All-nuclear power grids are not only feasible, but proven and operating today 1

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  1. Good article!

    The one festering fly in the ointment of public nuclear acceptance is fear primarily based on FUD urban legends, not proven records. Cold safety stats don’t stroke John Q. Public — grass-roots examples do, as I personally found effective on the unwashed. Example: “You can pack ALL the nuclear plant fatalities incurred _worldwide_ for the 60 years since they’ve been around on ONE city bus. You can’t build enough _ocean liners_ to accommodate the fatalities and injuries incurred by fossil energy production.” A simple little ditty like that first gets a dubious snicker but gets them re-thinking all the antis fodder they’ve been fed. If Indian Point just did an ad of that ditty word-for-word would turn wonders even here in NYC I’ve emailed this to tech and science editors at the leading TV and radio stations here and received nil acknowledgements much less comments — but boy they DO get gushy if you ask them for features on windmills and solar — and they “overlook” the awful cost and sacrifice of natural heritage and scenic beauty by their razing and marring landscapes and hillsides and shorelines. The media bias is glaring. Try it yourselves. The war for U.S. nuclear plant acceptance can’t be won by piecemeal hawking whiz-bang reactor tech to a skeptical FUD-drenched public; it has to be won on the antis’ own mass playing field with easily chewable comparative industrial mortality/safety/environmental impact facts and proof for turning hearts and minds around. It won’t happen via osmosis; we have to BE there.

    James Greenidge
    Queens NY

    1. “The one festering fly in the ointment of public nuclear acceptance is fear primarily based on FUD urban legends, not proven records”

      But that FUD is based in the mistakes made by the industry. You have provided the foundation for the FUD through pie in the sky promises about the unlikelyhood of accidents that eventually came to pass. You lament the fact that the public expects perfection, without admitting that that is exactly what they were promised. “It can’t happen” has happened often enough to sow distrust, and trust, once squandered, is very hard to rebuild. Post WWII, visionaries such as Disney gave you a foundation upon which to build that trust. You blew it.

      1. @poa

        I challenge you to find evidence that nuclear industry professionals told anyone that accidents “will never happen.” Everything I can find in the historical record, dating back to the 1950s when the first power reactors were being designed, was evidence that the industry told the public that they had made provision making accidents unlikely.

        They are “unlikely” as proven with thousands of reactor years worth of operation with just one core melt event and no injuries from radiation in the entire US commercial nuclear program.

        If people heard “impossible” when they nukes said “unlikely” they weren’t listening very well.

        1. “If people heard “impossible” when they nukes said “unlikely” they weren’t listening very well.”

          What they weren’t listening to was the quiet trouble free hum of a working reactor. Its just that TMI, Chernobyl, and Fukushima made noises impossible to ignore.

          Nobody said anything about “unlikely” when plants such as Fukushima were permitted. The plant was sold as “safe”. People don’t hear “unlikely” in the word “safe”. But they do hear “will never happen” when they hear the word “safe”.

            1. @Rick Armknecht

              At the known risk of being treated at a nut, I don’t believe that the RBMK design is inherently unsafe. Yes, it had a tiny region in its potential operating envelope that was unstable and had a positive void coefficient, but it was easy for operators to avoid that region. In fact, it took a series of almost unbelievable coincidences to put the plant into exactly the right condition necessary to achieve the demonstrated instability.

              I generally don’t believe such coincidences just happen, especially when they happen at what turns out to be — in retrospect — an opportune time for people who had the ability to influence the event to have made a great deal of money.

          1. Fukushima is/was safe. What about the other structures or emergency plans that failed to keep 20,000 people from dying in Japan?

            Still zero deaths related to the release of or exposure to radioactive material associated with Fukushima.

          2. @poa

            Nobody said anything about “unlikely” when plants such as Fukushima were permitted. The plant was sold as “safe”. People don’t hear “unlikely” in the word “safe”. But they do hear “will never happen” when they hear the word “safe”.

            I see an awful lot of car commercials that focus on their safety. Do people who purchase those cars think they have zero chance of dying in an accident?

          3. “Fukushima is/was safe”

            You can repeat that mantra until hell freezes over. It might even be true. But it is irrelevent. What is relevent is the public’s perception. And your assertion is polar to the general concensus of the media swilling public. And in large part, its “your” own fault.

          4. On November 15, 2011, a construction worker named Gregorz Sobko fell off a roof and died in Preston, UK. He was installing solar panels on the roof at the time. Mr. Sobko’s death didn’t make global headlines, yet with that one incident, solar energy’s death count for 2011 exceeded that of the Fukushima nuclear accident, which happened in the same year. It was a year in which nuclear power produced 44 times more electricity than solar worldwide.

            I really have to wonder why you don’t care a fig for Mr. Sobko, yet care passionately about the alleged dangers of nuclear power.

          5. Keith…..

            I doubt highly that you can find a post of mine that defends FUD as being credible. But I am a pragmatist when it comes to the reasons for the unquestionable success of FUD. Perhaps examining why FUD works would be a more constructive use of your time than imagining my position regarding NE.

        2. If you check the safety information, there have been a total of seven deaths from civilian nuclear power in the USA in 60 years of operation. But six of these we not even related to the nuclear generation. This is a fantastic safety record. People’s fears are wildly overblown. And the coming GenIVs are inherently better and safer than any previous.

      2. The possibility for nuclear accidents has very clearly been understood and has been MONUMENTALLY declared — in the form of enormous and very expensive containment structures.

        1. “The possibility for nuclear accidents has very clearly been understood and has been MONUMENTALLY declared — in the form of enormous and very expensive containment structures.”

          Which actually works against you. Because these massive hardened structures scream the word DANGER by their very presence. Like the bars and locks on a lion’s cage. The public sees these structures as the dividing line between safety and calamity. The accidents, in the public’s mind, let the lion out of its cage.

          1. I know what you mean. Every time I go to a bank, that big bank vault in the back just screams to me that this is not the place I want to put my money.

          2. Gee Brian, you and Rod seem to have a hard time today coming up with comparisons thst make sense.

            Rod fails to consider the role that personal control has in determining how humans view risk. When behind the wheel, ego allows us to take the position that “it won’t happen to me”. But when your nieghbor has a roaming pit bull, we tend to be afraid of getting bit.

            And you? If you read that that big vault failed to protect your nieghbors savings, would you still deposit your money there? After the robbery, are you still impressed with the vault’s impregnability?

          3. RE: ” these massive hardened structures scream the word DANGER by their very presence.”
            Thanks, poa, glad that I’ve been able to convince you that your original position (“You lament the fact that the public expects perfection, without admitting that that is exactly what they were promised.”) was in error.
            We lawyers are always glad to see such prompt results from our persuasive efforts!

          4. Rick…as an attorney, I would think my point would have been more apparent to you. I was merely pointing out that these hardened structures create the impression of the reactor/radiation posing extreme danger if not so encased. It reinforces the public’s fear of radiation, and NE in general. In so doing, the standard plant architecture works against your goals.

