Nuclear power sucks as an answer to climate change, energy security and air pollution

[kristopher]

Abstract here: http://www.rsc.org/publishing/journals/EE/article.asp?doi=b809990c

Full article for download here: http://www.stanford.edu/group/efmh/jacobson/revsolglobwarmairpol.htm


Energy Environ. Sci., 2009, 2, 148 - 173, DOI: 10.1039/b809990c

Review of solutions to global warming, air pollution, and energy security

Mark Z. Jacobson

Abstract
This paper reviews and ranks major proposed energy-related solutions to global warming, air pollution mortality, and energy security while considering other impacts of the proposed solutions, such as on water supply, land use, wildlife, resource availability, thermal pollution, water chemical pollution, nuclear proliferation, and undernutrition.

Nine electric power sources and two liquid fuel options are considered. The electricity sources include solar-photovoltaics (PV), concentrated solar power (CSP), wind, geothermal, hydroelectric, wave, tidal, nuclear, and coal with carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology. The liquid fuel options include corn-ethanol (E85) and cellulosic-E85. To place the electric and liquid fuel sources on an equal footing, we examine their comparative abilities to address the problems mentioned by powering new-technology vehicles, including battery-electric vehicles (BEVs), hydrogen fuel cell vehicles (HFCVs), and flex-fuel vehicles run on E85.

Twelve combinations of energy source-vehicle type are considered. Upon ranking and weighting each combination with respect to each of 11 impact categories, four clear divisions of ranking, or tiers, emerge.

Tier 1 (highest-ranked) includes wind-BEVs and wind-HFCVs.
Tier 2 includes CSP-BEVs, geothermal-BEVs, PV-BEVs, tidal-BEVs, and wave-BEVs.
Tier 3 includes hydro-BEVs, nuclear-BEVs, and CCS-BEVs.
Tier 4 includes corn- and cellulosic-E85.

Wind-BEVs ranked first in seven out of 11 categories, including the two most important, mortality and climate damage reduction. Although HFCVs are much less efficient than BEVs, wind-HFCVs are still very clean and were ranked second among all combinations.

Tier 2 options provide significant benefits and are recommended.

Tier 3 options are less desirable. However, hydroelectricity, which was ranked ahead of coal-CCS and nuclear with respect to climate and health, is an excellent load balancer, thus recommended.

The Tier 4 combinations (cellulosic- and corn-E85) were ranked lowest overall and with respect to climate, air pollution, land use, wildlife damage, and chemical waste. Cellulosic-E85 ranked lower than corn-E85 overall, primarily due to its potentially larger land footprint based on new data and its higher upstream air pollution emissions than corn-E85.

Whereas cellulosic-E85 may cause the greatest average human mortality, nuclear-BEVs cause the greatest upper-limit mortality risk due to the expansion of plutonium separation and uranium enrichment in nuclear energy facilities worldwide. Wind-BEVs and CSP-BEVs cause the least mortality.

The footprint area of wind-BEVs is 2–6 orders of magnitude less than that of any other option. Because of their low footprint and pollution, wind-BEVs cause the least wildlife loss.

The largest consumer of water is corn-E85. The smallest are wind-, tidal-, and wave-BEVs.

The US could theoretically replace all 2007 onroad vehicles with BEVs powered by 73000–144000 5 MW wind turbines, less than the 300000 airplanes the US produced during World War II, reducing US CO2 by 32.5–32.7% and nearly eliminating 15000/yr vehicle-related air pollution deaths in 2020.

In sum, use of wind, CSP, geothermal, tidal, PV, wave, and hydro to provide electricity for BEVs and HFCVs and, by extension, electricity for the residential, industrial, and commercial sectors, will result in the most benefit among the options considered.
The combination of these technologies should be advanced as a solution to global warming, air pollution, and energy security.

Coal-CCS and nuclear offer less benefit thus represent an opportunity cost loss, and the biofuel options provide no certain benefit and the greatest negative impacts.

