Stupidity-Powered
Why aren't we using clean, safe nuclear power?
It's outrageous. We have people storming around the globe shrieking that the planet is about to turn into a burning pit of lava or something thereabouts, heatwise, yet many (if not most) of them are staunchly against nuclear power.
Daniel Van Boom writes at CNET:
A quick thought experiment. What would the climate change debate look like if all humanity had was fossil fuels and renewables -- and then today an engineering visionary revealed a new invention: nuclear energy. That's the hypothetical posed to me by Dietmar Detering, a German entrepreneur living in New York."I'm sure we'd develop the hell out of it," he said, before sighing. "We're looking at a different world right now."
Detering thinks nuclear energy could be the key to solving the climate crisis. A former member of Germany's Green Party, Detering now spends his spare time as co-chair of the Nuclear New York advocacy group. He's part of a wave of environmentalists campaigning for more nuclear energy.
Though the word evokes images of landscapes pulverized by atomic calamity -- Hiroshima, Chernobyl, Fukushima -- proponents like Detering and his colleague Eric Dawson point out that nuclear power produces huge amounts of electricity while emitting next to no carbon.
This separates it from fossil fuels, which are consistent but dirty, and renewables, which are clean but weather dependent. Contrary to their apocalyptic reputation, nuclear power plants are relatively safe. Coal power is estimated to kill around 350 times as many people per terawatt-hour of energy produced, mostly from air pollution, compared to nuclear power.
"Any energy policy has pros and cons, and we feel, after putting a lot of scrutiny on it, that the pros outweigh the cons of nuclear energy," said Dawson, a grassroots campaigner at Nuclear New York.
It's a contentious statement. Many scientists and environmentalists say nuclear power is prohibitively dangerous and expensive, that plants take too long to build. "Better to expand renewable energy or energy saving, that is a better use of money in terms of climate change mitigation," says Jusen Asuka, director at the Institute for Global Environmental Strategies in Kanagawa, Japan.
But many scientists and experts believe nuclear power is necessary to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050. "Anyone seriously interested in preventing dangerous levels of global warming should be advocating nuclear power," wrote James Hansen, a former NASA scientist credited with raising awareness of global warming in the late '80s, in a 2019 column.
The arguments against nuclear power are emotional, not rational:
Bill Gates, when asked if nuclear energy was a solution to climate change, responded: "If people were rational, yes."The PR problem is understandable. Thirteen years before the first American nuclear power plant opened, the same technology was used to devastate Hiroshima and Nagasaki. No one appreciated the black cloud hanging over atomic power more than President Dwight Eisenhower, who accompanied the rollout of nuclear electricity with a marketing blitz. "This greatest of destructive forces can be developed into a great boon, for the benefit of all mankind," he promised in his now famous Atoms for Peace speech.
So alluring was the promise of cheap, clean energy that 11 countries had built nuclear reactors by 1970, with hundreds more commissioned for development. The newly created Atomic Energy Commission expected the US alone to be running over 1,000 reactors by 2000. But it was not to be. Forty years later, there are an estimated 440 nuclear reactors running -- globally.
There are three key reasons for nuclear's decline since the '70s. Environmental groups, fearful of nuclear meltdowns and weapon proliferation, began lobbying governments to stop building new power plants. In the US, the result was rafts of new safety regulations that made building and operating plants two to three times more costly.
Second was Three Mile Island, in which a mechanical failure at a Pennsylvania power plant led to radiation leaking outside of the plant. Though no one was killed, the near-miss caused an immediate pause on nuclear power's expansion -- plus more regulation on existing plants, further driving up costs.
Third, and most crucially: Chernobyl. The catastrophic meltdown realized the anti-nuclear movement's worst fears: 4,000 people died, according to conservative estimates by the WHO, and over 130,000 were evacuated. (One extreme estimate of the true death toll exceeds 900,000.) The incident illustrates another downside to atomic energy -- how lasting damage can be. The nuclear cleanup is expected to take 81 years to fully complete.
Chernobyl put a moratorium on nuclear power. Italy banned it outright a year later, and it would be 26 years before construction of another nuclear reactor was green-lit in the US. By 1987, it seemed the world had decided nuclear power was not the energy of the future.
But check this out:
Leaks and meltdowns happen when the metal structure in which nuclear fission occurs melts or ruptures. At Chernobyl, for instance, operator error caused a steam explosion that blew a nuclear reactor open, unleashing radioactive gas and debris.The graphite encasing nuclear materials used in X-Energy's reactors can withstand temperatures of up to 3,200 degrees fahrenheit, around 1,000 degrees more than the heat that caused Chernobyl's meltdown. Even if a reactor was torn apart, all radioactive elements would still be contained within the graphite casing.
"The accident in Chernobyl -- with our reactor, it's impossible," said Yvotte Brits, a nuclear engineer at X-Energy. "The reactor can never meltdown, no matter what the operator does. They can make the worst mistake but still cannot melt down the reactor."
That means plants aren't just safer, they're significantly cheaper and quicker to build. If meltdowns are impossible, the safety regulations that make power plants in the US so expensive won't be necessary. Neither will the giant containment structure that typically surrounds a nuclear core, which in turn allows X-Energy to build modular plants in a factory rather than constructing them at a building site.
The first plant is due for completion in 2027, with another following the year after. Brits says the company will eventually be able to complete a reactor in two years' time.