            1. @poa

              On 2/16 you wrote

              Nobody said anything about “unlikely” when plants such as Fukushima were permitted. The plant was sold as “safe”. People don’t hear “unlikely” in the word “safe”. But they do hear “will never happen” when they hear the word “safe”.

              Then you told us that our containment buildings create the impression of enough potential for accidents that we have added hardened structures to contain radiation and radioactive material.

              I happen to agree that the containment buildings are overkill that do not reassure the public. On the other hand, it’s pretty difficult to make a consistent argument saying that the industry promised perfect safety but still spent billions building thick-walled containment buildings. My review of the literature and the press indicates that the industry has always acknowledged that reactors contain huge amounts of powerfully hazardous materials but that engineers have added numerous layers of protection in a strategy of “defense in depth.” The marketing materials also include statements about the carefully-trained, carefully-selected operators who use procedures to even further reduce the possibility of harm.

              “Adequate protection” is the official standard for NRC regulations, even though certain commissioners have successfully pushed for rules that exceed that standard because they don’t like to admit they should be satisfied with “safe enough.”

          5. “On the other hand, it’s pretty difficult to make a consistent argument saying that the industry promised perfect safety but still spent billions building thick-walled containment buildings”

            I must be thinking from a different side of my brain or something, Rod. I think the two premises fit together perfectly….

            “Gee, look at this massive thick encasement we’ve provided to protect you from the radiation monster. There’s no way he’s escaping from this!”

          6. The nuclear industry does not need subsidies (although as a Bertrand Russell and Aneurin Bevan socialist, I reckon the work of the AEC, LANL, and so on are massive research subsidies for “private industry”).
            What it needs is an end to the monstrous injustice of letting coal and not-so-“natural” gas get away with hundreds of times as much poisons, and millions of times the GHGs, of nuclear.

        2. Re: Bonds 25
          Fukushima is/was safe. What about the other structures or emergency plans that failed to keep 20,000 people from dying in Japan? Still zero deaths related to the release of or exposure to radioactive material associated with Fukushima.

          So true! It just totally boggles my mind of the hypocritical mentality (or grudge?) of antis who’ll shrug and turn their backs and shortly forget people and whole communities fried and blown up by fossil energy, but have a whining bellyache about a pint of lightly irradiated being spilled at a NPP because there’re hardly any injuries at said places to rally torches and pitchforks over. By the mortality and accident numbers NPPs are FAR safer than air travel yet the air industry ALWAYS hawks that air travel is SAFE, so why the smirks when NPP say they’re safe even under the worst duress and have the stats and decades of historical proof to prove it? I bet the widows and families of workers lost in occasional oil or gas or coal accidents WISH that their lost love was at a job with the rare “worst case” fatality stats of TMI and Fukushima.

          James Greenidge
          Queens NY

  2. The nuclear industry seems to be spending most of its political capital asking for what appear to be special subsidies designed to keep existing power plants operating for a few more years until they die a more natural death at the end of their useful life.

    If you look at this from the viewpoint of the 21st century corporate person’s mind, not an engineer’s mind, it makes perfect sense. These old systems are a “cash cow”. No R&D required, no capital financing, low risk. Remember, these companies are run by accountants, actuaries and MBAs, not engineers.

    I’m not defending them, I’m saying that for things to change, the entire culture of the boardroom will have be torn down and I don’t believe that the old school corporations that run the industry can make that transition.

    It’s too bad that fission technology can’t be developed in a garage because what the industry needs is the equivalent of Apple from the late 70s.

    1. @Stephen Galperin

      It’s too bad that fission technology can’t be developed in a garage because what the industry needs is the equivalent of Apple from the late 70s.

      Agreed, sort of. Improvements on understood technology can be “developed” in a garage, which these days can have as much computing power as entire office buildings did in the 1950s and 60s. The step that we are not yet allowed to take is to actually build anything without investing about a billion dollars in deep reams of paper associated with a part 103 power plant operating license.

      Sure, there is a process for research reactors, but under current regulations they are not allowed to be fully integrated power production machines no matter how small the designer wants to make them.

      1. I can see the logic of not allowing every person with an idea access to isotopes any where, any time.

        However, there are thousands of acres in the Hanford Reservation, at Savannah River and at Oak Ridge where the government could license areas for new reactor development for commercial use. Like an incubator for fission power. Then they could have their access control to prevent isotopes from falling into the wrong hands and the NIMBYs couldn’t shut down the research.

        But that would be far too practical for our current government do.

        1. @Stephen Galperin

          We are pushing in that direction with some success. As you say, it is a practical suggestion and a bit of a difficult sell for office dwellers. However, that just makes the effort a little more challenging, not impossible.

    2. It’s too bad that fission technology can’t be developed in a garage because what the industry needs is the equivalent of Apple from the late 70s.

      Why? Nobody today runs the junk that was thrown together in a garage by Wozniak and Jobs.

      They run systems with hardware that was developed by Intel or AMD running software (even Apple’s computers) that is based on ideas and technology that were first developed by Bell Labs and Xerox. All of this stuff was developed by large companies, many of whom either held a monopoly or at least a dominating market share in their primary area of business, which allowed them to have ample R&D money to hire talented people and give them the freedom to develop technology outside their core business.

      I know that it’s romantic to think of billion-dollar companies that were started in a garage (HP started that way too), but what made these start-ups into billion-dollar companies happened outside of the garage.

      1. In those days that “old junk” was state of the art. More importantly, it took computing from the arcane world of Bell Labs and MIT to our living rooms. Their work effectively forced IBM to get into the PC market. Otherwise the computer would still be limited to the depths of corporations. Wang, DEC and IBM would still have a lock on the market. you’d be logging on to a big IBM server rather than doing this on your laptop assuming the web have ever gotten this far. Modern corporations are the enemies of innovation. It screws up their low risk business model.

        Westinghouse and GE would be delighted to continue to make fuel for their inefficient light water designs. It’s a cash cow with very low risk. Their new designs are really their old designs with improved control systems and the safety fixes that were installed ad-hock over the last 40 years incorporated. Neutron Jack Walsh set the standard, big corporations let little start ups do the risky R&D then they buy up the intellectual property when the startup can’t manufacture the product. We need fertile ground (ie a specialized garage) where those little companies can do their risk taking.

        It will take a startup developing a reactor that uses 90%+ of the actinides in the fuel with a tenth of the moving parts of the existing water moderated reactors to get the big companies to sit up and take notice, otherwise they have no motivation to really innovate. In fact, as Mr Adams pointed out, they seem to very happy with the status quo.

        1. First, All the “software” that Microsoft made was essentially plagiarized from existing SW. Their first OS was basically a “clone” of CPM. Any SW engineer that programed for MS OS machines knew it. Many programs written for a CPM OS worked, unrevised, on the early versions of MSDOS. There were at least half a dozen “microcomputers” actually very low end business machines that were esentially nothing more than the “IMSAI 8080,” the device that turned on the light in Bill Gates head, two to three years before Apple was building his “Bread-Board” computer. Look at the first apple. It literally was a PC board bolted to a wooden board! Look at the Data General Nova (Wikipedia). I worked with om in the late 60’s and early 70s. The IMSAI 80 80 did NOTHING that the early DG NOVA did not do. Only difference is that the Nova ha man discrete component circuit boards and the IMSAI 8080 had one board with many integrated circuits. Price was about the same. Ran many tests on the startup of TMI-I with the DG NOVA. It was the best for collecting data in a much more usable form than high speed brush recorders. I had the DG NOVA monitoring data on TMI-II for a RCS flow problem when the “incident” happened, and it provided invaluable in analyzing the “incident.”

