Titanic

[Roxanne Appleby]

That's very true, Roxy. However, that nuke plant doesn't exist and can't possibly be built and come online before 2018 and probbably not before 2025. Not to mention the cost difference. The 300MW plant I did find that is scheduled to come on line in three years has just started consturction if I read the reports correctly and will cost approx 350 Milllion dollars. A recent report of a study by Florida Power on the xcost of a Nuclear Plant in South Florida estimated the construction cost of a 1,000 MW plant at $30 Billion dollars.

That's a thousand times as much cost to generate just over three times as much power -- doesn't sound like the kind of choice a free market advoacte such as yourself would champion.

You could build one in 5 years and at a fraction of that cost. The numbers you cite are "social constucts," not physical or economic realities. Legal constructs, actually. Get the bureaucrats out of the way, disempower the NIMBYs, and we can get rolling. Anyone who's serious about accellerating the transition of our industrial civilization from fossil fuels (rather than pursuing a hidden agenda of dismantling our industrial civ, which will require the death of few billion people) will get with that program.

~~~~

PS. The government was obviously heavily involved in the original development of nuclear energy, largely for its own purposes (subs & aircraft carriers). I'm sure it's still involved, but a lot of the current research on advanced reactors is financed by the industry. In this country, the main subsidy government provided was liability limits. As Chernobyl and Three Mile Island demonstrated that was quite a substantial input for the kludgy first-generation reactors.

The current crop of plants that are a'building all over the world are inherently much safer, so that subsidy is less rich and less necessary. Naturally America's dysfunctional legal system makes the subsidy necessary still, but the liability it immunizes is largely one of those "social constructs" I referred to, not a prohibitive real cost in a rational legal environment. Nuke plant designs on the near horizon are "passively safe" - if everyone walks away they just stop fissioning, rather than melting down. Plants under construction now are very close to that. Close enough that there's no reason for leaving the current legal/regulatory obstacles in place. Unless, as I said, the real agenda is something other than phasing out fossil fuels.

 

[desertslave]

Here's a bit of info on a new solar project in VERY sunny AZ.

http://www.aps.com/main/green/Solana/About.html

I read an article in a Phoenix paper not long ago conjecturing that solar panels installed on all commercial buildings in Phoenix and Tucson could easily provide the electricity needs for most of the state. If they got really ambitious, we could sell power to CA at a premium.

Ironically, there's a nuclear plant not terribly far from this site, Palo Verde. It's been a train wreck of maintenance and management issues since it opened.

I grew up very close to Three Mile Island. I was home on break from college when the accident happened. The second reactor is still going strong and there hasn't been much of anything "exciting" except steady power production in the last 20+ years. Not bad!

I think the US could benefit further from nuclear power, but I think we'd be well-advised to adopt the French model of standardization both in construction and training/operations. Far less risk if everyone knows that they're doing and what's expected. (Hey, I have a rich fantasy life!)

 

[Weird Harold]

You could build one in 5 years and at a fraction of that cost. The numbers you cite are "social constucts," not physical or economic realities.

I'm not opposed to Nuclear power, and apparently neither was Floriida Power until they did a cost comparison that dealt with the existing realities of the permiting and construction process.

Legal constructs, actually. Get the bureaucrats out of the way, disempower the NIMBYs, and we can get rolling.

I'm not sure that I would want ALL of the legal constructs and regulations removed. But I can agree that the current level or restrictions are excessive and many are pure Paranoia. But just be cause they're pure paranoia doesn't necessarily mean they're unnecessary.

Plants under construction now are very close to that. Close enough that there's no reason for leaving the current legal/regulatory obstacles in place. Unless, as I said, the real agenda is something other than phasing out fossil fuels.

Part of the delay in constructions is the increased level of inspection and certification for nuclear plants -- A level and frequency of inpections I'm pretty compfortable with because I don't share your faith in "enlightened self-interest" to ensure that the low bidder isn't cutting corners to make the maximum profit.

The bottom line for this particular discussion is the Solar Concentration plants could be built faster for less money than Nuclear Plants under the existing regulatory conditions and holding their breath until congress changes the regulatory conditions wouldn't provide any additional power to their customers.

FP&L may at some future time build that 1000 MW Nuclear Plant they wanted but at this time, nuclear takes too long and costs too much in the State of Florida.

 

[Weird Harold]

Here's a bit of info on a new solar project in VERY sunny AZ.

http://www.aps.com/main/green/Solana/About.html

That one of three similar projects in Arizona and Southern California. I don't think they're going to be affected by the BLM's recent freeze on leases of federal land for Solar Power installations whil ethey study environmental impact on the desert flora and fauna. :rolleeyes:

I read an article in a Phoenix paper not long ago conjecturing that solar panels installed on all commercial buildings in Phoenix and Tucson could easily provide the electricity needs for most of the state. If they got really ambitious, we could sell power to CA at a premium.

I think that's probably an exaggeration: Solar panels on the equivalent acreage of those two cities could probably generate that much power during daylight hours, but the cost and technical details of reversing the city power grids from distribution to collection for the daylight hours would probably make the idea totally cost-prohibitive. That doesn't even consider the fact that the city isn't owned by a single entitity and the legal costs of negotiating a power contract for every building in the city would quickly mount up to impressive numbers of decimal places behind the dollar sign.

