Wind power

[phantom power]

I notice that GE makes a wind turbine rated for 3.6 megawatts. How many of these would we need to build, if we wanted to supply all of the USA's energy with wind turbines?

Start with my ever-popular 100x10^18 Joules/year. I'll start out generous and assume that this demand is constant (the optimal case, and obviously fictional), which would give a power demand of 3.17 tera-watts. So, in this mythical constant-demand case, we use 3.17 tera-watts, 24/7/365, with no ups or downs.

If we could also assume that our 3.6MW wind-turbines always generated their optimal power, 24/7/365, then we would need about 900,000 wind-turbines.

Now, the real question is, how many would we need, to account for peak-load requirements, and also to account for windless days? Beats me, but off the top of my head, adding a factor of 10 might be in the ballpark. That would be 9 million wind-turbines.

I can imagine building 9 million wind-turbines. It doesn't seem astronomical, although I have no idea what it costs to actually manufacture them and install them. And we also have to pay for storing surplus energy to smooth out production on windless days. Fuel cells, compressed air, batteries, liquid fuels, what-have-you.

[DemInDistress]

1. sounds good to me phantom..

but where would they be concentrated? Any renewable source should be encouraged big time,we're fighting big oil,they may have a say in development of windmills,i imagine that would cut into profits

[phantom power]

2. Probably the coasts, and the great plains.

Things have reached the point where I really don't care who profits. This is about the survival of me and my family. And everybody else alive.

I'm not exactly sure if 9 million wind turbines are good, bad, or indifferent. Depends a lot on how much they would cost to deploy. For instance, if they cost a million dollars each, that's 9 trillion bucks. Maybe somebody can contribute cost information. That would be about 30 thousand bucks for ever man, woman and child in America.

I'm equally concerned about the cost of storage. I'm 99% sure that any adequately scaled storage solution will also cost trillions. Some will cost fewer trillions than others, but that's the magnitude of the problem.

[FloridaPat]

3. Out west and in Florida and several other states we have a ton of sunshine

Solar could be the major import in those state.

[phantom power]

4. Yeah, we can do solar too, especially in the southwest.

Wind is still significantly cheaper than solar, per megawatt. I should say "photovoltaic", since wind is also solar power.

Also in the "solar" category, there's this bio-diesel from algae scheme floating around, which would also work well in southern states with lots of sun. The numbers run pretty well on that too, although I've read there are some aspects of the end-to-end process that aren't completely proven.

[gaia_gardener]

5. Some places are using methane gas from

landfills to make power. The GM plant in OKC was supposed to start doing that, but the latest news I've heard is that they are laying people off and holding off on using the methane.

Too bad, they're very close to the landfill (landform, I call it, that thing is huge) it'd be very easy to pipe it over.

[phantom power]

7. Landfill methane could solve about 1% of our current needs.

We can still do it, but people should understand that it's not ever going to supply a significant fraction of our energy consumption.

[punpirate]

6. One of the interesting things about this is that...

... there's always wind, somewhere. One has greater load-balancing requirements with solar (you know that for a set period for each day that there's no sunlight).

I don't think you're far off with the 3.2 terawatt figure--I think the last I read it was about 3.4 terawatts. But, you must remember that already includes excess capacity to account for scheduled shutdowns for maintenance, nuclear fuel reloading, etc., and excess capacity for peak shaving (there are a lot of smaller plants out there, especially those owned by AEP, which exist for peak-shaving only).

The GE plants you describe were acquired from the gone-bust Enron Wind division, so I'm not sure you can use that as a good cost model. A recent sale by a plant in Spain was for $440 million to supply 400 megawatts sounds like a surer cost to me--figure about $1.10 per installed watt--a pretty good cost these days.

The other consideration not built into your cost estimates is that of conservation--it's much easier and cheaper to not have to install capacity than it is to install capacity to meet wasteful demand (California is the leading case for that after being burned by the unregulated energy companies and a bad utility contract).

What would your costs be like if you could reduce installed capacity to, say, 2.2 terawatts and still meet demand?

[phantom power]

8. We could definitely leverage conservation more.

I try to avoid conservation in my estimates, mostly because I don't know how to estimate how far it will take us, or how much it would cost us. Some things, like making sure all buildings are properly insulated, have a huge cost/benefit ratio, and they use proven technology. Other ideas are more hypothetical, and more expensive.

I'm pretty sure that the economics of post-oil energy will force us all to conserve in various ways, simply because we won't be able to afford otherwise.

However... Assuming that we reduce our national demand to 2.2 terawatts, that would give us a cost of about 2.4 trillion dollars, assuming your $1.10/watt figure. Or, assuming my "10-x" slop factor, 24 trillion dollars.

[punpirate]

9. The "slop" figure...

... is not necessary--especially for mature or maturing industries (which wind now is). If businesses operated on a + x10 cost cushion, they'd all be broke--especially regulated utilities. This isn't defense spending, after all. :)

1.5 would more likely be the outside. Trust me--utilities don't do costs on your slop basis.

So, spending the same amount we spend on war each year, say, $100 billion--project that into the future and we have, over twenty years, $2 trillion available to subsidize electrical energy independence. Eliminate the tax cuts for the wealthy, and we can do that and reduce the national debt....