X-Energy is one of many companies building next-generation power plants that promise to realize Eisenhower's promise of atomic energy that's cheap, safe and widespread. Another is the Bill Gates-backed TerraPower, which is developing a reactor that aims to solve the cost and waste problems by running off depleted uranium. Both companies were awarded $80 million by the Department of Energy last October to help fund upcoming reactors.
"I've been in the industry almost 40 years, there's no better time than now," says Darren Gale, X-Energy's vice president of commercial operations. "People are coming to the realization that we can't have it both ways. We can't demand having the [clean] power and then refuse to let you build nuclear power plants to make that happen.
"Congress, public opinion, everybody is starting to change because they've seen the alternative is building more oil and gas."
Gale's optimism stems in part from President Joe Biden's American Jobs Plan, a huge infrastructure proposal which has provisions to fund advanced nuclear reactors. That's good news for companies like X-Energy -- and for the world if the designs live up to their potential -- but does little for existing nuclear infrastructure.
I'm not optimistic for a rush of rationality. You? Solutions?
The thing is, nuclear is the optimal kind of power we've got. We need to join the future intead of clinging to the past. Every decision has tradeoffs, and the planet the greens profess to care so much about is being destroyed by the energy they cling to like rats after a shipwreck.
The three mile island radiation release is purely bad publicity. Coal power plants release more radiation than that all the time and nobody complains. At least not about the radiation.
Ben at July 12, 2021 5:31 AM
"The thing is, nuclear is the optimal kind of power we've got."
"Optimal" depends on what we are talking about.
Nuclear power is not optimal for installation in regions of high geologic activity for example.
Ultimately the solution is a mixed portfolio of energy solutions.
This portfolio should include solar, wind, hydroelectric, and nuclear along with associated upgrades to the grid that include energy storage such as battery and pumped water, as well as improvements to energy efficiency.
There is no silver bullet to this problem.
Furthermore, nuclear cannot provide much assistance in the near term as the lead time to construct new plants is on the order of a decade.
If we wanted nuclear to solve all of our energy woes someone needed to get the ball rolling back in 2005.
Artemis at July 12, 2021 6:07 AM
When the "current wars" raged...Thomas Edison with his DC-based system versus Westinghouse and Tesla with their AC system...Edison employed sleazy fear-based tactics, such as referring to AC as 'killer current' and lobbying to have the electric chair used for executions and ensuring that everyone knew it ran on AC.
His campaign didn't succeed, but if today's social climate had existed back then, he probably would have gotten away with it.
David Foster at July 12, 2021 6:21 AM
Should be noted that France generates about 70% of their electricity from nuclear, and has done so safely for a long time.
Yet even with that track record, there are people there who want to shut down nuclear.
David Foster at July 12, 2021 6:23 AM
That's Amy's point: that we've created such a regulatory mess around nuclear power; that it takes so long to build a plant as to make that option practically untenable, even in the long term. She's arguing that, if we really want to have clean energy, we need to tear down the regulatory hurdles that essentially prevent us from building nuclear plants.
Wind and solar are currently far too weather-dependent to be relied upon to any large degree in an energy portfolio intended to support a good-sized population. With the advent of better mass storage capabilities and reductions in transmission losses, such options could become viable and their weather vulnerabilities less of an issue.
========================================
On another note:
Has anyone thought of putting solar panels in the roofs and body panels of EVs? I'm not sure if such an arrangement is currently practical, but I've always wondered about that.
How about RATs on EVs? Or would expending the energy required to get the vehicle up to a speed at which a RAT would actually generate power be counter-productive?
Conan the Grammarian at July 12, 2021 6:40 AM
> Has anyone thought of putting solar panels in the roofs and body panels of EVs
"The Bridgestone World Solar Challenge (BWSC) is the world's premier solar-powered car race where young engineers from all over the world compete with their self-designed solar cars. The solar cars travel over 3,000 kilometers from Darwin in Northern Australia to Adelaide in South Australia over five days."
And they look really cool.
https://www.google.com/search?q=across+australia+in+a+solar+car&client=ms-android-lge-rev1&prmd=vin&sxsrf=ALeKk02--xue4lwo6bQ48QAYmFRmTB0hCw:1626098979381&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjV7aPg2t3xAhWD-Z4KHXuUBg8Q_AUoAnoECAIQAg&biw=360&bih=592&dpr=3
Spiderfall at July 12, 2021 7:13 AM
Also consider that the US Navy has been using nuclear reactors on surface ships and subs for over 40 years.
Daniel McGuire at July 12, 2021 7:21 AM
They are cool. I knew people who competed.
But the key thing to notice is those are one person zero cargo vehicles. They also fail to pass safety standards for a road vehicle. There just isn't enough power in sunlight to run a standard car.
Ben at July 12, 2021 7:23 AM
The US Navy has been particularly on point safety wise, since 1954 with the commissioning of the Nautilus.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Navy_Nuclear_Propulsion#Safety_record
I R A Darth Aggie at July 12, 2021 8:17 AM
Wow, somebody cited all the taking points of public advocates for nuclear power.
Without defining any of the limiting terms.
A naval PWR is designed to survive close-order ordnance detonation. Earthquake wouldn't touch it, but it's difficult to scale up to 2GW.
But it can be done.
We won't do it, because racist/homophobic, which is most important now.
