All I can say is keep it up!! And thanks so much Michael, for all your efforts.
Not to sound snooty but I never went for the man-made warming being deadly stuff from the beginning. Made no sense considering the amount of co2 400 ppm and the opposing scientists being at the highest levels, Happer, Linden, Soon and so many others in the thousands from a group of signatories Happer collected at one point.
Secondly, being a carpenter, you need a good degree of common sense, and we often associate with engineers in building. all my engineering friends said that renewables lack the 'energy density' to do the job expected on large scale, not possible.
The multi billions wasted that could have done so much real good, makes me sad.
I was involved in the financings done for EDF in the 70's as France implemented one of the highest risk national ventures switching to mainly nuclear. Anyone who has really studied nuclear plant performance in countries who take safety seriously, not Chernobl, know how much safer nuclear is.
If Biden can persuade the world that nuclear is highly renewable, he will have done a great service
Please exercise caution in believing that Biden's administration sincerely supports nuclear. I hope it is true. But I also remember that anti-nuclear apparatchiks have a long history of appearing to hold out support with one hand, while holding a rock in readiness in the hand behind their back. Or simply claiming not to oppose nuclear with weak, meaningless, highly qualified statements, while continuing to oppose any physical implementation of nuclear in the real world.
For example, a tax credit alone may not be enough as long as "must take" rules remain in place favoring renewables.
"...Apocalypse Never, which argues that only nuclear energy can guarantee universal prosperity and environmental progress." Are we sure that ONLY nuclear energy can guarantee universal prosperity and environmental progress? Could it be possible that prosperity and progress could supported by a mix of renewables, nuclear, fossil fuels, smart grids, conservatism, and more? Or do you really believe that we should spread FB NPPs around the 180+ countries of the world?
It matters not what "WE" are sure of, it's facts that matter. BTW, I trust you meant conservation, it's not the same as conservatism.
There are two facts, first that COâ‚‚ has deleterious thermodynamics for the atmosphere, second that it is acidic enough in water to dissolve calcium carbonate as its bicarbonate. That's also what made limestone caves."renewables" in common parlance mean the solar resources that fossil solar fuel (that's what separated the carbon and hydrogen from the oxygen) ousted. Just making them do electricity doesn't bolster them up against their capriciousness. The plain fact is that BECAUSE nuclear fission releases as much energy from a kg of fuel, producing only one kg of waste, as thousands of tons of any chemical reactants, even the infamous stupidity of Chernobyl killed fewer people than have died from "wind turbine" failures.
Yes whether we do it or not, Russia and China fully intend to sell nuclear power plants around the world.
Thanks for the reply and catching my typos. FB NPP = Fast Breeder Nuclear Power Plants or FBR = Fast Breeder Reactor. When it comes to the ideal energy mix, I don't believe there are any established "facts." There are plenty of theories, all of which can be argued, sometimes convincingly. I tend to favor the theory that there is an optimal mix that is appropriate for each country and region, and the FACT that there are some nations and regions that where nuclear power plants would pose a massive security and safety risk. As an example, the Iraqi army torching over 600 oil wells in Kuwait during the first Gulf War. Lastly, can you provide a link to your source for deaths attributed to wind turbine failures? I couldn't find anything to support your claim. Cheers!
Caithness is a beautiful wild county in in NE of Scotland, now heavily infested with wind farms. But this website collects world wide statistics.
The first thing to know about a "mix" of energy sources is that per MWh of energy, nuclear fission requires less than a millionth of the mass of any chemical reactants, which of course includes batteries, and that three kg of fissile nuclear material, which for safety reasons in a civilian reactor is mixed with about twenty times its mass of neutron capturing, "fertile" uranium or thorium, and cane breed more fuel from that in "modern" designs one of which was demonstrated in the 1960s. The waste is therefore also less than a hundred-thousandth of that for chemical.
But that's not all. Today's technically obsolete reactors, nevertheless vastly superior to energy from either fossil or current solar sources, mostly use fuel in a three year cycle. When fuel rods are removed, it is done carefully in a standard fashion with appropriate machinery. This is quite reasonably called High Level Waste, because 95% of it is uranium that would be wasted if buried.
