Nuclear Energy Blog Carnival #222
Even dedicated pro-nuclear bloggers have been known to take late summer vacations, but the calendar did not prevent the submission of a number of excellent posts to highlight in this week’s Carnival. This event circulates among the top pro-nuclear blogs, and each week it provides descriptions and links to those items submitted to the host as most important or most timely.
Atomic Insights has been a free rider on this valuable effort for far too long; there have been more than 100 issues since the last time the Carnival was hosted here. I’ll do better in the future.
From Nuke Power Talk
EPA’s Proposed Rule: Some of the Complexities
Gail Marcus adds to her previous discussion of EPA’s proposed carbon dioxide emission rules on Nuke Power Talk. This week, she looks at two recent studies related to the topic, one from MIT, and one that is a joint effort of the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) and National Security Program and the Rhodium Group (RHG). The MIT study doesn’t explicitly address the EPA’s proposed rule, but does cover some of the same issues. The CSIS-RHG report is an interim report on a study of the proposed rule that will be completed in the fall. It looks at the possible state and regional impacts of the proposed rule, as well as prices and other impacts.
From Yes Vermont Yankee
Founders of Ben&Jerry’s ice cream were major opponents of Vermont Yankee’s continued operation. However, making, transporting, and storing a national brand of hard ice cream needs a lot of electricity. Angwin notes the energy infrastructure required to manufacture a pint of Cherry Garcia, transport it, and finally take it home from the grocery store. She suggests (tongue in cheek) that we should all switch to soft-serve ice cream, to save energy.
From ANS Nuclear Cafe
The Final Entrant – Last Nuclear Utility in Japan Applies for Restart
by Will Davis
All utilities that own nuclear reactors in Japan have now applied to have inspections conducted for restarting at least one of their reactors, with Hokuriku Electric Power Company submitting an application to restart Shika Unit 2. 20 nuclear units in all now have applications in under the revised and strengthened post-Fukushima safety guidelines of the Nuclear Regulatory Authority.
The Latest Sop to Nuclear Opponents
by Howard Shaffer
The Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant is scheduled to close in December – and the Vermont legislature has established a new citizens’ advisory panel on decommissioning. Howard Shaffer reports on whether this is simply a means to keep an anti-nuclear crusade going, or if information reaching the public might be more balanced and complete this time around.
From Robert Rock, President, Environmentalists for Nuclear, Canada
When healthy fear becomes unhealthy – Nuclear Waste
Robert Rock writes about his experience as an attendee at a one-sided “debate” about a proposed Deep Geologic Repository. He was shocked at the nature of the debate and how anyone who had positive things to say about the science or nuclear in general was very rudely treated. What he saw during this debate was healthy fear, which leads to solid research and developing a plan that covers known eventualities, give way to unhealthy fear.
From Areva North America’s Next Energy Blog
Common Misunderstandings about Nuclear Energy
An exchange on social media prompted a more lengthy consideration of common misunderstandings about modern nuclear energy. As with any complex topic, tapping into science-based, peer-reviewed expert resources is a good way to foster reasonable open discussion and develop a better understanding of the issues.
From Next Big Future
Japan’s nuclear shutdown continues to cost 35 billion us dollars per year
Nextbigfuture interviewed the CEO of Helion Energy
Helion recently received $2 million in funding. Dr. David Kirtley describes his company’s plans to achieve a first commercial scale nuclear fusion system with ten times energy gain in 2019.
From CNN Pressroom
CNN’s FAREED ZAKARIA GPS features an interview with Co-founder & CEO of the Transatomic Power Corporation, Leslie Dewan. Dewan speaks to Fareed about her aspirations to build a carbon-free, sustainable, and scalable nuclear reactor to generate great quantities of electricity.
Note: CNN’s Pressroom did not exactly provide that submission through normal channels to the Nuclear Energy Blog Carnival host, but they did send out a press release about the interview, so I thought it was fair game.
From NEI Nuclear Notes
Why Nuclear Design is the Most Rewarding Career I’ve Ever Had<
Bechtel’s Angela McAlpin is working exactly where she wants to be – in the most demanding industry in the country.
