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Post by quokka on Nov 20, 2013 8:03:35 GMT 9.5
According to ClimateProgress, the feed-in tariff for PV in Japan is 42 yen (~$0.43)/kWh guaranteed for 10 years for domestic installations and 20 years for utility scale installations. There are "must take" obligations on electricity suppliers. That would make it about four times as expensive as nuclear power in Japan.
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Post by Ed Leaver on Nov 20, 2013 13:03:47 GMT 9.5
Actually, to "keep the lights on" we need power that can keep the lights on.
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Post by sod on Nov 25, 2013 7:10:01 GMT 9.5
Actually, to "keep the lights on" we need power that can keep the lights on. Solar power is providing the power, when power is needed the most (in many countries!) A new study shows, putting panels towards west can drop peak demand by over 50%. thinkprogress.org/climate/2013/11/24/2988171/rooftop-solar-cut-peak-demand/In contrast to what we are constantly told, solar power is REDUCING the strain on the grid. It is a serious part of the solution.
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Post by Ed Leaver on Nov 25, 2013 9:56:25 GMT 9.5
Actually, to "keep the lights on" we need power that can keep the lights on. Solar power is providing the power, when power is needed the most (in many countries!) A new study shows, putting panels towards west can drop peak demand by over 50%. thinkprogress.org/climate/2013/11/24/2988171/rooftop-solar-cut-peak-demand/In contrast to what we are constantly told, solar power is REDUCING the strain on the grid. It is a serious part of the solution. Whoever told you that? Solar power by itself is benign. Any solar (or wind) related grid strain is due entirely to their artificial FIT structure. Wind and solar may indeed be "part of the solution." Perhaps a serious one. I rather think wind, at least, will be. But wind and solar cannot be the only part. Wind and solar by themselves cannot keep the lights on. I am glad you have discovered Think Progress. Their climate coverage is first rate. But early in the year I began to have doubts about their renewable objectivity and, trying to follow the money, found I could not. Taking that as a clue, I turned to the more eclectic The Daily Climate for my daily climate fix. (Well, I sure wish it were fixed...) A bit later I came across The Secret Donors Behind the Center for American Progress and Other Think Tanks, which you may find amusing. I should stress that I too find nothing remiss in being remunerated for work in which one sincerely believes. But neither should one be ashamed of the sources of one's remuneration.
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Post by Grant on Dec 7, 2013 6:18:44 GMT 9.5
I'm not saying this is realistic but Mark Jacobson a Stanford professor and a whole slew of folks with varying kinds of expertise have put together a fairly large study(54 pages) devoted to the specifics of turning California into a fossil fuel independent state by 2050. Principally the alternatives would be WWS, wind, water and solar. I'm interested in getting different perspectives, not arguing for any particular one. This one appears to be serious and detailed with charts included. So I throw it out here for examination.
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Post by Ed Leaver on Dec 7, 2013 7:25:32 GMT 9.5
I'm not saying this is realistic but Mark Jacobson a Stanford professor and a whole slew of folks with varying kinds of expertise have put together a fairly large study(54 pages) devoted to the specifics of turning California into a fossil fuel independent state by 2050. Principally the alternatives would be WWS, wind, water and solar. I'm interested in getting different perspectives, not arguing for any particular one. This one appears to be serious and detailed with charts included. So I throw it out here for examination. Hi Grant. I don't think there's much contention that given enough time, dollars, transmission, and fossil backup, that one cannot posit a "99% renewables 100% of the time" generation scheme. Its the time and dollars part that generally are not realistic. Prof. Jacobson is seriously anti-nuclear and has devoted his career to seriously studying low-carbon alternatives. The relevant BNC article you're looking for is here.
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Post by Grant on Dec 7, 2013 8:27:23 GMT 9.5
Yeah it probably isn't realistic but that graph on p. 39 showing how they imagine the energy conversion all plays out sure looks pretty. They also do a lot of dollar and cents stuff related to conversion and the lack thereof and the costs of global warming in general. As a Californian I appreciate having some sort of reference point.
