YOU: Fix the US Energy Crisis

[mheslep]

...So you need to be very specific about what you mean when you say such things. Ie:

-A 40 mi range electric car could be viable as a commuter car. What fraction of passenger cars they could possibly replace, I don't know. Perhaps 20-50%.
-In order to replace regular passenger cars completely, the replacement must equal their performance to be viable. That's 300-400mi.
-That doesn't help us much with light trucks and SUVs, much less larger trucks.

Now having a 40 mi range, of course, is not enough to declare a new electric car "viable". It also needs to have a competitive price and that price needs to be real. Toyota sold the Prius at a loss initially (not sure if they still do) and that is not a business model that is sustainable. A 40 mi range car, to be viable, has to cost, in my estimation, a maximum of $15,000 and yet still be profitable for the car company. That's going to be a tall order for decades to come, unless there is an enormous and unexpected breakthrough in battery technology.

russ waters, by commuter car here I assume you a referring to a pure EV here, just a 1-2 passenger ride. This little beast gets close to your specs with old lead acid tech:
http://www.zapworld.com/electric-vehicles/electric-cars/xebra-truck
25 miles on a charge, $12,500.
I don't such a thing limited to 25 or even 40 miles, only, would replace much of the fleet even as a commuter play. I do expect a PHEV, that goes 40 mi on batteries and then 400 mi on gasoline has the potential to take a substantial share of the US fleet. I'd also wouldn't mind paying substantially more for such a vehicle with that range and 4 passenger capacity, which I expect we'll see in two years from both GM, Toyota, perhaps others.

[edit] Oh, and we can't forget that the cost analysis must include the fuel cost, which is a serious source of viability issues for hydrogen and electric cars. For the electrics, people tend to trumpet the low cost of night-time electricity, but neglect the fact that the batteries will need to be replaced periodically. Even if they last for a thousand charges, people will be swapping them out every 40,000 miles. People cringe at paying $200 every couple of years for tires - imagine having to drop $5000+ on a new battery pack for your $15,000 car!

Its fairly clear that batteries planned for PHEVs should go 10years/life of the vehicle. They do that with a combination of 1)Li battery chemistry tailored for long life not energy density, 2)http://gm-volt.com/2007/08/29/latest-chevy-volt-battery-pack-and-generator-details-and-clarifications/" , and 3)temperature control. Together, these steps greatly extend the life cycle over what you may be used to with your laptop battery which does non of these things. #1 and especially #2 achieve extended life at the cost of more battery/size to achieve 40mi. So I don't expect the fuel savings of a PHEV to be offset by battery replacement just an initial premium of perhaps $10k over a comparable ICE vehicle. The fuel cost savings would conservatively be $1k/year, optimistically $2k/year. I believe the well laden mortgage bailout bill just guaranteed a $7600 credit for PHEVs.

 

[vanesch]

6 to 10 years each, so far. Blame law suits and and red tape if you like, but someone proposing a big push in nuclear ought to fix that first.

That's the pipe-through time maybe (it's long!), but you can fill up the pipe with constructions in parallel. France built 58 plants in 20 years, Belgium (tiny Belgium) built 7 plants in 11 years.

 

[mheslep]

That's the pipe-through time maybe (it's long!), but you can fill up the pipe with constructions in parallel. France built 58 plants in 20 years, Belgium (tiny Belgium) built 7 plants in 11 years.

Yes, but parallel or no that length of time means they are intrinsically expensive - no ROI for years.

 

[mheslep]

...Its fairly clear that batteries planned for PHEVs should go 10years/life of the vehicle. They do that with a combination of 1)Li battery chemistry tailored for long life not energy density, 2)http://gm-volt.com/2007/08/29/latest-chevy-volt-battery-pack-and-generator-details-and-clarifications/" , and 3)temperature control. Together, these steps greatly extend the life cycle over what you may be used to with your laptop battery which does non of these things. #1 and especially #2 achieve extended life at the cost of more battery/size to achieve 40mi. ...