Ironically, there's a nuclear plant not terribly far from this site, Palo Verde. It's been a train wreck of maintenance and management issues since it opened.

From what I've read of Palo Verde, a lot of the maintenance and management issues are seriously blown out of proportion by the people who didn't want Palo Verde built and have campaigned ever since to get it shut down.

I can't recall any specific complaint about Palo Verde, but fear-mongering headlines about "Nuclear Plant Inspection Reveals Numerous Maintenance Defects" generally leave me wondering "what's the big deal" when things like "water fountain in break room leaking" and "office door hinges squeaking" lumped in with things "Redundant guage on back-order" which might actually compromise plant safety in a worst-case scenario.

Inflated fear-mongering headlines are the kind of NIMBY behavior Roxxanne wants eleiminated, and I can certainly agree with her on eliminating that perticular obstruction to nuclear plants.

 

[SeaCat]

There are plenty of alternate sources of electric energy that can be used to supplement what we now have. Unfortunately there are way too many people who oppose them for myriad reasons. (Mainly having to do with their senses of Aesthetics or their wallets.)

While I am a supporter of Nuclear Power I do understand it's limitations. (Mainly that Uranium is a finite resource.) If we are going to build nuclear power plants then we need to design them to work much more efficently than they do now.

Coal plants can be designed and built that are many times more efficent and produce much less pollution than they do now. The same with Oil and Natural Gas driven plants.

Solar power, while nice is limited to to areas with large amounts of sunlight.

Geo-Thermal, while nice and proven is limited by the old Realtors Chant. (Location, location, location.)

Some others that have been tested and shown to work are also limited by location. Tidal and wave action generators.

Wind Power works as well but needs large areas and steady winds.

All of these power sources have been shown to work but are limited in where they can be efficent and cost effective. Taken together though,,,,,

Too bad there is so much opposition to any and all of these.

Cat

 

[Weird Harold]

Solar power, while nice is limited to to areas with large amounts of sunlight.

...

Wind Power works as well but needs large areas and steady winds.

Solar power doesn't require large amounts of sunlight, it's just cheaper to collect below 35-40 degrees latitude. It is however useable as far north or south as 90 degrees latitude for at least part of the year.

Wind power does NOT need large areas, it needs a lot of small areas. The footprint of a commercial scale Wind turbine is not much more than that of your local water tower -- if that. One figure I've seen is 1/10th of an acre per turbine tower.

Wind power doesn't really need those huge commercial scale towers, either. You can find small roof mounted wind turbines up to about 10KW that are no more obtrusive than a roof mounted aircondtioning unit or a series of attic vents -- some of the smaller ones are attic vent turbines.

 

[Bodhidharma]

I really should use my calculator for those simple decimal point shifts..

It's actually pretty easy. Just up billions into millions: 30 to 30,000, then divide by 100, = 300 vs 350.

That 300MW Florida project is a solar concentration type of solar plant that heats an intermediate heat storage medium -- liquid salt or sodium in most of them -- so that they generate power 24 hours a day and deal with up to 72 hours of no direct sunlight.

That would be very cool.

Photovoltaic solar installations do only work on sunny days, but they also tend to be under 50 MW -- most I've found specifics on are under 20MW.

Lots of sun in the US. Carpet Nevada with solar arrays, and you could power the country. Of course, the cost would be prohibitive.

But it's past time to start thinking about these things, because global oil production has peaked, and global oil demand is just getting started.

The price will only go up from here.

 

[Bodhidharma]

Oil won't run out, but it gets more expensive to extract once you hit the 50% mark. You have diminishing returns, until you reach the point where you're putting more energy into extracting the oil than the oil can produce.

Hang on to your hats, folks. If you have a long commute, reorganize your life. This is global. And there is no magic wand for it.

 

[Weird Harold]

That would be very cool.

Google up "Nevada Solar One" (with or without the quotes) the official site has a fairly good explanation of the technology and a link to the (Spanish) company that is building most of the solar concentration plants in the US.

Lots of sun in the US. Carpet Nevada with solar arrays, and you could power the country. Of course, the cost would be prohibitive.

Why not carpate Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas with solar concentrators? They're all further south and get more and more direct sunlight than Nevada does -- AND theyre not mostly owned by the US Government and have more land that is not subject to petty BLM bureaucrats flexing their veto power.

Oil won't run out, but it gets more expensive to extract once you hit the 50% mark. You have diminishing returns, until you reach the point where you're putting more energy into extracting the oil than the oil can produce.

If we don't develop alternatives, oil just might run out before Americans wise up and face their fossil fuel addiction. The rest of the world seems ot a good bit smarter than Americans

I noted above that the company building most of the US solar powerplants is Spanish. Wind Turbines are primarily being built by Siemens, a German Company, and wave and tidal generators are primarily being built in Scandanavia. Scandanavia's HYdrogen HIghway is an actual, functional route for Hydrogen fueled cars while California's (the most developed in the US, if not the only,) Hydrogen Highway is a ramshackle network of private companies and transit authorities that are difficult if not impossible for the general public to access. Scandanavia's H2 Hwy even has solar powered water cracking stations to avoid transportation difficulties transporting H2.

What few American Alternative Energy developments I can find seem oriented towards perpetuation of the internal combustion engine -- Ethanol, Biodiesels, TDP/TCP "turky offal oil," et al -- and cleaning up fossil fuel fired plant emissions with algae cultures;which are then used to produce methane or biodiesel to fuel internal combustion engines.