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You mean the source of 20% of our energy carbon-free?
by The Scientific Liberal on Sat May 17, 2008 at 08:38:15 AM PDT
[ Parent ]
I mean an economic black hole. What it costs to build a nuclear power plant, maintain it, dispose of the waste (which we haven't figured out how to do yet, but it's bound to add trillions to the cost of nuclear energy usage), and then decommission it. And that excludes any costs associated with any problems that occur in plant operation.
"In this world of sin and sorrow there is always something to be thankful for; as for me, I rejoice that I am not a Republican." - H. L. Mencken
by SueDe on Sat May 17, 2008 at 09:47:57 AM PDT
It costs about 2 bil to build a plant, the cost to generate electricity afterwards is tiny, the cost to decommission it is on your electric bill, something like $.50 per month, and we have absolutely figured out how to deal with the waste.
And we've gone 60 years in this country without incidents that cause death.
If you are a Democrat and are more concerned about radioactivity in southern Nevada 10,000 years from now than you are about the devastation likely due to global climate change in the next century, then you can make the philosophical decision to oppose Yucca and nuclear power.
If you are a Republican and are more concerned about short-term profits of your exxon stock than about the devastation likely due to global climate change in the next century, then you can make the philosophical decision to oppose Yucca and nuclear power.
Neither of those people are serious about solving global warming, however.
by The Scientific Liberal on Sat May 17, 2008 at 10:40:08 AM PDT
At least, not an economically efficient one. It costs a lot to build a nuke, it takes a long time, and the fuel-creation cycle produces large amts of CO2. Reason 3 may be the least important, and reason 1 should be enough to disqualify it, when you add in the fact that the money spent to build a nuke could displace several times as much petroleum use if invested in technological improvements to the end-use of energy that make it possible to cut consumption, often by factors of five or ten, while delivering the same level of service as before.
Each dollar can only be spent once, and efficiency has a higher ROI than nuclear power. The trouble currently is that people making investment decisions with large chunks of capital largely don't understand this, and don't tend to be questioners of conventional wisdom. But the conventional wisdom on this is just plain wrong -- there are examples galore of energy efficiency returning wonderful results to the bottom line of people and commercial enterprises who absorb the fact that, say, building your building to use half the energy a standard building would use often costs very little more (sometimes less, as you can save on the HVAC equipment), and pays for itself very quickly, leaving you with lower operating costs ad infinitum.
Nuclear power costs too much and takes too long. If we're going to get into Faustian bargains, let's at least get ourselves a good price.
by MixedContent on Sun May 18, 2008 at 03:29:45 AM PDT
Such a claim is silly.
The first 2 billion? Probably you can make efficiency improvements that rival a new react. Picking the low-hanging fruits. CFC bulbs.
The second 2 billion? Maybe. Double-pane every window in the country.
The third and fourth 2 billions? Now all the hot water heaters are insulated and the appliances are all energy star. you are running out of things to improve.
By the 50th 2-billion, you are improving efficiency minutely. The 50th nuclear reactor, however, displaces exactly as much carbon as did the first (more probably, as the 50th reactor will be better than the 1st).
by The Scientific Liberal on Sun May 18, 2008 at 08:14:42 AM PDT
What you say might be true if the attention of technological innovators had been pointed at the field of end-use efficiency of energy, but it hasn't. It's a vast unexplored field. Just because you can't imagine any more ways to improve end-use efficiency doesn't mean there are no more ways.
The energy-star stuff is great, but it's single-component improvement. The real gains come when split-incentives stop preventing people taking the low-hanging fruit based on consumer-level cursory inspection of what things cost them. E.g., currently landlords are responsible for upgrading the heat efficiency of their buildings, but tenants pay the utility bills. This is an institutional barrier, not a technological one.
Starting earlier in the lifecycle, improved building design can result in vastly reduced power consumption for lighting ("deeplighting"), which can be provided by LED's. The lighting bill for commercial buildings is probably several nukes' worth. Improved design can also yield vastly reduced consumption for HVAC allowing smaller HVAC plants, which in many cases has proved to have an overall negative upfront cost -- just from a change in design assumptions. You only get answers to a question once you start asking it, and we've barely begun.
And when a mentality develops around these tech improvements the way one developed around software development in the 1980's-1990's, you'll be foolish to place arbitrary bounds on what can be achieved.
Detroit used to complain that it was technologically infeasible to achieve fuel-efficiency improvements proposed back in the late 1970's. This was a load of crybaby nonsense, shameful in a country that used to pride itself on its "can do" mentality. The improvements thought infeasible back then have been achieved, and the only reason actual fuel economy is so dismal now is that Detroit preferred to take the benefits of the new technology in the form of much heavier vehicles that now get roughly 20MPG, whereas before they would have gotten, idunno, eight? Twelve? Anyone here have a 1968 International Harvester Scout? Imagine a Hummer or a Denali based on that drive train. Imagine telling someone in 1970 that a Scout could get 20MPG.
There's a credible design, which by a couple of years ago had been built at half-scale, of a 4- or 5-passenger SUV that would get 100MPG. And the Aptera, currently moving towards commercial production, is a 2-passenger, crash-worthy vehicle whose effective fuel economy (based on a formula that makes its plug-in powering show up as more efficient) declines from, I think around 160MPG when you've just charged up, to 130MPG when you're running entirely on gasoline.
These products we're seeing now are the equivalent of the TRS-80.
by MixedContent on Mon May 19, 2008 at 08:30:52 AM PDT
wide narrow
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