Here's some data supporting the battery life extension approach:
Limiting the top off voltage:
http://www.batteryuniversity.com/images/parttwo-34-2.jpg
Limiting the discharge/charge rate:
http://www.batteryuniversity.com/images/parttwo-34.jpg
The specifications for the battery GM is buying for its upcoming Volt is 5000 charges / 10 years.

 

[mheslep]

A more rigorous data set for Li ion battery characteristics from Linden's Handbook of Batteries (2001):

Table 35.11 General Performance Characteristics of Li-ion Batteries (2001)

Characteristic                         Performance Range
---------------------------------------------------------
Specific Energy                        100 to 158 Wh/kg
Energy Density                         245 to 439 Wh/L
Cycle life at 100% DoD                 Typically 3000
Cycle life at 20 to 40% DoD            Over 20000
Self discharge rate                    2 to 10%/month
Calendar life                          Over 5 years
...

Where DoD is Depth of Discharge.
Linden states the performance of Li-ion batteries in energy density steadily improved in the period '96 to '99 at 14% on average. This model for instance is rated at 201 Wh/kg.

 

[Topher925]

Given that the bureaucracy was caused by the opposition, if it really is true that people are onboard, then the bureaucracy will go away and the time from announcement to tape-cutting should drop to 6-10 years.

I won't be holding my breath, but if you are right (and I hope you are), we could double or triple our nuclear output by that 2030 timetable in that Google chart.

I'm curious Russ, why the big support for nuclear energy? With major technological advancements in support of solar micro-generation being made in the past few years, and in the years to come why is it we would want our nuclear output tripled by 2030? What will we do with the hundreds millions (if not billions) of tons of hazardous waste? We can't just keep dumping the stuff into Canada, eventually that country is going to fill up.

This wasn't meant to sound like bureaucracy, but a legitimate question.

 

[Count Iblis]

Radioactive waste is just a few tons per year. You can store the nuclear waste from a few Gigawatt powerplants from one year's operation safely in your garden. It is only a few cubic meters in volume.

 

[russ_watters]

I'm curious Russ, why the big support for nuclear energy?

-It is very inexpensive (intrinsicly).
-It is 100% pollution free.
-It is domestic.
-It has the capability to supply massive amounts of power.
-There is a lot of fuel available.

With major technological advancements in support of solar micro-generation being made in the past few years, and in the years to come...

Solar power has a long way to go to become viable and we don't have time to wait for advances in technology that may never come. We need more power and cleaner power now.

The US's current electric generation capacity is 1100 gigawatts. If solar increases by 25% a year (a goal of solar proponents: http://photovoltaics.sandia.gov/docs/PVRMChapter_4.htm ) by 2030, it'll account for about 7% of today's peak generation capacity, which is essentially pointless since it it won't come close to overcoming increases in demand. And that's not even considering that the load factor of solar power is like 25%, so the with a capacity of 7%, we'll only get 2% of our electrical energy from it. In other words, if the best wish of solar advocates comes true, we'll still need much more of our conventional power sources for at least another 20 years and in 20 years, solar power will still be basically irrelevant as a player in our national electric grid. We'd need about 7 new nuclear plants to generate that much power.

That's not a solution, it's a 20 year delay in even starting to deal with the problems we face.

Other issues:
-Night/rain.
-Cost.

What will we do with the hundreds millions (if not billions) of tons of hazardous waste? We can't just keep dumping the stuff into Canada, eventually that country is going to fill up.

The nuclear waste problem is quite simply nonexistent. More than 98% of the fuel is recyclable, but for political reasons, reprocessing was banned by Carter in the '70s. It'll be back, though, as the political situation improves.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_reprocessing

And that's not even considering Count Iblis's point. Even if you wanted to store it, it isn't a big deal.

 

[mheslep]

The MIT report assumes a growth from the existing 336 plants worldwide to 1500 plants by 2050, generating 1500GWe. That assumption requires per year, depending on the fuel cycle:

Once through cycle:
306,000 tons of Uranium ore.
29,864 tons UOX waste (or 19T per plant/year)

Recycle:
257,000 tons U ore.
4764 tons MOX waste + processing waste (or ~3T per plant/year)
plus 167 tons of separated Plutonium accumulating per year

http://web.mit.edu/nuclearpower/
Table 4.2

 

[mheslep]

-It is very inexpensive (intrinsicly).
-It is 100% pollution free.
-It is domestic.
-It has the capability to supply massive amounts of power.
-There is a lot of fuel available.
Solar power has a long way to go to become viable and we don't have time to wait for advances in technology that may never come. We need more power and cleaner power now.

