Ridding our dependence on foreign oil.

[Username17]

Finally the huge concrete monolith shit is bollocks as well, you can (and people have) completely removed nuclear reactors during the decom process for unconditional site release. Admittedly thats only like 15% of total decoms, but hey, if you state that up front you want that, it can certainly be made to happen

Are you serious? Where are you going to "remove" it to? When you "completely remove" the reactor, you just chop it into pieces and drag it off somewhere else. And then it becomes a huge, poisonous, concrete monolith somewhere else. It's still somewhere, and it's still gradually destroying its own monolith.

We have never figured out a permanent storage system for any of these items. Our most impressive and elaborate Nevada installation is rated for a thousand years at the most generous. And that's not long enough. That's going to become a serious problem for us in the future (though admittedly, not in our lifetimes). If we rebuilt the same thing i yet another place it would become a problem again. And it would do so ten times or more.

Also, the uranium shortage issue is total bullshit. No-one is doing any uranium exploration at all, so we have no idea how big global reserves are. Doubling of current reserves is an extremely conservative estimate, but we'll never know because everyone is off busily finding iron and coal to make more pollution in china.

I'm curious what kind of geological surveys you think exist that would detect coal and iron but would not detect uranium ore.

-Username17

[Maxus]

I'm curious what kind of geological surveys you think exist that would detect coal and iron but would not detect uranium ore.

-Username17

Depends on what they're looking for, if I remember right. Seriously, when companies/people are prospecting, they often ignore what they're not looking for. Coal isn't too hard to find. And iron...seriously, hematite is *everywhere* and it happens to be the ore of choice for getting iron. We will not run out of iron. (We aren't in trouble with copper, either.)

My memories of uranium from Mineralogy are vague, but I could ask one of my professors if you'd like to know. (I recall something about uranium being found along riverbeds and the like, because it's been washed out of the ground since the planet cooled. Likewise, uranium and its ores are often yellow or orangish, and it's indeed possible to find places in the desert where the rocks are a nice yellow color and just so happen to make Geiger counters scream.)[/b]

[ckafrica]

France has been producing much of their power from nuclear for years. WHat have they been doing with their waste?

[Username17]

France has been producing much of their power from nuclear for years. WHat have they been doing with their waste?

Sending it to third world countries, solving the problem for all time.

-Username17

[cthulhu]

I'm curious what kind of geological surveys you think exist that would detect coal and iron but would not detect uranium ore.

-Username17

Well thats the thing - the gold/copper/uranium ore bed discovered in south Australia increased world uranium reserves significantly - and they were not looking for uranium. The discoveries so far have been accidental because people were looking for mineral A and tripped over mineral B.

But different ore bodies do have different techniques for finding them. The obvious answer to your question is to contrast techniques used for finding iron ore to uranium - as that is the subject under discussion

Amongst other tools and methadologies, Iron ore is searched for using magnetometers, and uranium ore is searched for using gieger counters and scintillation counters for checking samples. Neither of those tools will find the other material -unless they are co-located.

Ariel surveys using magnetometers are a major component of ore hunting too, so its not like these tools are just being used to confirm findings or can both be applied at the same time either.

[cthulhu]

France has been producing much of their power from nuclear for years. WHat have they been doing with their waste?

They undertake lots of reprocessing, and have the leading reprocessing program in the world, but due to political resistance there has never been a long term storage dump built.

They busted a gut to get breeder reactors working - that technology would allow you to functionally eliminate nuclear waste - but they have no despite significant investment.

As a result, they are much like everywhere else - heaps of reprocessed waste in medium term dumps, no plan to deal with it.

[PhoneLobster]

I can't imagine why we care about those surveying techniques.

It remains a fact that uranium is an important resource that has at times been a boom commodity and has for many decades been a strategic commodity.

To pretend people haven't been looking for it in particular quiet extensively is rather ridiculous.

More importantly experts have put a figure on how much undiscovered uranium is out there based on a very comprehensive set of geological data and knowledge and it isn't in actual dispute.

And before you get all excited about any recent finds I remind you, when someone finds a new uranium deposit it isn't ADDED to the estimated undiscovered uranium, it is SUBTRACTED from it.

[Gelare]

Now seems like a good time to point out that people on both sides of this nuclear power issue are either exaggerating their views or stupid. Nuclear fission is a pretty efficient method of power generation. It uses fuel which is quite abundant right now and will, some day in the not too distant future, run out. It also produces byproducts which are harmful to the environment (and us). In many of these respects it is similar to all the other ways we produce power (and if you think neither solar nor wind power generation are harmful to the environment, I've got news for you).