Radwaste at July 12, 2021 8:18 AM
Conan Says:
"That's Amy's point: that we've created such a regulatory mess around nuclear power; that it takes so long to build a plant as to make that option practically untenable, even in the long term. She's arguing that, if we really want to have clean energy, we need to tear down the regulatory hurdles that essentially prevent us from building nuclear plants."
Getting rid of regulatory hurdles doesn't significantly change the time frame of constructing a nuclear plant.
As a matter of fact you seem to misunderstand the nature of the regulations that Amy is referencing.
"In the US, the result was rafts of new safety regulations that made building and operating plants two to three times more costly."
"Though no one was killed, the near-miss caused an immediate pause on nuclear power's expansion -- plus more regulation on existing plants, further driving up costs."
"If meltdowns are impossible, the safety regulations that make power plants in the US so expensive won't be necessary."
The regulations Amy is referencing all have to do with costs associated with operating the plant.
The fact that they take about a decade to get build from the time you find a site and get construction approval has to do with the fact that they take a long time to actually construct.
Solar and wind can take advantage of economies of scale and mass manufacture within optimized fabrication environments.
The same is not true for nuclear plants.
Part of the reason they take a long time to build because we don't have manufacturing plants churning out thousands of units of nuclear reactors per year.
"Wind and solar are currently far too weather-dependent to be relied upon to any large degree in an energy portfolio intended to support a good-sized population. With the advent of better mass storage capabilities and reductions in transmission losses, such options could become viable and their weather vulnerabilities less of an issue."
We're pretty much already there Conan.
As of right now, we will get to an energy solution more rapidly using the mass manufacture of solar, wind, hydro, and emerging battery storage.
We simply waited too long for nuclear to be a quick option.
It is still fine as a back up for some base load scenarios in the long term, but in terms of what needs to be done right now... it is too slow to deploy.
"Has anyone thought of putting solar panels in the roofs and body panels of EVs? I'm not sure if such an arrangement is currently practical, but I've always wondered about that."
It's not really worth it from the perspective of running the vehicle itself.
You cannot generate enough electricity given the surface area of a car to operate the car.
One could do something like this to charge devices in the car though... like for phones or tablets.
Artemis at July 12, 2021 9:28 AM
Well, Artie, you're fulla shit again, there in Mom's basement making generic statements...
BS: "Solar and wind can take advantage of economies of scale and mass manufacture within optimized fabrication environments.
The same is not true for nuclear plants."
It is not necessary for "thousands" of "units" to harness the economy of scale. In fact, the US Navy has benefited from standardized plans in submarine weapon systems, notably the S5W nuclear engineering plant (been there, done that. You?). Dozens is the number at which this economy, controllable for quality, appears, and similar examples exist everywhere in manufacturing.
I get that this is hard to see from your basement, but these plants use hundreds of circuit breakers and valves, and miles of wire and piping, all of which is manufactured en masse.
Maybe go visit one, or look at the INPO practice exams for SROs and consider the implications.
You're way below the ECP.
Radwaste at July 12, 2021 11:04 AM
What we want is a network of small, unpressurized reactors all over the place.
The internet of juice, if you will.
And divert half the DOD budget into fusion research. Get 'er done.
Gog_Magog_Carpet_Reclaimers at July 12, 2021 11:07 AM
Radwaste,
Before you go shooting your mouth off maybe you should know what you are talking about.
Solar takes advantage of economies of scale in ways that nuclear power simply never can.
Thin film photovoltaic cells for example can utilize roll-to-roll processing techniques that vastly exceed the kind of manufacturing benefits nuclear can ever hope to achieve.
The same goes for polycrystalline cells that use silicon fabrication technology that churns out millions upon millions of semiconductor chips each and every year.
One can never hope to accomplish anything like this with nuclear.
It will always be slow to deploy by comparison.
I was advocating building nuclear plants about 15 years ago when it would have been online and ready to go before we were in crisis mode.
Now that folks are freaking out because the electrical grid fails consistently in Texas and we have droughts all over the place they want to scramble to throw nuclear in like it is plug and play.
Please stop pretending you are a nuclear engineer... or an engineer of any type for that matter.
This really isn't an area where you are an expert to be telling anyone they are "fulla shit".
The appropriate strategy at this stage is to deploy rapid energy solutions while getting started on things like nuclear that will come online in ~10 years or so give or take.
No one wants a nuclear facility constructed in their home town that has been set and ready to go in 2 years... and that isn't because of onerous regulations... it's because proper fabrication and setup takes longer than this.
It takes longer than this to properly construct a manufacturing facility.
Solar and wind are good short term because the investments to achieve scale have already been made.
Nuclear is behind because no one did what they needed to do a decade ago.
It is now playing catch up.
Artemis at July 12, 2021 11:45 AM
The civilian nuclear power industry was murdered in the 1970's with the likes of Helen Caldicott. There was more fear-mongering stupidity at those anti-nuke rallies than you could shake a stick at.
While I would guess nuclear is the best solution for us, I have little hope that it can be revived. The idiocy and paranoia indices of the Far Left are much too high; probably much higher than they were in the 1970s. It would be like BLM/antifa times 100.
ruralcounsel at July 12, 2021 12:26 PM
"There was more fear-mongering stupidity at those anti-nuke rallies than you could shake a stick at"
It was a magic stick, a wand if you will, and it made coal-fired plants spring up all across the globe.