The US's current electric generation capacity is 1100 gigawatts. If solar increases by 25% a year (a goal of solar proponents: http://photovoltaics.sandia.gov/docs/PVRMChapter_4.htm ) by 2030, it'll account for about 7% of today's peak generation capacity, which is essentially pointless since it it won't come close to overcoming increases in demand. And that's not even considering that the load factor of solar power is like 25%, so the with a capacity of 7%, we'll only get 2% of our electrical energy from it. In other words, if the best wish of solar advocates comes true, we'll still need much more of our conventional power sources for at least another 20 years and in 20 years, solar power will still be basically irrelevant as a player in our national electric grid. We'd need about 7 new nuclear plants to generate that much power.

That's not a solution, it's a 20 year delay in even starting to deal with the problems we face. ...

That's 2020 in the Sandia report, or 10 years out; the figures there are of course for PV only which doesn't include solar thermal. And note wind jumped 45% 2005-2006. Still, point taken, we'll need some more nuclear.

 

[russ_watters]

The MIT report assumes a growth from the existing 336 plants worldwide to 1500 plants by 2050, generating 1500GWe. That assumption requires per year, depending on the fuel cycle:

Once through cycle:
306,000 tons of Uranium ore.
29,864 tons UOX waste (or 19T per plant/year)

Recycle:
257,000 tons U ore.
4764 tons MOX waste + processing waste (or ~3T per plant/year)
plus 167 tons of separated Plutonium accumulating per year

http://web.mit.edu/nuclearpower/
Table 4.2

Just as a basis of comparison, coal fired electricity produces about 3.7 million tons of CO2 per plant per year, dumped straight into the atmosphere. And even if one doesn't buy into global warming, there is plenty of other nastiness there: http://www.ucsusa.org/clean_energy/coalvswind/c02c.html

 

[russ_watters]

That's 2020 in the Sandia report, or 10 years out

No, I extrapolated an extra ten years to make the timeframes match.

 

[mheslep]

Just as a basis of comparison, coal fired electricity produces about 3.7 million tons of CO2 per plant per year, dumped straight into the atmosphere. And even if one doesn't buy into global warming, there is plenty of other nastiness there: http://www.ucsusa.org/clean_energy/coalvswind/c02c.html

Yes, if its not captured and stored back underground.

 

[russ_watters]

Yes, if its not captured and stored back underground.

What do you mean "if it is not captured"? It isn't captured. We don't know how too do that yet!

Again, you cannot base a national energy policy on maybes. You have to do what works.

 

[gmax137]

Yes, if its not captured and stored back underground.

Is this "capture & store undergound" explained and discussed anywhere? I have to admit I don't understand just how this would work. What would keep the CO2 from bubbling back up? What if it leaks into my basement? What keeps me from suffocating to death down there?

Really, what structure will prevent the CO2 from migrating back to the surface? What's the design life of that structure? If Yucca Mtn has to demonstrate confinement for ten thousand or one million years (based on > ten half lives), how long does the CO2 storage have to be designed for (actually forever?)

I really would like to find out more about this idea.

 

[Topher925]

What do you mean "if it is not captured"? It isn't captured. We don't know how too do that yet!

I thought CO2 scrubbers were already being employed in many coal plants?

http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/mar2006/2006-03-15-06.asp

I guess we have some conflicting information about nuclear power. I believe that most of the waste which can not be recycled is from high-level waste such as cooling rods which can only be stored. However, I wouldn't call their storage a "non-existent" issue.

[crackpot link deleted]

I know for a fact that nuclear waste storage in France is a major issue that no one has yet to resolve. I believe they are currently just storing their high-level waste on site. This is stuff that can kill you with in minutes and is not something you can keep in your garden.