          1. I can vouch for this.  MS-DOS 1 was operation-for-operation interchangeable with CP/M.  Digital Research effectively shot itself in the foot by making its CP/M-86 operating system harder to convert programs to from CP/M. In some ways it was better, but harder (and MS-DOS’s adoption by IBM) trumped that.

            In a just world, Microsoft would have died and Bill Gates would be competing with Indian programmers in the USA on H-1B visas.

        2. In those days that “old junk” was state of the art.

          Er … an 8-bit computer running BASIC? No, it wasn’t. The state of the art at the time was the various minicomputers being produced by companies like DEC. The Apple computer wasn’t even that novel. For example, you can’t compare it to the Altair 8800, which was not only novel for the time, but revolutionary.

          Their work effectively forced IBM to get into the PC market.

          No. IBM was not Apple’s competition, at least not at first. The stuff that Apple developed “in a garage” competed against products by Commodore, Tandy (Radio Shack), and a couple of other companies. Apple’s competition did not consist of companies that produced mainframes, but companies that made hand calculators or sold electronics equipment to hobbyists.

          By the time IBM got into the game, it dominated the market against the newer Apple products such as the Lisa and the Macintosh (both of which were not built in a garage and were released after the IBM PC). Apple’s products for the low-end home market were similarly out-sold by products like the Commodore 64, the best-selling computer of all time.

          The only sector where Apple did well was the academic market, which was a niche market that Apple chose early (hence the name “Apple” as in “an apple for the teacher”).

          Otherwise the computer would still be limited to the depths of corporations. … You’d be logging on to a big IBM server rather than doing this on your laptop assuming the web have ever gotten this far.

          Instead, to read your comment, I’m logging into the depths of a big data-center owned by Amazon, a very large corporation, which is running a centralized system of perhaps thousands of “personal computers” or perhaps a dozen IBM mainframe computers, which have turned out to be particularly useful as servers for the Web and other network applications (who knew?). Yes, reports of the death of the mainframe have been greatly exaggerated.

          The “laptop” is nothing more than an upgrade of what would have been called a “dumb terminal” back in the old days. It too was manufactured by a large corporation, not built in a garage.

      2. Well maybe I’m “romantic,” but there may be somebody out there right now tinkering in his or her garage on a new innovation that will be a billion dollar industry some day. I’d lay good odds on it. Here’s another consideration, As technology branches out and becomes ever more complex, there are ever more combinations that can be thought of by our garage tinkerer. Just look at all of the phone apps that are developed by people “tinkering.” This is an example of innovations that were not possible when Mr. Hewlett and Mr Packard developed their tube type audio oscillator in the garage.

    3. @Stephen Galperin

      “It’s too bad that fission technology can’t be developed in a garage…”

      Actually, there was a young man who did try to build a nuclear reactor in a potting shed behind his step-dad’s house. It is documented in the book titled “The Radioactive Scout”. Once discovered, the EPA was brought in by state authorities, immediately declared the shed a Superfund site, came in with full contamination suits, tore the site down, and cleaned the site within three days. EPA did not tell the neighbors what was going on.

      Just thought I’d pass that along….
      Flying Finn

        1. @Eino

          Thanks for the link. There were several follow-on youtube stories similar to this, including one about a 15-yr old with a “fusion” device in his garage.

          1. IIRC the Boy Scout kid ended up making a neutron generator. That allows you to make incredibly minute amounts of transuranic elements but comes nowhere near to a “fast reactor” that the media was reporting. Same with the “fusion device”. A fair number of amateurs have built versions of the Farnsworth–Hirsch fusor. Sketches and plans are on the internet. Some claim neutron production in the range of 1E06 n/sec, but there are also some aneutronic reactions of interest.

  3. Just one complaint about this article, which is this sentence:

    “The nuclear industry seems to be spending most of its political capital asking for what appear to be special subsidies designed to keep existing power plants operating for a few more years until they die a more natural death at the end of their useful life.”

    Industry advocates engaged in the debate to encourage the market to recognize and properly value the important aspects that nuclear generation brings are not asking for “special subsidies”. Rather, they are seeking a way to allow the market to place a monetary value on those things that are not now valued when in fact they should be, and therefore allow an unfair competitive advantage to polluting generators (natural gas) or unreliable, outrageously expensive generators (wind and solar). Unless it is resolved, this is an issue that will dog the deployment of any advanced reactor technologies as surely as it does the nuclear plants of today.

    Further, we are not seeking “a few more years” of operating life, but at least 20 and perhaps 40 more years for useful assets that are functional in every aspect and have tremendous value in providing clean energy at affordable and stable prices. 20 or 40 years is more than “a few”.

    Keeping the existing fleet operating and in good shape both functionally and financially does not preclude the deployment of newer systems that can be readily integrated into an enhanced power grid with a majority contribution from nuclear sources. I agree that playing defense instead of seizing the initiative and taking the fight to our opponents is probably not a good game plan, but neither will Internecine conflicts advance our cause.

    I understand and believe in the value of electricity to a modern society, and I won’t rehash those arguments here since we all know them. But unlike those who sing the siren songs of the death of baseload power, I believe there will always be a need for it, and that need will likely be met by systems that resemble those of today, not a whole bunch of small microgrids. There are simply too many things out there in a modern industrial society that need constant and copious amounts of electricity.

    1. @Wayne SW

      While I understand your perspective and that of the industry, please pay attention to the words “seems” and “appears”. I talking about what the public sees and hears.

      The industry’s product has not been devalued, the nuclear industry’s competitors have done a better job at getting massive levels of unfair support. With few exceptions, the nuclear plant operators have been silent on making the case that the market is being tilted against them with MASSIVE subsidies of taxpayer funds plus mandates that add diffuse but real costs for all electricity ratepayers.

      Now that the competition has established their subsidy gravy train, the industry’s response sounds like “we need subsidies too.” That tells the audience that our product is expensive and cannot compete without government assistance.

      Finally, the industry quietly accepted at least $3 billion in added capital expenditures plus an uncalculated annual operating cost increment in order to allow the NRC to appear to be responding to public outcry over Fukushima. A similar increment was imposed without sufficient pushback from the industry as a result of security mandates following 911.

      In neither case was there a corresponding increase in safety or security that came anywhere close to fulfilling a reasonable cost-benefit computation. Because of its defensive posture, the industry is generally adverse to resisting a call for “more safety” or “more security.” At best, resistance happens inside closed door meetings and people come out saying things like “Whew. At least we didn’t have to shut down our plants.”

