Deaths from electricity production, some more data

[Treedbear]

...
Indeed, it is the adoption of wind and solar power that is a major driver of the push to more and more gas power plants.

Explain.

Because there has to be base-load generators to back-up all the non-baseload generators (i.e. wind and solar). This was fleshed out in a previous thread about how, paradoxically, adding *more wind and solar* can have the effect of overall increasing carbon emissions, unless the *base load* is low carbon. Well, our base-load is now coal and gas, in the US.

That strikes me as ridiculous. Whatever portion of electricity generation comes from wind and solar is essentially carbon free. If all of the increase in supply came from coal and gas then carbon emissions will increase. The extra capacity needed in coal and gas (or apparently mainly gas, per bilby) is idled during average wind and solar generation periods.

Yes, that is precisely my point. We needed a low-carbon base-load generation like two decades ago. At the very least, we need it NOW. Instead, we are going head-first into renewables, but the problem is that as long as renewables have to be supported by gas/coal, any positive effects get dampened, or indeed, can even get reversed, because of the underlying base-load source. We do not have the time for baby steps. Renewables, in certain geographic locations, are excellent solutions. But in most of the world, this is not the case if you are burning coal and gas to make up for the poor dynamics of intermittant renewables.

Again, the devil is in the details. But wherever renewables make sense, by all means: full steam ahead. But we need nuclear as base-load NOW. Or else, renewables are not going to make a sufficient impact in time. So, while gas is better than coal, that is a very low bar, probably too low.

We (the US) needed to have gotten onto nuclear decades ago, like the French. That an a fleet of electric cars, which actually are effective only when the energy is being generated by carbon-clean sources.

Electric cars are a separate issue.

That was an aside - the point I was making is that we needed nuclear power yesterday!

Instead, Germany is replacing nuclear with gas - the renewables are a red-herring - and France is set to roll-back on nuclear too. People are stupid. But your generation won't be around to suffer the consequences of this folly. So I guess it's not surprising that no one seems to care.

You need to include personal insults in your argument? You don't know me but if you want me to care about you and your generation start by losing the Trumpian rhetorical style. If I didn't care why would I even consider paying more for wind and solar when we have all that coal and tar sands oil? Sheesh.

I wasn't insulting you, I was calling the French and German policy makers who are shutting down nuclear plants and replacing them with coal/gas stupid. And I stand by that.

Also, my generation - the left and right wing - is overwhelmingly against Trump. So if we are going to be criticizing a generation for Trumpism, then the millennial generation is not it.

But if my rhetorical style were sufficient to get you to not care about the disastrous effects we are having on the environment, then you are a lost cause anyway. And while I am glad you are even willing to pay more - have a cookie - that is more than made up for in your resistance to nuclear.

All of the possible downsides of nuclear power, even their worst-case scenarios, are nowhere near as bad as what is being caused by coal and gas. Even issues of waste disposal are orders of magnitude lower for nuclear than for what passes as status quo for coal/gas, including radiation.

OK, you've convinced me. I'm in favor of building as many nuclear power plants as possible, providing government subsidies and loan guarantees to reluctant power companies here and abroad while eliminating all objectionable regulations concerning safety and security that stand in the way of expediency, leaving it to future generations to figure out what to do with radioactive waste stored on-site, deal with ever increasing world demand for a limited amount of uranium ...... whenever, trust in the international community to manage nuclear facilities in developing nations run by fascist and religious dictatorships, and finally dismantle all solar and wind generators run by utilities as well as private residences where they can't meet some as-yet-to-be-determined minimum standard for on-line dependability. On second thought, screw that, they still require 100% gas power-plant backup during down time. I can now see that intermittent power sources only offer the illusion of solving global warming. Unless and until they solve the electricity storage issue we'd be pandering to pure fantasy. There can be no compromise. We can do this!

 

[Loren Pechtel]

OK, you've convinced me. I'm in favor of building as many nuclear power plants as possible, providing government subsidies and loan guarantees to reluctant power companies here and abroad while eliminating all objectionable regulations concerning safety and security that stand in the way of expediency, leaving it to future generations to figure out what to do with radioactive waste stored on-site, deal with ever increasing world demand for a limited amount of uranium ...... whenever, trust in the international community to manage nuclear facilities in developing nations run by fascist and religious dictatorships, and finally dismantle all solar and wind generators run by utilities as well as private residences where they can't meet some as-yet-to-be-determined minimum standard for on-line dependability. On second thought, screw that, they still require 100% gas power-plant backup during down time. I can now see that intermittent power sources only offer the illusion of solving global warming. Unless and until they solve the electricity storage issue we'd be pandering to pure fantasy. There can be no compromise. We can do this!