[bananas]

1. It sure does!

[Go2Peace]

3. Al-Gore is not onboard with Nuclear...This greenwashing comes from INDUSTRY, Not ENVIRONMENTALISTS

[Name removed]

2. Deleted sub-thread

Sub-thread removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Merchant Marine]

4. I like how 144,000 turbines are equated with 300,000 40s' vintage aircraft

For starters, there's a massive discrepancy in size and tonnage of materials required. Simple mathematics reveals the vast difference in tonnage.

Assuming all aircraft built during WW2 by the USA were B-29 Stratofortresses, the largest aircraft built during the war at 40 tons, we get the following tonnage value.

300,000 x 40 = 1,200,000 tons

Now, wind turbines are massive constructions compared to a 1940s strategic bomber. I found multiple technical sources quoting the weight of the nacelle at 350 tons. Not that this is not taking into account the blade weight or tower weight.

144,000 x 350 = 50,400,000 tons

Oh yeah, 144,000 wind turbines is totally "less" than 300,000 bombers.

If you want another comparison of what a massive heap of metal 50,400,000 tons of steel is, consider that the displacement tonnage of a supercarrier is 112,000 tons.

Some more simple math gets us this comparison...

50,400,000 / 112,000 = 450 Carriers

Four hundred and fifty supercarriers, folks. That is the industrial output needed to replace all petroleum road vehicles in the US with electric wondercars.

Edit: I did more math. D:

http://www.straitstimes.com/Breaking%2BNews/Tech%2Band%2BScience/Story/STIStory_403592.html

Wind installations in the North Sea using 5mw turbines. 250m euros to put up 12 turbines.

250/12 is roughly 20m euros per turbine installed. Now the math gets scary...

20m x 144,000 turbines is 3,000,000,000,000 euros. Yes, that is 3 trillion.

To make it even scarier, convert euros to dollars US.

At current rates that's roughly 4.09 trillion greenbacks.

Yep, 144,000 turbines, no problem at all.

[joshcryer]

5. Yeah, the paper is rife with weird stuff like that.

Lowballing numbers, citations of one liners in news reports, etc.

[kristopher]

13. ROFL Bandwagon effect

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=115&topic_id=241308&mesg_id=241400

[FBaggins]

8. Yes... that's a constant meme here

whenever kris gets on a Jacobsen kick.

Need to replace every single gas/coal/oil/nuclear plant with wind/solar/hydro in 20 years? No big deal... we once built a whole bunch of planes for a war.

Need to replace every single automobile/truck/aircraft/tractor/etc with electric versions of same? Don't you realize how quickly we ramped up production of fighter planes in WWII?

The beat goes on...


And, of course, I'm sure everyone will agree that the Axis was less pressing a motivation than clean energy is. < /sarcasm>

[Statistical]

26. Even worse the calculations for wind is not 20 years or even 10 years but 2 years.

It is 2 years. He uses a CO2 emissions due to time lag which factors in a 2 year builout. 2 years to not only completely replace all forms of power generation with wind but to also replace every single vehicle in the country with EV.

Check link kris provided and click on supplemental information. The author provides line by line his "logic". Line D21 is the CO2 emission due to delay. It is based on a 2 year build out.

Calling this report junk science gives junk science a bad name.

[kristopher]

27. So you are claiming it takes 20 years to plan and build a wind farm?

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=115x241475

:crazy:

[Statistical]

29. No I am claiming it will take a long longer than 2 years to generate enough power by wind to power..

all cars.

The CO2 lag cost for wind should be more like 30 years not 2. Just because a single farm can be built in 2 years doesn't mean that can scale up to power 100 million electric vehicles in 2 years. Unless of course you are trying to promote a study which falsely makes wind out to be a savior for the planet.

BTW on the xlinked article.

If that projection holds true wind will provide only 5% of global electrical demand by 2014 and only 8% by 2020.