Dumping tons of depleted uranium someplace is kind of sad. So is dumping millions (yes) of tons of airborne pollutants and greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. There is a proper weight these costs should be assigned, given that they might give people cancer a thousand years from now, and also given that better methods for getting rid of this depleted uranium might be found in the future, or possibly we will all transcend into higher forms of being or get obliterated by a comet or maybe our friends at CERN will suck us all into a black hole.

Nuclear power plants are possible. They can be built and operated remarkably safely and would not (and do not) go out of business. Whether they are better than the alternatives of coal, oil, solar, wind, ethanol, hydrogen, or fusion is what is debatable. It is my guess that the answer right now is no, and that the answer within a decade or two will be yes.

[PhoneLobster]

(and if you think neither solar nor wind power generation are harmful to the environment, I've got news for you)

Actually I have news for you on that front.

The raised issue with solar generation here is the pollution caused by manufacture of complex industrial components.

I remind you that atomic power ALSO has complex industrial components.

You can't count manufacturing costs against renewable power generation technologies as an offset against the non renewable power technologies being non renewable because those techs ALSO have manufacturing costs.

Its a piece of non renewable spin to pretend that coal and nuclear plants don't have to built out of you know, stuff.

given that better methods for getting rid of this depleted uranium might be found in the future, or possibly we will all transcend into higher forms of being or get obliterated by a comet or maybe our friends at CERN will suck us all into a black hole.

Three of those things I can safely assure you will NOT happen. And I'm willing to take a gamble and declare that the comet is highly unlikely.

Mind you interestingly a comet IS likely to hit before our nuclear waste problem is solved. But that doesn't HELP matters, it just means we have to make our nuclear waste storage fucking comet proof as well.

They can be built and operated remarkably safely and would not (and do not) go out of business

I didn't even have to try hard.

And that's nothing compared to the bigger picture of nuclear business history or the forecast production shortages in the immediate future.

And it scoops some random no they aren't safe and total nuclear con artist scamming in the same search.

All on the first page.

[cthulhu]

I can't imagine why we care about those surveying techniques.

It remains a fact that uranium is an important resource that has at times been a boom commodity and has for many decades been a strategic commodity.

Actually once a sufficient amount was found to make all the bombs people wanted, people pretty much stopped looking.

The ABS provides really good numbers on this, so lets have a factual discussion about compartive spends, that'll be interesting won't it

For example, in Australia we spend less than 10 million dollars on uranium exploration and 850 million dollars on oil exploration, and 400 million on gold exploration (2008 ABS statistics. measured annually).

Ferrous metals and coal runs close to a billion.

To pretend people haven't been looking for it in particular quiet extensively is rather ridiculous.

I'll leave it to the reader to determine if one case or the other is more convincing. Oh, I forgot, independent reports cannot be trusted, clearly the ABS is lying as part of the... pro nuclear agenda?

Its especially interesting as there has been a widely reported run up in uranium exploration in the last 3 years, because nuclear power is becoming more promising and the price is rising!

More importantly experts have put a figure on how much undiscovered uranium is out there based on a very comprehensive set of geological data and knowledge and it isn't in actual dispute.

Why do estimates for reputable sources range from 30 - cited by you - to 200, cited by the Germans? Estimates are going to be wildly inaccurate because of the low amounts spend on exploration. look at how much world oil reserves have shot up over time and that has been a strategic commodity since WWI

Also, please, determing the amount of reserves is a very imprecise science that the oil companies cannot do properly despite it being their bread and butter. As shown with the ABS stats, no-one cares about uranium.

You can't count manufacturing costs against renewable power generation technologies as an offset against the non renewable power technologies being non renewable because those techs ALSO have manufacturing costs.

No, your right, your model should include all costs. Currently solar is the least economical of all the choices. Wind has extreme supply level problems that have been broadly noted. Tidal does not have sufficent energy density and is even more expensive than solar.

Geothermal and hydro are interesting concepts, but we need hot rocks to make geothermal fly.

Hydro is pretty good and probably my preferred solution, but we don't have the water levels for it - and higher population countries like the UK don't have the energy density for it.

Now we're down to nukes, then past that in the whole of life cheapness scale is coal and oil, but we both agree with the global warming thing, so they are out.

[Gelare]

(and if you think neither solar nor wind power generation are harmful to the environment, I've got news for you)

Actually I have news for you on that front.

The raised issue with solar generation here is the pollution caused by manufacture of complex industrial components.

I remind you that atomic power ALSO has complex industrial components.

