Tag Archives: nuclear

Nuclear Power, 2019. Why?

Vogtle 3 and 4, the first new nuclear reactors built in the United States in 30 years, are now 6 years late and estimated to cost $28 billion. (Taxpayer.net).  That is a cost overrun of $14 billion, 100% over the initial cost of $14 billion.  (Atlanta Journal Constitution, Power).

The 2.234 GW plants at Vogtle will cost $12.5 per watt, if there are no more overruns, plus the costs of fuel, security, maintenance, etc. Utility scale solar is under $2.00 per watt. Utility scale wind is estimated at $1.44 per watt for Ocean Wind, the 1.11 GW wind farm to be built 15 miles east of Atlantic City.
 
Neither solar nor wind require fuel or military security forces.  The money used to construct a 1 GW nuclear reactor could construct 6.5 GW of solar or 8.7 GW of wind. 
 
Rough Comparison of New Electricity Capacity Costs
Energy Price per watt Capacity for $12.5 B (GW)
Nuclear $12.50 1.00
Solar $2.00 6.25
Wind $1.44 8.70
Table 1
 
Why, given the cost of nuclear, the bankruptcy of Westinghouse, the dearth of young nuclear engineers, and the costs of wind and solar are we even thinking about, let along sinking $Billions of taxpayer dollars, in nuclear? 

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The World Will Not End & Other Predictions for 2012

space-apple-logo

 

Here are my top 10 predictions for 2012. These are less readings of the tea leaves or the entrails of goats and chickens and more simple extrapolations of patterns in progress. Altho that may be the way effective oracles. They just masked their observations with hocus pocus, mumbo-jumbo, and guts.

This list runs a gamut from business and technology to energy, instability in the Middle East, micro-economics in the United States, politics, and not-yet-pop culture.

  1.  Apple and IBM will continue to thrive. Microsoft will grow, slightly. Dell and HP will thrash. A share of Apple, which sold for $11 in December, 2001, and $380 in Dec. 2011, will sell for $480 in Dec. 2012.
  2. The Price of oil will be at $150 to $170 per barrel in Dec., 2012. The price of gasoline will hit $6.00 per gallon in NYC and California.
  3. There will be another two or three tragic accidents in China. 20,000 people will die.
  4. There will be a disaster at a nuclear power plant in India, Pakistan, Russia, China, or North Korea.
  5. Wal-Mart will stop growing. Credit Unions, insurance co-ops and Food co-ops, however, will grow 10% to 25%.
  6. The amount of wind and solar energy deployed in the United States will continue to dramatically increase.
  7. The government of Bashar Al Assad will fall.
  8. Foreclosures will continue in the United States.
  9. Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio will resign. Calls for Clarence Thomas to recuse himself from matters involving his wife’s clients will become louder, but Justice Thomas will ignore them. A prominent politician who says “Marriage is between a man and a woman,” or her husband, will be “outed” as gay. President Obama will be re-elected.
  10. The authors of Vapor Trails will not win a Nobel Prize for literature. They will not win a “MacArthur Genius Award.” Nor will I despite my work on this blog or “Sunbathing in Siberia” and the XBColdFingers project.

Here are the details … Continue reading →

"Beyond Fuel" at the Space Coast Green Living Festival

Space Coast Green Living Festival

Green Living Festival

Follow LJF97 on Twitter Tweet I am presenting “Beyond Fuel: From Consuming Natural Resources to Harnessing Natural Processes,” a discussion of the hidden costs, or “economic externalities,” of nuclear power, coal, and oil, and the non-obvious benefits of wind, solar, marine hydro and efficiency at the Space Coast Green Living Festival, Cocoa Beach, Florida, Sept 17, 2011.

The festival  is sponsored by the Cocoa Beach Surfrider Foundation and the Sierra Club Turtle Coast Group. It will be at the Cocoa Beach Courtyard by Marriott.

