[extropy-chat] FWD (SK) Re: And Bush global climate change and Nuc?

[Terry W. Colvin]

On 13/11/2005, at 3:13 PM, Scott Peterson wrote:

> At 07:23 PM 11/12/2005, Tony Mills wrote:
>
>> Agreed- If you need quickly delivered peak power- the option of choice is
>> hydro- ie let water fall from a place you've already pumped it up 
>> to.  You
>> can use H2 electrolysed from water by renewable power for continious 
>> power,
>> or you can simply pump water up a hill. But these are problems for 
>> about a
>> decade hence when renewbles make a up a larger proportion of power
>> generation. At the moment they are expensive options- but doable. I don't
>> think it is too optimistic to think H2 generated by electrolysis  will
>> become more cost effective over that decade.
>
>
> Yes, but I'm not talking just short term power generation.  We have 
> peaker units today to do that, but that power often costs 10 times or 
> more the cost of regular power plants and they only produce a small 
> fraction of the total load to carry the network load until cheaper 
> units can come on line or the demand drops.
>
> I'm talking longer term for the week(s) the sun doesn't shine or the 
> wind it too fast or not fast enough or just doesn't blow.  I just 
> don't see any significant amount of generating capacity being replaced 
> until you can find substitute power that is reliable.  Biomass might, 
> but remains unproven in large scale deployment. It's also dependent on 
> availability of large amounts of fairly consistent material.  Wood, 
> paper, cow shit  or whatever.  This requires long term planning and 
> economic coordination.
>
>> Which will presumably be available in 30 years at the earliest?.  The 
>> price
>> per kw of renewable energy is going down, as it is more widely deployed.
>> The nuc industry has been promising safe nuc power designs for 30 years,
>> without result- So I wouldn't hold my breath.
>
>
> It could be sooner.  GE and other companies have offered a number of 
> designs for reactors that are self limiting, much cleaner and 
> smaller.  We know what it takes to build plants now and developing a 
> set of consistent set of guidelines for design and operation would be 
> a lot easier.
>
>
>> Nuc power is available outside the US, and you would think 40 years 
>> might be
>> sufficient to sort out the above problems, at least in one country - But
>> even if they were fixed there are a few fundamental problems- Waste-
>> millions of years of it- decommissioning- runs in to billions of $- 
>> then the
>> decommissed reactor parts have to be stored at medium (and high) level
>> repositories.
>
>
> Seventeen percent of the worlds electricity is generated by nuclear 
> power.  As far as waste, a large part is definitional.  Most low-grade 
> waste is simply a product that came from a nuclear plant.  Had it come 
> from somewhere else, it would be simple trash.  The issue of fuel rods 
> and other high-level radiation waste is proving to be more of a 
> political problem.  Much of that is of the NIMBY variety, but it's one 
> that does need to be resolved.
>
>> But why go nuc anyway? It is not cost competitive with renewables, 
>> and given
>> the lowering costs of renewables, and the high fixed costs of nuc (waste
>> storage, construction and decomissioning) is unlikely to ever be.
>
>
> Main reason, biased figures.  A nuclear plant or even fossil fuel 
> plants will reliably generate power 24/7 for months at a time. When 
> supplemental power costs are factored into the "renewable" plant costs 
> they don't look nearly as attractive.
>
> I'm not saying nuclear is cheap but it's also biased because of the 
> huge cost overruns, upgrades and regulatory costs.  More standardized 
> regulations and plant designs should significantly reduce those costs.
>
>                                           Scott Peterson



You are dead right Scott, it's not peak load that is the real problem, 
it's base load.  It takes a very large amount of energy to keep a modern 
society running and that energy has to have at least two fundamental 
attributes - it has to be economically viable and it has to be reliable, 
and, of course, It should also be as environmentally benign as possible.  

By far the vast majority of (non transportation) energy in the world is 
generated by plants using steam to turn turbines and thus generators.  
Steam requires water to be boiled, which requires a heat source, and 
these are many.  Burning fossil fuels (coal, oil, gas), burning plant 
matter (biomass), decay of radioactive elements (nuclear), focused solar 
radiation via  mirrors (solar thermal), using hot water from existing 
volcanic related sites, of pumping water through sub-surface hot rocks 
(geothermal).  All of these have advantages AND disadvantages. most of 
them are reliable enough for base load production 24 hours per day; some 
of them are economically viable, and;  none of them are totally 
environmentally benign (though some much more so than others).

The next most common process is hydro, which still uses water but at 
ambient temperatures, but is constrained by various geographical (and 
environmental) factors such as mountains and rainfall.

Then we have the non-steam/water 'renewables', wind, solar photovoltaic 
and tidal being the most common.  None of these is reliable enough for 
base load production, though they (along with some of those in the steam 
cycle) have a useful place in the overall mix, as does better energy 
efficiency technologies.  But they will never be the main source of  the 
energy we need to keep functioning.

As Scott so correctly pointed out, if you have too much of the 
unreliable renewables in the mix, you then have to keep what the power 
industry calls a 'spinning reserve" continuously on line (but not on 
load), so you don't save much (if anything) on any front.

Then we get to hydrogen, which Tim seems to think is the long term 
solution.  We all know that H is the most common element in the 
universe, and burning it causes no serious pollution risk - its 
byproduct is water (albeit water vapour is by far the most common 
greenhouse gas in the environment).  Certainly hydrogen is common 
enough, but it does not exist as a resource in its natural state (not on 
Earth anyway), it has to be manufactured.  Yes it is benign at the end 
use stage (just as electricity is) but at the manufacturing stage it is 
far from that.  In the last Skeptic, I published an article on the 
Hydrogen Economy by an expert in the field, a former divisional chief of 
the CSIRO division that investigates such matters, including fuel 
cells.  Very sobering reading for anyone who sees hydrogen as the holy 
grail for energy, and I would be happy to send a copy to interested 
people off line.  Like anything else, it has its place, but a universal 
panacea it ain't.

Taking all the factors into consideration, nuclear electricity 
production is probably going to come into its own in the future as the 
best available method with the least downside and we had better get used 
to it.

Barry Williams

the Skeptic of Oz



-- 
"Only a zit on the wart on the heinie of progress." Copyright 1992, Frank Rice


Terry W. Colvin, Sierra Vista, Arizona (USA) < fortean1 at mindspring.com >
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