Tag Archives: Clean Energy Program

Oyster Creek & Nuclear Power After Fukushima

Oyster Creek Nuclear Generating Station

Oyster Creek Nuclear Power Plant, Courtesy Exelon

A public hearing will take place October 28, 2013, at the Clarion Hotel, 815 Route 37 West, Toms River, NJ. The subject of the hearing will be the National Academy of Sciences, NAS, study on nuclear power plants and cancer and “Lessons Learned from Fukushima.”

As I see it, the most important lessons from Fukushima are:

  1. Three of the Fukushima Dai’ichi nuclear reactors withstood the earthquake, the tsunami and the aftershocks. We can engineer systems that will withstand various scenarios, but this raises the cost such that nuclear cannot compete in a de-regulated energy market – see The Economist, here – and we cannot  engineer against all possible events.
  2. The radioactive plume reached across the Pacific to North America, just as the plume from Chernobyl reached across the Atlantic to North America. An accident anywhere, when it involves dispersion of toxic materials, is an accident everywhere,
  3. We have seen four (4) meltdowns in the 54 years between the passage of the Price Anderson Act and the disasters at Chernobyl and Fukushima. The risk of a catastrophic accident such as a melt-down may be low, but a catastrophic accident, is by definition, catastrophic.
  4. The losses from Fukushima are estimated in the Trillions of Dollars. The economic value of the electricity produced by the six nuclear reactors is probably less than $100 Billion. Generating electricity from nuclear power is like taking heroin for a headache: The cure is worse than the disease.

There is a fifth lesson to be learned; this from the NJ Clean Energy Program in New Jersey and Vestas, the wind company. As noted on the NJ Clean Energy Program – Project Activity Pages, we in New Jersey now have have 1,117.5 Megawatts (MW) of grid tied photovoltaic solar electric generating capacity, almost double the 636 MW of Oyster Creek. Vestas is offering 8 MW wind turbines.

WE HAVE WIND and SOLAR: WE DON’T NEED OYSTER CREEK OR OTHER NUCLEAR POWER PLANTS.

Offshore Wind Farm

Offshore Wind Farm

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Moore's Law Applied to Solar Power

Gordon MooreDoes “Moore’s Law” hold for Solar Power?

In New Jersey, between 2001 and 2010, we went from a total of six systems with a combined capacity of 9.0 KW to about 7000 systems with a combined capacity of 211,000 KW or 211 MW. This is illustrated below.

Solar Capacity, NJ, 2001 to 2010. Increase from 9 KW in 6 systems to 211 MW, or 211,000 KW in 7000 systems

Increase from 9 KW in 6 systems to 211,000 KW in 7,000 systems. Copyright, 2010, L. J. Furman. All Rights Reseved.

This is the “hockey stick” curve of exponential growth typical of positive feedback mechanisms. I expect this kind of growth to continue for the next few years as prices drop, until solar meets 25% to 35% of New Jersey’s needs. This would be another 2500 to 3500 systems and about 200 additional MW in 2011 and 4000 to 5000 systems of 300 to 500 MW in 2012 , and brings me back to “Does ‘Moore’s Law,’ or a corollary, apply to PV Solar?” or “Is this a bubble?” Continue reading