 

[mheslep]

What do you mean "if it is not captured"? It isn't captured. We don't know how too do that yet!

Of course we know how chemically, and there's a little bit of early practical experience, just not enough to provide confidence in the economics. Storage is trickier still.
http://www.economist.com/specialreports/displaystory.cfm?story_id=11565676

...The “capture” part is not that hard. Carbon dioxide reacts with a group of chemicals called amines. At low temperatures CO2 and amines combine. At higher temperatures they separate. Power-station exhaust can thus be purged of its CO2 by running it through an amine bath before it is vented, and the amine can be warmed to release the gas where it will do no harm. ...

All this processing is expensive, but there is no reason why it should not work. An experimental plant in Denmark that uses monoethanolamine as the captor has been running for two years. Alstom, a French firm, has almost finished building one in Wisconsin that uses ammonia...

Again, you cannot base a national energy policy on maybes. You have to do what works.

Ok, but the economics of nuclear in this country are still a maybe. I agree that 'intrinsically', as you say above, nuclear can be cheap, but in reality it is not, at least not here. Again, I'm all for anyone who can put forward a plan to reduce the cost of all the red tape. Sen. Obama for instance specifically said he's against turning on Yucca, that's going in wrong direction, making nuclear more expensive.

 

[mheslep]

Is this "capture & store undergound" explained and discussed anywhere? I have to admit I don't understand just how this would work. What would keep the CO2 from bubbling back up? What if it leaks into my basement? What keeps me from suffocating to death down there?

Really, what structure will prevent the CO2 from migrating back to the surface? What's the design life of that structure? If Yucca Mtn has to demonstrate confinement for ten thousand or one million years (based on > ten half lives), how long does the CO2 storage have to be designed for (actually forever?)

I really would like to find out more about this idea.

Storage...

...It is what comes next that is the problem. The disposal of carbon dioxide needs to be permanent, so a lot of conditions have to be met. To be a successful burial site, a body of rock needs to be more than 1km underground. That depth provides enough pressure to turn CO2 into what is known as a supercritical fluid, a form in which the stuff is more likely to stay put. The rock in question also has to have enough pores and cracks in it to accommodate the CO2. Lastly, it needs to be covered with a layer of non-porous, non-cracked rock to provide a leakproof cap.

So far, only three successful CCS projects are under way. The Weyburn-Midale CO2 project is burying carbon dioxide from a coal gasification plant in North Dakota in a depleted oil field in Saskatchewan. The Salah gasfield project in Algeria, run by BP, strips CO2 from local natural gas and injects it back into the ground. And Statoil, a large Norwegian oil and gas company, performs a similar trick at two places in the North Sea. None of these projects is actually linked to generating electricity. Still, a few years ago they were touted proudly. But the touting has become more nervous, and no new projects have come on stream.

The scale of the problem is awesome. The three showcase projects each dump about a million tonnes of CO2 a year. But America’s electricity industry alone produces 1.5 billion tonnes, which would mean finding 1,500 appropriate sites, and nobody knows whether the country’s geology can oblige. Even transporting that amount of gas would be a huge task.

http://www.economist.com/specialreports/displaystory.cfm?story_id=11565676
Apparently all of the major US coal power providers have looked into this. Its known that some large areas of the country are geographically unsuitable - the Southeast in particular.

 

[gmax137]

"The scale of the problem is awesome. The three showcase projects each dump about a million tonnes of CO2 a year. But America’s electricity industry alone produces 1.5 billion tonnes, which would mean finding 1,500 appropriate sites, and nobody knows whether the country’s geology can oblige. Even transporting that amount of gas would be a huge task."

So, does anyone believe it is possible to put the CO2 back underground?

(soory, I couldn't figure out how to 'quote' your quote...)

 

[mheslep]

"The scale of the problem is awesome. The three showcase projects each dump about a million tonnes of CO2 a year. But America’s electricity industry alone produces 1.5 billion tonnes, which would mean finding 1,500 appropriate sites, and nobody knows whether the country’s geology can oblige. Even transporting that amount of gas would be a huge task."

So, does anyone believe it is possible to put the CO2 back underground?