      1. Its true that there seems to be a strong undertow in the industry that favors acquiescence rather than resolve. I was in the research reactor business for years and can’t count the number of times there was the attitude of “its easier to go along with foolish and unfounded regulatory ratcheting rather than stand up to it”, which prevailed in the decision-making process. Trouble is, you do that often enough and eventually it gets you run out of business when the funding well runs dry. Perhaps that is what we are seeing today in the power reactor business.

        OTOH, when you are fighting for your life, it is hard to resist the seduction of accommodation rather than confrontation, especially if that buys you more survival time. My hope, and that of many others, is that if we can weather this perfect storm of (temporarily) low gas prices and the political inertia of subsidies out the wazoo for unreliables, we can not only retain our existing base of operable plants, but gradually move to the (hopefully) lower-cost and inherently safe systems, which tend to go hand in hand. Just from a resource preservation viewpoint, it would be a shame to lose any more of our assets before we have developed and demonstrated a viable alternative. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t stand up for what we believe to be true, but it does mean going the extra mile to make sure we have a firm justification for maximizing our existing assets. Throwing away perfectly functional power plants for lack of a fraction of a cent per kwhr of revenue doesn’t seem right to me.

      2. I agree that asking for subsidies to keep existing plants running is not exactly an inspiring story. I also agree that the undue subsidies and other large market interventions on behalf of renewables are a significant source of existing plants’ economic problems. Finally, I believe that the industry is responding to its escalating cost problem by asking for subsidies (that will forgive its escalating costs), as opposed to addressing the real problem (i.e., how to bring costs down). If nothing is done about these issues, costs will continue to escalate and eventually no amount of subsidy will be enough. Hell, even renewables w/ storage may begin to beat nuclear on cost (the Hinkley project in Britain being a possible example).

        All that said, however, I agree with Wayne that nuclear plants *deserve* financial credit for its non-polluting, non-CO2-emitting nature. They *deserve* to be given some economic advantage over fossil units. Fossil generation (esp. coal) has large external costs that are not reflected in its price (even w/o global warming), whereas nuclear’s external costs are negligible. Even a small amount (< 1 cent/kW-hr) of credit would halt all nuclear plant closures.

        Right now, if surplus generating capacity exists (say, due to a large amount of renewable power being forced onto the grid by govt. fiat), and a nuclear or coal plant must close, the nuclear plant gets closed if its operating costs are so much as 0.1 cents/kW-hr more than those of the coal plant. That just ain't right.

        Another factor, often cited for nuclear plant closures, is the extremely low cost of natural gas. Well, whereas nuclear's escalating costs are primarily driven by relentlessly increasing regulations and requirements (far out of proportion with the actual hazards involved), natural gas (fracking) costs have dropped dramatically due to a tremendous *relaxation* of regulations and requirements. The Energy Policy Act of 2005 granted fracking operations blanket exemption from both the Clean Water and Safe Drinking Water Acts. This was "surprisingly" followed by a large drop in the cost of gas. I've come to believe that regulations drive the cost of things more than anything else…

        The ideal solution, of course, would be to level the regulatory playing field. But barring that (and indeed I doubt that will ever happen), giving nuclear some tangible credit for being non-polluting is the best (and defensible) policy alternative.

      3. I completely agree with everything you said in the bottom half of your post, Rod. The industry does not push back at all against ever increasing requirements. As I’ve written many times, rarely if ever are cost/benefit calculations performed on these requirements. If they were, the results would be comical in most cases because an honest analysis would show the benefits to be minimal (especially what we’ve just leaned from Fukushima, i.e., the LACK of any significant health consequences from even a worst case release).

        I’m also aware of the dynamic of doing analyses that aren’t accurate, but are instead unrealistically conservative, because the goal is not to provide the most accurate result, but to make the regulator nod their head and go away as quickly as possible. I’ve done it myself, many times. In addition to analyses, the same idea would apply to agreeing to requirements that are not really justified by the actual risk reduction.

        I also think that the industry has a tendency to agree to as many requirements as they think they can afford (again, to make the regulator, and perhaps policy makers and the public, “go away”). The problem is that “how much you can afford” is subject to change. I think that they essentially agreed to overly-strict requirements based on a given, assumed future market price for power, only to be surprised by the great reduction in natural gas prices, as well as the amount of subsidized renewable generation that also acts to suppress wholesale power prices.

        As you said:

        “…and people come out saying things like “Whew. At least we didn’t have to shut down our plants.”

        Well, eventually the burdens became too heavy, and they did indeed end up having to shut their plants. Not only did the burdens (costs) go up, but the cost that could be “afforded” went down (to their surprise) due to what has happened with gas and subsidized renewables.

        I believe that the industry agrees to all these escalating requirements out of fear of not only the NRC, but policy makers and the public as well. Also, NRC tends to ratchet requirements out of fear of the public, politicians, and anti-nuclear activist organizations.

        The tragedy here (I believe) is that these attempts at appeasement are completely counter productive. If the industry agrees to all these excessive measures, they (effectively) tell the public that all these measures are necessary. If we act like the hazards involved are so great as to require those measures, the public will take us at our word. That in turn results in ever increasing levels of fear. We need to insist on measures that are actually in line with the hazards involved, and push back hard against requirements that are far out of balance with the hazards. We need to not be shy about very clearly communicating the level of hazards (or lack thereof) to the public.

    2. “Keeping the existing fleet operating and in good shape both functionally and financially does not preclude the deployment of newer systems that can be readily integrated into an enhanced power grid with a majority contribution from nuclear sources”

      Well, if you could actually deliver “keeping the existing fleet in good shape both functionally and financially” in a timely and efficient manner you might be in a different position today. But as the San Onofre SG tube debacle so clearly demonstrated, with great cost to the consumer, the industry seems unable to police itself sufficiently to deliver trust instilling performance. Perhaps its unfair to blame the NE industry, when in fact it was SCE that gave birth to that fiasco. But it is the NE industry that is the culprit in the eyes of the public. Once again, right or wrong, your own actions, and that of SCE, provided the fodder for a strong argument in favor of retiring our older NPPs.

      1. An interesting perspective @poa. I tend to blame Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (MHI), who either messed up the design or manufacture (or both) of the steam generators. In fact, you talk about great cost to the consumer, and I do not think the lawsuits involving the utility and MHI are completed yet. If MHI is found to be liable, the cost to the consumer could be largely recuperated.

            1. @Kevin Krause

              Sounds to me like a “he said, she said” here. SCE thinks they have a case and is going in with a big number. They’re an American company challenging a deep pockets foreign company and probably think they have an in with the arbitrator.

              I’ll wait and see how it comes out. My bet is that the settlement will be well under a billion and that the terms will never be made public.

              Here is an article that is only three weeks old detailing some of the items of contention and mentioning that original MHI contract liability number of $138 million.

              http://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/2016/jan/30/san-onofre-anniversary/

          1. @Rod I agree that each side is digging in on their position. There probably is a document that limits liability to $137 million. It is probably also void in the case of “gross negligence”. Can SCE prove gross negligence? Maybe, maybe not. It looks like they think their chances are good.

            I am not sure which terms you think will never be made public. The dollar amount will need to be known at least by the PUC, because it will offset money that needs to be collected from the ratepayers. I believe the dollar amount of the settlement will get out. Other terms of the settlement may remain confidential.

