If Solar And Wind Are So Cheap, Why Are They Making Electricity So Expensive?

[bilby]

Bilby, before Chernobyl I would have agreed with you all along the line. I've got a degree in Physics from Ga. Tech, and in my youth I almost joined the Navy and would have been running a reactor on a sub or carrier; and I applied for a job at Oak Ridge as an assistant to the scientists running their laser fusion research program. I'm not prone to knee-jerk reactions when I hear the word 'radiation'.

But... from the Wiki article on that disaster:

According to Mikhail Gorbachev, the Soviet Union spent 18 billion rubles (the equivalent of US$18 billion at that time) on containment and decontamination, virtually bankrupting itself.[9] In Belarus the total cost over 30 years is estimated at US$235 billion (in 2005 dollars).[209] Ongoing costs are well known; in their 2003–2005 report, The Chernobyl Forum stated that between 5% and 7% of government spending in Ukraine is still related to Chernobyl, while in Belarus over $13 billion is thought to have been spent between 1991 and 2003, with 22% of national budget having been Chernobyl-related in 1991, falling to 6% by 2002.[209] Much of the current cost relates to the payment of Chernobyl-related social benefits to some 7 million people across the 3 countries.[209]

A significant economic impact at the time was the removal of 784,320 ha (1,938,100 acres) of agricultural land and 694,200 ha (1,715,000 acres) of forest from production. While much of this has been returned to use, agricultural production costs have risen due to the need for special cultivation techniques, fertilizers and additives.[209]

Politically, the accident gave great significance to the new Soviet policy of glasnost,[228][229] and helped forge closer Soviet–US relations at the end of the Cold War, through bioscientific cooperation.[230]:44–48 The disaster also became a key factor in the Union's eventual 1991 dissolution, and a major influence in shaping the new Eastern Europe.[

Yes, that accident was the result of a long chain of human fuckups, and I agree the other nuclear accidents don't really amount to much. But when one screwup can cost 235 billion dollars (more, actually; that just is over a 30-year period), and poison large areas for hundreds or thousands of years, then I really think we need to look for safer ways to generate our power.

Any accident in any industry CAN cost as much as you are prepared to spend. The question is how much needed to be spent; and the answer is dramatically less than was actually spent.

The cause of the expense was not any actual threat to life or health; as at Fukushima, it may well have been better for everyone to spend a lot less, and to ignore risks below a certain threshold. That's what the petrochemical and chemical industries do - imagine the cost of Deepwater Horizon, had BP been required to remove every trace of oil from the Gulf of Mexico.

The question of how much it did cost is political. What it needed to cost to bring harm down to the levels tolerated in other industries is a far smaller sum.

And what counts, when assessing danger, is lives, not dollars.

The human cost of Chernobyl was minuscule.

As I pointed out above, nuclear power would be a net reduction in risk vs coal power even if there was a Chernobyl every week.

There is no limit to how much it can cost to clean up any kind of mess - toxic, radioactive, or even just unsightly. The cost is determined entirely by the required standard, and uniquely with nuclear power, the standard is set to 'perfect', while all other industries are only held to 'good enough'.

I note that you have walked back a long way from your claim that nuclear waste and nuclear fuels are dangerous, and that nuclear power poses a similar long-term risk to carbon dioxide emissions; Now we are just concerned with the cost of cleaning up after the very rare accidents. In the thirty odd years since Chernobyl, how much do you think has been spent cleaning up after the coal, gas, or oil industries? It's been spread over thousands of incidents, but I bet the total is in the same ballpark as the Chernobyl cleanup.

Oh, and nobody seriously believed that the Ruble was worth one US dollar back in the 1980s. That was the official exchange rate; but as soon as the markets were allowed to speak, the Ruble dropped to between 5,000 and 10,000 to the dollar. 18 billion roubles in 1986 was more like 18 million dollars US at most, by any reasonable measure (eg actual purchasing power). The official soviet exchange rates were pure fiction.

There are only a tiny handful of spot locations in the immediate vicinity of Chernobyl that are hazardous to live in today; the excluded areas have higher than background radiation, and in places even higher than the permitted dose based on the discredited LNT model. But according to modern assessments of actual risk, they are perfectly safe to live in, with the exception of a few building basements that could easily be cleaned up or just buried. There are very few parts of  Pripyat that are as radioactive as Ramsar.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Bilby, before Chernobyl I would have agreed with you all along the line. I've got a degree in Physics from Ga. Tech, and in my youth I almost joined the Navy and would have been running a reactor on a sub or carrier; and I applied for a job at Oak Ridge as an assistant to the scientists running their laser fusion research program. I'm not prone to knee-jerk reactions when I hear the word 'radiation'.