(soory, I couldn't figure out how to 'quote' your quote...)

It certainly doesn't look like CCS will happen universally. But then, nothing in the centralized energy business is small or particularly cheap. For comparison:

The approximately 144,000 Class II wells in operation in the United States inject over 2 billion gallons of brine every day.

http://www.epa.gov/safewater/uic/wells_class2.html

 

[russ_watters]

I thought CO2 scrubbers were already being employed in many coal plants?

http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/mar2006/2006-03-15-06.asp

Read the title and the first three sentences of your link!

I guess we have some conflicting information about nuclear power. I believe that most of the waste which can not be recycled is from high-level waste such as cooling rods which can only be stored. However, I wouldn't call their storage a "non-existent" issue.

[crackpot link deleted]

And on that link, you should have known after reading the first sentence that it was outright crackpottery. Racist?? C'mon. You need to have at least a little ability to judge the quality of your sources. I read most of the link, and everything I saw was an outright lie or intentional mischaracterization. I saw not a single valid point. [edit] Correction: after reading the whole thing, I found one (see your pm): nuclear power uses a lot of water.

I know for a fact that nuclear waste storage in France is a major issue that no one has yet to resolve. I believe they are currently just storing their high-level waste on site. This is stuff that can kill you with in minutes and is not something you can keep in your garden.

France's reprocessing was halted for the same political reasons ours was never started.

Regardless - even if you do want to store the waste, it still isn't a big deal. Air pollution kills somwhere on the order of 100,000 people a year worldwide. The fact that nuclear waste is 100% contained makes it vastly easier to deal with, even if we do decide to store it in a cave in New Mexico (which is the current choice). Again, what is making that expensive is pure politics. There is nothing inherrently expensive about storing a small volume of trash in a cave.

 

[russ_watters]

Of course we know how chemically, and there's a little bit of early practical experience, just not enough to provide confidence in the economics. Storage is trickier still.
http://www.economist.com/specialreports/displaystory.cfm?story_id=11565676

Just to be clear: when I talk about feasibility of solutions, I always mean both technical and economic. Often the two are intertwined and like you say, we don't even know if those issues are surmountable.

Ok, but the economics of nuclear in this country are still a maybe. I agree that 'intrinsically', as you say above, nuclear can be cheap, but in reality it is not, at least not here. Again, I'm all for anyone who can put forward a plan to reduce the cost of all the red tape.

Yes, I think you understand, but just to be clear: when I talk about economic viability and I use the word "intrinsic", I am talking about the cost of the technology, materials, design, etc. itself. Nuclear, by comparison, has very little in the way of these real economic problems: virtually all of nuclear's economic problems are simply created by the political problems. That means that as energy prices rise (and get ready: if you're an American and you don't know about the deregulation coming in 2 years, watch out!), political opposition will drop, and the price (and time to construct a plant) of nuclear will drop substantially.

 

[Astronuc]

Reseachers derive 'green gasoline' from plant sugars - Sept. 18, 2008
http://www.news.wisc.edu/15627

Alternative energy doesn't always mean solar or wind power. In fact, the alternative fuels developed by University of Wisconsin-Madison chemical and biological engineering professor James Dumesic look a lot like the gasoline and diesel fuel used in vehicles today.

That's because the new fuels are identical at the molecular level to their petroleum-based counterparts. The only difference is where they come from.

Funded by the National Science Foundation and the U.S. Department of Energy, Dumesic and his team have developed a process that creates transportation fuels from plant material. The paper, published in the Sept. 18 online version of the journal Science, explains how they convert sugar into molecules that can be efficiently "upgraded" into gasoline, diesel and jet fuel.

"Domestically, there are large amounts of lignocellulose available that are not being used effectively for energy," says Dumesic. "This work is a step along the way to making it practical to use biomass as fuel."

Lignocellulose refers to nonedible sources of biomass, which is biological material that can be converted into fuel. Instead of relying on corn as a source of energy, Dumesic notes that the goal of researchers in the field of "cellulosic ethanol" is to turn the carbohydrates, or sugars, from agricultural waste, corn stovers (leaves and stalks), switchgrass and forest residue into ethanol. Dumesic now suggests that instead of converting the water-soluble sugars derived from cellulose to ethanol, it may be better to convert these sugars to gasoline, diesel and jet fuels via this process.