Nuclear Technology’s Trail Out of the Valley of Death
NEI’s Mark Flanagan takes a look at nuclear technology and venture capital investment.
A question about Vermont Yankee (and decommissioning, in general):
Given:
(1) the time value of money;
(2) the possibility of cheaper methods for dismantling (robotics, etc.) that can be developed over 50 years; and
(3) the possibility that the public will wake up someday and understand the benefits of nuclear power (and that the entombed reactor could then be refurbished and restarted)
THEN:
Why is the ENTOMB option so disfavored?
Re: Rick Armknecht —
What happens when a suddenly desperate world/U.N tastes ominous climate effects that’ll change coastlines and rivers and agricultural areas and which will take decades to brake much less reverse? Global crisis emergency action — not one more ton CO2 or soot into the air anymore. Mothballed nukes will be like life insurance in the bank.
James Greenidge
Queens NY
Hey Mr. Adams !
This is off-topic so if you wish to delete – you know I won’t mind….
I’m currently engaged in a heated back and forth with some (mildly) influential
political Progressives here in western Pennsylvania (or as we call it: Frackistan)
I’ve done a decent job correcting their misconceptions about nuclear safety (mostly just by recounting what I’ve learned here at Atomic Insights) but they’re still convinced that wind energy is the way to go. Their defense of “cutting-edge storage capability” (miracle batteries) seems more like faith-based dogma than legitimate science. I need a quick primer on legitimate expectations for 21st century battery storage. Have you covered this topic in the past? Or do you know of a good (free) resource I can tap in to?
Thanks ! As usual – Keep up the good fight ! Oh – and here’s a 10 dollar donation for the kitty.
Best Regards,
Lyle Wayne Moss,
libertystreet@mail.com
@Wayne Moss (Thanks for the donation.)
Coincidentally, one of my email lists just discussed the storage topic. Here is a link to a document with a good, entry-level explanation.
http://www.timothymaloney.net/www.timothymaloney.net/Blog/Entries/2014/2/4_Greenpeace_anti-nuclear_policy.html
Look for heading of “Energy Storage”
Let me know if you need any additional information.
Two quick points to use, regarding storage are:
1) All storage methods which currently exist add more to the cost of the electricity than all but the most expensive methods to generate it in the first place.
2) Wind and solar need backup capacities equivalent to something like a week of demand, at least. If good, affordable storage existed, it would make more sense to build out more nuclear and use such storage to load balance. Less than one day’s worth of demand would be required as storage capacity. A savings of more than a factor of 14 on the storage system alone. Add in the fact that nuclear generation is cheaper than wind and solar and vastly cheaper after the 30 years mark and it’s even more of a no-brainer.
3) Wind installations last 20 years. Solar last 30 years. Nuclear reactors can last 100 years or longer. After the initial installation is paid for, you’ll be replacing it with wind and solar, but have even cheaper electricity with nuclear.
4) All nuclear facilities pay for their clean up and removal with a decommissioning fee deposited in a trust. Who is going to dispose of wind and solar facilities when they wear out in less than 30 years? Who is going to pay for those towers and panels littered all over the landscape?
@ Jeff – Wow, Thanks! I really like the simple cogency of numbers 0ne and three.
Although the friend I’m debating with is better educated and smarter than I am, he is still a mechanical Doofus. (He once thought a circular saw was for cutting circles.) And I think that’s why he so easily falls for the continuing promises of perfect energy storage “just around the corner.” But it’s like Rod says – I doubt that the battery factory is itself battery powered.
@ Rod – Great article! I loved this section:
If we build seven of these $1.6-billion battery-banks, we can keep all of
Long Island’s ~ 8,000,000 population electrified for nearly 1 hour.
Then we light our candles.
Just found this from a new article at bravenewclimate.com:
==================================
It’s important to understand the nature of this EROEI limit. This is not a question of inadequate storage capacity – we can’t just buy or make more storage to make it work. It’s not a question of energy losses during charge and discharge, or the number of cycles a battery can deliver. We can’t look to new materials or technological advances, because the limits at the leading edge are those of earthmoving and civil engineering. The problem can’t be addressed through market support mechanisms, carbon pricing, or cost reductions. This is a fundamental energetic limit that will likely only shift if we find less materially intensive methods for dam construction.
