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On 13/11/2005, at 3:13 PM, Scott Peterson wrote:
<div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline">
<blockquote type="cite">
<div style="margin: 0px;">At 07:23 PM 11/12/2005, Tony Mills wrote:</div>
<blockquote type="cite">
<div style="margin: 0px;">Agreed- If you need quickly delivered
peak power- the option of choice is</div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">hydro- ie let water fall from a place
you've already pumped it up to.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>You</div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">can use H2 electrolysed from water by
renewable power for continious power,</div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">or you can simply pump water up a hill.
But these are problems for about a</div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">decade hence when renewbles make a up a
larger proportion of power</div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">generation. At the moment they are
expensive options- but doable. I don't</div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">think it is too optimistic to think H2
generated by electrolysis<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>will</div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">become more cost effective over that
decade.</div>
</blockquote>
<div style="margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><br>
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">Yes, but I'm not talking just short term
power generation.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>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.</div>
<div style="margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><br>
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">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.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>I just don't
see any significant amount of generating capacity being replaced until
you can find substitute power that is reliable.<span
class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Biomass might, but remains
unproven in large scale deployment. It's also dependent on availability
of large amounts of fairly consistent material.<span
class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Wood, paper, cow shit<span
class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>or whatever.<span
class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>This requires long term
planning and economic coordination.</div>
<div style="margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><br>
</div>
<blockquote type="cite">
<div style="margin: 0px;">Which will presumably be available in 30
years at the earliest?.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>The
price</div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">per kw of renewable energy is going down,
as it is more widely deployed.</div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">The nuc industry has been promising safe
nuc power designs for 30 years,</div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">without result- So I wouldn't hold my
breath.</div>
</blockquote>
<div style="margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><br>
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">It could be sooner.<span
class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>GE and other companies have
offered a number of designs for reactors that are self limiting, much
cleaner and smaller.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>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.</div>
<div style="margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><br>
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><br>
</div>
<blockquote type="cite">
<div style="margin: 0px;">Nuc power is available outside the US,
and you would think 40 years might be</div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">sufficient to sort out the above
problems, at least in one country - But</div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">even if they were fixed there are a few
fundamental problems- Waste-</div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">millions of years of it- decommissioning-
runs in to billions of $- then the</div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">decommissed reactor parts have to be
stored at medium (and high) level</div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">repositories.</div>
</blockquote>
<div style="margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><br>
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">Seventeen percent of the worlds electricity
is generated by nuclear power.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>As
far as waste, a large part is definitional.<span
class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Most low-grade waste is simply
a product that came from a nuclear plant.<span
class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Had it come from somewhere
else, it would be simple trash.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>The
issue of fuel rods and other high-level radiation waste is proving to
be more of a political problem.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Much
of that is of the NIMBY variety, but it's one that does need to be
resolved.</div>
<div style="margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><br>
</div>
<blockquote type="cite">
<div style="margin: 0px;">But why go nuc anyway? It is not cost
competitive with renewables, and given</div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">the lowering costs of renewables, and the
high fixed costs of nuc (waste</div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">storage, construction and decomissioning)
is unlikely to ever be.</div>
</blockquote>
<div style="margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><br>
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">Main reason, biased figures.<span
class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>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.</div>
<div style="margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><br>
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">I'm not saying nuclear is cheap but it's
also biased because of the huge cost overruns, upgrades and regulatory
costs.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>More standardized
regulations and plant designs should significantly reduce those costs.</div>
<div style="margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><br>
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px;"><span class="Apple-converted-space">
</span>Scott Peterson</div>
</blockquote>
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</div>
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</div>
<div>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. </div>
<div><br class="khtml-block-placeholder">
</div>
<div>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).</div>
<div><br class="khtml-block-placeholder">
</div>
<div>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.</div>
<div><br class="khtml-block-placeholder">
</div>
<div>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.</div>
<div><br class="khtml-block-placeholder">
</div>
<div>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.</div>
<div><br class="khtml-block-placeholder">
</div>
<div>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.</div>
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</div>
<div>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.</div>
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</div>
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<pre class="moz-signature" cols="60">--
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