But... from the Wiki article on that disaster:

According to Mikhail Gorbachev, the Soviet Union spent 18 billion rubles (the equivalent of US$18 billion at that time) on containment and decontamination, virtually bankrupting itself.[9] In Belarus the total cost over 30 years is estimated at US$235 billion (in 2005 dollars).[209] Ongoing costs are well known; in their 2003–2005 report, The Chernobyl Forum stated that between 5% and 7% of government spending in Ukraine is still related to Chernobyl, while in Belarus over $13 billion is thought to have been spent between 1991 and 2003, with 22% of national budget having been Chernobyl-related in 1991, falling to 6% by 2002.[209] Much of the current cost relates to the payment of Chernobyl-related social benefits to some 7 million people across the 3 countries.[209]

A significant economic impact at the time was the removal of 784,320 ha (1,938,100 acres) of agricultural land and 694,200 ha (1,715,000 acres) of forest from production. While much of this has been returned to use, agricultural production costs have risen due to the need for special cultivation techniques, fertilizers and additives.[209]

Politically, the accident gave great significance to the new Soviet policy of glasnost,[228][229] and helped forge closer Soviet–US relations at the end of the Cold War, through bioscientific cooperation.[230]:44–48 The disaster also became a key factor in the Union's eventual 1991 dissolution, and a major influence in shaping the new Eastern Europe.[

Yes, that accident was the result of a long chain of human fuckups, and I agree the other nuclear accidents don't really amount to much. But when one screwup can cost 235 billion dollars (much more, actually; that just is over a 30-year period), and poison large areas for hundreds or thousands of years, then I really think we need to look for safer ways to generate our power.

Fossil fuels just spread the harm around so you can't avoid it and can't really put a price tag on it.

 

[skepticalbip]

Fossil fuels just spread the harm around so you can't avoid it and can't really put a price tag on it.

And, interestingly, while the anti-nuke crowd raves about radioactive emission from nuclear power plants they generally ignore the much higher radioactive waste from coal fired power plants.
https://phys.org/news/2015-09-radioactive-contaminants-coal-ash.html

 

[bilby]

https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelshellenberger/2018/05/15/solar-and-wind-lock-in-fossil-fuels-that-makes-saving-the-climate-harder-slower-more-expensive/

Solar and wind lock in fossil fuels - particularly gas.

 

[lpetrich]

As if nuclear power doesn't. Nuclear reactors generally need to be supplemented with peaking powerplants to handle periods of high demand, the same as with wind and solar.

Unpacking All The Bad News About Renewable Energy & Energy Storage | CleanTechnica

• First, Admit You Have A Problem
• Second, Admit That Energy Storage Has A Problem
• Third, Why Are Electricity Rates Going Up?

Author Tina Casey notes a study that concludes that

energy managers among the 10 nations in the study are coping with the intermittent nature of wind and solar by installing more fossil fuel capacity.

That’s more natural gas capacity, to be specific. The case for natural gas integration with renewables is pretty straightforward if your only goal is to ensure reliability when there’s a lot of wind and solar on the grid. In contrast to coal, natural gas power plants can hang out on standby mode when not needed, and rev up quickly when needed.

The next one is a study of emissions related to energy storage.

Although economically valuable, storage is not fundamentally a “green” technology, leading to reductions in emissions…We find that net system CO2 emissions resulting from storage operation are nontrivial when compared to the emissions from electricity generation, ranging from 104 to 407 kg/MWh of delivered energy depending on location, storage operation mode, and assumptions regarding carbon intensity…

I could not find what that study was referring to. Inefficiency of energy storage? CO2 release during manufacture? Decomposition of plant material on the floor of a pumped-storage lake? All-renewable generation gets around the first problem rather nicely, and renewable energy for manufacture will likely solve much of the second problem.

 

[lpetrich]

The third one linked to the article that bilby linked to in his OP. “If Solar And Wind Are So Cheap, Why Are They Making Electricity So Expensive?”

After other possibilities, Shellenberger zeroes in on wind and solar. He cites German economist Leon Hirth, who crystal balled the situation back in 2013:

…Both solar and wind produce too much energy when societies don’t need it, and not enough when they do. Solar and wind thus require that natural gas plants, hydro-electric dams, batteries or some other form of reliable power be ready at a moment’s notice…

This has stimulated a lot of research into electricity storage, like improved batteries, something that use of nuclear reactors had failed to do.