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Post by Ed Leaver on Dec 7, 2013 13:44:29 GMT 9.5
As a U.S. taxpayer and former Californian I'd appreciate it even more if Prof Jacobson actually provided some sort of reference point. Rather, he makes an arbitrary a priori assumption that nuclear power is a Really Bad Thing to be avoided at all cost, then totals up a cost for an "optimal" generation scheme that avoids it. Prof Jacobson could make a genuinely useful contribution by including nuclear in some of his sets of optimizations. Keep the rest of his parameters, storage, transmission, and renewable assumptions the same, see what optimized mixtures of generation technologies he comes up with, at what cost, and compare those with his no-nukes scenarios. Now that would be useful, and provide fodder for informed public debate. Seriously. Its not as if the man hasn't the knowledge or resources to do a thorough job.
But he chooses not to.
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Post by Grant on Dec 7, 2013 14:41:34 GMT 9.5
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Post by Ed Leaver on Dec 7, 2013 16:58:29 GMT 9.5
I'm not arguing that Prof Jacobson has no right to debate safety, cost, emissions, and potential proliferation concerns about nuclear. Or anything else, for that matter. These are all debatable and welcome the debate. My difficulty is getting anything like a useful comparison out of his economic studies, which appear predicated on the assumption he has already won the previous debate. Which he has not. It is still a debate. Where, for example, does he get his estimate that "1.5% of all power reactors have suffered some sort of meltdown"? I'm curious. And just which five countries "developed nuclear weaponry under the guise of civilian power?" I'm against nuclear weapons proliferation as much as the next, If we knew who these were, we could look into the details, see what actually went on. And that nuclear emits 25x the CO2 as wind. Seriously? If one assumes that 100% of all energy used for mining and refining of uranium to fuel comes from fossils, I doubt its anywhere near that high. In their oft-touted Renewable Energy Futures 2012 study, NREL estimates 10.6 tCO2e/GWh for nuclear and 4.6 tCO2e for wind, a factor of 2.3, less than a tenth what Jacobson quotes without citation. (I'm sure he got it from somewhere.) In a 2000 assessment IAEA found just the reverse -- 21 tCO2e/GWh total lifecycle for nuclear vs 48 tCO2e/GWh for wind. Sweden's Forsmark plant actually obtains 3.1 tCO2e. It's a somewhat special case, but might become more commonplace as the seasons progress. See what I mean? Its a very open debate. Seems to me Prof Jacobson preaches to the deep green choir, and churns out economic grid generation studies for the already converted. I'm not one of those, so his work holds little interest though a fair deal of frustration, as he could readily at least partially address some questions I do find pressing. As for your main points, safety of existing plant can be assessed and the statistics are overwhelmingly favorable to nuclear. The "rare but catastrophic" event is well worth debating, but is still debatable. Fukushima for example is generally termed a "catastrophe". But by what metric? No one died or was injured by radiation, and none are likely to be so. Yes, there is a lot of emotional trauma and even some deaths from evacuation stress. How could they have been prevented? These are worth debating. But it is a debate, not a foregone conclusion. There have been no new U.S. commercial reactor builds in thirty years. The four presently under construction are all Gen III+ Westinghouse AP1000. The "Advanced Passive" concept was developed in the 80's and 90's, and is not unique to Westinghouse. Basically, Gen III and III+ reactors allow for complete "walkaway safe" passive safety for 3 to 7 days after serious accident and complete station blackout, after which operators must still intervene to top off the cooling water reservoirs, which are designed to be easily accessible from sources e.g. fire equipment external to the containment structure. The 60's are over. There has since been a great deal of progress. Waste management is the other bugaboo the U.S. resolutely refuses to address. Rather than repeat myself, please see my recent comment over at Ars Technica.