Wind is a great resource but nobody (not even the wind industry) is projecting the kind of build out necessary to for wind to provide even 20% of electrical demand in next 20 years.

[kristopher]

30. Are you asserting that Jacobson made such a claim?

[Statistical]

31. Yes D12 determines the CO2 delay impact of wind to be based on 2-5 years.

Thus in determining total CO2 cost of wind he is factoring in only 2-5 years of "delay". 2-5 years before CO2 released from current grid is replaced by the reduced CO2 output of wind power. The only way that metric makes sense is if enough wind is installed in that 2-5 years to power the entire grid.

Maybe you should actually read line by line what your "hero" calculated.
It is pretty pathetically bad.

[kristopher]

33. Deliberately trying to mislead people again?

Co2 starts being displaced when each individual project goes online, be it nuclear, wind, solar or any other. Claiming the CO2 savings only start when the entire grid is converted is a strange thing to say, even for you.

[joshcryer]

37. His 2 year wind cite is just some guy making a claim in a web article.

It is not a peer reviewed number, unlike the nuclear citations, there is not even any serious study on how long it actually takes. I found that a good number of large farms take many years to get off the ground, primarily because of local resistance. (This of course changes with the economic situation; recession? People will beg to have wind farms built on federally protected lands.)

Just a guy making some claim.

[Dogmudgeon]

9. Interesting how Jacobson "proves" nuclear energy is high-carbon

He factors in a nuclear war with 16 million deaths and 50 raging firestorms.

Then he says that the probability of such an event falls between 0.0 and 1.0, knowing that most people will simply take the average, 0.5, rather than call Jacobson out on his bullshit argument.

It's interesting that the no-nukes arguments always get around to exploiting fears of terrorism, yet they never cite Dr. Mohammed ElBaradei, THE expert on nuclear proliferation and terrorism issues. He was the head of the International Atomic Energy Association for several years and won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2005. But ElBaradei isn't categorically anti-nuke; he maintains that if we want to eliminate the threat of nuclear war and terrorism, we have to directly eliminate the threat of nuclear war and terrorism, not simply demonize and ban anything with the word "nuclear" in it. He "only" wants to abolish nuclear weapons and establish a global partnership to regulate nuclear material; the secure production of energy and medically-useful isotopic material is his aim.

But what I'm most surprised by is that ANY well-respected scientist would trade on his or her reputation to throw in with a crackpot political movement. Jacobson has actually done definitive work on atmospheric dynamics; his situation is a little like those of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freeman_Dyson#Global_warming">Freeman Dyson or http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Shockley#Beliefs_about_populations_and_genetics">William Shockley. Granted, Shockley's case is a little extreme, but it does show what's possible; I consider the case of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Carleton_Gajdusek">Daniel C. Gajdusek to be far worse.

Most of the accurate math on our energy and environmental situations leads to the realization that however we choose to solve these problems, it will be neither easy nor cheap, as your math has shown. And, that US$4 trillion figure you derived is probably quite low, since renewable energy would require a "smart grid" or an integratable energy storage solution, or both. Mark Z. Jacobson would agree: he estimates the cost of his wind-solar-tidal energy worldwide system at $100 Trillion. (Mark Z. Jacobson and Delucci, M., A Path to Sustainable Energy by 2030, Scientific American, November 2009, p64).

You read that right: one hundred trillion dollars. For that price, we could build 5000 nuclear reactors, using the anti-nukes' own inflated figures (US$20 billion). Today, 439 reactors provide about 20% of the world's electrical needs; we could replace all coal, gas, and hydro electricity production with nuclear, AND completely replace the current fleet of nuclear power plants, for half that price, only US$50 trillion.

Only.

So I tend to disbelieve anyone who says, "all we have to do is insulate our homes better, have a solar Manhattan Project, go vedge, use CFL bulbs instead of incandescents, buy Priuses, compost our poop, tax carbon, and give all the cows Gas-X, and we'll be saved without nukes". I think it's going to take an historically difficult effort even WITH nukes.