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Clean Energy, Good Jobs, and a Vibrant Economy … But

 

Earth from Space, courtesy NASA (our tax dollars at work)

courtesy NASA (our tax dollars at work)

Follow LJF97 on Twitter  Tweet  It sounds too good to be true:

*   100 gigawatts of offshore wind, $300 Billion,
*   100 gw of landbased wind, $200 Billion,
*   75 gw of solar, $300 Billion,
*   75 gw of geothermal, $200 Billion.
*   200 gigawatt equivalents of efficiency – $200 Billion.
*   100 & Clean, Renewable, Sustaianble Energy: 1.2 Trillion.
*   2.7 Million New Jobs and a Healthy Economy: Priceless!

This is happening, slowly, inexorably, by the “invisible hand of the market.” But it will happen faster if the “invisible mind of the community” acts. This means the government!

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Earth Day, 2011, Where Are We?

Earth, from space, courtesy of the American taxpayer

Earth from Space, courtesy of the American taxpayer. Reto Stöckli, Nazmi El Saleous, and Marit Jentoft-Nilsen, NASA GSFC

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Earth Day, 2010, I looked to the future on Popular Logistics. In 2009, I wrote about water pollution and agricultural waste in the Chesapeake. Today I am looking at the present and recent past. While a comprehensive look at where we are can be found on the web pages of the World Watch Institute, the New York Times, and the World Factbook of the Central Intelligence Agency, I want to make a few points.

Our energy policy is “when you flip a switch, the juice gotta flow.” It ain’t magic. It’s engineering and classical physics, with an understanding of radioactive fission and decay and a profound lack of long term thinking. It ain’t magic, but it might as well be. But we really need to base our energy policy on an understanding of ecological economics and sustainability.

We’ve had a few problems with nuclear power and fossil fuel in the last few years. Yet, there’s some light on the horizon.

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Drill Baby, Drill – or Drill Baby, Oops

Second in a series  (1, 2) that began on “Earth Day” (0).

“In order to make Policy, you have to be good at Politics.”

– Deborah Stone, “Policy Paradox”

President Obama

President Obama, Official Photo

I like and respect President Obama. I think he’s a well educated lawyer and law school professor, with a good grasp of the Constitution, and the realities of Chicago machine politics and Inside-The-Beltway politics. He understands Stone. He’s also a moderate liberal. However, his economic advisors – Tim Geithner and Larry Sommers – only know what’s good for Wall Street, so every answer is “what’s good for Wall Street.” They don’t appear to know anything about ecological economics.  Obama needs to listen to Herman Daly, Robert Costanza, Paul Krugman, Robin Krugman, Joseph Stiglitz, and others with a long term view and a better understanding of what neoclassical economists call “externalities.”

Perhaps worse, his energy secretary, Steven Chu, is focused on carbon sequestration, nuclear power, and what we might as well call “Drill Baby, Opps.” Continue reading →

Fossil Fuels and a Walk on the Moon

Ships trying to Extinguish the Flames

Ships trying to Extinguish the Flames at the Deepwater Horizon Rig

The unfolding disaster at the Deepwater Horizon rig in the Gulf of Mexico, which promises to be an environmental catastrophe, (click here) the recent disasters at the Upper Big Branch coal mine in West Virginia, and the Kingston, Tennessee fly ash retention pond demonstrate that fossil fuels are dirty and dangerous.  Safety and environmental protection are expensive and cannot be guaranteed. The oil will adversely effect fisheries in the Gulf for years. If the oil gets into the Gulf Stream, it will curl around Florida and flow up the coast hitting Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Virgina, Maryland, Delaware, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and if it flows around the Long Island Sound, Connecticut – all the original 13 states, then Maine and the Atlantic Provinces of Canada.

Rather than harnessing the Gulf Stream to push pollution from the Gulf of Mexico up the Atlantic coast of the United States, we should harness the Gulf Stream for clean renewable energy. (Here’s how.)

Solar and wind, which harness natural processes rather than consume natural resources, provide power without fuels, and without waste: with no arsenic, carbon dioxide, lead, mercury, methane, and other toxins, greenhouse gases or radioactive waste. These systems enable us to meet our needs and allow future generations to meet their needs – and flourish.

Rather than clinging to the dirty and hazardous infrastructure of the past, we must build the clean, renewable, and sustainable infrastructure of the future.