Another problem is building powerlines from generators in out-of-the-way places, as wind and solar farms often are.

I'd mentioned some other problems, like coal and natural-gas prices going up, and wind and solar not always being so cheap.

 

[bilby]

As if nuclear power doesn't. Nuclear reactors generally need to be supplemented with peaking powerplants to handle periods of high demand, the same as with wind and solar.

In that case, how do we explain:

This has stimulated a lot of research into electricity storage, like improved batteries, something that use of nuclear reactors had failed to do.

It seems like you are saying that because nuclear power doesn't have the ability to load-follow precisely, and therefore requires some storage or peaker plants, that it is JUST AS BAD AS wind and solar. But that couldn't be further from the truth.

Older designs of nuclear plants need some buffering on an hourly or daily cycle; Newer designs can load follow pretty well without any buffering. Wind and solar require MASSIVE buffering, on an unpredictable cycle that could easily include months long dependence on storage. These requirements may be similar in kind; But they are not at all similar in degree.

France and Sweden both use hydro plants to buffer their nuclear power production. Germany cannot do the same to buffer her wind power production, because the size of the buffer required massively exceeds the available sites for hydro power. Hence the "research into electricity storage, like improved batteries". Which right now has failed to produce any results that are sufficiently inexpensive and environmentally sustainable to get anywhere CLOSE to solving the problem. I seriously doubt that it ever will, but even if it does one day, that doesn't help solve the urgent problem of CO₂ emissions today. Right now, we have all the knowledge, technologies and materials available to transition to a mostly nuclear power generating regime in a decade (France and Sweden already did just that, in thew 1970s and '80s). In the same one decade time-frame, Germany has completely failed to reduce CO₂ emissions from electricity generation, despite a similar effort in money and resources.

"All renewable" is simply not possible, without the imposition of energy poverty. Which is a serious shortcoming when we have a demonstrated solution that does NOT require people to bear that onerous burden.

As the complete failure of Energiewende shows, hope is not sufficient. Good intentions do not reduce emissions. Dreaming about massive, cheap, and environmentally friendly batteries is a waste of time - time we do not have.

Why we are still trying to implement a half-arsed solution that has been demonstrated to be ineffective, and ignoring a tried and tested solution that is perfectly good, I do not know. Well, I do know, but irrational fear isn't a sound basis for policy, and we need to stop it.

 

[steve_bank]

Part of the problem with nukes is that each is a new design in some way. No economies of scale.

About 5 yeras ago there was an anouncement that Sandia was devloping small nuke generators for local use. Encased in concrete, no meltdown threat, and transportrable to a site. The idea was to mass produce and lease units. Don't see it on the net, that would be a way to go.

 

[skepticalbip]

Part of the problem with nukes is that each is a new design in some way. No economies of scale.

About 5 yeras ago there was an anouncement that Sandia was devloping small nuke generators for local use. Encased in concrete, no meltdown threat, and transportrable to a site. The idea was to mass produce and lease units. Don't see it on the net, that would be a way to go.

If I recall correctly, this idea was originally suggested back during the Carter administration - Carter nixed it outright. I hope that the idea gets a bit more consideration this time. The idea of a sub-critical reactor, for local power, serving towns seems to me to be a damned good idea as it does not present possible problems current power reactors do. They would also make the current power grid, and all the concerns it creates, obsolete.

 

[bilby]

In a sadly typical example of how regulations are a needless hurdle to new designs, all reactors in the US were, until earlier this month, required to have multiple backup power sources (called 'Class 1E' power), in principle to ensure that cooling is maintained even in a loss of grid power event. Older reactor designs (such as the one at Fukushima Daiichi) need power for coolant circulation, and can melt down if it is not available - and although (as we saw at Fukushima), that's not particularly dangerous to life if suitable containment is present, it certainly makes an expensive and embarrassing mess.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has just (finally) relaxed that requirement for one design of Small Modular Reactor; hopefully we might see a number of other designs approved with similarly relaxed rules, where (as with NuScale), a melt down is physically impossible even with no power and no human intervention.

https://www.utilitydive.com/news/small-nukes-pass-key-step-as-regulators-approve-nuscale-safety-system/514470/

NuScale plans to build 'twelve pack' 600MW plants, each with a dozen 50MW modules - the modules are small and can be mass produced in American production facilities (unlike traditional large reactor designs that require parts too large to forge at any existing US facility).