I wish the solution was cheap, easy, and able to please everybody, but we've neglected taking responsible action for well over a century. At this point, sustaining a productive, beneficial society will be difficult enough. Absent several major technological breakthroughs, that future will include nuclear power plants among the other energy sources we are able to employ.

--d!

[Statistical]

21. Exactly the cost of smart grid is never factored in.

Like is will magically appear.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=115x241170

Here a $3 billion project to build just a single 550 mile high voltage transmission line link between two points.

A massively redundant "super grid" would be a magnitude more.

The coal project is getting this investment because sadly (without a carbon tax) coal is cheap.

So cheap coal + expensive transmission = acceptably priced power.

Expensive renewables + expensive transmission = high priced power.

Unless you outlaw coal guess what will end up being pushed over that super grid.

If you guessed coal you are the winner. A super grid would simply make it even more economical for long range transmission of coal (our lowest cost power) all over the country.

[Statistical]

11. It gets worse. The paper assumes that can be done in 2-5 years.

The "logic". A windfarm can be built in 2-5 years THUS all vehicle CO2 can be replaced (via wind powered EV) in 2-5 years.

The paper is beyond stupid on some many levels. Of course COPY & PASTE master has no critical thinking skills he can't actually look at the calculations the author provides and say "hey that doesn't even make sense".

[kristopher]

12. You are asserting it costs $27,000,000 to erect ONE turbine.

The technological challenge of building a wind turbine is virtually the same as building WWII aircraft and your post has no bearing unless you are claiming that steel and copper are limiting factors. As an unabashed supporter of the nuclear industry you are doing nothing more than making a very, very clumsy and ham-handed attempt to discredit Jacobson's work with an appeal to irrelevant trivia.

The largest part of the weight of a turbine is the generator windings and the tower, but making these components are neither complex nor labor intensive.


Far more revealing of your intent is your claim that putting up 12 turbines cost 250M Euros, and the absolutely preposterous act of extrapolating that to the price for all turbines.

Apparently in your zeal you didn't bother to consider that you've claimed it cost $27,000,000 just to ERECT a wind turbine? Since the best number I've heard of for the cost of completed 3.6 offshore turbines is about $5M each, one has to wonder how they are hiding the rest of that cost. Even if they've learned some really great tricks from the nuclear industry (a group that specializes in hiding true costs) I don't think that is an assumption that we can accept, do you?

Your post, while interesting in a "Trivial Pursuit" sort of way, is pure horseshit as far as meaningful content. I think we should continue to rely on folks like Jacobson who actually have some basic reasoning skills.

For starters, there's a massive discrepancy in size and tonnage of materials required. Simple mathematics reveals the vast difference in tonnage.

Assuming all aircraft built during WW2 by the USA were B-29 Stratofortresses, the largest aircraft built during the war at 40 tons, we get the following tonnage value.

300,000 x 40 = 1,200,000 tons

Now, wind turbines are massive constructions compared to a 1940s strategic bomber. I found multiple technical sources quoting the weight of the nacelle at 350 tons. Not that this is not taking into account the blade weight or tower weight.

144,000 x 350 = 50,400,000 tons

Oh yeah, 144,000 wind turbines is totally "less" than 300,000 bombers.

If you want another comparison of what a massive heap of metal 50,400,000 tons of steel is, consider that the displacement tonnage of a supercarrier is 112,000 tons.

Some more simple math gets us this comparison...

50,400,000 / 112,000 = 450 Carriers

Four hundred and fifty supercarriers, folks. That is the industrial output needed to replace all petroleum road vehicles in the US with electric wondercars.

Edit: I did more math. D:

http://www.straitstimes.com/Breaking%2BNews/Tech%2Band%...

Wind installations in the North Sea using 5mw turbines. 250m euros to put up 12 turbines.

250/12 is roughly 20m euros per turbine installed. Now the math gets scary...

