I’m getting a lot of email about this today, so to save time, here are some of the points I made on Today FM’s Sunday Business Show. Before reading my points below, please read this, this, and maybe even buy this.
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0. The problem is a complex interplay of the existence of greenhouse gas emissions, security of fuel supply and carbon taxes/carbon charging. Now this will be tied together post-Lisbon, I expect.
1. There is no point in building a power plant here. We in Ireland simply do not have the knowledge base to run nuclear power stations. Any plant purchase would send Irish taxes to France or Japan.
2. Uranium is much more prevalent than, say, North Sea Oil, which has been declining since the 90’s. The price of Oil/Gas will continue to rise from now on. Around 5.5m easily accessible tons of the stuff. This gives us a reserve of 80 years. Considering so many more countries are planning to build now, that is probably around 50 years. Nuclear’s contribution to energy generation in Europe and North America has grown in the last 20 years, despite the decline in power plant construction. No plants have been ordered in the US in more than 20 years. The key has been improved reliability.
3. Government’s target of up to 40% of electricity generation from renewables (mostly wind) by 2020 is borderline insane. The recent Irish Academy of Engineering report suggests this. Simple pricing rules will really help. For example, the Government should be locking in oil futures, as prices for 3-5 years time as the current weak price will not last.
4. Here’s a potentially much more successful and cheaper policy: undersea inter-connectors and a focus on energy efficiency. Wind power won’t change this either. Go to Eirgrid.com, plot a chart of the 14th of November. Wind generation by MW/h is all over the place–not enough to actually produce on demand power, and certainly not reliably.
5. I therefore take an ‘ecopragmatist’ view of James Lovelock/Stewart Brand of the Long Now Foundation. The only viable, workable solution at this moment and for the next 5-10 years we can see is nuclear power. In its recently-issued Second Report, the Joint Oireachtas Committee on Climate Change and Energy Security makes worthy proposals for legislation relating to climate change. It argues in some detail for provisions to encourage energy conservation and renewable energy, two of the three major means for combating climate change. The third means is nuclear energy, which supplies 16 per cent of the world’s electricity without significant carbon emissions.
I think, therefore, that the costs and benefits of nuclear generation in an Irish context should be fully studied. If it turns out that the costs outweigh the benefits, then we shouldn’t do it. But until then, let’s keep an open mind in this area.
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I found your comment on not having the knowledge base for nuclear in your country to be interesting – that doesn’t seem to be an aspect that comes up much when countries talk of taking it on. But of greater importance perhaps are the cultural aspects – do workers in a particular culture tend to be question authority or be robots?
FYI: Stewart Brand was also kind enough to endorse my book “Rad Decision: A Novel of Nuclear Power”.
One thing most pundits, activists, scientists and reporters have in common is a lack of understanding regarding how this power source is operated in the real world. Nuclear is not The Simpsons and it’s not Star Trek. To provide some clarity, I’ve written a novel aimed at the general reader, based on my 20+ years in the US nuclear industry. My book covers the people, politics and technology of this controversial topic, looking at both the good AND the bad (Chernobyl, TMI, etc.) “Rad Decision” is free online, and is also in paperback. See the homepage for reader comments – they seem to like it for both its story and information. I think there are many possibilities for our future, both with and without nuclear power, but I also believe we’ll make better decisions about our energy future if we first understand our energy present. http://RadDecision.blogspot.com
“I’d like to see Rad Decision widely read.” – Stewart Brand
Hi James, thanks for the comment, I’ll check out the book’s blog now. I’m always interested to know more about these issues. Regarding the knowledge deficit, while the materials, etc, could largely be sourced from Ireland (or at least from Europe), the expertise required would have to come from either France or Japan, largely, meaning we’d be paying out billions to other economies for this plant, which doesn’t make sense as there are 10 new ones being built on our doorstep.
First, having worked at a U.S. Energy Research Lab in the most radioactively contaminated site in the free world (Handford) I can tell you that the current Fission nuclear energy production is, for a fact, an example of a big battery.