But the high level radiation comes from the fission products that are 4% of the not-really-spent fuel. It is high level because radioactivity is a decay process, and fission product isotopes are short-lived. After five years, no matter where they are put, their radioactivity drops by a factor of 400
There have been NO injuries reported from this process. The standard immediate destination is cooling ponds, to absorb the radiation and dissipate its heat energy.
Specifically commenting on: "All of this was predicted by an obscure German economist in the peer-reviewed economics literature back in 2013. He found that the economic value of wind would decline 40% once it becomes 30% of electricity, while the value of solar would drop by 50% when it became just 15% of electricity, and that’s roughly what has occurred."
The price cannibalization of solar and wind have some interesting political implications, and more importantly, price cannibalization describes nuclear's esoteric economic problems.
Political implications of solar price-cannibalization:
1) Solar farms serving a region will likely go bankrupt together as revenues systemically fall short of debt service payments. Bankruptcies are visible and make for easy political targeting of progressive energy policy.
2) Combined-cycle natural gas (CCNG) and coal, which data shows suffer negligible price cannibalization, remain profitable even with higher generation expenses. For example, when electricity production reaches its limits during California's windless August nights, the wholesale revenue of $900+ per MWH goes primarily to CCNG and imported Coal generation, while solar and wind collect almost none of it. In comparison, California's mid-day August generation frequently earns around $7 or less per MWH. The revenue disparity means that load-following, carbon-producing electricity generation remains generously economic despite being more costly to produce. Consequently, these load-following, carbon-producing companies are profitable and can remain politically active indefinitely.
Nuclear suffers base-load economic issues:
Current nuclear has similar economic problems to solar and wind, although the problems are less widely understood. Diablo Canyon, for example, is fairly cheap electricity generation. However, PG&E would be more profitable with Diablo Canyon closed.
Base-load economics:
Diablo Canyon is always-on, must-run, base-load. Diablo Canyon always produces the same amount of electricity per hour, and is therefore a price-taker in the day-ahead ISO markets. Diablo Canyon takes the high prices at night, as well as the low or negative prices during the day, making it marginally profitable as a stand-alone entity. However, the primary issue with base-load is that it makes load-following less profitable, and nuclear plant owners typically have a portfolio of load-following CCNG or coal plants.
PG&E makes its generation money primarily with its multi-gigawatt CCNG plants on the high-priced dusk and dawn electricity demand. A must-run gigawatt nuclear plant has a material effect on the final marginal price of every hourly day-ahead-market closing bid affecting the real price garnered for every megawatt produced.
PG&E owns both nuclear base-load and CCNG load-following. PG&E lobbied to close Diablo Canyon because reductions in always-on base-load add to the magnitude of the daily post-solar peaks, increase the closing marginal bids in the day-ahead markets. (Of course that's not the official justification.) Closing Diablo Canyon is economic for PG&E. Closing Diablo Canyon will increase the nightly ramp rate and marginal closing ISO prices, and every MWH produced by PG&E's CCNG receives that higher marginal price. Diablo Canyon’s biggest issues are not solar competition, spent fuel storage, public opinion, safety, or regulation. Nuclear’s issue is primarily base-load economics. Nuclear base-load cannibalizes marginal load-following prices.
As an aside, nuclear plants made economic sense prior to the ISO markets where generation and distribution lived under the same government-regulated-monopoly power company. The only way nuclear wins the ISO economics game is to become load-following.
The day the first load-following nuclear plant comes online is the day the ISO markets turn in favor of nuclear and the day the tide turns for carbon emissions.
Yes indeed "The day the first load-following nuclear plant comes online is" may be a little too optimistic, but it is certainly why I am sure that Fossil Carbon interests are funding anything that supports the groundless fears of civilian nuclear.
Plutonium for bomb making is far easier to synthesize with a special reactor, than to use the stuff from "reactor waste".
For instance, If you had a perfect way of extracting chemically pure plutonium from a tonne of PWR waste, you'd get about 10 kg. The Nagasaki bomb used 6 kg. But what you'd actually get is a demolished building, because unlike reactor grade uranium, the problem with reactor grade plutonium is that the unwanted isotope EMITS neutrons.
Molten salt reactors do indeed load follow. It has been demonstrated. The only difficulty for ceramic fueled reactors is the trapping of the neutron-capturing fission product, xenon 135, within the pellets. being a gas, it can be bubbled out of the fuelsalt. US Navy reactors primarily for propulsion quite evidently are fairly nimble about load following, too.