==================================
Go read the whole article. It’s titled: “The Catch-22 of Energy Storage” Very well considered and documented. I was happy to see nuclear listed with an EROI around 80. Some jokers in the anti- movement have tried to lie it down around 2 or 3. Grrrr.
“All storage methods which currently exist add more to the cost of the electricity than all but the most expensive methods to generate it in the first place”
And we cannot expect the technology to improve and evolve? This is one of the things that perplexes me about the pro NE argument offered here. The cynicism and animosity directed towards developing technologies that compete with NE seems so “our way or the highway” that it is hard to realize a motive on the pro’s part that isn’t purely material, never mind all this nattering about helping mankind.
When the first GM electric vehicles came out, was it unreasonable to hope, and predict, that vehicles such as those manufactured by Tesla would be possible? And what will tomorrow bring in the way of battery innovation and storage improvements?
This lack of optimism is somewhat disconcerting, coming from a blog community that purports an altruistic approach to mankind’s energy needs. It is as though you do not want alternatives to fossil fuel to succeed, unless, of course, its YOUR alternative.
Sure we can hope for improvement. We can even fund research.
But until said, affordable storage exists, it’s insane to bet our electrical grid’s future on the fantasy that it will magically leap into being. There is no guarantee that it will ever exist.
Do you understand the difference?
Nuclear is here now and works now. We can build it now and it will solve all the problems we currently have with electricity generation.
Wind and solar will not work without ridiculously cheap and large capacity storage, and those things do not exist. They might come into existence. But they might not, and we certainly can’t set a schedule for when they will.
Committing to a non-existent technology, that we don’t even have the physical and chemical theory to build yet, is insane. Researching it is prudent. Assuming we’ll make the breakthrough in time to help is living in fantasy land.
Unfortunately, our entire grid has been taken to fantasy land here in Texas.
Additionally, even if cheap storage existed, it would still be better to build out more nuclear and use the storage to even out peak load with nuclear supply.
Wind and solar are vastly more expensive than nuclear.
So, yes, I want wind and solar to fail, because I don’t want to pay ridiculously high prices for my electricity. I’ve already seen a 20% increase in my bill because of all that “cheap” Texas wind the legislature has forced on us.
Again, if they wanted to research wind and solar in say, prototype installations to see if they could make them affordable, that’d be great. Jumping in and building them when they are three and five times more expensive, in the real world, than nuclear is a fools’ game, unless you’re one of the people laughing all the way to the bank with the subsidies and the Transimission-Rights Trading Profits that unreliable and inadequate power generation creates.
Transmission-Rights Larceny
@Jeff Walther
Agreed. One small nit:
I’ve already seen a 20% increase in my bill because of all that “cheap” Texas wind the legislature has forced on us.
My understanding is that a certain governor George W. Bush had something to do with passing and signing laws designed to encourage wind energy development in Texas.
http://oilprice.com/Alternative-Energy/Wind-Power/George-W.-Bush-The-Hero-of-US-Wind-Energy.html
In fact, that is one of my talking points when I describe the promotional effort invested into wind and solar by people who are actually more interested maintaining the dominance of oil and natural gas in our energy supply.
@poa
Recognition and discussion of the technical limitations of various alternative energy supplies and storage schemes is not a lack of “optimism.”
For example: the fundamental limits of chemical energy storage mean that we are very close to the asymptote; there is very little margin for improvement remaining. Technological development is not a game for optimists who dream that there must be a magical new development just waiting to be discovered. It is the job of people who can take the time to study prior knowledge and recognize paths that allow improvement.
The much vaunted “Moore’s Law” is not a general rule. It was very specific to microprocessors and digital storage chips and Moore’s understanding that making smaller transistors and thinner connections between the transistors was a path towards packing more storage and more processing capability into the same area on a chip. Later innovators recognized that using a third dimension would allow a new path for development by stacking microprocessors on top of each other.