Edit: As there are but ten nations with atomic weaponry, its not hard to figure out the five to which Jacobson refers: Israel, Iran, Pakistan, India, North Korea. One may read up on each here and here. Of these, neither Israel nor North Korea has a commercial nuclear power program beneath which to disguise anything. Iran's weapons program is separate from commercial power, its only "guise" is its highly transparent excuse that it requires in-house uranium enrichment to fuel its commercial reactors after international sanctions over its weapons program interrupted pre-fabricated fuel supplies from Russia. India and Pakistan are both outside the nuclear non-proliferation treaty. Basically, any country that wants to develop a nuclear weapon can do so independent of a nuclear power program and in fact are better off that way. Pakistan's sharing of centrifuge and other weapons technologies has not hindered the process. International inspections are absolutely necessary and our continued involvement and support of IAEA is critical to national and global security. None of which has any bearing whatsoever upon whether or not the world's six largest ghg emitters -- China, US, EU, India, Russia, Japan -- should or should not continue with domestic commercial nuclear power. In that very important sense weapons proliferation is a (quite ripe) red herring.
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Post by jagdish on Dec 7, 2013 17:32:14 GMT 9.5
I think that power generation should be distributed to the extent profitable. It is more true of wind and solar. The wind power should be stored as compressed air and used as such to maximum extent. It could be used with heat pumps for heating or cooling. With pneumatic motors, it could be used for pumping water or pneumatic tools or household equipment. Solar should be mainly rooftop, stored as 12V DC in batteries and used for lighting or electronics like the 12V systems in vehicles. Industrial power should be fossil fuels or nuclear. Bio-fuels could make up the balance on both ends.
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Post by Grant on Dec 7, 2013 21:49:18 GMT 9.5
An interesting convert to nuclear power is Michael Moore. Here he and Robert Stone of 'Pandora's Box' discuss the issue with an audience. For me, nuclear is going to have to make some sort of magical transformation in people's minds to really get off the ground and get the trillion's of dollars needed to generate a serious turn around in global warming. Arguing simply some, this is slightly better than this, technical advantage doesn't seem to be enough with all the visible downsides. To me its biggest selling point is the possibility of eating its nuclear waste for further energy, a kind of wondrous almost perpetual motion effect just for starters. That way you deal with the carbon footprint issue, the waste issue and create a closed system for easier monitoring. Not a lot of waste NIMBY stuff. Anything that looks like more of the same I don't see getting much traction, even among the French now and even its biggest fan China, as I showed before, doesn't have it taking that big a cut out of fossil fuel by 2050. I'd certainly support my government developing the waste eating technology. I'm not as interested in recreating nukes with lots of mining required and spent fuel rods kept on site, for obvious reasons. I notice George Monbiot, a nuclear enthusiast, is indicating that a nuclear system that doesn't eat its own waste doesn't give us much of a future.
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Post by Roger Clifton on Dec 10, 2013 12:48:33 GMT 9.5
Grant says "... nuclear is going to have to make some sort of magical transformation in people's minds ... technical advantage doesn't seem to be enough with all the visible downsides." They are not visible to all of us. If you were to detail a technical difficulty (just one, or at least, one at a time), it would allow us to check out the facts and either persuade you or be persuaded by your reasoning.
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Post by Grant on Dec 10, 2013 14:30:14 GMT 9.5
Just one, that's pretty easy. What other kind of energy facility has more continuing problems and costs associated with post breakdown management. Yes I know radiation mortality has been exaggerated but still post breakdown nuclear power is somewhat unique in its costs, nearby disruptions and lack of determinable end. And it is not enough to simply play the greater horrors of fossil fuel card when you realize that the consequences of these breakdowns has been to escalate the use of fossil fuel and divert resources from alternative energies and efficiencies. Once again I, like Monbiot, think a jump to a waste eater technology is the only thing with the saleable power to overcome nuclear's apparent negatives. And no Roger, I can't keep it just technical. As a quick second do you know any region that doesn't pull a NIMBY when it comes to burying nuclear waste? Yucca Mountain the one initial exception got buried in politics. So that takes us back to the necessity of recycling nuclear waste to move nuclear forward.
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Post by Roger Clifton on Dec 10, 2013 18:43:41 GMT 9.5
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Post by Grant on Dec 11, 2013 4:20:26 GMT 9.5
Well bad actors like PAULIN, pushing their wares, can perhaps have at least helpful consequences. I started looking at the German thread and found this bit of info. derived from an Ed Leaver link. Deaths per TWH by energy source. Perhaps that will provide part of a response. Keep on it and you learn new things.