There are two problems with nuke plants that make them uneconomic:

1) Insurance. Insurance companies are unwilling to write policies for very big, rare events. If forced to they way overcharge so people won't buy it. (I'm thinking of earthquake insurance here.) Thus it's impossible to get insurance against major disasters. The only fix is for the feds to act as the insurer of last resort.

2) The problem isn't the safety regs, it's the ability of the greens to keep delaying construction with lawsuits, or even deny an operating permit to the plant. What we need to do (and not just with nuke plants) is to say that all issues must be raised during the planning phase.

 

[Bomb#20]

<sarcasm snipped> leaving it to future generations to figure out what to do with radioactive waste stored on-site, deal with ever increasing world demand for a limited amount of uranium <sarcasm snipped>

We have already figured out what to do with radioactive waste, and we have 30,000 years' worth of proven uranium reserves. We will run through our limited amounts of literally everything else before we run out of uranium.

You never have more than a couple hundred years of reserves of anything because once you know where to get that much of some resource there's no money in prospecting for more. Except uranium. The reason we have such vastly more extensive reserves of uranium than anything else is the same reason that all that radioactive waste is still stored on-site and still such a headache for policy makers even though we know perfectly well what we should be doing with it. It's because over 99% of the extractable energy is still in the "used" uranium. It's all that energy trying to get out that makes the stuff dangerous. Natural uranium is a mixture of 137 parts U-238 to 1 part U-235. For the most part the nuclear power industry generates electricity by burning the U-235 and dumping the U-238 in on-site waste facilities. "Waste" is a very good word for this practice. We know how to build U-238 reactors. Once we start using them the energy content of the reaction byproducts will go way down and the long-term storage problem will become far more manageable.

 

[Tristan Scott]

I think what we need is a multi pronged strategy. Solar energy is awesome, but as has been pointed out up thread it can't be the only answer-they don't generate at night or in the case of wind turbines there are times when the wind isn't adequate. You need a base provider. Nuclear could be a good candidate for that, but IMO we need to look at newer breakthroughs such as traveling wave reactors (they cut waste by at least 70%. Also we should continue research into sustainable solutions to the waste problem.

On edit: And yes we absolutely need to continue to strive towards fusion power. It will completely change the world- which is probably the main reason we aren't spending the money needed for development.

 

[TV and credit cards]

I see how far we've come with renewables over the last eight years. We are at the point now where the economics of it has taken over. That's a good thing. That pushes it beyond government when moneyed interests are involved. Ideally, we will see renewables with economical storage that is easy to throttle on an hourly basis. In a better political climate, we surely would see a strong push in this direction. This could be our baseload, though I think that term is coming close to being antiquated. The idea of having large power generation always on and not easily throttled is something we will move away from. Especially a power generator that cost the same regardless of how much power it's producing. Our current energy production and transmission is terribly inefficient. There's money to be made here.
I see no path forward for nuclear. Honestly, if there is one for the US, it would likely be one enabled by Trump. All boogeymen aside, It simply is not economically viable today.

 

[Bomb#20]

I see no path forward for nuclear. Honestly, if there is one for the US, it would likely be one enabled by Trump. All boogeymen aside, It simply is not economically viable today.

It would be if carbon-based energy production were required to eat the cost of its externalities.

 

[Bomb#20]

Even issues of waste disposal are orders of magnitude lower for nuclear than for what passes as status quo for coal/gas, including radiation.

Well, there's a misleading headline.

Coal Ash Is More Radioactive Than Nuclear Waste​

No it isn't. Nuclear plants are just a lot more careful with their waste products than coal plants; consequently, the public gets more radiation exposure from coal ash than from nuclear waste.[/science journalism critic]

 

[bilby]

I think what we need is a multi pronged strategy. Solar energy is awesome, but as has been pointed out up thread it can't be the only answer-they don't generate at night or in the case of wind turbines there are times when the wind isn't adequate. You need a base provider. Nuclear could be a good candidate for that, but IMO we need to look at newer breakthroughs such as traveling wave reactors (they cut waste by at least 70%. Also we should continue research into sustainable solutions to the waste problem.

