While the greens and Labor have been shouting “solar, not nuclear” for a third of a century, world electricity generation from coal and gas has soared dramatically by 6418 billion kWh/y between 1980 and 2006.
Nuclear added 1821 billion kWh, ALL renewables added a mere 381.

Germany is lauded as a model for “green” electricity.
In 2006, 47.5% of its electricity came from coal, 11.9 from gas, 26.3 from nuclear, 2.2 from biomass, 1.2 from waste, 4.3 from hydro, 4.8 from wind and 0.35% from solar. It subsidises coal, wind and solar, but not nuclear. Nuclear subsidises the others.

There is no value in filling the BNC web site with utter rubbish. Surely you are not suggesting we should do that, are you?

Thank you for pointing to the comments in t=your link. Carl S seems like he knows what he is talking about. Here are two of his comments:

The capital investment for a “smart grid” that could handle this would run into the trillions and take decades to build. If 31 states actually tried to go completely wind and solar, or even generated more than 10% of their power needs via solar/wind they would be besieged by rolling blackouts that would make Baghdad’s electrical supply look like a model of reliability.

and

The state of Texas has the most wind power, with over 8300MW of installed capacity. ERCOT, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, reported 2 stage 1 electrical emergencies and 5 stage 2 electrical emergencies this year, all of them due to sudden and unexpected drops in output from wind farms. Luckily there was enough spinning reserve (all natural gas) to make up for the drop and the emergencies did not lead to any widespread residential power outages (industrial outage were another story though).

Now this 8300MW accounts for only 3.5% of all the power on the Texas grid, what do you suppose would happen in it accounted for even 5%? It would mean more power emergencies and rolling blackouts.

As far as the “smart grid”, the main technical difference would be using a 1MVDC and plus T&D network. More volts, less line loss. While the US does have some 1MV lines in service, the vast majority of the country’s T&D system is 161Kv 230Kv and 345Kv. All of this would have to be upgraded, meaning new towers, lines, transformers, switchgears … well, you get the picture. This would cost trillions and take decades.

Shoud we consider the The Institute for Local Self-Reliance as an authoritative source?

Can we rely on its conclusion that the USA can be self reilant on renewable energy?

The EPR is not just a FOAK in general, that is it’s bigger components, and other aspects being deployed for the first time, but *everything*, from concrete to controls to types of steel. This requires a very steep learning curve.

During my interview with a EdF union rep (who is a safety engineer and waste disposal expert) he noted the experience they were having in Flameville with concrete molds, learning from the Finnish experience.

What to look for is the *trend* after the second one is completed and to parse it out exactly:

#what specifically were the cost overruns?
#are the cost overruns falling or increasing?
#site location aside, does the schedules for phases of the projects increasing or decreasing?

We won’t know any of this until the first 4 or so are well underway and nearing completion.

The idea that all EPRs will forever ‘overrun’ meaning Areva won’t learn from this is simply absurd.
David

Yes. Good point. We could extend this thought. Others who comment on this web site know much more about this than I do. I hope these people will build on your point that the costs are almost entirely labour. I’d like to know:

By how much is the cost of nuclear power increased by government mandated requirements, bureaucratic imposts, and over-engineering in an attempt to achieve almost infinite safety? I’ve heard, for example the US NRC referred to as the Nuclear Rejection Commission.

What is the real cost of all the government imposts and interference? Is the government interference really making NPP’s safer? By how much, and what is the cost?

Why do we need the high level of government interference in every aspect of nuclear power but we do not require the same level of interference in the far more dangerous plants using chemical processes – which exist everywhere throughout our cities?

To get a perspective on the cost of governments and bureaucrats getting involved in projects, just look at what has happened with the project to build houses in central Australia. The project has not built a single house in 2 years and has squandered much of the money that was intended for the houses. The funds have been consumed within the buraucracy on bureaucrats salaries, meetings, site visits and studies. It is no wonder that nuclear power in the developed countries is some 2 to 5 times more costly than it needs to be?

Is there an alternative way? Can we avoid having a Nuclear Rejection Commission, or an Australian version of it?

What could we do to establish low-cost nuclear in Australia instead of high-cost nuclear?

And I would emphasise to those who I imagine are horrified by the thought: if we have nuclear power at a price less than coal power, the change to nuclear (and a low GHG emission electrcity) could be relatively rapid. The lower the cost of electricity, the more quickly fossil fuels will be displaced from land transport (the second of the major sources of GHG emissions).

If we really want to cut GHG emissions significantly, start thinking low-cost nuclear.

The following provides a perspective:

1. The MIT study states that the cost of all the baseload generation technologies have increased by close to a factor of 2 since 2003.

2. From other sources, I understand that this also applies to hydro.

3. That ACT Government has just announced that the new water supply dam being built in the ACT is going to overrun its cost estimates by a factor of 3. (the cost estimates are just 2 years old!)

4. The EPR being built in Finland is a first of a kind (FOAK) plant. It is common for FOAK plants to overrun their original estimates, no matter what the plant is for, e.g. chemical processing plants, pulp mills, military hardware, etc (recall the cost increases for the BHP iron smelter in WA).