Short answer: Every pound of nuclear material a US nuclear power plant has ever used is still in that same power plant.
Longer answer: Recycle the material to further reduce the "waste". We'd be able to run it through the plants several more times. We also have uses (e.g. medical) for the other elements in the fuel which would be removed during the recycling process.
The same short answer you give to the objection that there's no safe way of air travel given the nonzero chance of plane crashes. We know how to deal with radioactive waste, and its volume is small anyway.
Indeed the waste from nuclear energy is much smaller than the waste from most other energy sources, per unit of energy produced. And it can be stored pretty securely for potential use in the future: note that if it is radioactive it has energy that might become useful at some time.
The short answer is that it isn't true. Also, that 95% of it is uranium being wasted.
The slightly longer answer is that a fuel rod removed from a reactor, or even left in an abandoned reactor, loses 99.75% of its radioactivity in five years. The customary place to put rods from a healthy reactor is a pool of water that absorbs the radiation of decay, and dissipates its heat. Now, note that the annual quantity of "retired" fuel rods is about 2500 tons, and that therefore the freshly retired "radioactive waste" is equivalent to a million tons (2500 x 400) of the stuff that comes out of the cooling ponds five years later.
There have been no fatalities or injuries alleged from the processing of the retired, only slightly used fuel rods. A sufficiently safe method of handling them has been used. When they are taken from the water, and dried or allowed to dry, they can then be stored quite safely in steel and concrete "Dry Storage Casks" deliberately made big and heavy enough to require conspicuous machinery to move.
To propagate fear of a mere 80 thousand tons of this still slowly decaying stuff, is mere bogeyman memes. Since it's politically motivated, I call it terrorist propaganda.
All I can say is keep it up!! And thanks so much Michael, for all your efforts.
Not to sound snooty but I never went for the man-made warming being deadly stuff from the beginning. Made no sense considering the amount of co2 400 ppm and the opposing scientists being at the highest levels, Happer, Linden, Soon and so many others in the thousands from a group of signatories Happer collected at one point.
Secondly, being a carpenter, you need a good degree of common sense, and we often associate with engineers in building. all my engineering friends said that renewables lack the 'energy density' to do the job expected on large scale, not possible.
The multi billions wasted that could have done so much real good, makes me sad.
Thanks again,
Don Pascucci
I was involved in the financings done for EDF in the 70's as France implemented one of the highest risk national ventures switching to mainly nuclear. Anyone who has really studied nuclear plant performance in countries who take safety seriously, not Chernobl, know how much safer nuclear is.
If Biden can persuade the world that nuclear is highly renewable, he will have done a great service
Please exercise caution in believing that Biden's administration sincerely supports nuclear. I hope it is true. But I also remember that anti-nuclear apparatchiks have a long history of appearing to hold out support with one hand, while holding a rock in readiness in the hand behind their back. Or simply claiming not to oppose nuclear with weak, meaningless, highly qualified statements, while continuing to oppose any physical implementation of nuclear in the real world.
For example, a tax credit alone may not be enough as long as "must take" rules remain in place favoring renewables.
It is really time for the entire renewables fantasy to END.
Great article :) Thank you!
"...Apocalypse Never, which argues that only nuclear energy can guarantee universal prosperity and environmental progress." Are we sure that ONLY nuclear energy can guarantee universal prosperity and environmental progress? Could it be possible that prosperity and progress could supported by a mix of renewables, nuclear, fossil fuels, smart grids, conservatism, and more? Or do you really believe that we should spread FB NPPs around the 180+ countries of the world?
It matters not what "WE" are sure of, it's facts that matter. BTW, I trust you meant conservation, it's not the same as conservatism.
There are two facts, first that COâ‚‚ has deleterious thermodynamics for the atmosphere, second that it is acidic enough in water to dissolve calcium carbonate as its bicarbonate. That's also what made limestone caves."renewables" in common parlance mean the solar resources that fossil solar fuel (that's what separated the carbon and hydrogen from the oxygen) ousted. Just making them do electricity doesn't bolster them up against their capriciousness. The plain fact is that BECAUSE nuclear fission releases as much energy from a kg of fuel, producing only one kg of waste, as thousands of tons of any chemical reactants, even the infamous stupidity of Chernobyl killed fewer people than have died from "wind turbine" failures.