Gog_Magog_Carpet_Reclaimers at July 12, 2021 12:42 PM
I get the distinct sense that I am watching revisionist history in the making.
Folks who for decades have been insisting that anthropogenic climate change isn't real and that oil, gas, and coal were our energy mainstays are now scrambling to redefine climate change as a problem caused by left-wing political forces that prevented the construction of nuclear power plants.
It seems like we have gone from outright denial to finger pointing in a matter of months.
If anthropogenic climate change isn't real what is the big rush?
Artemis at July 12, 2021 1:13 PM
> Radwaste,
>
> Before you go shooting your mouth
> off maybe you should know what
> you are talking about.
Wait a sec, little
darlings…
Crid at July 12, 2021 1:28 PM
(Raddy, remember: It's a Chinese basement.)
Crid at July 12, 2021 1:29 PM
As long as central (ie, federal) authority doesn't do something stupid that prevents the whole country from running nukes again, I think we can count on the Gray Davis lesson giving us power again.
In other words, when the rolling blackouts start to happen regularly again, the public panic about that will trump any panic about this week's environmentalist phony emergency.
jdgalt1 at July 12, 2021 1:45 PM
JD, you are really, really optimistic.
Crid at July 12, 2021 1:58 PM
"(It's a Chinese basement.) "
Nailed it. This guy gets his noodles at the government store.
Gog_Magog_Carpet_Reclaimers at July 12, 2021 2:45 PM
Good grief... I've never met a bunch of more confident yet ignorant folks in all my life.
Let's do some math.
Globally we added ~250GW of renewable energy in 2020.
In the US we added ~15GW of wind power and ~15GW of solar power.
The average nuclear plant outputs ~1GW.
In order for nuclear to be competitive in the near term with wind and solar in terms of offsetting fossil fuels we would have to build more than 30 plants per year.
Anyone who thinks we can just start cranking out 30 nuclear plants each year is kidding themselves.
In addition, solar and wind are already in their exponential growth curve so the 30GW capacity added in 2020 is very likely to be exceeded in 2021, which will likely be exceeded in 2022, etc... This is a growth industry at this point.
I happen to like nuclear power... the fundamental problem is that it kind of missed the boat.
Sure they should plan on building some, but by the time they are done we will have added hundreds of GW of new capacity to the grid of wind and solar.
Tesla and others have been building out manufacturing capacity for grid storage as well.
The fundamental problem for nuclear is that it is late to market.
Artemis at July 12, 2021 3:46 PM
> In the US we added ~15GW of wind power
Artemis at July 12, 2021 3:46 PM
We'll skip the insult about ignorance. Really, you haven't met any of us. More to the point, capacity is not production, non?
> we would have to build more than 30 plants per year.
No. We would have to build three times as many wind turbines to reach 15 GW of production.
"The capacity factor of a wind turbine is its average power output divided by its maximum power capability. On land, capacity factors range from 0.26 to 0.52. The average 2018 capacity factor for projects built between 2014 and 2017 was 41.9%. In the U.S., the fleetwide average capacity factor was 35%."
https://css.umich.edu/factsheets/wind-energy-factsheet
Spiderfall at July 12, 2021 5:29 PM
Spiderfall,
Let's just look at the facts... you seem to have an issue with the notion of capacity. Fine, let's talk production instead because the conclusions remain the same.
In 2010 we generated ~800GW from nuclear power... in 2020 we generated ~800GW from nuclear power. This shouldn't surprise anyone as we didn't do anything in this area to increase generation capacity. Nuclear power plants in the US tend to run at ~90% capacity most of the time anyway.
On the other hand, in 2010 we generated ~95GW from wind and solar power(predominantly wind at that time)... in 2020 we generated ~430GW from wind and solar power (now the split here is ~80% wind to 20% solar... but the salient point is that in 10 years solar power generation has increased by a factor of 100 in the last 10 years).
Again, wind and solar are on an exponential growth trajectory at the moment... nuclear is way behind and it isn't regulations holding it back... they simply haven't been the first to market and other solutions are already here and being implemented.
I have nothing against building new nuclear power plants... but in 10 years time we should expect solar and wind generation in the US to increase by at least a factor of 4.
Who here seriously thinks we are going to increase nuclear power generation by a factor of 4 in the next 10 years?
I am telling you that this isn't going to happen and it has nothing to do with regulations... it is market forces.
Artemis at July 12, 2021 6:30 PM
Just to clarify further... we aren't going to double nuclear generation capacity either.
The point is that solar and wind are on a trajectory to overtake nuclear power generation within the next ~5 years.
By the time the first set of new reactors went online they would already be behind renewables.
Nuclear plants needed to start being designed and built ~15 years ago when I was pushing for that alternative.
Artemis at July 12, 2021 6:35 PM
"15 years ago when I was pushing for that alternative"
Good lord. They've been ignoring you all this time?
Gog_Magog_Carpet_Reclaimers at July 12, 2021 6:43 PM
Gog,
They've been ignoring lots of people.
Pretty much everyone who was pushing for nuclear power 15 years ago was ignored.
On a separate note I want to clean up my units. In my post at 6:30pm I am talking about GWh since we are talking about energy production over the year and not power.