            1. @Kevin Krause

              I’m not sure what makes you think SCE believes their chances are good. They are certainly shooting for the moon, but as I understand legal strategies, that is often the tactic of the desperate, especially if they are regulated and have “ratepayers” that will eventually cover whatever expenses they are unable to recover from the entities that they have sued.

              As I’ve tried to make clear here, I am a fission fan, but I often come across situations where “nuclear” companies have dug themselves into deep holes through their own business or technical incompetence.

      2. No question that both the San Onofre and Crystal River fiascos were self-inflicted wounds. Of the two, I hold the CR3 incident in greater disdain, because they tried to do a complicated job on the cheap. There is a place for economizing in certain areas of the business but major modifications to plant infrastructure is not one of them. SCE erred in trusting Mitsubishi’s analytical model, and also taking a regulatory path that anyone who knows the business knows would end in grief. The other recent closures I would not be so quick to lay at the door of the NE business. Kewaunee, Vermont Yankee, Pilgrim, and Fitzpatrick were all forced to compete in a flawed market where unfair advantages were deliberately granted to competitors, either proactively by granting huge subsidies and then socializing those costs, or passively, by not valuing the zero-emissions and high reliability of nuclear compared to polluting generators like natural gas. Those plants were also saddled with millions of dollars of costs as a result of regulatory ratcheting, which is like tying an anchor around the neck of a drowning man. Rather than stand together and push back against unproductive and unjustified regulatory ratcheting, the reactor operators decided they’d rather switch than fight.

      3. I worked at SONGS as an SCE employee for several years. There were many extremely capable people there. Some of the best I’ve ever worked with.

        But the company as a whole was a political / social justice organization. For most of my time there the CEO was John Bryson, a lawyer who worked for the Environmental Defense Fund. Celebrate LTGB month? Sure, why not?

        SCE fought hard for electricity deregulation in California which passed unanimously if I recall. Until it bit back – badly. Then they ran to the state to save them.

        The annual reports always featured a new wind or solar facility or electric vehicle charging station while hiding anything nuclear related.

        SONGS 1 was closed as I understand it when the state PUC offered to go easy on them in recovering costs. I suspect that a similar deal was made for units 2&3. There is currently legal action being taken over an illegal private meeting between SCE and the PUC where public business was discussed. The PUC chairman (a former SCE executive!) was forced to resign.

        Officially, the SONGS faulty SGs were largely attributed a faulty Mitsubishi design code that was insufficiently benchmarked. A contributing factor was ineffective oversight by SCE. Ironically, SONGS had the largest staff by far of any US nuclear station. Something like 50% more than the runner up.

        While the SONGS debacle was centered on a technical flaw it was really a symptom of a dysfunctional state government and a feckless corporate management. As a side note, a current example is the South African utility Eskom. I deal with companies that are tripping over themselves trying to sell Eskom new reactors. One mentioned that cell phone service was out an entire day and there were several hours each day where electric power was unavailable.

        The nuclear industry’s problems are not so much technology but management.

        Don’t want to sound like a gloomy Gus here but from what I’ve seen with new nuclear, not much has improved.

      4. @poa

        I’ve said this a hundred times, but I’ll say it one more.

        The mechanical issues at San Onofre were quite minor and repairable. The loss of two very large nuclear power units came as a result of an incredibly politically charged, massive overreaction to a 75 gallon PER DAY leak from a single tube out of 9,700 tubes in a heat exchanger that was designed to be able to operate at full power even with 10% (970 tubes) plugged to stop leaks.

        The tech specs for that power plant did not even require the operator to stop operating if computed leak rate was less than 150 gallons per day from a steam generator.

        The operating company could have, within its operating license, simply shut down the plant, found the leaking tube, plugged the leak and started up. If wanting to be conservative, they could have conducted an inspection of that steam generator to find out if there were any other tubes in danger of leaking. That inspection would have identified about 100 tubes in a very small area of the heat exchanger with signs of excessive WEAR (not corrosion). Those tubes could have been plugged as well before starting operations.

        For some reason, the utility decided they needed to submit a corrective action letter to the NRC that made the commitment to ask permission before restarting. That letter, sent to Boxer’s buddy Greg Jaczko, gave total control of a technical situation to politicians.

        1. Why does finding and plugging leaking tubes in a nuclear reactor sounds alarming to any technical person?

          As we all know one problem never comes alone and usually leads to another problem.

          Common symptom on old systems and designs: material fatigue, embrittlement, corrosion you name it, anyone keeping a classic car alive knows what it means…. but a classic car can be towed and safely parked unlike a nuclear reactor.

          Rod, i am happy to know that you are NOT actively working in the industry.

          1. Why does finding and plugging leaking tubes in a nuclear reactor sounds alarming to any technical person?

            It doesn’t, and I seriously doubt that you are a “technical person.”

            These components are designed to have tubes plugged. There is quite a bit of sophisticated equipment that has been designed and built to do the job.

            Rod, i am happy to know that you are NOT actively working in the industry.

            I seriously doubt that you work in any industry … except perhaps the Internet disinformation industry, “Pete.”

        2. Common symptom on old systems and designs: material fatigue, embrittlement, corrosion you name it, anyone keeping a classic car alive knows what it means…. but a classic car can be towed and safely parked unlike a nuclear reactor.

          “Near Braceville, Ill., the Braidwood Generating Station, owned by the Exelon Corporation, has leaked tritium into underground water that has shown up in the well of a family nearby. The company, which has bought out one property owner and is negotiating with others, has offered to help pay for a municipal water system for houses near the plant that have private wells.

          In a survey of all 10 of its nuclear plants, Exelon found tritium in the ground at two others. On Tuesday, it said it had had another spill at Braidwood, about 60 miles southwest of Chicago, and on Thursday, the attorney general of Illinois announced she was filing a lawsuit against the company over that leak and five earlier ones, dating to 1996. The suit demands among other things that the utility provide substitute water supplies to residents. “

          1. @Pete:

            We’ve discussed tritium here dozens of times. It’s not even a tempest in a teapot, but cold tea in a cup. There is no hazard to humans. The only real issue is that nuclear plant operators are held to a silly standard of zero uncontrolled discharges, even of completely innocuous isotopes that are massively diluted in purer water than what comes out of your tap.

          2. @pete, rod

            Here is an example of how ridiculous the standards are:
            A nuclear power plant was cleaning out the”Screen House,” a building on the bank of theriver with rotating screens that filters out the trash in the water so that the pumps could pump the filtered water for cooling purposes. They were using a portable gasoline driven pump to pump water fropm the river and spray down the building and the silt that had accumulated on the floor of the area on the building side of the screen. This caused the silt to return back into the river from which it came from. The resident NRC engineer. saw this action, noted that their license did not include “unmonitored” release of plant discharge from this facility and promptly wrote the plant a Notice of Violation. In researching if the violation was legitimate the plant determined that even if they simply returned water to the river from a flooding condition or even sprayed the water from the pump to the river they violated the regulations. Thus the plant got nationwide coverage of “Illegal Plant Discharge of “potentially” contaminated waste.”