You can't count manufacturing costs against renewable power generation technologies as an offset against the non renewable power technologies being non renewable because those techs ALSO have manufacturing costs.

Its a piece of non renewable spin to pretend that coal and nuclear plants don't have to built out of you know, stuff.

Yep, you're totally right. I'm simply coming from the other direction - it's been my experience that it's usually a piece of pro-renewable spin, making it sound that solar energy and the like is not harmful at all, which is simply not true. But yeah, absolutely, atomic power, complex industrial components, I'm totally with you there.

given that better methods for getting rid of this depleted uranium might be found in the future, or possibly we will all transcend into higher forms of being or get obliterated by a comet or maybe our friends at CERN will suck us all into a black hole.

Three of those things I can safely assure you will NOT happen. And I'm willing to take a gamble and declare that the comet is highly unlikely.

Mind you interestingly a comet IS likely to hit before our nuclear waste problem is solved. But that doesn't HELP matters, it just means we have to make our nuclear waste storage fucking comet proof as well.

I do disagree with you here, I think it's actually fairly likely given the quite frankly ridiculous pace of technological advancement that we'll probably come up with better ways to store nuclear waste (or even put it to actual use) in the not too distant future. I'd be willing to bet against the future that way - you possibly would not be, and that's totally fine, it's just a matter of probabilities, not a fundamental disagreement on values.

Although if we do get hit by a comet, I really don't think it makes any difference whether our radioactive waste leaks out or not, we've got other issues (like extinction) to worry about.

They can be built and operated remarkably safely and would not (and do not) go out of business

I didn't even have to try hard.

And that's nothing compared to the bigger picture of nuclear business history or the forecast production shortages in the immediate future.

And it scoops some random no they aren't safe and total nuclear con artist scamming in the same search.

All on the first page.

You're right, I should have specified they would not go out of business significantly more often than other forms of power plants. Of course companies are going to go out of business in general, that's a given. But if nuclear power plants happened to go getting shafted significantly more often, it'd give us reason for pause - but they don't. As for safety, I get the feeling we're using different definitions of safe. Yeah, radioactive water is going to get accidentally leaked into the local water supply, just like oil is going to get spilled into the ocean. That seriously just comes with the territory, and yes, is something to take into account, but it's not significantly different from the other kinds of pollution we've been talking about. I was referring more to the Chernobyl-style disasters lots of people seem to dread for no good reason.

[PhoneLobster]

so lets have a factual discussion about compartive spends

Why the hell would we have a factual discussion about tangential details when you refuse to agree to ANY figures provided by any source even pro nuclear about uranium reserves?

You can't even tell the difference between my 30 year figure for KNOWN uranium reserves and the 100 year figure including estimated undiscovered reserves. You need to improve your basic comprehension, your understanding of what an estimate is, your ability to differentiate known and estimated supplies and total supplies and rates of supply and your basic math abilities.

If you can't fucking understand that stuff why the fuck should I expect you to have any kind of sane interaction with only tangentially relevant exploration budgets. I mean holy fucking hell you actually choose to discard every estimate of reserves in existence and instead select EXPLORATION COSTS as an inverse indicator?

I mean do you even understand that relative cost of different forms of exploration are not directly comparable? Not in any way related to actual available reserves? And in almost no way impact or change estimated reserves?

Why do estimates for reputable sources range from 30 - cited by you - to 200, cited by the Germans?

Again read the god damn data and reports, heck even my posts. The thirty year figure is current CONFIRMED reserves with current consumption. Beyond that everyone agrees on basically the same estimated undiscovered reserves in actual volume. Differences occur in the number of YEARS of reserves estimated. But that is because the different reports make different assumptions about the rate of consumption.

Any report that doesn't imagine that we will magically make all reactors 100x more efficient just next week promise, no this time for real, yes I know we have been saying that since 1950... and in fact factors in any kind of increase in reactors tends to have us running out somewhere between 70-100 years.

But more importantly, and if you understood the concepts behind Peak Oil you would understand this, the other time I mentioned 30 years (or less!) is over the concerns about production RATE. We simply aren't mining it fast enough and our capacity to increase that rate is highly questionable for a wide variety of reasons.

We won't run out of available reserves until the later estimated dates but we could very well exceed production capacity in our rate of demand, well, any time now, and that is WITHOUT expansion of demand with new reactors.

But anyway.

After reading your miraculous declaration that once admitting the cost of manufacture for solar energy is no more than the basic manufacture costs of components of other technology that you somehow still declare it to be "the least economical" (WTF?) I think I have figured it all out.