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Post by jagdish on Dec 11, 2013 18:30:52 GMT 9.5
Anti-nuclear feeling is so strong that data do not convince people. What is now required is floating nuclear power plants on lease. Russia has started with small ones. It may be 10-20 years before China is able to provide 500-1000MW UNITS.
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Post by Roger Clifton on Dec 12, 2013 8:10:40 GMT 9.5
Jadish said: "Anti-nuclear feeling is so strong that data do not convince people." Yes, passion speaks louder than facts. The " continuing problems" after a nuclear blow-up (in the media!), that Grant speaks of are people issues, not medical issues. Political grandstanding with excessive evacuations, fears that their real estate will lose value, greed for compensation if they can establish a link between their ailments and the events painted in the media, perhaps a scapegoat for all one's accumulated fears. One can be swept up in the excitement, too... I must admit that if the people on either side of me are sure they can see the " visible downsides", then I feel under pressure to see them too. But are we all such mindless sheep that we must run with the herd? Surely every thoughtful person is capable of checking that the pressures on him are no more than hysteria? That should be an occasion for technical reassurance.
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Post by Grant on Dec 12, 2013 8:53:55 GMT 9.5
Roger the continuing problems are real but as you indicated exaggerated, particularly in the medical area. As a little update on these objectively continuing problems check: ChernobylFukushima
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Post by Grant on Dec 12, 2013 9:42:41 GMT 9.5
Too bad I don't have an edit. I now see that Christina Macpherson the story writer in the Fukushima link has an anti-nuke agenda. In any case we know there are ongoing costs associated with radioactive leakage into the ocean and securing the spent fuel rods, so yes there are continuing problems. And by the way, how these post breakdown problems aren't visible downsides to you is hard to fathom. Chernobyl and Fukushima have provided two of the most striking visible downsides I can imagine, even without the overkill that went along with them. In both cases it was drama city. I mean nuclear melt downs, are you kidding?
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Post by Roger Clifton on Dec 12, 2013 13:07:47 GMT 9.5
As you say, Grant, " it was drama city", but that is the category for all of your examples. You have been unable to identify a single hazard to the community. I should not belittle the scenario of a large number of activists running around shouting that there is a hazard to the community, but that doesn't mean to say that there really is a hazard, rather that it is time to check for technical facts. Instead what a "drama city" points to is a political problem, something requiring leadership and reassurance. Especially at Chernobyl and Fukushima. Yes, a meltdown would indeed be a very interesting technical phenomenon, especially as to how well the design contained it. But a contained meltdown still would not amount to a hazard to the community.
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Post by Grant on Dec 12, 2013 18:09:41 GMT 9.5
No matter how much you want to downgrade it Roger highly energized nuclear material is a hot potato unlike any other energy source. So it has unique problems and costs. That's all I was trying to say. Even if there are a lot of ignorant anti-nuke folks running around that fact remains. And post breakdown those problems are adding continuous objective management costs. You did catch the picture of the new sarcophagus for Chernobyl I assume. Are all those folks deluded? Should they not attempt additional containment? Should the Japanese stop trying to hose down the nuclear fuel rods and stop trying to contain the nuclear overflow from flowing into the ocean and irradiating the local marine life and instead attend seminars on the overrated problem of radiation?
Other than telling the locals to move back into their homes what is your recommendation to these nuclear workers? Stop wasting your time and the public's money? From my vantage point the nuclear power problems continue and they are unique, constituting a very visible downside.
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Post by edireland on Dec 12, 2013 19:16:27 GMT 9.5
The water in the containment tanks is not in any way significantly dangerous.
All that is left is tritium, which will disperse to nothingness if they just release it into the ocean.
That is not a cost of nuclear, that is a cost of idiots who have no idea what they are doing.