Artemis at July 12, 2021 6:53 PM
"Folks who for decades have been insisting that anthropogenic climate change isn't real and that oil, gas, and coal were our energy mainstays are now scrambling to redefine climate change as a problem caused by left-wing political forces that prevented the construction of nuclear power plants."
No, they are merely pointing out that IF you were serious about addressing this theoretical anthropogenic climate change problem, nuclear would be the correct solution. Solar and wind power will always be a specialty boutique power source, unsuited for supplying baseload. And history has taught us that the Left is unlikely to ever back nuclear in any significant numbers.
And oil and gas will be the smart choice for transportation fuel right up until there isn't any. EVs have their own environmental problems that the current faddists don't ever discuss.
"If anthropogenic climate change isn't real what is the big rush?"
Ask California. The country continues to require more and more power (EV's, anyone?) while it retires older power plants. The population continues to grow, and our lifestyles keep shifting to higher and higher per capita power usage.
ruralcounsel at July 13, 2021 4:08 AM
ruralcounsel says:
"No, they are merely pointing out that IF you were serious about addressing this theoretical anthropogenic climate change problem, nuclear would be the correct solution. Solar and wind power will always be a specialty boutique power source, unsuited for supplying baseload. And history has taught us that the Left is unlikely to ever back nuclear in any significant numbers."
Your perspective here is woefully out of date.
As of 2020 the cost per kWh for solar is ~$0.06 while the cost per kWh for wind is ~$0.05.
By comparison the estimated cost for new nuclear power plants is slightly less than $0.10 per kWh.
Nuclear would have been the correct option to focus on about 10 years ago when the economics were very different than they are today.
Please also keep in mind that the costs for wind and solar are continuing to drop with targets of ~$0.03 per kWh over the next decade.
This was a race and while nuclear is maybe just starting to get out of bed, options like wind and solar have already showered, gotten dressed, had morning coffee, drove to work, and settled at the desk.
This entire narrative about being unsuitable for baseload is an outdated talking point as well given the advances and new manufacturing capabilities for grid storage that will be coming online over the next decade.
I still think we should build some new nuclear facilities based on modern designs in the proper locations... but by the time that is complete wind and solar production in the US will have already doubled or quadrupled.
The train has left the station on this one.
Artemis at July 13, 2021 5:19 AM
ruralcounsel,
I also wanted to address another erroneous claim you've made:
"The country continues to require more and more power (EV's, anyone?) while it retires older power plants. The population continues to grow, and our lifestyles keep shifting to higher and higher per capita power usage."
In 2010 we generated ~4150TWh of electricity.
By comparison, in 2020 we generated ~4050TWh of electricity. Now this drop can likely be attributed to the pandemic... but if we go back to 2018 we generated ~4200TWh of electricity.
The point is that this rapid expansion of generation capacity and massive increase in demand you are claiming simply does not exist when we look at the numbers.
Over that same time period coal used to contribute ~45% of our grid power and now contributes ~20%.
One might then wonder how we compensated for that 25% shift. Well we saw about a 15% share increase in natural gas (this is where all the fracking comes into play)... but we also saw about a 10% share increase in solar and wind combined.
This is why I am saying that over the next 10 years we will easily see the contribution from wind and solar rise to at least 20% of our overall energy production mix. At that point it will exceed nuclear energy production as a percentage of our overall generation.
We currently have 94 operating nuclear reactors in the US... if we want to increase the share of nuclear power by ~10% we would need to construct ~50 new reactors.
Anyone who thinks the only significant barriers to constructing ~50 new reactors within just a couple of years is regulations is kidding themselves.
Maybe we'll get 5-10 new reactors constructed over the next 5-10 years... but I simply don't see the economics playing out for 50 new reactors given the competing alternatives.
Artemis at July 13, 2021 6:08 AM
"As of 2020 the cost per kWh for solar is ~$0.06 while the cost per kWh for wind is ~$0.05."
These costs are calculated by taking the annual cost (operating cost plus capital cost) of the generation facility and dividing it by the number of kwh generated in that year, without considering *when* (over the course of the day and year) the power is generated and how it matches up with what the demand is at that point in time.
If you want to look at solar/wind as the predominant sources of electricity, you need to include the cost of storage and overbuilding and allocate them against the total generation. Alternatively, you can look at solar/wind as supplements, with gas or coal (mainly gas) generation remaining in place for when it is needed. In that latter model, the wind/solar displace only the fuel costs of conventional generation, not the capital costs and periodic operating costs. And even there, some battery storage will be necessary once wind/solar reach more than a small % of the total generation, because gas/steam turbines need some time to greatly increase their output.
David Foster at July 13, 2021 6:26 AM
Electricity generation in China:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_sector_in_China
David Foster at July 13, 2021 6:30 AM
David Foster,
I will refer you to my original post in this thread:
"Nuclear power is not optimal for installation in regions of high geologic activity for example.
Ultimately the solution is a mixed portfolio of energy solutions.
This portfolio should include solar, wind, hydroelectric, and nuclear along with associated upgrades to the grid that include energy storage such as battery and pumped water, as well as improvements to energy efficiency.
There is no silver bullet to this problem." - Artemis at July 12, 2021 6:07 AM
The fundamental point here is that right now in 2021 the outlook for nuclear power simply is not the same as it was back in 2005 when we compare it against renewables.
This entire argument regarding "when" the power is generated really isn't what you think it is.