If you combine your strongly imagined faith in magical extra undiscovered uranium, and indeed non renewable resources in general, your casual assumption of free market capitalism as a natural force for good, your weird xenophobic addendum, your dismissal of radioactive wastes as dangerous, your half ass solutions to dealing with those radioactive wastes you deem as hazardous, your complete and utter ignorant dismissal of solar technology and your total inability to plan beyond 50 years in the future...

Be honest. You come from the 1950s don't you. They just thawed you out yesterday right?

[Username17]

Nuclear power plants are possible. They can be built and operated remarkably safely and would not (and do not) go out of business. Whether they are better than the alternatives of coal, oil, solar, wind, ethanol, hydrogen, or fusion is what is debatable. It is my guess that the answer right now is no, and that the answer within a decade or two will be yes.

Pretty much exactly right. Although I'm not with you on the 10-20 years guess.

Why not? Because they've been promising that they would be viable in 10-20 years for the last fifty years. I am unconvinced that nuclear power will ever become viable or anything except places where space is at a super premium. Nuclear power is already the best source for submarines and ships, I think it will probably be quite the thing for space stations if we ever get back into doing that sort of thing. And frankly, I'm not holding my breath that it will become viable for any other purpose within my lifetime.

The fact is that solar, wind, geothermal, hydroelectric, and tidal power are also advancing technologically and becoming cheaper and more efficient. They are cheaper now and there's no reason to believe that nuclear power will ever catch up. It has one really impressive advantage, where all the fuel can fit into a brief case. That's cool, but if you aren't on a ship that hardly even matters. One extra hectare or three isn't going to make or break the power generation system for a city, and that's why nuclear power plants never really pay off for any non-mobile platform.

And they probably never will.

-Username17

[cthulhu]

Link

Uranium 2005: Resources, Production and Demand - also called the "Red Book" - estimates the total identified amount of conventional uranium stock, which can be mined for less than USD 130 per kg, to be about 4.7 million tonnes. Based on the 2004 nuclear electricity generation rate of demand the amount is sufficient for 85 years, the study states. Fast reactor technology would lengthen this period to over 2500 years.

However, world uranium resources in total are considered to be much higher. Based on geological evidence and knowledge of uranium in phosphates the study considers more than 35 million tonnes is available for exploitation.

So that is 600 years (85 x the fact that reserves have increased from 4.7 million to 35 million) to 17500 (adding in fast reactors) years of reserves, is that sufficient? And hey, its the hans blix and UN, gotta be reasonably decent.

Does that meet your requirements for sane debate?

Onwards to your next argument- I will defend my position on solar being the least economical. However, I will make no statements and instead cite reports.

After reading your miraculous declaration that once admitting the cost of manufacture for solar energy is no more than the basic manufacture costs of components of other technology that you somehow still declare it to be "the least economical" (WTF?)

Well, studies have been done on this too. The problem is that the lifespan of solar cells as they stands is not 'forever' - so you need to factor in the cost of labour, the cost of power lines, the replacement cost of new solar cells - the operating lifespan of a solar panel is shorter than a nuclear powerplant, blahblah whatever. Someone else has done my thinking for me on this one.

So the real measure of the cost of power is cost per kilowatt hour.

Cost per power generation type according to the Euro in 2007, without, then with the proposed EU carbon tax as it would stand in 2030 but in 2005 dollars.

10% discount rate on capital costs, - I'd prefer to see something slightly lower, but thats not a bad number 7-9 seems more reasonable.

Gas CCGT 3.4-4.5 4.0-5.5
Coal - pulverised 3.0-4.0 4.5-6.0
Coal - fluidised bed 3.5-4.5 5.0-6.5
Coal IGCC 4.0-5.0 5.5-7.0
Nuclear 4.0-5.5 4.0-5.5
Wind onshore 3.5-11.0 2.8-8.0
Wind offshore 6.0-15.0 4.0-12.0

Right now best estimates I've seen for solar are solar gas hybrid solutions that come in at 8 cents per kilowatt hour - and would attact a carbon tax. These guys cite more: http://eprints.usq.edu.au/4000/1/Kamel_ANZSES_2003.pdf but thats NZ dollars, so its what, 12 cents a kilowatt hour approximately.

European commission report on costs:

Second Lick

There is 5% capital costs in the report, I leave tabulating that as an exercise for the reader.

So, mea culpea, I was wrong on costs! Wind is more expensive than solar.

But nukes and coal are cheaper than solar.

That is the basis for my opinion. So its not totally ill conceived.

[Crissa]

I'm sorry, cthu... You're just wrong on this.