From the mining of the uranium to the shutdown of a energy reactor. The production of energy is a net ZERO proposition. It’s a fraud, with the dirty secret that you will have to live with the contaminated waste for hundreds of years.
What you put into the ’system’ fossil fuels, manpower etc, will ‘gain’ you nothing and could better be used to forward other energy development. EVEN the carbon footprint that might be saved from the actual reactor will be wasted in the ore refinement processes that lead up it it.
The only way this technology could be useful, is when Fusion can be made productive.
I know you have been drinking the Koolaid, so don’t believe me, do the due diligence. An hour with Google will tell you more than you can believe.
Hi Branedy, I haven’t touched the blue stuff just yet, I promise–can you give me a URL or two to get me started? I’m all over the Worldchanging fora, etc, but perhaps I’m missing the technical stuff from sheer lack of terminology. Happy to read/discuss anything about this, and to learn more!
Given your first point, with which I agree (and to which I would add that even a small nuclear plant would be too big for our market), I don’t see how your last sentence makes sense.
Hi Fergus,
It always makes sense to cost these things out-on paper, and if the costs and benefits do work out positively (which I highly doubt, see above), then it makes sense to go with the plan. But not discussing it or attempting an evaluation doesn’t make sense either.
“From the mining of the uranium to the shutdown of a energy reactor. The production of energy is a net ZERO proposition. It’s a fraud, with the dirty secret that you will have to live with the contaminated waste for hundreds of years.”
No, YOU are the one perpetrating a fraud Branedy.
Here’s the EPD for that’s ~10 miles from my location: http://www.environdec.com/reg/021/ , Go to EDP content tab -> 3.4.
If you passed 6th grade introduction to physics you’ll know how to convert units. Even comparing apples to oranges(i.e. adding the heat from the fossil fuels as if it was equivalent to electricity from a nuclear plant, which is unfair to the nuclear plant), the energy gain is ~80. If you try to be a bit more fair and convert the fossil fuels to electricty at the relevant efficiency(super critical coal plants, CCGT for oil and gas etc.) you get an energy gain of ~200.
In other words, you’re full of shit.
Stephen, LWRs were never meant to be more than a stop gap. It turned out that there was a lot more uranium than what was at first suspected; the move to deep burn and breeder reactors was stalled.
The current cost of yellowcake uranium is ~$50/lb, that’s equivalent to ~$1 per barrel of oil if you consume only 1% of the energy(a modern LWR) or ~1 cent per barrel if you consume 100% of the energy content. Uranium is very widely distributed in the crust, with most of the uranium in lower grade deposits(see Deffeyes and mcGregor, “World uranium resources”). Fuel is a small part of the cost of operating a nuclear reactor, and of that cost yellowcake is just a small part(you pay mostly for the conversion, enrichment, deconversion and fabrication of fuel elements).
The 5.5 million tonne estimate is predicated on a price of yellowcake less than $130 per lb, but even a light-water reactor can support a much higher cost of yellowcake than this without significantly hurting its economics.
Eventually one of the alternative approaches(deep burn pebble beds, lead-bismuth cooled fast breeder reactors, molten salt epithermal breeder reactors etc.) will be well developed enough and uranium expensive enough that it makes sense make the switch over.
The uranium and thorium in a tonne of average crust(just your typical rock) is equivalent to over 100 barrels of oil when fully fissioned(which will require a combination of different reactor technologies).
It will take the better part of an eon to work our way down to such poor ore-grades absent a huge expansion into energy intensive space exploration(even this has the potential to yield more energy resources). During this unimaginable stretch of time it is likely that we’ll develop compact, cheap nuclear fusion or some other alternative that is just plain better than nuclear fission. First generation fusion reactors may not have sufficiently high Q to make it on their own; they might be fusion-fission hybrids that produce energetic neutrons from D-T fusion, which can directly fission just about any actinide.
@ Soylent, thanks very much for this information, I just came across your post now, apologies for not replying sooner!
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