the containment domes. I'm talking about all the layers upon layers of safety systems. Make sure there isn't a single point of failure and you've done 90% of what's needed.

IIUC, the steel and concrete and labor associated with containment structures is a major portion of the total cost. THAT is what I was trying to drive at. Speaking in generalities, one might get the impression that oodles of Benjamins are being wasted on "red tape" or something. Nope, steel and concrete is a big cost. And now you say you don't mind that?

You tell us nuclear is very safe. Did I say otherwise? The simple fact is that, for whatever reason, nuclear power TODAY is much more expensive than renewables; and renewable technology continues to improve.

Something I do NOT understand is that financing is a major cost:

The discount rate for nuclear construction projects in the United States is generally about 12.5 percent, higher than in many other countries, especially those where the nuclear industry is at least partially subsidized by the government. For example, discount rates for plant construction are typically closer to 8 percent in France and just 2–3 percent in Japan.

Given the long time for a nuclear plant to come on-line, a 12.5% interest rate will be onerous. But why is that rate so high? Is it that bondholders and shareholders demand a high return because of the big chance that the eventual plant will be obsolete or unsafe?

The government subsidizes petroleum and renewables. Should it subsidize nuclear more than it does? Before addressing that question I'd like to understand this high 12.5% discount rate.

 

[steve_bank]

Nuclear could be safe if we had a standard well tested common design.

But it could be safer than anything else if it were...just as it is. Or even twice as dangerous.

Wow, simply stunning analysis.

It's not a stunning analysis. I am pointing out that nuclear already is safe, at least better than anything else by a large margin.

In one incarnation I was a reliability engineer and I deigned avionics that went on Boring and Airbus jets. If you want to lecture me on safety and reliability go right ahead.

Back in the 90s a commercial twin engine jet first lost the electrical generator on one engine, and then the other. The oidds of that hapeng were low to begin with. When the pilots tried to star the emergnecy gas turnibe gebertor you can see coming out the tail of some aurcft the emergency batteries faild. The plane had zero electric power. Fortunatly it was not fly by wire and had cbles from the cockpit to the control surfaces and it landed safely. Throttles are mechanical.

My company made the battery charger and was involved in the failure analysis. The problem was in the batteries themselves.

Or the battery failures on the ISS, improperly conditioned batteries had been used.

Point being low probabilities do happen and sometimes catastrophically even with redundancy. The question is the potential effect of a complete failure. There is no absolute protection from human failures. Fukushima demonstrates that.

If yiu make a safety claim what is the Mean Time Bteween Failures of the control systems? Numbers talk.

Even up through recent times there have been catastrophic chemical pant, gas plant, and refinery explosions. People die. However the long the effects are temporary.

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

With nuclear there's no room for error. Sure, on paper it's safe, but that safety has a cost. We built grid straps for fuel assemblies that have been refueling reactors around the world for decades. The tolerances are exacting.

We were to supply the ap1000 reactors that were being built in the US but were abandoned. When you build foundations for nuclear the testing is much more extensive. Whole foundations have to be removed and rebuilt if the tests are not satisfied. Just doesn't happen with other technologies. The average joe has absolutely no idea of the differences. It's those differences that make the technology more expensive, because it is catastrophically dangerous and proactive safety measures beyond your typical are the norm.

Can something like Pripyat happen with gas or coal or renewables? No chance. But it can with nuclear.

For those here who are hurrahing the safety of nuclear it comes at enormous cost.

 

[Angra Mainyu]

In one incarnation I was a reliability engineer and I deigned avionics that went on Boring and Airbus jets. If you want to lecture me on safety and reliability go right ahead.

I do not want to lecture you on safety and reliability. Why would you think so? Rather, I want to say that nuclear is already safe, at least compared to any of the alternatives.

Point being low probabilities do happen and sometimes catastrophically even with redundancy. The question is the potential effect of a complete failure. There is no absolute protection from human failures. Fukushima demonstrates that.

Well, there is absolute protection from human failures if one goes AI and the humans are out of the loop.

But that's for the future, and this is now, so to answer your point:


1. Absolute protection is not the goal, but low risks. Nuclear risks are lower than those of other forms of producing energy.

