Best of luck from the ‘other side’ ( a horrible contractor who has had industry exposure to coal, oil, power generation, power transmission and lots of other terrible things ;-)

In all, excellent work.

Regards, Mark.

I’d love to, but at the moment I can’t. Politics, especially nuclear politics, can’t always be transparent. I know politicians who are convinced that IFRs are a great idea but they won’t utter such a sentiment in public. Having to pander to the public’s prejudices and irrational fears is an unfortunate corollary of democracy (such as it is). So a lot gets done behind the scenes. There seems to be little alternative.

Then there’s no way I can make a decision.

I’m hoping these things can be as *cheap* as you guys say, simply because we need all the options we can get.

Even if the actual energy infrastructure costs come in cheaper than renewables with backup, it would probably be the “externalities” that blow it out. Not including the real cost of extra security and insurance issues would be just the same as not including the real economic impacts of global warming in the coal budget. Society pays, but the books are cooked (a bit like the planet).

Again, if a terrorist blows up a solar plant, it just doesn’t matter.

It’s not worth anything in this instance. It looks like we’ll be building one of these things very soon, perhaps even starting by the end of this year. Lots of serious groundwork is being laid that you won’t find mentioned in Wikipedia or anywhere else.

I don’t get this faith in Gen4 when the reactors are so far away. If these super-safe, super-cheap Gen4 reactors are not built till about 2030 (according to wikipedia, whatever that’s worth)…

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

Any time I hear “oh, but they’re coming in about 20 years” I think of the abundant fusion energy we were all supposed to have by now.

By 2030 we’ll already have 2 decades of experience with renewables! Wind won’t be on his own, but will have heavy hitting baseload friends such as solar thermal, CETO wavepower (+ desal at night!) and geothermal.

Next year we should get to test a whole town running on solar thermal. (Although only Cloncurry, QLD, a small town of 2,340 people it should give us a good idea for that region at least).

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,22700605-2702,00.html

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

How can you make such bold assertions about the costs of cheap *modular* Gen4 technology when we can’t walk up and kick one yet?

Can you 100% guarantee that solar thermal and a mixed renewable grid will keep the lights on? Germany’s experience has shown that to be a pipe dream (please, Ender, don’t bother to quibble, I’ve heard all your arguments and I simply don’t buy them. I know how to count.). In which case you are left with the other options: fossil fuels or nuclear. With the risk assessment studies of the PRISM indicating it’s about as meltdown proof as can possibly be expected, I’d opt for IFRs any day of the week.

Hey, if nuclear works out as safe and cheap as you’re saying, then why not? I’m just waiting on more data. Maybe new nuclear technology will come out so cheap that the overall cost to society drops, including insurance.

But it’s a significant economic factor that solar thermal doesn’t have to deal with. If a terrorist blows up a solar thermal plant, oh dear, we have to rebuild some glass and concrete. But if a terrorist DOES manage to blow up a nuke with high level radioactive waste going everywhere, we have to evacuate a whole region.

What is the economic cost to ‘lose’ Melbourne of Sydney in this manner, even if everyone is evacuated in time?

Seems to me a risk management exercise. If the chance of something, although incredibly small, is still incredibly NASTY, we HAVE to insure against that chance.

How much is this insurance really going to cost? DO insurance companies really insure against such scenarios? ;-) Or is “moving Melbourne” just so unthinkable a scenario there’s no policy in the world that will cover it?

I know this is all alarmist hippie crap to some reading here, but CAN you 100% guarantee this will not happen? With solar thermal & a mixed renewable grid, we can.

Also not all the CSP plants would have to have storage as the peaks when it is needed would be quite sufficient for perhaps 30% of the CSP plants as we do not need as much supply at night.

nice point there regarding off-peak demand, although don’t forget night time demand may rise a bit when the “Better Place” electric cars start pluggin in and charging overnight.

Also, found this, which makes me wonder how much governments are subsidising the insurance costs and whether or not there is far more to “insurance” in the real world of nuclear accidents, however unlikely, than implied by even by your quote?

One of the biggest of several hidden subsidies for nuclear power is that it is only required to pay a small fraction of the cost of insuring fully against claims from a Chernobyl-style disaster, or worse:
“… in the United States, the Price-Anderson Act limits the nuclear industry’s liability in the event of a catastrophic accident to $9.1 billion, which is less than 2% of the $600 billion guaranteed by the Congress. In any case, $600 billion is considered to be a gross underestimate …” (Helen Caldicott, p. 32). There are similar limitations on liabilities in other countries around the world, including the UK.