In the hard drive world, there were other innovators that recognized the pathways to improvements in better locational accuracy, thinner tracks, faster spinning, etc.
What makes you think that chemical storage battery improvements have not been diligently pursued?
Tesla’s primary innovation was developing a way to harness the very best in chemical battery technology already developed for items like laptop computers where maximizing energy storage per unit mass, providing capacity for fast, numerous recharges from a low charge state to a high one, and minimizing cost per unit of energy stored have been key design goals for at least a quarter of a century.
There is, by the way, a known method of storing tens of thousands of times more energy per unit mass, but it requires the use of certain radioactive isotopes like Pu-238, Po-210, Tritium, and Sr-90. Their common characteristic is a decay sequence with minimal gamma releases, thus enabling a relatively low weight shielding system.
I’ve always been intrigued by the idea of coupling the steady charging capability of RTGs with the fast discharge, high power capacity of chemical storage batteries. That innovation, of course, requires a far greater acceptance of nuclear energy, used fuel recycling, and the use of radioactive materials in commercial applications.
Remember your response to the commenters here who read something about walnut wood that led them to believe it was a total waste to simply cut down trees that had past their prime bearing years and use that wood for fuel. They did not understand the costs associated with attempting to harvest and use that wood for a “higher” purpose like making furniture. Skilled practitioners in every field know some truths that they might not even remember learning and often have a hard time explaining to others.
“For example: the fundamental limits of chemical energy storage mean that we are very close to the asymptote; there is very little margin for improvement remaining.”
Being a drag racing enthusiast, I remember when the seven second quarter mile was “durned near as fast as we’ll ever go.” The top fuelers are now cutting that time in half.
Man wasn’t designed to fly, either Rod. Or, uh, spend months under water in huge steel vessels.
@poa
So how quick to you expect quarter miles to get? There are only 3.5 seconds left to cut. How long and how much investment will be required for each tenth of a second improvement. That is what I mean by approaching asymptotic limits. Progress gets slower and slower.
The reason so many of us on this blog have chosen to invest our careers and even our personas into developing atomic energy rather than continuing to rely on chemical energy is that there is a six order of magnitude increase in the energy density of a reaction that involves breaking bonds in atomic nuclei to form new isotopes compared to rearranging electrons to form compounds.
It is very much like man’s decision to fly and then to venture into space rather than remain tied to the speed limits restricting movement on the earth’s surface.
Fundamental physical limits, poa.
Just found this from a new article at bravenewclimate.com:
==================================
It’s important to understand the nature of this EROEI limit. This is not a question of inadequate storage capacity – we can’t just buy or make more storage to make it work. It’s not a question of energy losses during charge and discharge, or the number of cycles a battery can deliver. We can’t look to new materials or technological advances, because the limits at the leading edge are those of earthmoving and civil engineering. The problem can’t be addressed through market support mechanisms, carbon pricing, or cost reductions. This is a fundamental energetic limit that will likely only shift if we find less materially intensive methods for dam construction.
==================================
Go read the whole article. It’s titled: “The Catch-22 of Energy Storage” Very well considered and documented. Why “renewables” can’t work. And goes a long way to explain why Germany is having the miserable experience it is when you apply the facts in this article to the application in Germany.
@Jeff Walther
Given adequate resource mix, and modern power resource management options (i.e., the grid), assumptions of 10 days storage at full load is not very informative in this model.
If nobody is suggesting we need to build 10 days of storage why is it relevant to rule it out on an EROEI basis?
@EL
The adequate resource mix to which you are referring includes a substantial contribution from both controllable fossil fuel generators and nuclear energy generation. The argument for recognizing the limitations of unreliables based on EROEI is an attempt to illustrate the absurdity of those people like Jacobson who advocate a power system based solely on WWS (Wind, Water, and Sun.)
Here is an important quote from the article to which Jeff referred:
Believe it or not, most of the people who write for and read Brave New Climate believe that merely reducing the CO2 emissions of fossil fuel power systems is simply not sufficient if we want to avoid the risks associated with climate change. They believe we need to follow a path that will allow those emissions to be continually reduced to a level approaching zero.