On edit: And yes we absolutely need to continue to strive towards fusion power. It will completely change the world- which is probably the main reason we aren't spending the money needed for development.

I completely agree; nuclear fission is a very young technology, and we can certainly do it a lot better than we are right now. Fast breeder reactors, and molten salt reactors (both U and Th fueled) are interesting options; and the basic design of 'conventional' reactors is only in its third generation - we can do a lot more with this technology than is currently being done.

Improving fuel efficiency is almost pointless, as fuel is such a small fraction of costs - as Bomb#20 points out, better fuel efficiency is perhaps more valuable as a side effect of waste management.

IMO the big gains are to be had in making plants small, cheap and mass produced - something that can power a large factory or factory complex, or a small town or suburb, with the major components fitting into a shipping container sized unit that is delivered to the point of use as a sealed unit, generates power for a few decades, and is then replaced, refuelled and recycled by a central facility, for example.

The power is generated where it is needed, reducing transmission costs and losses; you have zero carbon dioxide emissions; the running costs are just the wages for a few electricians to connect the thing and disconnect it; and economies of scale make each unit cheap and interchangeable.

Still, that's for the future; what we need right now is to stop burning coal, ASAP - and current proven Gen III nuclear power plants are perfectly capable of being exchanged like-for-like with current coal power plants.

So we need to do that while we are waiting.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

<sarcasm snipped> leaving it to future generations to figure out what to do with radioactive waste stored on-site, deal with ever increasing world demand for a limited amount of uranium <sarcasm snipped>

We have already figured out what to do with radioactive waste, and we have 30,000 years' worth of proven uranium reserves. We will run through our limited amounts of literally everything else before we run out of uranium.

You never have more than a couple hundred years of reserves of anything because once you know where to get that much of some resource there's no money in prospecting for more. Except uranium. The reason we have such vastly more extensive reserves of uranium than anything else is the same reason that all that radioactive waste is still stored on-site and still such a headache for policy makers even though we know perfectly well what we should be doing with it. It's because over 99% of the extractable energy is still in the "used" uranium. It's all that energy trying to get out that makes the stuff dangerous. Natural uranium is a mixture of 137 parts U-238 to 1 part U-235. For the most part the nuclear power industry generates electricity by burning the U-235 and dumping the U-238 in on-site waste facilities. "Waste" is a very good word for this practice. We know how to build U-238 reactors. Once we start using them the energy content of the reaction byproducts will go way down and the long-term storage problem will become far more manageable.

Somehow it seems wrong for a bomb to be arguing for nuclear power!

- - - Updated - - -

I see how far we've come with renewables over the last eight years. We are at the point now where the economics of it has taken over. That's a good thing. That pushes it beyond government when moneyed interests are involved. Ideally, we will see renewables with economical storage that is easy to throttle on an hourly basis. In a better political climate, we surely would see a strong push in this direction. This could be our baseload, though I think that term is coming close to being antiquated. The idea of having large power generation always on and not easily throttled is something we will move away from. Especially a power generator that cost the same regardless of how much power it's producing. Our current energy production and transmission is terribly inefficient. There's money to be made here.
I see no path forward for nuclear. Honestly, if there is one for the US, it would likely be one enabled by Trump. All boogeymen aside, It simply is not economically viable today.

I'm afraid this is mostly wishful thinking.

We aren't even close to an answer on the storage side of things. The closest we've come is solar thermal but that's in it's infancy.

 

[Treedbear]

...
There are two problems with nuke plants that make them uneconomic:

1) Insurance. Insurance companies are unwilling to write policies for very big, rare events. If forced to they way overcharge so people won't buy it. (I'm thinking of earthquake insurance here.) Thus it's impossible to get insurance against major disasters. The only fix is for the feds to act as the insurer of last resort.

Aye, there's the rub. It would remove any need for a sense of responcibility. It will have the same result as the Treasury bailing out the big banks.

...

 

[Treedbear]

<sarcasm snipped> leaving it to future generations to figure out what to do with radioactive waste stored on-site, deal with ever increasing world demand for a limited amount of uranium <sarcasm snipped>

We have already figured out what to do with radioactive waste, and we have 30,000 years' worth of proven uranium reserves. We will run through our limited amounts of literally everything else before we run out of uranium.

Except we haven't figured out how to get it done (re:Yucca Mt debacle). 30,000 yrs worth if the price ever goes high enough to mine sea water. Otherwise our proven and potential reserves at current usage level is 230 years. From there on we have to count on various technological improvements. Not saying we shouldn't do it, just that you're painting too rosey a picture.