As it stands, facilities such as oil, gas, or even nuclear for that matter need to be run at high levels pretty much around the clock because they are not simple to turn off and turn on again.
This means they often waste energy generation during off hours when demand is low but they still have to generate at a certain level just to stay running.
Solar by contrast generates predominantly during peak usage and then obviously generates nothing at night when the sun is down.
The point being that we have already been "overbuilding" when it comes to fossil fuel generation because in order to meet energy requirements during the day means we have wasted generation at night when we cannot sufficiently ramp down production.
Grid storage is a massive benefit even outside of the consideration of renewables for this very reason because we could get by with fewer fossil fuel power plants by storing energy generated at night.
We already do this to some extent with pumped water systems and fly wheels.
Grid storage is beneficial no matter what... it just gets even more beneficial when we take into account renewables that are less predictable on an hour to hour basis.
The point I am getting at is people seem to be getting all excited here about nuclear when the time to get the ball rolling on that was over 10 years ago.
Times have changed and as a result the appropriate path forward has also changed.
This is going to be one of those things where 10 years from now many of these folks will declare that solar+wind+grid storage+improvements to transmission efficiency was the *obvious* path... but right now they are insisting they know better.
I've seen this happen here on multiple occasions where folks have very strong opinions one way (even when the facts do not support their positions)... and later when things don't pan out as they predicted they pretend they knew how things would turn out all along.
10 years from now we'll be seeing at least some of these folks chanting how the economics of renewables finally made them viable.
Many of these folks only have hindsight... but have no foresight at all.
Artemis at July 13, 2021 9:08 AM
Some fanatics for solar and wind just cannot be reasoned with.
First, I never said there was a massive expansion of generation capacity. We may need it, but we aren't getting it. And the population of the country is climbing quickly, so yes, demand is outpacing supply. Just ask California.
The cost per kWh is almost irrelevant when you factor in that you can't do baseload on things that don't work in the dark or in becalmed. Not to mention the distorting tax credits for "green" energy.
And solar panels have about a 25-year lifespan, no matter how they are made. We are on the cusp of determining how to landfill these toxic things when their efficiencies drop off. The windfarms will soon look like the oil platforms of the North Sea ... rusting junk cluttering the landscape.
Like Tesla's and carbon credit offsets, wind and solar are fine toys for rich people. Boutique power for the perpetually angst-ridden.
But unless you intend to kill off or leave in perpetual powerless serfhood most of the population (which is what the Davos crowd intends), nukes are the only solution. Period. No matter when the construction begins.
ruralcounsel at July 13, 2021 9:22 AM
RC, he's not from our country, he literally doesn't know the landscape. He's doing this through translated web pages.
I'm not asking you to be patient, just to understand.
Crid at July 13, 2021 9:49 AM
If meltdowns are impossible, the safety regulations that make power plants in the US so expensive won't be necessary.
When has a regulation ever been repealed just because it was unnecessary?
Rex Little at July 13, 2021 10:55 AM
ruralcounsel Says:
"Some fanatics for solar and wind just cannot be reasoned with."
Try using data to back up your claims... that is how one reasons with people.
"And the population of the country is climbing quickly, so yes, demand is outpacing supply."
Actually population growth in the US is on the decline.
Back in 1960 population growth was 1.7%... as of 2019 it is 0.5% and the trend is downward.
I've already demonstrated that demand has been relatively stable over the last decade which is why we generated ~4150TWh in 2010 and ~4050Twh in 2020.
Simply stated, your claim is wrong based on the facts.
"The cost per kWh is almost irrelevant when you factor in that you can't do baseload on things that don't work in the dark or in becalmed. Not to mention the distorting tax credits for "green" energy."
So now cost doesn't matter when it comes to the economics of power generation?
As for tax credits, the oil and gas industry receive massive government subsidies. If we removed all energy subsidies across the board oil and gas take a massive hit relative to the alternatives.
"And solar panels have about a 25-year lifespan, no matter how they are made."
This is also wrong.
There have in fact been some recent advances in the field regarding the understanding of how oxygen vacancies within the crystal lattice impact longevity. There is no reason why 25 years is some magic limit to cell lifespan.
"But unless you intend to kill off or leave in perpetual powerless serfhood most of the population (which is what the Davos crowd intends), nukes are the only solution. Period. No matter when the construction begins."
I think we've established already that pretty much everything you've written is erroneous... why do you suspect this wildly speculative statement to be true?
As I've said, I happen to like nuclear power... it just isn't going to be the rapid solution some folks here are pretending it to be.
By the time we get any new nuclear plants online our energy mix will already be shifting much further away from fossil fuels.
Artemis at July 14, 2021 4:56 AM
Quick clarification.
The rate of population growth is on the decline... we are still growing, just slower and slower each year.
Artemis at July 14, 2021 4:58 AM
Crid,
People are trying to have a discussion here and you are right on queue to poison the well with made up nonsense because you cannot cope with the idea that I might have a conversation with someone other than you or Conan on this blog.
No one thinks you are mentally well.
Artemis at July 14, 2021 5:11 AM
Nobody's all that desperate but you, and it's gotta be a Chinese/disability thing. It's a blog, not a courtroom. Your neediness is inexplicable, but deserves explication. Or, meanwhile, ridicule.