That path is possible when using nuclear in combination with unreliables, but not with unreliables alone.
Nuclear works well with hydro, especially when the hydro system has the capability for being reversed to store power when there is more available supply than demand. (That is the function of one of my favorite playgrounds, the 600 MWe pumped storage system that includes Smith Mountain Lake.)
@Rod Adams.
If the argument is 100% wind and solar, and 10 days storage … sure, that’s a heavy lift (and an unrealistic straw man argument). The case is equally unrealistic for an all nuclear approach (were nearly every current impediment to expanding the technology, and on a fully flexible basis, will be magically removed). To say nothing of developing future advanced reactors and nuclear fuel cycles that don’t currently exist. So are we only talking fantasy alternatives … or real ones?
I prefer models that look at real ones … and don’t cook the numbers with unrealistic assumptions for 10 day storage (especially when nobody is looking at systems that operate on such a basis … except to make straw man arguments).
Deep greenhouse gas reductions (including electrification of consumer transportation sector) are possible with a high share of renewables (74% by 2050) with only incremental increases in storage (charging on dinural cycle when demand is low, and discharging the next day when demand is high). A realistic high nuclear alternative also entails an energy storage component (only 1/3 the level of renewables). And as it turns out, the projected costs for both alternatives are the same. “Our results show that generation mixes dominated by renewable, nuclear, and CCS, in the absence of cost breakthroughs, would have roughly comparable costs, raising the present average cost of electricity generation by a factor of about two, a result also noted by other researchers” (p. 4). Reliability and operability remain the same. The only difference is where are we likely to see cost reductions (breakthroughs) in the future, and expediency (financing, global security, consumer acceptance, international cooperation, environmental impacts, user participation and consumer choice, long term resource availability, risk management, and more).
By controllable fossil fuel generators … I take it you are including renewable fuels in your characterization as well (and not only limiting yourself to fossil resources sequestered long ago during the carboniferous period)? The only way storage tanks your EROEI is if you are adding 10 days of it. So indeed, the article referenced by Jeff makes a good case that a resource alternative that nobody is looking to build is unwise. There’s no problem with EROEI and energy storage, 6 to 8 hours is just fine.
EL, even without the ten day storage requirement, unreliables have terrible EROI and their implementation reduce the wealth of society. They waste the wealth of society.
If you would bother to read the article you would see that.
It’s conclusions are not linch-pinned on the ten day storage assumption.
Or perhaps you know that and are just raising that straw man as your way of casting doubt on a well researched and considered article. I suspect this latter theory, as it is always your way to abfuscate and use clever lies to undermine good technically sound arguments.
The EROI in the real world on wind and solar are already pathetically low, absent any storage requirements. Without storage, solar’s EROI is too low to be sustainable. Without storage, wind’s EROI is sustainable, but extremely low compared to other energy sources, indicating that is a very inefficient use of society’s capital.
You’d know all this if you bothered to read the article. Or perhaps you did and just choose to throw out irrelevant strawmen arguments which would be difficult for the casual reader to sort out. After all, that’s your way. Confuse your way to a rhetorical win, rather than actually demonstrating any technical competence at describing real world physics and energy engineering.
I’m sure your mentor, the great charlatan is very proud.
@EL, without the 10 days storage requirement one needs to builds *both* the renewable and the equivalent backup fossil storage capacity, which makes the cost a lot higher. Currently we are helped by the fact the countries implementing that don’t have a really increasing energy demand so the backup is already amortized cost which is quite less painful.
And it’s very clearly not possible at all to go to 74% renewable with only incremental storage. As Robert Wilson demonstrated with a simplified model, at a 74% level of wind penetration level, at least 45% of the energy production would need to be either stored or exported, and it’s much worse for solar : http://theenergycollective.com/robertwilson190/288846/low-capacity-factors-challenge-low-carbon-energy-transition
And I believe the model is actually optimistic since it doesn’t take into account the fact that fossil plant cannot ramp up or down instantly, so more storage/curtailing would be required to accommodate for that.