...

PS - You misinterpret my intensions. After looking into the issues and in particluar learning about how intermittent power sources require gas backup, and reassessing the seriousness of the global warming situation I came to the difficult decision that it's time to pull out all the stops. Wind and solar are proven technologies but are missing the critical storage component. As such they serve as a panacea and a diversion. I'm still an environmentalist and I still recognize the dangers of current nuclear technologies. So it wasn't an easy choice. OK?

 

[Treedbear]

I think what we need is a multi pronged strategy. Solar energy is awesome, but as has been pointed out up thread it can't be the only answer-they don't generate at night or in the case of wind turbines there are times when the wind isn't adequate. You need a base provider. Nuclear could be a good candidate for that, but IMO we need to look at newer breakthroughs such as traveling wave reactors (they cut waste by at least 70%. Also we should continue research into sustainable solutions to the waste problem.

On edit: And yes we absolutely need to continue to strive towards fusion power. It will completely change the world- which is probably the main reason we aren't spending the money needed for development.

It's clear to me now that it's pointless building wind and solar without adequate storage batteries since they require gas power plants as 100% backup so they can come on-line quickly when winds don't blow and the sun isn't out. Better/safer reactor and battery technology are needed quickly. And if we have a break-through with batteries and/or fusion then eliminate all the fission reactors too (probably another reason private industry won't want to invest in nuclear right now).

 

[Treedbear]

Even issues of waste disposal are orders of magnitude lower for nuclear than for what passes as status quo for coal/gas, including radiation.

Well, there's a misleading headline.

Coal Ash Is More Radioactive Than Nuclear Waste​

No it isn't. Nuclear plants are just a lot more careful with their waste products than coal plants; consequently, the public gets more radiation exposure from coal ash than from nuclear waste.[/science journalism critic]

I didn't see anything in the article about waste disposal at all. And actually the bottom line was:

So why does coal waste appear so radioactive? It's a matter of comparison: The chances of experiencing adverse health effects from radiation are slim for both nuclear and coal-fired power plants—they're just somewhat higher for the coal ones. "You're talking about one chance in a billion for nuclear power plants," Christensen says. "And it's one in 10 million to one in a hundred million for coal plants."

So how concerning is it?

 

[Treedbear]

...
So we need to do that while we are waiting.

I like your ideas but the problem with waiting is that we need governments to step in with research on a big scale because businesses don't take risks when profits are more than 20 years out.

 

[bilby]

Aye, there's the rub. It would remove any need for a sense of responcibility. It will have the same result as the Treasury bailing out the big banks.

Not at all. The cost of cleaning up after a disaster is dwarfed by the cost to the industry of the negative publicity of even minor incidents where nobody gets hurt - such as the Fukushima Daiichi meltdowns.

It would only remove the sense of responsibility from plant owners if they knew that there was no other option at all than nuclear power - and that's clearly not the case. If people stop using nuclear power, the industry is stuffed. The problem with the bank bailout is that the bankers know we are not going to abandon money in favour of something else, because there is literally no way to replace banking with something else that does the job.

As to nuclear waste, there is absolutely no need for long term 'Yucca Mountain' style repositories; For over six decades we have been storing spent fuel at reactor sites, and in that time, exactly zero people have suffered the slightest injury; What we are currently doing is perfectly good, and it is only a false perception that this is inadequate, along with the highly inefficient practice of dumping partially used fuel (largely due to the blocking of reprocessing by NIMBYs* and BANANAs**) that makes it necessary to do even that.

The anti-nuclear myths are so all-pervading that they are simply assumed to be true; But they are not. Nuclear waste needs to be handled with care for a few years, but not for thousands - the short lived stuff is the dangerous stuff, and it disappears after a couple of decades (in some cases, such as ¹³¹I, much faster than that).

The long-lived stuff is mostly usable as fuel, and by its very nature isn't particularly dangerous.

Insurance is currently available on the private market, and does not rely on government, except to insure the very large 'risks' which we can now see are not significant from an actuarial point of view; and to cover liabilities for events such as cleaning up of spilled materials that other power producers don't even pay for, much less insure against. Coal and Gas plants just squirt their toxic waste into the air and forget about it; If they were treated the same way as the nuclear industry, and had to ensure that none of their hazardous waste entered the environment (and pay to clean up if it accidentally did) then there is no way coal or gas could compete with nuclear on price.