Crid at July 14, 2021 7:23 AM
Crid,
You're the one constantly tracking me down for this meaningless back and forth.
I'm really not interested in you... take a hint.
Artemis at July 14, 2021 9:27 AM
Taking all the air out of the room is not a "discussion." I just want to know what kind of intrusive, claustrophobic background makes your behavior seem worth worthwhile: That's the only thing that makes you interesting (though not worth reading).
Crid at July 14, 2021 9:40 AM
Crid,
Conversations here are active until you show up with your stupidity.
Prior to that folks are chatting.
Artemis at July 15, 2021 2:06 PM
You've never "chatted" in your life. Suadi Arabia, right?
Crid at July 15, 2021 5:19 PM
Crid,
The fact that you're divorced and I'm still married suggests that I'm able to hold someone's interest in conversation and you cannot.
Artemis at July 15, 2021 5:34 PM
>
People are trying to have a discussion here and you are right on queue to poison the well . . .
Artemis at July 14, 2021 5:11 AM
A cue is "a thing said or done that serves as a signal to an actor or other performer to enter or to begin their speech or performance." This is where we derive the phrase "on cue."
"On queue" seems to be an amalgam of the east coast phrase "on line," (commonly said as "in line" out west) and the British usage of queue to mean a line of people waiting for service.
"On queue" is thus inappropriate as used in the context above.
Possibly Singapore or Hong Kong.
Spiderfall at July 16, 2021 10:02 AM
Is your "spouse" ashamed of where he/she lives, too?
Crid at July 16, 2021 11:25 AM
Crid,
What does your therapist say about your pathological behavior?
Artemis at July 16, 2021 12:28 PM
Spiderfall,
You guys read way too much into mistakes from folks who disagree with the conservative thought bubble.
Either way, you are obviously correct that the word should have been cue as opposed to queue.
I'll note that you have nothing at all to say about the fact that it remains a logically fallacious way to operate.
As a result, if you can conclude that I am possibly from Singapore or Hong Kong on the basis of a simple error... I suppose I am free to conclude you are dumb as rocks for failing to recognize the fundamental logical flaws in the approach both you and Crid are taking.
There is a reason why red states are seeing coronavirus flare ups post vaccination deployment... and it isn't because the folks who live there are operating rationally.
It may also by why you cannot recognize evidence of logical thought as part of American culture.
I assure you that it is in many parts of the country... just perhaps not where you live.
Artemis at July 16, 2021 12:34 PM
"There is a reason why red states are seeing coronavirus flare ups post vaccination deployment... and it isn't because the folks who live there are operating rationally."
Artemis at July 16, 2021 12:34
But if you look at this map from the Mayo clinic, you will see that current corona virus hotspots follow more closely the geographic pattern of immigration from the southern border. Note also that two of the "reddest" states, Idaho and Montana, both with less than 40% vax rate, also have low case numbers.
And for Heaven's sake, don't even try to pretend the left is rational.
https://www.mayoclinic.org/coronavirus-covid-19/map
I dislike the red state/blue state labels. It's simple-minded and divisive. The blue noses had no problem inventing more than two genders. Maybe they could investigate something with actual differences.
Spiderfall at July 16, 2021 4:08 PM
Spiderfall,
I am happy to dispense with "red state/blue state" labels as they are too coarse grained... as for your objection about divisive discourse... I'll believe you are serious about that when you stop trying to draw nonsense conclusions based off of Crid's idiocy.
"But if you look at this map from the Mayo clinic, you will see that current corona virus hotspots follow more closely the geographic pattern of immigration from the southern border. Note also that two of the "reddest" states, Idaho and Montana, both with less than 40% vax rate, also have low case numbers."
I am glad that you are looking at data from the Mayo clinic. This is a reliable source we can actually discuss. That being said, you are not really looking at the data properly.
Low vaccination rate in a state does not guarantee it will be a hotspot... it just predisposes it to become a hot spot.
The states that are presently flaring up are as follows:
Texas - ~43% fully vaccinated
Florida - ~47% fully vaccinated
Georgia - ~38% fully vaccinated
North Carolina - ~43% fully vaccinated
Arizona - ~44% fully vaccinated
Missouri - ~40% fully vaccinated
Louisiana - ~36% fully vaccinated
Arkansas - ~35% fully vaccinated
The issue isn't that all low vaccination states are seeing flare ups... it is that *only* low vaccination states are seeing flare ups.
Do you see the distinction between those claims?
As a result it makes no difference if you can identify a couple of low vaccination states that haven't yet been hit... Idaho and Montana are also extremely low population density states, which also plays a role in the spread of infectious disease.
Keep in mind that all of those states predominantly and traditionally vote conservative in terms of state and federal elections... they may have liberal citizens, but the population skews right wing.
Now Georgia might be considered an exception at the moment, but it is dealing with some other issues. The first is that it was a VERY even split during the last election cycle. The second is that African American citizens are also showing lower than average vaccination rates.
Either way, best case scenario is you get 7/8 trend for states that lean heavily conservative and 1/8 states that is pretty much an even split.
These are numbers that cannot just be brushed under the rug.
"And for Heaven's sake, don't even try to pretend the left is rational."
I've got massive issues with left wing folks as well... it is primarily those folks who pushed the whole anti-vax nonsense associated with autism.
It just so happens that when it comes to the corona virus pandemic the problem is mostly a right wing one.