20m x 144,000 turbines is 3,000,000,000,000 euros. Yes, that is 3 trillion.

To make it even scarier, convert euros to dollars US.

At current rates that's roughly 4.09 trillion greenbacks.

Yep, 144,000 turbines, no problem at all.

:rofl:

[Merchant Marine]

17. Appeal to trivia? More like logistics...

My point is that your energy policy is to truck 50 million tons of wind turbine to every crag and ridge that hasn't met the developer's axe yet.

Oh, and if 27m USD per turbine is too much, you should tell the Germans they got ripped off. I ain't a scientist and I ain't ever claimed to be one. All of that "math" was just to put things in perspective. Frankly I tipped the court in your favor. Vastly all of the aircraft built in the US for the war were light single engine pursuit fighters and small transports. I gave you 300,000 Superfortresses.

Its simple math; a project has $250m to erect 12 turbines, how much of that budget covers each turbine? Come on, you can do division!

Remember that this covers the cost of the turbine, transportation, specialized crane barges, divers to install the base and do the welding, and all the administration overhead.

[Name removed]

19. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Merchant Marine]

20. Could you please make an attempt at honest debate?

Constant abuse and personal attacks is NOT an argument.

I would appreciate it if you could post some examples of projects with a lower cost/turbine. There should be plenty, the Europeans have something like 2,000 MW installed offshore capacity.

[Confusious]

23. HA! Thats NOT going to happen

That mind is a steel trap. A debate assumes people can change their mind.

Done been closed A loooonngg time.

[Merchant Marine]

24. Well, I'm not going to bother insulting him.

Nnadir has that market locked up. :p

[kristopher]

28. ROFLMAO - Sure, continue to defend that nonsense.

And it is pure nonsense.

Apparently you have never heard of concept of either "test projects" nor "economies of scale". But then again, given your attempt to evaluate wind power by the pound perhaps you have heard of economies of scale after all, its just that the only economic tool you could related it to was what you learned of economics in the produce and meat sections of the supermarket.

You are the one making the preposterous claim that all wind turbines will cost $27 million dollars, please tell me that you have a better reason.

[Merchant Marine]

32. I asked you for some cheaper examples...

Willing to step up to the bat, or are you going to continue to just try to insult my intelligence?

Economy of scale will apply to the turbines themselves, but unless the folks doing the installations offer a bulk discount the cost for transportation and installation is linear. Do you want to do the math for barge charter, crane rental and worker/diver wages? I sure don't.

[kristopher]

34. I gave you a number.

The all in cost is about $5M for an OFFSHORE turbine the last time I chased the number down.

$27M!
:rofl:

[Merchant Marine]

35. [citation needed]

[Statistical]

41. Since he won't give you one here is one from Wind Lobby.

http://www.wind-energy-the-facts.org/en/part-3-economics-of-wind-power/chapter-2-offshore-developments/development-of-the-cost-of-offshore-wind-power-up-to-2015.html

Looks like cost for installed offshore wind is currently about 2.1 mil E PER MEGAWATT

A similar price increase can be observed for offshore wind power, although a fairly small number of finished projects, as well as a large spread in investment costs, make it difficult to identify the price level for offshore turbines accurately. On average, the expected investment costs for a new offshore wind farm are currently in the range of 2.0 to 2.2 million €/MW.

2.1 mil Euros = $2.85 mil

So 5MW offshore wind turbine would be in the ballpark of $14 mil. Note that is "overnight cost" we haven't accounted for financing. Say amortized over 30 years at 7% = $33.53 million (compounded interest is a bitch when dealing with large sums).

I guess you can see why Kris wouldn't provide a cite for his $5M "all in" price on a offshore turbine.

The interesting thing about anti-nuclear math:
Nuclear is "too expensive". MEAG is building 2 reactors in GA for $14 billion. That $7 billion a piece. $6086 per KW peak. Factor in 92% capacity factor that is $6620 per KW average.