Cape Wind and the Staten Island Ferry solar array and the thousands of other solar and wind projects here in the U. S. and elsewhere on the globe are, to paraphrase Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong, “small steps … yet giant leaps for mankind.”

This post is the First Installment of a series that will follow the unfolding catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico.

—

The index is below:

  1. Fossil Fuels and a Walk on the Moon, May 3, 2010.
  2. Drill Baby Drill or Drill Baby Oops, May 7, 2010.
  3. The Magnitude of the Spill, May 15, 2010.
  4. One Month After The Spill BP Siphoning 3,000 Barrels Per Day, May 20, 2010.
  5. Deep Water Horizon – The Chernobyl of Deepwater Drilling?, June 2, 2010.
  6. The Deepwater Horizon: 40,000 Barrels Per Day or 70,000, June 13, 2010.
  7. The Deepwater Horizon After the Macondo Well Explosion, June 19, 2010.
  8. Deepwater Horizon – Bombs and Hurricanes, July 1, 2010.
  9. Like a Bad High School Math Problem, July 14, 2010.
  10. Crisis Management and the Gulf Oil Spill, July 16, 2010.
  11. The Deepwater Horizon: The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly, October 7, 2010.

Tritium Leaks Trouble Nominees for Panel – NYTimes.com

MATTHEW L. WALD, writing on the Green Inc. blog at the Times, reports

WASHINGTON — Tritium leaks like the one that threatens the future of the Vermont Yankee nuclear plant are undermining confidence in other reactors around the country, three experts nominated by President Obama to join the Nuclear Regulatory Commission said Tuesday at their confirmation hearing.

The leaks by themselves do not appear to have had any impact on public health, one of the three, William D. Magwood IV, told the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. “The point is not that it’s not hurting anyone,” he said. “The point is it’s showing you don’t have your act together.”

via Tritium Leaks Trouble Nominees for Panel – NYTimes.com.

Entergy official "relieved of duties" for false statement about Vermont Yankee nuclear plant

Vermont Yankee, on the banks of the Connecticut River

Vermont Yankee, Courtesy of US NRC

There’s no question that nuclear power will be part of our energy supply mix for the foreseeable future.  The United States has 104 nuclear power plants in operation at present, according to Matthew Wald on the Green Inc. blog of The New York Times, relying on NRC data. Incidents like this – in which a corporate official makes a false statement with serious health and safety implications – give us pause.

Which is worse – that the official was mistaken, and not aware that Vermont Yankee had water pipes which could leak – or that he knew and lied?

Incompetence or dishonesty, it would seem.  Nuclear power can’t be a safe part of our energy future on those terms. Entergy is responsible for knowing everything there is to know about the plants it operates. A material and incorrect statement – under oath, no less – seems explainable only by three hypotheses: (1) the official lied; (2) the official failed to make himself aware of the plant, in which case the question shouldn’t have been answered; (3) the official was misinformed by subordinates.

If the first explanation is correct, perjury charges are, of course, in order. If the second or the third – Entergy hasn’t met its obligations to mind the store.

From the Associated Press via NPR: Top Vermont Yankee Official ‘Relieved Of Duties’:

A top official at the Vermont Yankee nuclear plant was permanently relieved of his duties and placed on leave, the plant owner’s CEO said Tuesday, less than a week after Gov. Jim Douglas demanded management changes over misstatements made to state officials.

Entergy Nuclear chief executive J. Wayne Leonard did not identify the official by name. But he described the executive relieved of his duties in a way that could only apply to Vice President Jay Thayer.

Douglas’ urging for management shake-up followed revelations that plant officials misled state regulators and lawmakers by saying last year the plant did not have the sort of underground pipes that could carry radioactive tritium.

“In May 2009, an Entergy executive testified in a hearing on the state’s report that he didn’t think we had any such pipes, but he would get back to them,” Leonard said. “He did not get back to them. He has issued a public apology and made clear that he failed to provide full and complete information, either on the witness stand or by failing to get back to them.