5. The following illustrates the average cost increase for projects by project types and risk (listed in order of increasing project risk type). For each I’ve listed: type of project, number, cost growth percent)

a. Highways, 40, 35%
b. Water projects, 49, 55%
c. Public buildings, 59, 80%
d. Very large construction, 12, 135%
e. Pioneer process plants, 29, 190%
f. Major weapons systems, 17, 40%

(The reason the military projects have smaller cost increases relative to their risk is their use of the Earned Value Management method for project performance measurement and control.)

7. Using these admittedly old figures, the Finnish EPR’s cost growth is roughly in line with experience with other FOAK projects (pioneer plants).

8. But the ACT Government’s tripling of a simple water supply dam demonstrates that even the lowest risk projects still suffer major cost increases.

9. Lastly, the cost of the recent wind power projects is around $2,200 to $2,500/kW, about double what the wind power advocates claim. For equivalent energy, they are 50% higher capital cost than nuclear. And the energy they do produce is nearly worthless. No one would buy it if they were not forced to by government regulation. (For a fair cost comparison of wind and nuclear we should add the cost of back up, energy storage, grid stabilisation, and transmission to the cost of wind)

Water will also be needed for new mines like the Ambrosia zircon deposit. New mines will take materials away while a waste disposal site buries some others. I believe to avoid economic stagnation SA has little choice but to get into additional phases of the nuclear industry.

You said:

… but at least wind energy is a reality, and actually generating power.

Wind is generating eratic power. The power is intermittent and changes rapidly and almost continuously. As a result it has low value to the purchasers (the electrcity distributors). It causes extra costs in transmission systems, grid management and for purchasers who have to manage their regulatory obligations to buy the wind power.

Wind energy costs around twice that of the conventional baseload power that it is supposed to replace.

Wind power has low value and is very high cost.

And it replaces little greenhouse gas emissions.

Did you see my question at the end of post 187 here: http://bravenewclimate.com/2009/09/10/solar-realities-and-transmission-costs-addendum/

You have not explained how OCGT capacity creates CO2 when not in operation.

Did you read the paper “Cost and quantity of greenhouse gas emissions avoided by wind generation” and the references cited?

Once we have 27GW wind and solar capacity operating we will have a better idea of how much back-up pumped hydro and OCGT capacity is really required.

Oh my gawd!

More likely we’ll wonder how we went so wrong.

I see the Whyalla scuba diving fraternity want to move the RO desal down the coast to Cowleds Landing near where a small uranium ISL is planned. That would make the desal to Roxby distance about the same as Ceduna, where of course the desal could be the more efficient flash distillation using nuclear waste heat.

On nuclear waste disposal the Federal government has already bought Arcoona Station near Woomera.
I assume that is sedimentary layers overlying granite. When OD goes open cut the underground equipment could be moved to a suitable site to enable cask storage in tunnels accessed by deep shafts. In time that whole region would become wealthy.

I totally agree that nuclear should be considered as a renewable energy resource, however in Australia, at least for now, nuclear is a hope(perhaps a dream), but at least wind energy is a reality, and actually generating power.

I hope nuclear can contribute significant power by 2030, Japan has built 50GW in last 50 years(the second largest economy, 6-7 times the size of Australia, has virtually no FF resources and very little wind or solar potential). Do you seriously compare Australia’s industrial capacity to build nuclear power plants with Japans?? ( one GW of nuclear per year really is a big stretch, but we can dream of what could be possible even if it’s probably not going to happen that quickly. Having a lot of the components build overseas will help but will still be competing with other countries for the same components.
You have not explained how OCGT capacity creates CO2 when not in operation. If OCGT is being used at 10% capacity factor the CO2 contribution compared to CCGT running at 100% is very minor(15%). That’s the alternative for most electricity, or worse, coal-fired power until at least 2040.

You have done a good job of showing that we could build a lot more pumped hydro,(12GW) so new OCGT is probably not needed, but no reason to dismantle existing OCGT(6-7GW ?) capacity at least until the last coal-fired plant is retired. Once we have 27GW wind and solar capacity operating we will have a better idea of how much back-up pumped hydro and OCGT capacity is really required.

If there is ONE area that is going through an absolute “Boom” it’s in the construction of component factories around the world, even the USA.

There have been recent articles about this if you know where to look, including recently on the WNA.

A more extensive article at the ‘other NEI’ (Nuclear Engineering International) shows that component manufacturing, and heart and sole of any atomic Renaissance, is growing *exponentially*:

http://www.neimagazine.com/story.asp?sectionCode=147&storyCode=2052302

The biggest hindrance then is setting up the infrastructure (commissions, training, staffs, oversight, etc etc) which is something even the Chinese have now moved up the checklist of bottlenecks for the steroidal nuclear program.

David

And how many on nuclear electricity generation?

And what has been the return on investment on our research into renewable energy?

Can anyone answer these questions for me?