2. Fukushima was a minor accident. Well, you can say it was big because any human fatality is a tragedy, but in that sense, alternative energy sources have many more.

3. Fukushima could not happen with current designs, or even with older designs that are still an improvement over Fukushima, so that sort of risk does not apply to power stations to be made now or in the future.

4. Fukushima could not have happened in a place where tsunamis cannot go, even with older technologies.

If yiu make a safety claim what is the Mean Time Bteween Failures of the control systems? Numbers talk.

I was thinking about number of fatalities. For example:

Deaths per TWH by energy source | NextBigFuture.com

I wrote this back in 2008 and with one new death that is somewhat nuclear energy related (a death at one of the japanese nuclear plants following the 8.9

www.nextbigfuture.com

But if you want more numbers, I recommend bilby's defense of nuclear energy, for example

Even up through recent times there have been catastrophic chemical pant, gas plant, and refinery explosions. People die. However the long the effects are temporary.

But whether they are short-lived or long-lived (I'd argue they're always long-lived, but regardless) is a matter that has to be considered in the context of how big the effects are. Take Fukushima: radiation levels in large areas will be higher than before for a long time. However, they will remain low enough that they're not a threat to humans. So, that's not a long-term side effect that is a problem. Additionally, as I mentioned safety of current reactors is better, and the same sort of accident could not happen.

 

[Bomb#20]

With nuclear there's no room for error. ... It's those differences that make the technology more expensive, because it is catastrophically dangerous and proactive safety measures beyond your typical are the norm.

Can something like Pripyat happen with gas or coal or renewables? No chance. But it can with nuclear.

You're right, with renewables there's no chance of something like Pripyat happening, for sufficiently specific values of "like".

For those here who are hurrahing the safety of nuclear it comes at enormous cost.

Catastrophically dangerous and enormous cost compared to what? Is it catastrophically dangerous and an enormous cost compared to the danger and cost of not going nuclear?

250,000 deaths a year from climate change is a ‘conservative estimate,’ research says

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

Catastrophically dangerous and enormous cost compared to what? Is it catastrophically dangerous and an enormous cost compared to the danger and cost of not going nuclear?

Point taken. The Pripyat factor is, however, enormously important and my point is to inform those that nuclear safety is not an accident. Certainly the same measures can be undertaken wrt fossil fuels. I'm in favor of paying those costs up front, as we do with nuclear. So far we have not. Mitigating radiation danger and mitigating climate change danger are the same thing wrt the article you linked.

 

[Elixir]

And note that Fukushima killed nobody, the political reaction to it killed a lot of people.

It may have killed one person, though of course the absurd panic killed a lot more. But the solar industry kills a lot more than the nuclear industry (several times more), even counting Fukushima (an old design with flaws not present in present-day ones).

I doubt (correct me please) that solar-related deaths exceed the 108/yr who die in the oilfields alone ... not counting those killed in the later production and transportation of the product. But hey - thousands kill themselves and others annually in the process of consuming it, so what's a few more? Unless it's nukes. That shit you can't see, it just blows up your gametes and fucks with your dna until you die and don't even know what hit you. Let me get hit with a coupler on a rig instead, or give me black lung disease; just don't make me worry about invisible shit, ok?

/sarcasm

 

[bilby]

Nuclear could be safe if we had a standard well tested common design.

But it could be safer than anything else if it were...just as it is. Or even twice as dangerous.

Wow, simply stunning analysis.

It's not a stunning analysis. I am pointing out that nuclear already is safe, at least better than anything else by a large margin.

In one incarnation I was a reliability engineer and I deigned avionics that went on Boring and Airbus jets. If you want to lecture me on safety and reliability go right ahead.

Back in the 90s a commercial twin engine jet first lost the electrical generator on one engine, and then the other. The oidds of that hapeng were low to begin with. When the pilots tried to star the emergnecy gas turnibe gebertor you can see coming out the tail of some aurcft the emergency batteries faild. The plane had zero electric power. Fortunatly it was not fly by wire and had cbles from the cockpit to the control surfaces and it landed safely. Throttles are mechanical.

My company made the battery charger and was involved in the failure analysis. The problem was in the batteries themselves.

Or the battery failures on the ISS, improperly conditioned batteries had been used.