@Jeff Walther
At 12 – 18 EROEI for OPEC oil, I’m curious to hear your argument for how predominantly light sweet crude has NOT increased the wealth of society (i.e., been a “waste”). Similarly for tar sands at 4 to 7 (or wind at 16, and CSP at 19 … all of which reflect utility scale developments). Care to give us the EROEI for utility scale solar PV in high resource areas (and not residential roof installations in low resource areas, e.g., Germany). You speak of straw man arguments, but it seems you either don’t understand the term (or don’t have much skill in recognizing them when they are put to use in a specific example).
Yes … I did manage to look at the article, and even managed to glean a few insights from it. You?
Are we reading the same paper?
@jmdesp
You’re incorrect on energy economics. You don’t get to count energy resources twice. The cost of wind is not the cost of wind + the cost of everything else. There is a small efficiency loss to operating capacity reserves in an energy system with a high share of renewables (in excess of 30% variable supply). These have been estimated in the range of $0.47 – $1.28/MWh (inclusive of plant and transmission construction costs), and are offset by $27 – $28/MWh in fuel savings from high variable and displaced energy costs (based on model assumptions). Absent of plant and transmission costs, additional cycling costs are in range of $0.14 – 0.67/MWh and compare “… to fuel cost reductions of $28-$29/MWh …” (pg. 1).
The detailed report I cited above also does a cost analysis (comparing high renewable, high nuclear, and high CCS alternatives).
What does a simplified model from Robert Wilson and 74% generation from wind have to do with anything?
With regard to “When healthy fear gives way to unhealthy—nuclear waste,” please take note of a recent headline where here in the USA, Mississippi Public Utility Commission unanimously joined the opposition to volunteer as the nation’s nuclear waste dump.
http://www.clarionledger.com/story/politicalledger/2014/08/19/nuclear-waste-presley-psc/14283689/
@Paul Gunter
Thank you for visiting and for providing the useful link. It is certainly true that a three member panel has voted unanimously to oppose long term nuclear waste storage.
I refuse to buy into your labeling of any such facility as a “dump.” I realize that is the accepted lingo by people from organizations like Beyond Nuclear and that you have — so far — convinced many journalists to use your slanted term. However, there is no relationship between a storage facility for used nuclear fuel and the common dictionary definition of “dump.”
Since all on-site storage is acceptably safe, I am fine with recycling. Nearly all of the materials left over from commercial nuclear plant operation are useful and should not be discarded. It might take us a while to develop the necessary infrastructure, but we have plenty of time. The material doesn’t take up much room and, despite a couple of decades of searching, I have not found a single instance anywhere in the world where someone has been harmed by exposure to the routinely handled material produced in commercial nuclear power plants.
Please note that the Clarion Ledger article quotes Mississippi Public Service Commissioner Presley’s use of the term “dump”, not Beyond Nuclear.
Moreover, as I recall, back in 1985-1986 when the DOE was poking around the Granite State with its Crystalline Rock Repository Program for a supposed second site for 70,000 metric tons of high-level nuclear waste, even then Governor John Sununu, an atomic power champion, referenced the DOE’s characterization of the Cardigan Pluton under several New Hampshire towns around Hillsboro Center as a “dump.” That same time, 100 of 136 NH Town Meetings voted “to oppose the burial, storage, transportation and production of high-level nuclear waste in the State of New Hampshire” despite Gov. Sununu’s effort to divorce the production of nuclear waste from the proposed “dump.”
When the DOE came poking around the Granite State in 1985-1986, then Governor John Sununu called it a “dump” like in this news article…
http://www.beyondnuclear.org/storage/waste/waste-confidence-decision/geis-comments-12202013/nhdump_sununnu.JPG
The referenced Clarion Ledger article quotes Mississippi Public Service Commissioner Presley as using the term “dump”.
Perhaps. But you did not quote anyone else saying “dump” when you chose to use the term in your comment.
The only way to alter the use of such emotionally-charged, agenda-driven, inaccurate terms is to challenge each use. It is — admittedly — a small quixotic effort that will only work if others catch on, but I think it is still worth doing.
What makes Sununu an expert on the use of the English language? Do you think that just because he is a Republican and moderately supportive of nuclear energy that his characterization means a hill of beans to me?