          1. @Pete

            You are quickly wearing out your welcome. This space welcomes people who want to learn and want to engage in polite conversation with knowledgable people.

            It doesn’t welcome people who like to start fights or attack others, especially when they have displayed little or no subject matter comprehension or expertise.

            Please revise your approach or find another place to converse – if that is what you call what you are doing.

  4. You could also supply electricity from nuclear facilities practically anywhere around the world– without having a nearby nuclear power plant– if nuclear power plants were also used to manufacture carbon neutral methanol. This could be done from the pyrolysis of garbage plus the electrolysis of water– or from the US Navy’s new fuel from seawater process.

    The ocean production of methanol for electricity production and for transportation fuel would also have the advantage of requiring– the mass production– of an enormous number of floating nuclear power plants. These could be remotely located in large clusters practically anywhere in the oceans. There are vast amounts of remote oceanic area in the Pacific totally under the jurisdiction by the United States government that would be perfect for Ocean Nuclear synfuel production.

    Marcel

    1. “The ocean production of methanol for electricity production and for transportation fuel would also have the advantage of requiring– the mass production– of an enormous number of floating nuclear power plants.”

      Can’t you just put them on land and pump seawater to them? Seems like it would be a lot simpler.

  5. *Personal aside: OK…SONGS…it goes to my socialist outlook on energy: only a large centralized and (preferably) national energy agency should be running the grid and generation. Like France. Like most countries. The closing of SONGs was an aspect of the bankruptcy of unregulated (‘cuz the were not regulated to *stay open*) capitalism that puts profit and investor concerns over the climate and stability of the grid. ’nuff said on that by moi….*

    The grid can be run around the world if there is flexibility in generation while load moves up and down. It’s that simple. The French do it (though of course they also use some gas and hydro for load following). The important thing is not only a high tech quickly responding *large* grid or several grids with inter-ties to other grids but enough of a reserve, preferably in the double-digits, percentage of the load at any given point in time that can respond to an unexpected lost of generation on the grid and/or a sudden increase in load.

    Now…with SMRs, it makes a 100% nuclear grid doable in a big way. A combination of large utility size atomic plants providing baseload and hundreds, even thousand of rapid load following SMRs…plop them down in both transmission AND distribution sub stations…and your smart grid becomes truly smart and responsive.

    David Walters

  6. All these words about safety of nuclear power plants calling them clean, without having a solution to store the generated waste, sorry why is it clean again??

    After all only 16% of the worlds electric energy comes from nuclear power, this number is not growing but decreasing year by year.

    Nuclear power is what it is, Insignificant that fact combined with unmanageable waste and safety risks its insane to continue.

    1. @Pete,

      You only need to look at the nuclear construction plans for China, India, and Russia plus all of the international sales that China and Russia are pursuing (including floating nuclear power plants). The percent of electricity from nuclear will greatly expand in those countries and also in other parts of the world. End result is your prediction is way off base.

      Also, you are completely wrong about the wastes. It is contained, solid, and manageable. The issue with dealing with this “waste” is purely political. To engineers like myself, it is NOT wastes and can be recycled to extract a lot of useful material (uranium, non-bomb grade plutonium, and radioisotopes for medical and industrial uses) and in a non-proliferation and transparent manner.

      1. “Also, you are completely wrong about the wastes. It is contained, solid, and manageable.”

        You are completely wrong about the waste, it is contained for now, maybe the next 150 years, but not for what is technically required the next 10K or even 100k years.

        So please point out which country figured out how to safely store its nuclear waste, i can wait to read the reply.

        1. The license application for the Yucca Mountain waste repository has been submitted to the NRC. The only problem remaining is the politicians who get in the way.

          Thank goodness somebody beat up Harry Reid and he has decided to finally retire.

          1. Are you kidding?
            The Yucca mountain “solution” would not pass a standard fema, the storage is above a groundwater table, they designed sheet metal roofs to cover the containers from dripping water. Better do your homework before posting.

            “DOE engineers have designed waste canisters with two-inch walls of stainless steel protection, covered by half an inch of Alloy 22, a corrosion-resistant nickel-metal alloy. When studies revealed that there would be much more water percolation, or dripping, within Yucca Mountain than previously expected, engineers designed special titanium drip shields to be placed over the waste canisters.

            The State of Nevada, however, says that the drip shields and DOE’s reliance on waste packages underline the fact that Yucca Mountain is geologically unsuitable for a repository. The State points to the possibility of volcanism and seismic activity, and notes that the area is one of the most geologically active in the country. The Agency for Nuclear Projects also remarks that “the Yucca repository is the only repository under consideration in the world that is located above the water table, not below it.”

          2. “Thank goodness somebody beat up Harry Reid and he has decided to finally retire”

            Harry Reid is a spineless wimp. But here you are repeating unfounded right wing crap, put out there by wack jobs such as Savage or Limbaugh. Show us one single bit of evidence that Reid was “beat up” other than assertions made by shameless media whores that make thier living dividing Americans by stereotyping and sensationalism. It says alot about you, Brian, that you repeat crap like that without even a shred of evidence being presented that lends truth to the assertion. Do you ever think for yourself?

          3. Better do your homework before posting.

            I guarantee you, “Pete,” that I know more about Yucca Mountain than you will ever know.

            All of your talking points could have been (and probably were) lifted from Harry Reid’s website. That covers the extent of your “homework.” As Finn has already pointed out, all of these “issues” brought up by the State of Nevada have been addressed ad nauseam in the licensing application and supporting documentation submitted by the DOE.

        2. Containment for 150 years is 30 half-lives or more for everything with a HL <= 5 years, and about 5 half-lives for the Sr-90 and Cs-137 which are the major persistent contributors to radiation emissions after the fuel is cool enough for dry storage.

          People are paranoid about dry-cask storage at Palisades.  I calculated that the entire Cs-137 inventory at Palisades, completely extracted and dumped into the Great Lakes, would only get to about 2x the maximum standard for drinking water.  After 30 years of storage, the worst you could get is 1x the standard… and that assumes complete extraction.

          To get that level of extraction, you would have to work at it quite seriously.  No mere leak could get close.  So where's the "danger"?

          1. oh dear, how sweet, you forgot to mention the other byproducts of all nuclear waste:

            Technetium-99 (half-life 220,000 years)
            Iodine-129 (half-life 15.7 million years)
            Neptunium-237 (half-life two million years)
            Plutonium-239 (half-life 24,000 years)

            Whats the danger? I will not call you a hypocrite if i am allowed to store any of the suff mentioned above under your sofa, otherwise STF……

          2. And the majority of nuclear “waste” is Uranium-238 (half-life 4.5 billion years).

            OMG!! We’re all going to die!! /sarc

            Pete – Please take a physics course, for goodness sake! Make sure that it covers modern physics, which will inform you that the longer the half-life, the less radioactive the stuff is.

            I guess EL and Bas have the month off. I can’t say that I’m impressed with their replacement.