. . . .

In the fall, when I see piles of leaves, I have to wonder if there isn't a way to turn them into fuel. Similarly, when I see piles of grass.

We shred the leaves and grass and put the matter in a compost pile with the kitchen scraps (without meat and dairy products). The compost is used in our gardens.

 

[Count Iblis]

For renewable and nuclear energy, a major problem is how to store energy. This is obvious for wind and solar energy. But it is also an issue for nuclear energy, because nuclear powerplants cannot be started up fast enough to deal with peak demand unlike coal fired powerplants.

A possible way to deal with this problem is by using excess power to produce hydrogen and then build powerplants that can burn hydrogen. Another way is to use excess power to pump seawater up to some elevation. This can then be used to generate hydro power to meet peak demand.

 

[vanesch]

For renewable and nuclear energy, a major problem is how to store energy. This is obvious for wind and solar energy. But it is also an issue for nuclear energy, because nuclear powerplants cannot be started up fast enough to deal with peak demand unlike coal fired powerplants.

This is a common misconception about nuclear power plants.

The French (but there's no reason that this cannot be implemented on other plants) can do this:

Between 100% and 30% of their nominal power, they can accept *immediately* a 10% power change, and they can accept a *slew rate* of 5% of the nominal power per minute. That's largely enough to follow more than 99% of all consumption profiles.
In fact, coal fired plants are usually slower than nuclear plants.

But where does this misconception come from ? From two things. First of all, nuclear power plants are expensive in investment, and very cheap in fuel. As such, you have interest in using them at full load. So as long (and in most countries, this is the case) nuclear power is a minority part of the energy offer, you want to use them only in base load. And then you only need a slow steering mechanism, and that was the solution of boron in the primary water, a very slow process, that just needed to compensate the gradual burn up of the fuel. That's what gave nukes the reputation of slow machines.

But in France, where 78% is nuclear, you cannot use all of the nukes in base load, they also have to follow load. That has been implemented with special grey control bars, which makes the above slew rate possible. And that works fine. There's no big secret. Almost any npp could be equipped with such a control system that allows for flexible steering. But most npp don't need it, as they are only supposed to work in base load.

 

[mheslep]

Regards the Olkiluoto EPR, any word from the industry on a) the expected final cost of the plant and b) the primary reasons for the cost overruns and schedule delays? Pop press now says 4.5B Euro / $5.7B for the 1,600MW plant, won't come online until 2012 (permit granted in early 2005)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/oct/18/nuclearpower

 

[misgfool]

Regards the Olkiluoto EPR, any word from the industry on a) the expected final cost of the plant and b) the primary reasons for the cost overruns and schedule delays? Pop press now says 4.5B Euro / $5.7B for the 1,600MW plant, won't come online until 2012 (permit granted in early 2005)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/oct/18/nuclearpower

Expected final costs probably are > 4.5B€, which is already 50% more than originally planned. Since it is a fixed price deal (at 3 B€) Areva is expecting quite heavy losses already not to mention the penalty fines they have to pay to TVO for production delays. Areva doubled the work force this year in hope of catching up a bit.

http://www.tvo.fi/www/page/ajankohtaista_en/

First problems were with steel welds in the base concrete, which had to be remade as they did not fulfill the safety regulations. That delayed the project with about a year. Then there was inspections, problems with subcontractors, planning was apparently unrealisticly scheduled etc. Second news came that the reactor unit had design flaws and before they were fixed it could not be built which brought another six months delay. Originally it was supposed to be running in 2009 so three years is probably a result of some kind of cumulative delay. However, it is still a prototype reactor and from recent decades there is not much experience of building nuclear plants.

 

[misgfool]

And additionally Areva/Siemens really needs a PR specialist and more open information distribution strategy. So far it has just been saying we are in perfectly in schedule. The next day there is suddenly a years delay, National Radiation Safety Center is investigating possible safety violations and employees are going to press claiming gross negligence in construction works. This is obviously not encouraging news.