When folks move too far to the right or too far to the left I have observed that their thinking gets very muddled.
Unfortunately, that I have also noticed that that most folks on the right have moved really extreme... whereas the looney folks on the left are not as dominant.
There are presently no left wing analogues to the likes of Marjorie Taylor Greene, Lauren Boebert, or
Louie Gohmert... those folks have lost their minds.
You may not like AOC or Bernie for example... but they don't go around asking if the forest department can alter the orbit of the earth to improve the climate.
The political right seems to enjoy voting for people with a very loose grip on reality these days.
It was at CPAC that the audience cheered for lower vaccination rates... no one on the political left is doing this. The fourth wave that is now emerging was entirely preventable, but we've got loons on the right at the moment.
Artemis at July 16, 2021 5:14 PM
You're in Singapore... Why are you so eager to pretend to be part of America?
Crid at July 16, 2021 6:44 PM
Crid,
Hush... people are trying to hold a conversation.
Artemis at July 16, 2021 6:47 PM
Artemis,
Thanks for the tip about Louie Gohmert. Molly Ivins would have had fun with that one. I'll file it right next to Hank Johnson (D, GA) asking if Guam might tip over if we shipped 8,000 more Marines to the island.
I don't much follow politicians and their maneuverings. Am I being selfish? Probably not.
Spiderfall at July 16, 2021 7:55 PM
Spiderfall Says:
"I'll file it right next to Hank Johnson (D, GA) asking if Guam might tip over if we shipped 8,000 more Marines to the island."
I remember that too... that was also monumentally stupid.
Artemis at July 16, 2021 8:00 PM
If you live in the States, why are you afraid to say which one? All the rest of us have shared that kind of basic information. And you're not a bashful personality... I'm guessing you wouldn't want to have to pretend to know about the civic history and attractions.
Crid at July 16, 2021 9:02 PM
Crid Says:
"If you live in the States, why are you afraid to say which one?"
You are confusing the notion of fear with the fact that I just don't see any of this as relevant information for you to have as it isn't really any of your business.
I don't ask people for personal information... people can share what they wish when they wish.
Why is this concept difficult for you to understand?
Artemis at July 17, 2021 3:14 AM
Wheelchair? Blindness?
Crid at July 17, 2021 2:22 PM
Incontinence? Dementia?
Do you seriously not understand how stupid you sound?
None of what you are doing is clever or impressive... but I'm happy to let you put your idiocy on display for all to see.
Artemis at July 17, 2021 6:03 PM
Confucian, always. Probably China
Crid at July 18, 2021 6:55 AM
I don't know Crid... you seem to know more about Confucius than I do... maybe you're from China.
When it comes to philosophy I am more of a Kant and Hume kind of person.
So I suppose that would make me a German/Scottish mix.
Artemis at July 18, 2021 9:41 AM
But you're disabled, right? Isolated somehow. People can tell, Orion.
Crid at July 18, 2021 9:45 AM
Crid,
You are not well... precisely how many people in your life have decided to go no contact with you because of your lackluster and pathological personality?
Artemis at July 18, 2021 10:32 PM
Where do you live?
Crid at July 19, 2021 5:12 AM
Where do you live?
Crid at July 19, 2021 5:13 AM
Twice in as many minutes... as I said... you are not well.
Artemis at July 19, 2021 9:02 AM
Straightjacket? Some institution, certainly. Not American citizenship. You don't know the language.
Crid at July 19, 2021 9:13 AM
Language proficiency is not a requirement for you to insist someone is from Russia, China, Taiwan, Brazil, Singapore, etc...
The reality is that you cannot cope with the existence of people with differing opinions and perspectives.
Artemis at July 19, 2021 10:51 AM
Care facility, right? A co-op home or something.
Crid at July 19, 2021 5:40 PM
The death song of solar and wind power...
https://thesilicongraybeard.blogspot.com/2021/07/why-solar-power-isnt-likely-to-keep.html
ruralcounsel at July 20, 2021 6:21 AM
ruralcounsel,
So you believe the "death song" of solar power is that it is cheap???
This is from blog you linked to:
"The problem is that solar panels generate lots of electricity in the middle of sunny days, frequently more than what’s required, driving down prices—sometimes even into negative territory."
Earlier in this conversation people were saying that solar wasn't a solution because demand was growing exponentially... now you are arguing that demand isn't high enough for solar.
Here is a link to some expert analysis on this topic:
www.eia.gov/outlooks/steo/report/electricity.php
"We forecast that in 2022 large-scale solar capacity growth will exceed wind growth for the first time. We forecast that 16 GW of solar photovoltaic (PV) generating capacity in the electric power sector will be added in 2021 and an additional 17 GW is forecast for 2022. We forecast small-scale solar PV capacity to increase by about 5 GW per year through the STEO forecast period."
Nuclear on the other hand is not forecast to grow at all in 2022... and it cannot reasonably be expected to because we simply cannot just snap our fingers and make new nuclear facilities appear within 1 year.
This is why I keep saying the time to have started building nuclear plants to deal with the current issues was about 10-15 years ago. We can still work on them now, but renewables are already off to the races.
In terms of peak power output during the middle of the day, that is what grid storage is for... which I've also gone over in the conversation multiple times.
You capture the excess in the middle of the day and then use it at night.
Artemis at July 20, 2021 7:17 AM
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