          3. Technetium-99 (half-life 220,000 years)

            I’ve been directly injected with technetium-99m.  Instead of having 1 chance in about 5000 of decaying during my lifetime (during which it would most likely be excreted first), its half-life of 6 hours meant that it was almost certain to deposit its gamma ray in my body.

            I survived the cardiac stress test, technetium or no technetium.

            Iodine-129 (half-life 15.7 million years)

            So about 1 chance in 300,000 of decaying during a human lifetime.  Until it does, it’s chemically functional iodine.  Essential for the thyroid.

            Iodine deficiency creates hypothyroid cretinism.  Explains a lot….

            Plutonium-239 (half-life 24,000 years)

            Whats the danger?

            I should be lucky enough to live as long and well as the average member of the UPPU study group, whose Pu-239 body burden was as much as 1.4 micrograms and whose intake was estimated to be roughly twice as much.

            Looking at those guys’ age at death, why would I be worried about a little plutonium?  It obviously didn’t do them one bit of harm.  Now, YOUR stress hormones from your phobia… you might want to have your cortisol level checked, and maybe get some scientifically-literate psychologist to treat your phobia.

        3. @Pete,

          Keep up with the news, my ancestral homeland licensed a deep geologic repository! Quoting from a December 2015 article in Nature:

          “Why Finland now leads the world in nuclear waste storage”

          See the rest of the article at: http://www.nature.com/news/why-finland-now-leads-the-world-in-nuclear-waste-storage-1.18903

          Also, France is well known for reprocessing used nuclear fuel safely and efficiently for decades and burning up the plutonium in their commercial reactors (e.g., MOX fuel)

          Even Wikipedia has all of this information…..

          Yes, Virginia, it can be done!

          CASE CLOSED!!!!!

          Enjoy,
          Flying Finn

          1. @Pete,

            I also suggest that you read the Yucca Mountain SER. All of the points that the State of Nevada raised were addressed in those volumes.

            Additionally, Nye County in the State of Nevada still consents to (i.e., wants) DOE to build and operate the repository!

            If you don’t like that, then change the nuclear waste policy act. Good luck with that because the House will never agree, especially since the NRC has stated that it would meet all regulatory safety criteria, even EPA’s limits, to permanently store the nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain.

            Enjoy!
            Flying Finn

          2. I understand that MOX can only be cycled a couple of times in LWRs, because the buildup of Am and Cm makes further use impossible.

            Obviously, this means that some fast-spectrum reactor is necessary to finish the job of actinide disposal.  If France can’t resurrect the Fenix or Superfenix, maybe Russia will sell them a BN-1200.

          3. EP – You understand correctly. Think of it as breeding plutonium in reactors that already exist and are operating. It’s not a long-term solution, but it’s almost a no-brainer for what to do in the short term. By the time the “actinide disposal” reactors are ready (and it won’t require very many of them to get the job done), there will be plenty of fuel to feed them.

            1. @Pete

              That’s a second strike after a warning to behave better. One more opinionated attack with poorly sourced information will be strike number three.

              Some politicians in France are TALKING about closing some of the nuclear plants. They even managed to pass a law freezing the total number of plants at its current level with a goal of reducing nuclear’s portion of electric power to 50% by 2025. It is highly unlikely that more than one or two will be closed within the next decade.

              http://www.reuters.com/article/us-climatechange-summit-nuclear-france-idUSKBN0TE21820151125

          4. Someone should one day do a documentary on the demise of the Superphenix. Most of the available information on websites/videos is sketchy and in French. In the pre-internet realm, there are some books, also in French.
            I’m almost convinced that digging into that information would once again reveal the hand of anti-nuclear/non-proliferation activism and politics. Superficially, it seems they shut down a perfectly good reactor, a special one at that (fast breeder), for no good reason.

  7. If we are serious about reducing CO2 emissions the globally we must keep every nuclear power station open for as long as practical and build as many as possible in the fastest possible time.

    History shows that only nuclear power can reduce electricity emissions. French CO2 emissions are just 44g/kWh using 63GW of nuclear.
    http://www.rte-france.com/en/eco2mix/chiffres-cles-en

    This is 11 times less than Germany at 484g/kWh using 80GW of renewables with gas and coal backup. German electricity CO2 emissions in 2015 were 313M tonnes (see page 41) and electricity production was 647TWh (see page 13).
    http://www.agora-energiewende.de/fileadmin/Projekte/2016/Jahresauswertung_2016/Agora_Jahresauswertung_2015_Slides_web_EN.pdf

    At the current CO2 emissions reduction rate Germany will reduce to French CO2 emissions by 2164 providing they do not close any more nuclear reactors.

    Over the past 50 years civilian nuclear power generation has accumulated about 270,000 tonnes of high level waste which to my knowledge has killed nobody and is unlikely to, see.
    http://jmkorhonen.net/2013/08/15/graph-of-the-week-what-happens-if-nuclear-waste-repository-leaks/

    By contrast air pollution kills about 5.5 million people annually.
    https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/02/160212140912.htm

    As Jim Hansen says clean nuclear power saves millions of lives just by cleaning our air.
    http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/abs/kh05000e.html

    1. “By contrast air pollution kills about 5.5 million people annually.”

      Look at this data and the map. http://www.numbeo.com/pollution/rankings_by_country.jsp

      Seems strange that the present administration is imposing “EPA pollution regulations” that literally requires the particulate levesl – (PM2.5) see http://www3.epa.gov/pm/actions.html – that are lower than the air that they burn. Thus the EPA has mandated that all Coal power plants become rate payer provided “Filters.” How is this going to help the other 150+ countries? For half of the population of india when there is no sun/wind they will still burn dung to cook their food. Same for many other countries.

  8. Would the astute, knowledgeable AGW experts please explain to me how the CO2 affects areas with a higher population more than areas with a lower population? THis just does not seem logical or even possible if the increase in CO2 is the “Cause” of the perceived global warming/climate change.

    For at least 40 years James Goldridge (CA State Climatologist) has published more than a dozen papers detailing how the temperature of each county in CA with the lowest population has not significantly increased in temperature over the last 100 years. These studies show, when you graph the temperature increase of each county that those with over a population of 1 Million have increased by about 4 degrees, those with a population between 100,000 and 1 million by only 2 degrees and those with a population less than 100,000 have less than a 1 degree change in temperature over the last 100 years.

    Studies are on the internet, but most are paywalled, Might be able to look at them if you are associated with a college/university with access to them. Others have noted the same phenomenon, however, all have been dismissed as people trying to prove that AGW is caused by the “disproven UHI effect.”

  9. There is nothing disproven about the urban heat island (UHI) effect. It is caused by

    – the generally darker and more thermally massive surfaces in urban areas absorbing more heat during the day and re-radiating it at night, as compared to vegetation in the countryside,

    – transpiration of moisture in vegetation absorbs latent heat of vaporization which has a local cooling effect; this effect is of course less in highly-populated paved-over urban areas,

    – overall energy consumption appears ultimately as waste heat, which has a slight warming effect in denser urban areas.

    Locally-elevated urban temperatures, due to UHI, are a noticeable feature of local weather reports. Temperature monitoring stations in urban areas are routinely normalized for the local UHI effect, among several other factors, when used to calculated averages over wider areas.