There is massive amounts of speculation, rumors circulating and misinformation everywhere. Naturally Greenpeace and other similar organizations are on a full campaign creating more fear, uncertainty and doubt among the general population trying make things worse.

 

[vanesch]

My uneducated guess is that it will take time and money to build up again the nuclear industry knowhow we had 20-30 years ago, and that this may have been seriously underestimated.
If people would stop making computers for 30 years, I guess suddenly the first new PC of a rather ordinary kind will turn out to be way way more expensive than it is right now. Of course, no knowledge is really lost, but the entire network of companies, activities and so on which was running smoothly is to be set up all over again.

This EPR is also paying that bill. The genuine cost of an EPR will be correctly estimated when 50 or so will have been build.

 

[mheslep]

My uneducated guess is that it will take time and money to build up again the nuclear industry knowhow we had 20-30 years ago, and that this may have been seriously underestimated.
If people would stop making computers for 30 years, I guess suddenly the first new PC of a rather ordinary kind will turn out to be way way more expensive than it is right now. Of course, no knowledge is really lost, but the entire network of companies, activities and so on which was running smoothly is to be set up all over again.

That illustrates part of the problem: nuclear is centralised and large scale so its inherently going to be done in big, halting bites, as are most such projects of that size; computers, wind, CCGT not so.

This EPR is also paying that bill. The genuine cost of an EPR will be correctly estimated when 50 or so will have been build.

i.e. after the fact? I don't know why any private entity would make such an investment.

 

[Topher925]

My uneducated guess is that it will take time and money to build up again the nuclear industry knowhow we had 20-30 years ago, and that this may have been seriously underestimated.

Who says the nuclear industry needs to be rebuilt? The US isn't the only country that has ever built a nuclear power plant. I believe the infrastructure is still there, however its now a global infrastructure instead of a national one.

 

[mheslep]

Who says the nuclear industry needs to be rebuilt? The US isn't the only country that has ever built a nuclear power plant. I believe the infrastructure is still there, however its now a global infrastructure instead of a national one.

Yes World Nuclear shows 35 reactors currently under construction in 11 countries - mainly Russia, India, China.
http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf17.html?terms=russia. I'd like to see pricing on a few of those plants.

 

[gmax137]

Yes World Nuclear shows 35 reactors currently under construction in 11 countries - mainly Russia, India, China.
http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf17.html?terms=russia. I'd like to see pricing on a few of those plants.

Plus the South Koreans have been building plants since the 1980's following "tech transfer" from ABB/Combustion Engineering.

Back to the load following capability, the 10% step change and 5% per minute ramp have been design specs for the US design PWRs (Westinghouse & CE units anyway, I'm not familiar with the B&W units or the GE BWRs) since the mid 1960s. As Vanesch points out, their owners do not run them this way because uranium remains cheap. But the capability to run this way has always been part of the plant design.

And if that's still to slow a maneuvering capability, consider the capabilities of the naval designs. There's nothing inherently slow moving about fission plants. Its all about designing the plant for the mission.

 

[vanesch]

That illustrates part of the problem: nuclear is centralised and large scale so its inherently going to be done in big, halting bites, as are most such projects of that size; computers, wind, CCGT not so.

It is IMO the real drawback of nuclear power: it isn't compatible with a totally liberalised energy market. It finds more its place with state driven power policies.

i.e. after the fact? I don't know why any private entity would make such an investment.

Not really after the fact. In Europe alone, there is room for 300-400 EPRs and we need to build 100 of them (or similar ones) by 2030 just to keep the current level of nuclear power in Europe (33%) according to estimates I've seen.

But, as you pointed out, this is not really something that is easily done with private capital on which one wants short-term benefits. So it is not very compatible with the way we view business currently. It was much more compatible with the way things were run in the 60ies - 80ies.

 

[Astronuc]

FYI -

The National Academies Summit on America's Energy Future:
Summary of a Meeting

http://books.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=12450 (Free downloadable pdf available)

http://sites.nationalacademies.org/energy/index.htm