When we're looking at modern retail costs, (DOE) and how this varies by region... Solar, wind, hydroelectric are not as high priced as you place them.

Solar is also a point of use technology, like a portable generator . It can be placed where you need the power, or spread out throughout your system. The systems you link to do not include the cost of transmission into the cost of the other power systems. Nor do they include the cost of fuel, strangely enough, or offsets to the environment.

So if you by a 2kW system, put it on your roof (about $20K) it'll last many years, but let's look at twenty years you've spent basically 3¢ per watt hour.

Yeah, Solar may not be a good buy in the EU, which is mostly above the 45th parallel. But for the rest of the world, it's a pretty damn good buy.

-Crissa

[cthulhu]

You may have noticed that much of the EU is extremely windy, so I suspect their wind ranges are exactly that, a range, and it still doesn't address base load problems. Has denmark actually decommissioned its coal power plants despite a wind build out?

But please note that study I included was actually new zealand, not europe.

But anyway, please produce a reputable study re: cost of solar, I actually struggled to find a really good one. I'm not sure what you're proving with the DoE study that says the average retail price of 'leccy is 12cents a kilowatt hour?

I am aware of the benefits of solar as a point of use technology, but it doesn't produce the energy density to support heavy industries (such as mining which accounts for a very significant percentage of australia's power consumption) or cities in areas such as Melbourne or sydney (or london!) which have a large number of no sun days a year.

[cthulhu]

http://www.solarbuzz.com/SolarPrices.htm

Those guys say 21 cents a kilowatt hour - which means nuclear is super cheap and coal will not be displaced even with a tax- but that seems unreasonably high, though I do know PV generation is expensive.

Edit: He's comparing retail prices and saying that its twice the price - another US government study concluded un july that cost of solar in california is 36 cents per kilowatt hour retail, which is 3 x the US average, but close to california's power prices!

[angelfromanotherpin]

What about this?

[cthulhu]

Sorry to triple post:

The further complexity that we are all ignoring is the cost of backup power systems. If we assume that australia is going to look to keep its zinc and aliminum smelting operations, we need vast quanities of electricity on a fairly stable feed.

So what happens when its cloudy for 2 days at your solar plant?

Oz does have a huge advantage here in that we can just build a massive set of solar cells out in the desert somewhere where it isn;t cloudy very often and exterminate a few spinfex plants, then pipe the eletricity back, though that does negate the microgeneration concept.

All the advocates of micro generation seem to want a feed in tariffs too which i hate - taxing carbon and subsiding the alternative options is just paying people to be unproductive. The carbon tax is good, but a feed in tariff at about retail price is terrible.

[angelfromanotherpin]

So what happens when its cloudy for 2 days at your solar plant?

You don't give a damn.

[Crissa]

No, taxing the carbon emissions is stopping the subsidizing of people spraying their effluent on you and pretending it doesn't matter.

-Crissa

[cthulhu]

Sorry, all availible infomation I am referencing is based on the current cost of powers.

@Crissa: Yeh, thats fine, you have to make people pay the true costs - but then further subsiding one of the choices doesn't particularly add to productivity.

Any chance of that study?

[Crissa]

I don't believe anywhere has a tax structure like that yet, so why the complaint about subsidies?

And why would it be bad to subsidize smart but otherwise expensive choices like stormwater retention, solar roofs, recycling, etc?

-Crissa

[cthulhu]

QLD is about to introduce one, and the ACT wants too as well (which will, in addition to the government subsidy, finally make solar power comparable to the green power tariff you could get from ACTEW already. Why are we paying people to choose something they could already select?), and lots of other countries already have one - power companies in germany have to pay 3 times the market rate for electricity for solar energy fed into the grid, which suddenly makes solar power very economic for individuals, not so sure the power companies will be super happy though.

And the legally guaranteed operating lifetime on the QLD and ACT feed in tariffs is longer than the horizon over which the carbon tax is coming to Australia, so we will have both, and probably soon.

Anyway, I'd dispute that solar roofs are a smart idea if they need a subsidy to make them economical. It may be far more efficient to build large scale hot rocks geothermal power plants, or huge tidal plants on Australia coastline, or very large solar plants near alice springs and ship the power to Melbourne - but a subsidy may distort the market and encourage people to put solar power panels on their roof in Melbourne and not explore the other choices, which just reduces quality of life for no reason, and as the government will have to pay for it, it will have to come out of some other area of the budget.

[cthulhu]

http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2008/10/27 ... cy_update/

In other news, we're getting the chevy volt.

Any chance of that cost of solar study?