    UHI, and warming due to elevated CO2, are completely separate effects.

    1. …but I suppose you could argue that urban areas are man-made and therefore “anthropomorphic”. It would be “anthropomorphic local warming” as opposed to “anthropomorphic global warming” however.

  10. “…or the invention of magically cheap, energy dense and durable storage devices.”

    This is a burden for the pro-Nuclear movement as well in relation to replacing the ICE in personal transport and I don’t think incremental improvements to electrochemical batteries are going to of any use to the working stiff owning a truck.

    However, I don’t see much motivation within Big Nuclear to do so…whereas its a life or death issue in renewables.

    1. You don’t need a 100% electric solution to de-carbonize transport.  A 90% solution will do.  Liquid fuels from biomass and waste will suffice for the other 10%.

      In my experience, about 7.5 kWh is sufficient to de-carbonize 75% or so of ground transport.  I don’t know how much is required to hit 90%, but molten-salt heat storage for grid-level electric supply would offload much of the burden from batteries.

      1. @E-P

        I might be mistaken, but isn’t the portion of mini-vans, light trucks, RV’s heavy duty vehicles, etc. 50% or more of the energy use in ground transportation?

        7.5 kWh might be enough for a light, short distance commuter, but it would hardly do a reasonable job of replacing the 250 or so useful kWh provided by an ICE with a 25 gallon fuel tank. It wouldn’t even replace the 180 kWh available to my Jetta TDI with a full tank of fuel. (Note: those numbers include reasonable approximations of the fuel energy to wheel energy efficiency for gasoline or diesel engines.)

        1. isn’t the portion of mini-vans, light trucks, RV’s heavy duty vehicles, etc. 50% or more of the energy use in ground transportation?

          LDVs travel the vast majority of all VMT in the USA.  If you’re starting every trip leg with a fully-charged battery, it doesn’t take a very big one to electrify a lot of your mileage.

          7.5 kWh might be enough for a light, short distance commuter

          It gets me at least 16-18 miles in all but the very worst weather.

          it would hardly do a reasonable job of replacing the 250 or so useful kWh provided by an ICE with a 25 gallon fuel tank.

          It doesn’t have to.  If you can charge everywhere and fast enough (drawing energy from a sufficiently large store, like a big steam turbine powered by a big tank of molten solar salt) you would be able to electrify 10+ miles from almost every stop.  How many trip legs are more than 10 miles in an average day?

          My problem is lack of charging opportunities, especially 240 volts.

          1. @E-P

            Admittedly, my travel situation is rare, but nearly every time I get into my Jetta, I will be traversing a minimum of several hundred miles.

            I don’t have a daily commute anymore. When we travel around town, I’m usually in my wife’s car or the old Mustang ragtop.

            1. My “commute” is just a few steps down the hallway, but I rarely fly when I travel to conferences, dinners, meetings, or other information gathering activities.

      2. EVs are very efficient right now, but this is only to get the most (range) out of the batteries, which have limited storage in the more affordable models.
        Someone sitting in a Tesla Model S with an 80kWh battery, close to home, with 150KW superchargers nearby, isn’t going to be very motivated to conserve energy. He will probably accelerate/slow down at will, turn on the heating as much as he likes etc, and no longer have much motivation to conserve, nor should he. As battery capacity grows and EVs get bigger (Tesla Model X, VIA VTRUX), consumption will grow also.

  11. Incongruously inspired by San Francisco cable car ride…

    Maybe one way to minimize the recharge service station pit stop hassle; Imagine electric induction cables buried under Interstate lanes and major highways, constantly keeping your electric car battery charged till you go off lane. (Maybe internally metered in car or such?). Mandating buses and trucks to go electric would be justification enough to install system. Cuts down disposal of prematurely worn-out batteries too, etc… Just a wild notion.

    James Greenidge
    Queens NY

    1. There’s a guy out of Japan who proposes a capacitive coupling to the steel belts in the tires.  I like that better than induction; a metal body shields electric fields almost perfectly.

          1. @E-P

            I didn’t delete your comment, even though it includes nothing but a link. You have earned some forbearance due to the hundreds of comments you have posted over the years.

            However, please remember that comments need to include at last some original thought or statement. A link by itself is worthless without some kind of explanation as to why it’s worth the inherent risk of following a link to click on it.

          2. I could have gone into depth but sometimes brevity is the soul of wit.

            BTW, Siemens has already demonstrated an electrified highway using overhead lines.  The problem with these things is that they’re ugly and vulnerable to damage or sabotage.

  12. By my reckoning, the design by Leslie Dewan and her colleagues of Transatomic Power, at http:transatomicpower.com seems quite convincingly deserving of her name for it
    “Waste Annihilating Molten Salt Reactor”. It is calculated to run and breed fuel at 1.8% enrichment.
    Presuming there is no serious error in the design calculations, and perhaps allowing for a slight admixture of zirconium deuteride in the zirconium hydride moderator, It will indeed be able to take the long-lived, actinide 96% of “spent” LWR nuclear fuel, and prove that it is only “slightly used”. the Carter ban on “reprocessing” which makes spent fuel “nuclear waste” by deliberately wasting it, will have to be rescinded, but it was intended to not enable chemical extraction of straight plutonium.
    So today’s huge and terrifying US inventory of a mere 70 thousand tons or so of slightly used nuclear fuel, a.k.a. “long lived deadly nuclear waste” could be progressively partitioned into about 2800 tons of short lived fission products and 67,200 tons of WAMSR fuel, which in its turn will gradually become about 67,000 GWa (gigawatt years) of electrical energy and the same mass of short lived waste.
    The catch is, of course, that construction and demonstration of a prototype may take five years, and the Devil only knows how long to get NRC approval.
    But the principle is well enough established, that the dread of “nuclear waste” is totally unjustified. That problem is solved., and should not be permitted to block new LWR reactors.

  13. Rod, and all who read these:
    I’m a hard core liberal, lifelong environmentalist, and still “believe in” democracy.
    I believe also that Al Gore does not take seriously enough the threat he describes in “Inconvenient Truth” — otherwise by now, being a reasonably intelligent man, he’d realise not only that biomass, (he knows that ethanol is a mistake) but also solar, wind, and the waves that are second-hand wind, are utterly incapable of ousting fossil carbon.
    Our democratic system is heavily contaminated by corporate capitalism, which has far too much influence over what friend “poa” describes and I think laments as the public perception.
    The USA pioneered the molten salt reactor, which incidentally uses as its coolant the same salt, lithium fluoride, as the slightly better class of solar concentrators (parabolic long trough arrays focusing on a common pipe) use as heat storage.

    The “People’s Republic” of China, is in effect the biggest capitalist conglomerate in the world. It has a team of engineers and physicists instructed to produce a viable commercial MSR in ten years.
    Now if it should happen that the ancient Mandarin ruling class of China solves the AGW problem and exports these to the idiot countries that have been buying materials and fechnology from them for “renewable energy” projects, it will prove that I am mistaken in my democratic convictions.

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