* The costs of providing protection against terrorist attack for nuclear plants, and for trains and ships carrying nuclear fuel and nuclear waste;
* The costs to us all arising from the fact that any such protection can only ever be partial;
* The cost of decommissioning nuclear plants. An estimate in 2006 by the UK Treasury for the cost of decommissioning the UK’s old nuclear power stations was £90 billion;
* The costs born by national governments in that ultimately they must underwrite all risks, as evidenced by the way the UK government had to bale out British Energy in 2005 at a cost of £5 billion;
* The costs arising from nuclear waste that will be dangerous for thousands of years. These costs will be born by future generations but they will receive no compensating benefit.

http://www.mng.org.uk/gh/nn.htm

2. What do you do when you have a few cloudy days in a row, especially in winter when generating capacity is at half the summer insolation? How much extra thermal storage do you build in to your system to stop extended blackouts?
I have always wondered about this exact question, and wondered whether the heat could also be backed up by a few large onsite bio-gas tanks? You know, methane biodigesters (like Kompogas in Europe) or Biochar gas, stored in tanks for just this occasion? Not sure how large the tanks would have to be to top up the heat for a week of cloud.

Would it be economical to have huge sheds of good old fashioned WOOD pellets just for these occasions, and have a backup furnace that can pipe some extra heat to the turbines when required? When we are dealing with enormous industrial areas of this magnitude a few huge farm sheds of wood lying there aren’t really going to add too significantly to the land required, especially given the importance of electricity to the local economy.

Is it possible to elaborate on how these facilities are highly visible? I remember you saying in a talk that remote sensing could be used to discern PUREX processing from pyro-processing, meaning that nations could no longer hide weapons grade material production behind a nuclear power program.

For me it could help to clarify the position that IFRs cannot produce weapons-grade plutonium. Sorry if this has already been addressed.

—-excerpt follows—-
For very large generation 3+ reactors, production of the pressure vessel requires, or is best undertaken by, forging presses of about 14-15,000 tonnes capacity which accept steel ingots of 500-600 tonnes. These are not common, and individual large presses do not have high throughput – about four pressure vessels per year appears to be common at present, fitted in with other work, though the potential is greater than this. Westinghouse is constrained at present in that the AP1000 pressure vessel closure head and three complex steam generator parts can only be made by JSW. Areva has a little more choice.

Reactor vendors prefer large forgings to be integral, as single products, but it is possible to use split forgings which are welded together. These welds then need checking through the life of the plant.

Westinghouse says that the minimum requirement for making the largest AP1000 components is a 15,000 tonne press taking 350 tonne ingots.

The very heavy forging capacity in operation today is in Japan (Japan Steel Works), China (China First Heavy Industries) and Russia (OMX Izhora). New capacity is being built by JSW and in South Korea (Doosan), France (Le Creusot) and is planned in UK (Sheffield Forgemesters) and India (Larsen & Toubro). In China the Harbin Boiler Works and Shanghai Electric Group are bidding for AP1000 work which will require very heavy forging, so they can be expected to install that capacity rapidly if required. Nothing in North America currently approaches these enterprises.

However, another development is Westinghouse going upstream and setting up factories in USA and China to produce modules for AP1000 reactors. ….

http://bravenewclimate.com/2009/03/18/the-solar-fraud/

http://bravenewclimate.com/2008/12/21/renewable-energy-cannot-sustain-an-energy-intensive-society/

http://bravenewclimate.com/2009/01/06/prescription-for-the-planet-part-i/

http://bravenewclimate.com/2009/01/16/put-all-energy-cards-on-the-table-to-fix-climate-change-fully/

http://bravenewclimate.com/2009/02/12/integral-fast-reactors-for-the-masses/

All about Solar Thermal power plants that will use just 2% of our annual sales of concrete steel and glass to construct over 10 years. Why would you do anything less.

http://beyondzeroemissions.org/Technology-Review-Solar-Thermal-Power-Towers

I’d urge you to read chapters 10 and 11 of Prescription for the Planet, pg 263-317, where Tom maps out his vision in considerable detail. I’ll be reviewing these crucial chapters soon in part V of my multi-part review of this book.

Also, for some reason your links are not inserting — you can use “a href” style or simply plonk them in with the http in the front.