Point being low probabilities do happen and sometimes catastrophically even with redundancy. The question is the potential effect of a complete failure. There is no absolute protection from human failures. Fukushima demonstrates that.

If yiu make a safety claim what is the Mean Time Bteween Failures of the control systems? Numbers talk.

Even up through recent times there have been catastrophic chemical pant, gas plant, and refinery explosions. People die. However the long the effects are temporary.

Fukushima Daiichi demonstrated exactly what a meltdown in a nuclear power plant looks like. It was a worst case scenario for a non-Soviet Generation I design. The core melted down, causing the total loss of an expensive facility; And this occurred three times in three of the four reactors (the fourth was in a maintaining shutdown when the earthquake struck).

The human cost?

One killed falling from a crane during the Magnitude 9 earthquake (this could have occurred at any industrial facility, and many in the area suffered far worse). Two cases of beta burn (basically just like a bad sunburn), both discharged from hospital that night. Zero other fatalities*. Radiation levels outside the plant perimeter fence never exceeded levels routinely seen as background in many cities.

That's as bad as it's possible to get - for a Generation I facility. And it wasn't a fluke - none of the three independent core meltdowns caused any deaths or serious injuries.

The nuclear power plant next door, Fukushima Daini, suffered minimal damage, and was ready to restart as soon as the damage to power distribution infrastructure in the area was repaired. It's a Generation II facility.

Worst case disasters in other industries kill people. In the nuclear power industry, nobody dies, but a lot of expensive equipment is irreparably damaged.

Of course it's possible to design nuclear power plants that do kill people when they fail - but only the Soviet Union ever built such plants, and the Soviet Union hasn't existed for thirty years.

Worst case disasters happen in any industry. Only in the nuclear industry does nobody get hurt when they do.


*One woman later persuaded a judge that her heavy smokier husband's death from lung cancer was due to his employment at F. Daiichi. The courts awarded her sizable compensation, despite expert oncological testimony that the cancer was almost certainly present in his lungs prior to the Tōhoku Earthquake.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

3 Mile Island put the kaibosh on nuclear power in the USA.

Once again, a major overreaction. Nobody died.

We still do not have a long term nuclear waste program, back again to a lack of political will to make hard decisions. National control of anything is opposed by conservatives, a national electric plan is not possible.

We have plenty of good answers for nuclear waste storage. It's just a political issue.

Nuclear could be safe if we had a standard well tested common design. Nuclear power does have costs above a cial plant. Welds have to be to a higher standard. Materials have to witstand long term radiation. Periodic testing.

Agreed--but the nuke plant doesn't need to keep being fed coal.

You can construct a moderate scale natural gas plant 'off the shelf'. Turbines, boilers, control systems, piping are all standard items.

At that scale everything's make-to-order.

 

[Angra Mainyu]

And note that Fukushima killed nobody, the political reaction to it killed a lot of people.

It may have killed one person, though of course the absurd panic killed a lot more. But the solar industry kills a lot more than the nuclear industry (several times more), even counting Fukushima (an old design with flaws not present in present-day ones).

I doubt (correct me please) that solar-related deaths exceed the 108/yr who die in the oilfields alone ... not counting those killed in the later production and transportation of the product. But hey - thousands kill themselves and others annually in the process of consuming it, so what's a few more? Unless it's nukes. That shit you can't see, it just blows up your gametes and fucks with your dna until you die and don't even know what hit you. Let me get hit with a coupler on a rig instead, or give me black lung disease; just don't make me worry about invisible shit, ok?

/sarcasm

Is there a point to the sarcasm? I mean, you have an actual objection to make to my point? Just deploying sarcasm doesn't make a point. My point is that the solar industry kills a lot more than the nuclear industry, etc., not about oil fields.

 

[steve_bank]

I expect mamy pro nuke people are NIMBY, not in my back yard.

Would you buy a house clode to a nuclear plant?

I saw a nuclear power promotional film from the 60s. It was cliamed that nuclear electricity would be so cheap it wooed not be netterrf, just a monthly flat fee.

It was thought the Navy submarine reactors could be just be scaled up.

In nay case, it is too late to affect what is coming. Developing a national grid with ingerted nuclear plus nob follsil sources to provide clean 24/7 power is certainly doable technically. No new science needed and no difficult technical issues.