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Post by Grant on Dec 12, 2013 23:12:57 GMT 9.5
Well doing something with a bunch of compromised spent fuel rods seems to be more the issue. Given the absurdity of over hyped radiation concerns do you think perhaps dumping the fuel rods in the nearby ocean might be a solution. Also I would like to be connected with an objective news source that would give me the real dope on the day to day narrative of what is happening at Fukushima so I don't get mislead by a bunch of idiots.
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Post by grlcowan on Dec 13, 2013 0:11:31 GMT 9.5
Well doing something with a bunch of compromised spent fuel rods seems to be more the issue. Given the absurdity of over hyped radiation concerns do you think perhaps dumping the fuel rods in the nearby ocean might be a solution. Also I would like to be connected with an objective news source that would give me the real dope on the day to day narrative of what is happening at Fukushima so I don't get mislead by a bunch of idiots. The Hiroshima syndrome blog follows and gives informed comment on Japanese media coverage. " Dumping the fuel rods in the nearby ocean", emphasis mine, is not that far from what they have actually been doing, except instead of the ocean they're using a large, ground-level manmade pool of fresh water: the common pool for the reactors at Fukushima Dai-ichi. All the fuel rods in the world that were retired in or before 2008 have radioactivity adding up to about a tenth that of the uranium and radiopotassium in the world ocean. The verb "to dump" has some connotation of careless tossing-aside, and I don't think that has ever happened with power reactor fuel, nor ever will happen, at least not any time in the next few decades. But careful, considered sinking of those fuel rods in deep parts of the ocean would have that factor of ten going for it, no matter what happened. But land is a lot more radioactive than sea. So if you're after a burial method that has Titanic saltshaker-style leak-safety -- i.e. it doesn't have to be immune to leakage, because leakage will inevitably be inconsequential, even if total -- you'll prefer deep land burial.
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Post by Grant on Dec 13, 2013 8:55:50 GMT 9.5
Well doing something with a bunch of compromised spent fuel rods seems to be more the issue. Given the absurdity of over hyped radiation concerns do you think perhaps dumping the fuel rods in the nearby ocean might be a solution. Also I would like to be connected with an objective news source that would give me the real dope on the day to day narrative of what is happening at Fukushima so I don't get mislead by a bunch of idiots. The Hiroshima syndrome blog follows and gives informed comment on Japanese media coverage.Thanks, I checked out the blog. It seems quite careful and thoughtful. I'm always in the market for quality sites. All the fuel rods in the world that were retired in or before 2008 have radioactivity adding up to about a tenth that of the uranium and radiopotassium in the world ocean. The verb "to dump" has some connotation of careless tossing-aside, and I don't think that has ever happened with power reactor fuel, nor ever will happen, at least not any time in the next few decades. But careful, considered sinking of those fuel rods in deep parts of the ocean would have that factor of ten going for it, no matter what happened.
To be fair, a lot of the radiation criticism I have read revolves around the fish uptake of radioactive cesium and strontium etc. that are not part of the marine environment's natural radiation background but are apparently highly absorbed into fish and humans. Not that I'm saying its a big problem but there is a qualitative difference in radioactive materials.
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Post by Ed Leaver on Dec 13, 2013 13:37:44 GMT 9.5
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Post by quokka on Dec 14, 2013 19:35:50 GMT 9.5
In the last few weeks major off shore wind projects in the UK from RWE and Scottish Power have been cancelled because the developers do not believe them to be economic at the CfD strike prices on offer. The offshore wind strike prices on offer are over 50% higher than the agreed strike price for the Hinkley nuclear project. It seems that the location for the cancelled Scottish Power's Argyll Array is considered one of the best for off shore wind in the UK. Scottish Power cancels £5.4bn Argyll Array offshore wind farm planThis cannot be good omen for Germany's ambitions to use off shore wind to replace the capacity lost when the remaining nuclear plants are shut down.
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Post by jagdish on Dec 14, 2013 19:51:05 GMT 9.5
Solar and their fuel cell back should best be developed as 12V DC distributed generation. That is the only way they can compete with fossil fuel and nuclear generation, by saving on distribution costs and having a reasonable storage support.
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Post by Graham Palmer on Jan 1, 2014 16:26:11 GMT 9.5
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