Such plants can load-follow, or can run continuously at 91.6% to 100% of nameplate capacity, as only one module need be offline for maintenance or fuelling at any given time.

Astonishingly, they actually manage to be inherently safer than the already incredibly high bar set by the nuclear power industry.

Unsurprisingly, that won't be good enough for the antis, because their opposition is based on a quasi-religious belief that nuclear power is evil, rather than in the stated claim that it is "just too dangerous"; Which is as factual as the claim that the Earth is flat.

Regulations should always specify requirements for outcomes; Not for methods of meeting the desired outcomes.

 

[steve_bank]

Part of the problem with nukes is that each is a new design in some way. No economies of scale.

About 5 yeras ago there was an anouncement that Sandia was devloping small nuke generators for local use. Encased in concrete, no meltdown threat, and transportrable to a site. The idea was to mass produce and lease units. Don't see it on the net, that would be a way to go.

If I recall correctly, this idea was originally suggested back during the Carter administration - Carter nixed it outright. I hope that the idea gets a bit more consideration this time. The idea of a sub-critical reactor, for local power, serving towns seems to me to be a damned good idea as it does not present possible problems current power reactors do. They would also make the current power grid, and all the concerns it creates, obsolete.

The announcement I read was 4 5 6 years ago.

 

[steve_bank]

Triple mode power redundancy is typical on commercial aircraft and with industrial process control.

My company was involved with faiure analysis on an incident. A Boring jet over Florida lost the generators on both engines, and then the battery backup failed. The odds of that happening were very low, but these kind of events do happen.

What saved it was the fact their were control cables from the yoke to the control surfaces. If it had been fly by wire like the 777 it would have crashed.

Critical systems on the 777 have 5 redundant power sources and the critical systems themselves are redundant. I worked on the magnetic proximity detection system on the 777.

I doubt redundant power is a major issue with nukes. The biggest hurdles are environmental impact studies, and finding backers wiling to take the financial risk that it will be profitable.

 

[bilby]

Triple mode power redundancy is typical on commercial aircraft and with industrial process control.

My company was involved with faiure analysis on an incident. A Boring jet over Florida lost the generators on both engines, and then the battery backup failed. The odds of that happening were very low, but these kind of events do happen.

What saved it was the fact their were control cables from the yoke to the control surfaces. If it had been fly by wire like the 777 it would have crashed.

Critical systems on the 777 have 5 redundant power sources and the critical systems themselves are redundant. I worked on the magnetic proximity detection system on the 777.

I doubt redundant power is a major issue with nukes. The biggest hurdles are environmental impact studies, and finding backers wiling to take the financial risk that it will be profitable.

The Fukushima Daiichi incident suggests that your doubts are misplaced, at least for Generation I BWR designs.

It's not an issue for more modern designs; Hence the need to relax the regulations, which were written with Gen I designs in mind. Modern reactors have passive cooling systems that make meltdown physically impossible - the core cannot generate heat faster than it is removed.

One advantage of SMRs is that the high surface area to volume ratio allows for air cooling. A reactor might run out of water, but it's hard to see how it could run out of air.

 

[steve_bank]

Let's go back to the 60s and 70s when industry could dump toxic wasre down the toilet.

There may be some specific cases, I doubt that technical and operating regulations are major impediments. It is more the licensing and environmental processes. There is a half finished site in Washington that goes back decades. The way electricity prices were going it would not have brrn profitable.

Same with a wind farm up here.

You can bet every system in a nuke plant is fault tolerant. Power systems and electronics are cheap, insignificant compared to everything else. It has been that way for a long time.

The main reason for large scale nuclear power is insulation from oil markets. Second, done properly it is better environmentally than fossil fuel.

As to Japan, it was clearly inadequate environmental analysis and inadequate protection. Added to that in the govt report a contributing factor was the Japanese culture of rigid hierarchical decision making. Early onsite initiative may have mitigated the severity.

There is a Ca coastal plant that was scrutinized after the incident.

 

[bilby]

https://reason.com/archives/2018/04/12/how-we-screwed-up-nuclear-powe

... over the past 30 years we could have substituted 186,000 terawatt-hours of electricity production, avoiding up to 174 gigatons of carbon dioxide emissions and 9.5 million air pollution deaths. Cumulative global carbon dioxide emissions would be about 18 percent lower, and annual global carbon dioxide emissions would be one-third less.

Thanks, "environmentalists".