$14 million for turbine. 5MW. $2800 per KW peak. Factor in 40% capacity factor that is $7000 per KW average.
Somehow $7000 is cheaper than $6620. Of course reactors routinely last 40+ years. How many wind turbines last 40 years? So nuclear is cheaper and lasts longer yet somehow is "too expensive".

[joshcryer]

39. So you're saying that new nuclear is bound to be less costly after more are built?

Cool.

[Nihil]

40. Oops ... you really should know better by now ...

Really ... expecting anything other than nuclear to be held to the
standard that is expected for nuclear?

:popcorn:

[joshcryer]

6. FYI, if the paper concluded 60+60 lifespan for Gen III+ reactors, nuclear beats hydro.

Now, I'm assuming that we'd like to base our projections on new technology and not old technology, so it seems as though this would be an acceptable move.

[Statistical]

10. Hell even if the paper took more moderate steps nuclear would score better

The paper uses
Construction time of 10 to 19 years (delays time to reduce CO2)
Plant life of 25 years (requires more replacement plants)
Capacity Factor of 80% (requires more plants)
Average capacity of 800 MW (requires more plants)
Includes the CO2 cost of a guaranteed nuclear war (as if nuclear building more reactors in the United State somehow increases chance of nuclear)

Even something like:
Construction: 5 to 10 years
Plant life: 40 years
Capacity factor: 90%
Average capacity: 1200 MW
No silly nuclear war (as if more reactors in US will increase chance of nuclear war) CO2 "cost"

puts nuclear on top.

The paper is downright stupid. It uses a linear assumption of time. Wind plant takes 2 years to build thus 100% of vehicles can be replaced with wind powered EV in 2 years.

Of all the garbage Kris posts this one is the most stupid.

[kristopher]

14. ROFL Bandwagon Effect

All of his numbers are valid and legitimately derived from a range of input values.

You just want him to use the the propaganda provided by the nuclear industry. Anyone that doesn't is ALWAYS accused by the nuclear power lobby of "hating nuclear" and attempting to shape the data to an end. The fact is that the data provided by the nuclear industry has, for 50 years, proved to be total bullshit on a scale that would make a completely dishonest used car salesman blush.

We can confirm YOUR attention to real bias by going here and then looking at your responses:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=115&topic_id=241308&mesg_id=241400

[Confusious]

25. All of his numbers are valid and legitimately derived from a range of input values

How do you know that, if it's not peer reviewed?

[joshcryer]

36. He just wants to bury peoples posts.

He believes that somehow on a forum of intellectuals, posting some spam will prevent them from actually reading the post he's replying to. He's wrong of course, but it does make his post count go way high (about 2/3rds of his posts here are copy+paste jobs).

[Dead_Parrot]

7. ...

[kristopher]

15. Sure, here you go.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=115&topic_id=241308&mesg_id=241400

[Nederland]

16. Are you aware...

...that DU rules allow you to post links to more than one article?

[kristopher]

18. Are you aware...

That when 10,000 lies are refuted by one set of established facts, it is appropriate to refer to that same set of established facts 10,000 times?

That is a particularly interesting belief you are demonstrating. You are essentially saying that that the act of rewording and/repeating a disproved lie means that it must be countered only with a new and unknown scientific study or else the lie should be accepted as true.

I guess that is to be expected from someone dedicated to convincing people climate change isn't anything to worry about.

[Confusious]

22. So I suppose you believe

that we never landed on the moon? there are more then 10,000 people who believe we did, but there are those who believe we didn't.

Do their "facts" trump the 10,000 who think it happened?

Keep trying, maybe one one day we'll all have a lobotomy, turn teapartier, and take it on face value.

[joshcryer]

38. BTW, this is not a peer reviewed research paper.

What's misleading is that this was a review article that was accepted and published within the span of a few months, in a rather new journal, at that.

The publishers even spammed the wikipedia page trying to sell the journal because it was only in 2008 that it started.

I myself will stick to Science and Nature.