It is amatter of piccalilli will. The energy text I had in the 80s at that tome redicted oil production curtailing. It was put off by new drilling and exploration techniques. The industry was well aware of the coming of peak oil. production. If we had stared back then it would have made a differnce.

During the Arab Oil Embargo, rembeber that?, we had tax credits for alternative energy. Japan went small and efficient for cars. When oil came back American auto went big gas guzzlers and the alternative energy subsides disapeared.

The consumer economy is based on mass production of power using gadgets that we do not need. Nuclear power does not really solve the basic issue. Increasing demand.

The text I had at the time said that given current demand and predicted growth there was enough fuelfor about 700 years of nuclear power.

I have seen it metioned, wat about all the enrgy itself? All electric power generated in the end shows up as heat. I wonder what that does to temperture.

I

 

[bilby]

Would you buy a house clode to a nuclear plant?

Not only would I happily do so - nuclear power plants are amongst the least unpleasant industrial neighbours imaginable - but I have for years been lobbying in support of a proposed nuclear power plant at Swanbank, which is about 15km (10 miles) from my house.

Sadly, Australian federal law currently prohibits this from being built, but I am hopeful that the law will change in the near future, and that a nuclear power plant will be operating at that site within my lifetime.

Certainly I shall continue to lobby my representatives and senators to repeal s140A of the EPBC Act, which is the first necessary step towards making it a reality.

Your expectation that "many pro-nuke people are NIMBY" is both insulting and wrong. You should stop assuming, and start paying attention.

 

[bilby]

The text I had at the time said that given current demand and predicted growth there was enough fuelfor about 700 years of nuclear power.

There's currently enough uranium available at current costs from seawater extraction to last indefinitely. It's not an infinite resource, but nothing is - and it's as sustainable as solar and wind power.

 

[Angra Mainyu]

I expect mamy pro nuke people are NIMBY, not in my back yard.

Is there any good reason to have that expectation? Do you think that pro-nuclear energy people are lying? If not, they - well, we - properly reckon that nuclear is safe, so that's not an expectation you should have.

Would you buy a house clode to a nuclear plant?

For a number of reasons, I would not buy a house. So, in particular, no, I would not buy a house close to a nuclear power plant. But that has nothing to do with radiation.

The consumer economy is based on mass production of power using gadgets that we do not need. Nuclear power does not really solve the basic issue. Increasing demand.

Nuclear power would save millions of lives, though.

I have seen it metioned, wat about all the enrgy itself? All electric power generated in the end shows up as heat. I wonder what that does to temperture.

I do not know, but I know our production of energy does a lot less to global temperature if produced by nuclear power than if produced by fossil fuels. Also, global warming is not the only issue that nuclear energy can tackle and improve. Air pollution too.

 

[bilby]

I have seen it metioned, wat about all the enrgy itself? All electric power generated in the end shows up as heat. I wonder what that does to temperture

But not enough to actually find out. So perhaps you don't really wonder. Perhaps you're just JAQing off, or just parroting someone else's JAQing off.

The heat due to power generation by humans is utterly negligible compared to the additional heat captured by our atmosphere as a result of carbon dioxide emissions.

 

[Elixir]

you have an actual objection to make to my point?
...

"Whoosh!" Au contraire.

My point is that the solar industry kills a lot more than the nuclear industry

My point was that virtually every source of energy currently under widespread use is more dangerous to obtain and deploy than nuclear.
But safety isn't what's keeping nuclear off the table, it's ignorance, stupidity and greed. A perfect storm of human traits, conspiring to keep us on the brink of self destruction or possibly push us over it.

 

[Angra Mainyu]

you have an actual objection to make to my point?
...

"Whoosh!" Au contraire.

My point is that the solar industry kills a lot more than the nuclear industry

My point was that virtually every source of energy currently under widespread use is more dangerous to obtain and deploy than nuclear.
But safety isn't what's keeping nuclear off the table, it's ignorance, stupidity and greed. A perfect storm of human traits, conspiring to keep us on the brink of self destruction or possibly push us over it.

Ah, okay, I misunderstood the direction of your sarcasm then, sorry. I'm not sure I get the point about self-destruction, though.