 

[steve_bank]

Anyone remember the 70s Arab Oil Embargo and gasoline rationing? In Ct you would buy gas on days defined by your license plate.

 

[Cheerful Charlie]

Let's go back to the 60s and 70s when industry could dump toxic wasre down the toilet.

There may be some specific cases, I doubt that technical and operating regulations are major impediments. It is more the licensing and environmental processes. There is a half finished site in Washington that goes back decades. The way electricity prices were going it would not have brrn profitable.

Same with a wind farm up here.

You can bet every system in a nuke plant is fault tolerant. Power systems and electronics are cheap, insignificant compared to everything else. It has been that way for a long time.

The main reason for large scale nuclear power is insulation from oil markets. Second, done properly it is better environmentally than fossil fuel.

As to Japan, it was clearly inadequate environmental analysis and inadequate protection. Added to that in the govt report a contributing factor was the Japanese culture of rigid hierarchical decision making. Early onsite initiative may have mitigated the severity.

There is a Ca coastal plant that was scrutinized after the incident.

For years I was an enginering model builder. One project I worked on was a model for a company bidding on dealing with nuclear waste. In Washington state for years, low level nuclear waste was buried in drums, and sometimes just trenches. Years later it became a problem as this stuff worked it's way to the surface. The company I was working for had designed an elaborate suite of machinery to freeze this waste with CO2 and dig it up and store it in approved waste containers. Yet the companies doing stuff like this compain that there are are these damned regulations. I wonder why?

 

[bilby]

Let's go back to the 60s and 70s when industry could dump toxic wasre down the toilet.

There may be some specific cases, I doubt that technical and operating regulations are major impediments. It is more the licensing and environmental processes. There is a half finished site in Washington that goes back decades. The way electricity prices were going it would not have brrn profitable.

Same with a wind farm up here.

You can bet every system in a nuke plant is fault tolerant. Power systems and electronics are cheap, insignificant compared to everything else. It has been that way for a long time.

The main reason for large scale nuclear power is insulation from oil markets. Second, done properly it is better environmentally than fossil fuel.

As to Japan, it was clearly inadequate environmental analysis and inadequate protection. Added to that in the govt report a contributing factor was the Japanese culture of rigid hierarchical decision making. Early onsite initiative may have mitigated the severity.

There is a Ca coastal plant that was scrutinized after the incident.

For years I was an enginering model builder. One project I worked on was a model for a company bidding on dealing with nuclear waste. In Washington state for years, low level nuclear waste was buried in drums, and sometimes just trenches. Years later it became a problem as this stuff worked it's way to the surface. The company I was working for had designed an elaborate suite of machinery to freeze this waste with CO2 and dig it up and store it in approved waste containers. Yet the companies doing stuff like this compain that there are are these damned regulations. I wonder why?

Probably because low level waste is harmless unless you plan to eat it, so it could and should just go into landfill along with all the other garbage.

Regulations above those that apply to the disposal of ordinary household garbage are pointless for low level waste, and achieve nothing to improve the safety of humans, or to protect the environment. Those regulations exist for the sole purpose of discouraging the use of nuclear technology by making it more expensive than it should be.

If you are eating garbage with low level waste in it, radioactivity is the least of your concerns.

 

[skepticalbip]

There is certainly a problem with the over-the-top regulation which is supported by irrational fear. One example I see is that radioactive tracers are routinely used in medical diagnoses. A radioactive substance in solution is injected into a patient for diagnostic purposes. It is understood that this will not harm the patient and it, in the end, eventually passes through the patient's system and is flushed down the toilet along with other bodily waste. However, the vial the tracer was in along with the syringe, gloves, and gown worn by the person administering the tracer is to be treated as material containing "hazardous" low level radiation. This is regulation for the sake of regulation not for real safety.

 

[steve_bank]

Bilby has lost any credibility.

The Hanford waste continues to be a problem from the past. Liquid waste was found to be in the groundnheaded towards the Columbia river.

Fairly recently there was a tunnel collapse on old waste storage. The Hanford issues with poor waste control will go on well after we are all dead.

Same with Rocky Flats in Colorado.

Toxic liquid hazardous radioactive waste was dumped directly on the ground I many palces/

I suggest Bilby would fit right in at Trump's EPA.

https://www.yakimaherald.com/news/l...cle_6ad1417a-59dd-11e8-9c09-1be6cc316cdb.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanford_Site

http://enenews.com/radio-uranium-ta...ar-released-into-columbia-river-audio-Hanford

There is a site in Georgia I believe where the can not hunt and eat it, contamination.