Yes whether we do it or not, Russia and China fully intend to sell nuclear power plants around the world.
You failed to expand what an FB NPP is.
Thanks for the reply and catching my typos. FB NPP = Fast Breeder Nuclear Power Plants or FBR = Fast Breeder Reactor. When it comes to the ideal energy mix, I don't believe there are any established "facts." There are plenty of theories, all of which can be argued, sometimes convincingly. I tend to favor the theory that there is an optimal mix that is appropriate for each country and region, and the FACT that there are some nations and regions that where nuclear power plants would pose a massive security and safety risk. As an example, the Iraqi army torching over 600 oil wells in Kuwait during the first Gulf War. Lastly, can you provide a link to your source for deaths attributed to wind turbine failures? I couldn't find anything to support your claim. Cheers!
See http://www.caithnesswindfarms.co.uk/fullaccidents.pdf
Caithness is a beautiful wild county in in NE of Scotland, now heavily infested with wind farms. But this website collects world wide statistics.
The first thing to know about a "mix" of energy sources is that per MWh of energy, nuclear fission requires less than a millionth of the mass of any chemical reactants, which of course includes batteries, and that three kg of fissile nuclear material, which for safety reasons in a civilian reactor is mixed with about twenty times its mass of neutron capturing, "fertile" uranium or thorium, and cane breed more fuel from that in "modern" designs one of which was demonstrated in the 1960s. The waste is therefore also less than a hundred-thousandth of that for chemical.
But that's not all. Today's technically obsolete reactors, nevertheless vastly superior to energy from either fossil or current solar sources, mostly use fuel in a three year cycle. When fuel rods are removed, it is done carefully in a standard fashion with appropriate machinery. This is quite reasonably called High Level Waste, because 95% of it is uranium that would be wasted if buried.
But the high level radiation comes from the fission products that are 4% of the not-really-spent fuel. It is high level because radioactivity is a decay process, and fission product isotopes are short-lived. After five years, no matter where they are put, their radioactivity drops by a factor of 400
There have been NO injuries reported from this process. The standard immediate destination is cooling ponds, to absorb the radiation and dissipate its heat energy.
Specifically commenting on: "All of this was predicted by an obscure German economist in the peer-reviewed economics literature back in 2013. He found that the economic value of wind would decline 40% once it becomes 30% of electricity, while the value of solar would drop by 50% when it became just 15% of electricity, and that’s roughly what has occurred."
@MichaelShellenberger and team
Lawrence Berkeley National Labs modeled solar economics for California and concluded the same in 2012. https://eta.lbl.gov/publications/changes-economic-value-variable
And, more recent work shows that the price-cannibalization effect accelerates as solar generation capacity increases market penetration. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0140988319303470
The price cannibalization of solar and wind have some interesting political implications, and more importantly, price cannibalization describes nuclear's esoteric economic problems.
Political implications of solar price-cannibalization:
1) Solar farms serving a region will likely go bankrupt together as revenues systemically fall short of debt service payments. Bankruptcies are visible and make for easy political targeting of progressive energy policy.
2) Combined-cycle natural gas (CCNG) and coal, which data shows suffer negligible price cannibalization, remain profitable even with higher generation expenses. For example, when electricity production reaches its limits during California's windless August nights, the wholesale revenue of $900+ per MWH goes primarily to CCNG and imported Coal generation, while solar and wind collect almost none of it. In comparison, California's mid-day August generation frequently earns around $7 or less per MWH. The revenue disparity means that load-following, carbon-producing electricity generation remains generously economic despite being more costly to produce. Consequently, these load-following, carbon-producing companies are profitable and can remain politically active indefinitely.
Nuclear suffers base-load economic issues:
Current nuclear has similar economic problems to solar and wind, although the problems are less widely understood. Diablo Canyon, for example, is fairly cheap electricity generation. However, PG&E would be more profitable with Diablo Canyon closed.
Base-load economics:
Diablo Canyon is always-on, must-run, base-load. Diablo Canyon always produces the same amount of electricity per hour, and is therefore a price-taker in the day-ahead ISO markets. Diablo Canyon takes the high prices at night, as well as the low or negative prices during the day, making it marginally profitable as a stand-alone entity. However, the primary issue with base-load is that it makes load-following less profitable, and nuclear plant owners typically have a portfolio of load-following CCNG or coal plants.