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Nuclear Fusion in 10 or 20 Years

Thomas Friedman is right in “The Next Really Cool Thing” in The New York Times, March 15, 2009, when he concludes:

At the pace we’re going with the technologies we have, without some game-changers, climate change is going to have its way with us. Yes, we’ll still need coal for some time. But let’s make sure that we aren’t just chasing the fantasy that we can “clean up” coal, when our real future depends on birthing new technologies that can replace it.

Note that he pointed out ‘the fantasy that we can “clean up” coal.

Friedman also said:

“I don’t know if they can pull this off; some scientists are skeptical. Laboratory-scale nuclear fusion and energy gain is really hard…. we need to keep working on all forms of solar, geothermal and wind power. They work. And the more they get deployed, the more their costs will go down.”

Fusion may be the game changer. “Energy Gain” means we get more energy out than we put in. The prototype will cost $10 Billion – enough for 5 GW of wind capacity, and 1.53 GW of PV Solar. And fusion is at least 10 years away, maybe 20, maybe 50. We know how to build wind and solar. (On the other hand it takes 10 years to build a nuclear fission reactor.)

But pushing carbon below 350 ppm is a problem that can’t wait 10 years.  According to the World Watch Institute’s Vital Signs, 2007-2008, the 6.5 billion humans on the earth are using the natural resources of 1.25 earths.  This can’t go on.

Chairman of NRC Panel indifferent to whether Indian Point hearings audible to audience

Preliminary evidence supports these propositions:

  1. The NRC is interested in limiting the scope of the public hearings;
  2. the NRC doesn’t mind if no one can hear what’s being said

Attempts by persons or groups to conceal their actions may be interpreted as circumstantial evidence of consciousness of guilt (Wigmore On Evidence, 2nd edition, 1915, § 178). We could probably find more citations, but the point is – what’s the NRC got to be afraid of?

From Matthew Wald’s piece in The New York Times [emphasis supplied]:

Opponents of the Indian Point nuclear power plants, including New York State, got their day in court on Monday – sort of – to explain why they thought the two reactors should not be allowed to operate 20 more years. It signified the first time that a state had stepped forward to flatly oppose license renewals.

But like much about the tangled history of the plants in Westchester County, the hearing before a three-judge panel appointed by the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission was not that simple.

The proceedings got off to a prickly start when a member of the audience seated in a courtroom at the Westchester County Courthouse here complained to the panel chairman, Lawrence G. McDade, that he could not hear what was being said. “The acoustics here are what the acoustics here are,” said Mr. McDade, a former military judge, who was himself using a microphone.

The difficulty was that about 20 lawyers seated at five tables and flanked by cartons of documents, as well as another 20 or so who spilled over into the jury box, did not have microphones.

When Michael B. Kaplowitz, vice chairman of the Westchester County Board of Legislators, rose and said he could not hear the lawyers representing him – and that he was not a member of the audience but a participant – Mr. McDade told Mr. Kaplowitz that he could read the transcript later.

After a lunch break, Mr. McDade relented and had more microphones brought in.

Acoustics were not the only setback for those opposed to relicensing the two plants in Buchanan, on the east bank of the Hudson River 35 miles north of Midtown Manhattan.

It was immediately clear that for the opponents – the state, Westchester County and several environmental groups – to win the day, they would have to persuade the panel and the regulatory agency itself to reconsider what arguments are admissible.

The commission has ruled that for an argument to be considered in license extension hearings, it must deal with problems that may arise because the license is extended. The state contends, however, that the region’s extraordinary population density, when considered together with the threat of terrorism or earthquake, makes the plants unsafe.

“The presence of the Indian Point nuclear power plant in our midst is untenable,” the state argued in a legal brief.

Joan Leary Matthews, a lawyer for the State Department of Environmental Conservation, said in an opening statement that “whatever the chances of a failure at Indian Point, the consequences could be catastrophic in ways that are almost too horrific to contemplate.”

Sherwin Turk, a lawyer for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, said that questioning whether the site was a good idea in the first place was not within the scope of the proceeding.

Foes of Indian Point Begin Legal Battle, The New York Times, March 11, 2008.