Nuclear power generation has the most enviable safety record of any power generation method - and indeed, of any modern technology of any kind. If commercial aviation was as dangerous as nuclear power, there would have been only three plane crashes worldwide since 1956, and only one of those would have caused any fatalities. This is not the record you would predict if the government underwriting of their public liability insurance was leading to irresponsible practices by the industry.





*Not In My Back Yard
** Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anything

 

[Bomb#20]

We have already figured out what to do with radioactive waste, and we have 30,000 years' worth of proven uranium reserves. We will run through our limited amounts of literally everything else before we run out of uranium.

Except we haven't figured out how to get it done (re:Yucca Mt debacle). 30,000 yrs worth if the price ever goes high enough to mine sea water. Otherwise our proven and potential reserves at current usage level is 230 years. From there on we have to count on various technological improvements. Not saying we shouldn't do it, just that you're painting too rosey a picture.

We have figured out how to get it done, apart from figuring out how to deprogram opponents of nuclear power. "Get it done" doesn't mean Yucca Mountain; it means reprocessing back into fuel what's called "waste" because we're currently wasting it. Did you read your own link? Not 30,000 years if we mine sea water. "Breeder reactors could match today's nuclear output for 30,000 years using only the NEA-estimated supplies." If we also mine seawater then the Scientific American numbers mean we'll run out in 8 million years.

What we will run out of in 230 years at current usage levels is proven reserves of U-235. If we haven't solved the problems with fusion by then, and if we haven't abolished the practice of throwing away the U-238 that our U-235 comes to us mixed with, then at that point it will pay to prospect for more uranium ore. Proven reserves of metals grow when prices rise.

 

[Treedbear]

... Did you read your own link? Not 30,000 years if we mine sea water. "Breeder reactors could match today's nuclear output for 30,000 years using only the NEA-estimated supplies." If we also mine seawater then the Scientific American numbers mean we'll run out in 8 million years.

What we will run out of in 230 years at current usage levels is proven reserves of U-235. If we haven't solved the problems with fusion by then, and if we haven't abolished the practice of throwing away the U-238 that our U-235 comes to us mixed with, then at that point it will pay to prospect for more uranium ore. Proven reserves of metals grow when prices rise.

If breeder reactors are the solution why aren't they being built? It can't simply be that it would cost 25% more than standard reactors because it should drastically cut the amount of fuel required as well as the cost of waste storage.

 

[LordKiran]

Well, there's a misleading headline.

Coal Ash Is More Radioactive Than Nuclear Waste​

No it isn't. Nuclear plants are just a lot more careful with their waste products than coal plants; consequently, the public gets more radiation exposure from coal ash than from nuclear waste.[/science journalism critic]

I didn't see anything in the article about waste disposal at all. And actually the bottom line was:

So why does coal waste appear so radioactive? It's a matter of comparison: The chances of experiencing adverse health effects from radiation are slim for both nuclear and coal-fired power plants—they're just somewhat higher for the coal ones. "You're talking about one chance in a billion for nuclear power plants," Christensen says. "And it's one in 10 million to one in a hundred million for coal plants."

So how concerning is it?

Not concerning, but it helps drive home the point that nuclear waste isn't as big a deal as people make it seem.

 

[Treedbear]

I didn't see anything in the article about waste disposal at all. And actually the bottom line was:

So why does coal waste appear so radioactive? It's a matter of comparison: The chances of experiencing adverse health effects from radiation are slim for both nuclear and coal-fired power plants—they're just somewhat higher for the coal ones. "You're talking about one chance in a billion for nuclear power plants," Christensen says. "And it's one in 10 million to one in a hundred million for coal plants."

So how concerning is it?

Not concerning, but it helps drive home the point that nuclear waste isn't as big a deal as people make it seem.

Nor coal flu ash.

 

[LordKiran]

I didn't see anything in the article about waste disposal at all. And actually the bottom line was:

So why does coal waste appear so radioactive? It's a matter of comparison: The chances of experiencing adverse health effects from radiation are slim for both nuclear and coal-fired power plants—they're just somewhat higher for the coal ones. "You're talking about one chance in a billion for nuclear power plants," Christensen says. "And it's one in 10 million to one in a hundred million for coal plants."

So how concerning is it?

Not concerning, but it helps drive home the point that nuclear waste isn't as big a deal as people make it seem.

Nor coal flu ash.

Neither here nor there. /shrug