PG&E makes its generation money primarily with its multi-gigawatt CCNG plants on the high-priced dusk and dawn electricity demand. A must-run gigawatt nuclear plant has a material effect on the final marginal price of every hourly day-ahead-market closing bid affecting the real price garnered for every megawatt produced.
PG&E owns both nuclear base-load and CCNG load-following. PG&E lobbied to close Diablo Canyon because reductions in always-on base-load add to the magnitude of the daily post-solar peaks, increase the closing marginal bids in the day-ahead markets. (Of course that's not the official justification.) Closing Diablo Canyon is economic for PG&E. Closing Diablo Canyon will increase the nightly ramp rate and marginal closing ISO prices, and every MWH produced by PG&E's CCNG receives that higher marginal price. Diablo Canyon’s biggest issues are not solar competition, spent fuel storage, public opinion, safety, or regulation. Nuclear’s issue is primarily base-load economics. Nuclear base-load cannibalizes marginal load-following prices.
As an aside, nuclear plants made economic sense prior to the ISO markets where generation and distribution lived under the same government-regulated-monopoly power company. The only way nuclear wins the ISO economics game is to become load-following.
It is possible for nuclear to load-follow, but it’s not here yet: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1738573317302875
The day the first load-following nuclear plant comes online is the day the ISO markets turn in favor of nuclear and the day the tide turns for carbon emissions.
Yes indeed "The day the first load-following nuclear plant comes online is" may be a little too optimistic, but it is certainly why I am sure that Fossil Carbon interests are funding anything that supports the groundless fears of civilian nuclear.
Plutonium for bomb making is far easier to synthesize with a special reactor, than to use the stuff from "reactor waste".
For instance, If you had a perfect way of extracting chemically pure plutonium from a tonne of PWR waste, you'd get about 10 kg. The Nagasaki bomb used 6 kg. But what you'd actually get is a demolished building, because unlike reactor grade uranium, the problem with reactor grade plutonium is that the unwanted isotope EMITS neutrons.
Molten salt reactors do indeed load follow. It has been demonstrated. The only difficulty for ceramic fueled reactors is the trapping of the neutron-capturing fission product, xenon 135, within the pellets. being a gas, it can be bubbled out of the fuelsalt. US Navy reactors primarily for propulsion quite evidently are fairly nimble about load following, too.
What is the short answer to the objection that the there's no safe way to get rid of the radioactive waste generated by nuclear plants?
Short answer: Every pound of nuclear material a US nuclear power plant has ever used is still in that same power plant.
Longer answer: Recycle the material to further reduce the "waste". We'd be able to run it through the plants several more times. We also have uses (e.g. medical) for the other elements in the fuel which would be removed during the recycling process.
The same short answer you give to the objection that there's no safe way of air travel given the nonzero chance of plane crashes. We know how to deal with radioactive waste, and its volume is small anyway.
Indeed the waste from nuclear energy is much smaller than the waste from most other energy sources, per unit of energy produced. And it can be stored pretty securely for potential use in the future: note that if it is radioactive it has energy that might become useful at some time.
All other power sources, even horses and oxen!
The short answer is that it isn't true. Also, that 95% of it is uranium being wasted.
The slightly longer answer is that a fuel rod removed from a reactor, or even left in an abandoned reactor, loses 99.75% of its radioactivity in five years. The customary place to put rods from a healthy reactor is a pool of water that absorbs the radiation of decay, and dissipates its heat. Now, note that the annual quantity of "retired" fuel rods is about 2500 tons, and that therefore the freshly retired "radioactive waste" is equivalent to a million tons (2500 x 400) of the stuff that comes out of the cooling ponds five years later.
There have been no fatalities or injuries alleged from the processing of the retired, only slightly used fuel rods. A sufficiently safe method of handling them has been used. When they are taken from the water, and dried or allowed to dry, they can then be stored quite safely in steel and concrete "Dry Storage Casks" deliberately made big and heavy enough to require conspicuous machinery to move.
To propagate fear of a mere 80 thousand tons of this still slowly decaying stuff, is mere bogeyman memes. Since it's politically motivated, I call it terrorist propaganda.
Using nuclear energy enables us to inhabit the future, ergo we will still be here as its custodians
Blue Ribbon Commission solved this problem over a decade ago. Thanks Obama!