And have cleaner air. There are a lot of ifs in this, but proper planning takes care of those--first of which is to get the fat cats out of government who have their own interests foremost.

All of this won't matter if Congress passes the latest energy bill--one of the little-known (and little-noticed by the press) provisions in it is the repeal of The Public Utilities Holding Company Act (PUHCA). If that happens, within a few years, there will be maybe two or three Enrons controlling all of the country's utilities.

Cheers.

[phantom power]

10. My slop wasn't exactly for cost, it was for windless days.

Basically, I'm imagining that we might need 10x the nominal capacity to cover windless periods.

Maybe that's needlessly pessimistic, but I'm trying hard to avoid being overly optimistic. I'd rather be pleasantly surprised :-)

[punpirate]

11. It's still far too high...

... wind is moving across the continent steadily and constantly. That's what helps move the weather. And there are channels where it happens more or less constantly because of terrain. Moreover, what you feel at ground level has no bearing on the air moving three hundred feet up. When you stop having sun, you stop having wind--because solar flux drives the wind system--particularly due to day/night cycles related to solar heating and radiational cooling. And we're going to have a sun around for quite a while yet. :)

Recently, I use to commute to west and central Texas, for example, and there are three main installations of wind farms that I used to cruise by. Never, no matter what time of year or time of day were they not running that I could see. Beyond that, these installations could not be profitable--even with small government subsidies--unless they were making power most of the time.

Coastal installations are perfect--differential heating and cooling between water and land create onshore and offshore winds at different times of day--the wind turbines almost always have energy to use, etc.

A truly alternative energy system would have to require depth and breadth, true, but solar and mass storage devices for peak-shaving, all of these are possible--it just takes the will to do it. In my state, most of the land mass in the flat lands doesn't have a lot of wind. But we do have sun 320-330 days a year. And plenty of wind along mountain range ridges. We'd end up being a net solar contributor to the grid.

Wind isn't the only solution--but with a midwest such as we have, we'd be foolish not to use it.

Even if your downtime factor were raised to five (which is very much on the high side, I think), an integrated system of wind, solar, and biomass fuels running generators for peak-shaving, geothermal (not nearly enough research being done on that) and tidal generation could completely supplant fossil fuels and nuclear--and have the benefit of decentralizing power production. When a nuclear station trips out, the grid instantly loses 800-1000 mW generating capacity. When the controller on a wind turbine fries the generator windings, the grid loses maybe 1 mW capacity.

But, that doesn't suit the economy of scale thinking of the big boys--especially the manufacturers of very large plants--the Bechtels, the Babcock & Wilcoxes, etc.

Cheers.

[rfkrfk]

18. storage, should be first

storage should be first.
If wind-solar advocates would build
'electricity type' storage now,
there would be uses, now.
Wind, solar, would fit in, whenever.
Wind-solar people should also
look for seasonal-interruptable customers.

[struggle4progress]

30. Who would put a windfarm where the wind only blew one day in ten?

[phantom power]

32. Anywhere can have 10 days of slack wind

And it's not just slack wind. It's days where the wind is low, and power output is lower than optimal.

The formal problem statement would be something like: "how many days of storage do I need to guarantee that the storage is exhausted with probability < 0.01%, which is to say 99.99% reliability for the grid"

As I pointed out, I don't really know what the real factor needs to be. It also would need to include extra for peak-loads. The wattage figure I came up with assumes constant load, and so it's overly optimistic. The real peak wattage would be larger than the average.

And, this is all assuming a pure-wind scenario, and that is unlikely to be what we end up with. I was just seeing if pure wind looked possible, which it seems to be. At least, it would not require something absolutely preposterous like a trillion windmills.

[struggle4progress]

34. There's usually more motion a few tens of meters up than at ground level:

Lots of time when the wind seems not to blowing (because we're stuck in the boundary layer) there really is some movement ...

[jpak]

35. I worked at a research lab in Denmark a few years back.

They had several wind turbines nearby.

Even when there wasn't a breath of wind at the surface, the turbines were turning (and they were VERY quiet).

Bergey Windpower is developing a 50 kW turbine (the BWC XL.50) that produces power at wind speeds of ~5 mph.

http://www.bergey.com/

It will make wind power feasible in areas where wind power is not presently considered feasible...

[Massacure]

36. peak power usually doesnt kick in until 25-30 mph though.

Remember as wind speed doubles, power output is cubed. Thus if you have two equal turbines and one is in 30 mph wind with the other in 15 mph wind, the one in 15 mph wind will only make 1/8 as much power as the 30 mph one.

[jpak]

22. Yes - as Dick Cheney tells us "Conservation is a personal virtue"

This is why these 100 exajoule exercises are so annoying.

100 exajoules for what???

8 mpg SUV's so we can drive to the mall???

Poorly insulated residential and commercial buildings???

Inefficient lighting and home appliances??

Inefficient electric motors????

Phantom loads???

Las Vegas????

Read on grasshopper


:)

http://www.rmi.org/sitepages/pid17.php

http://www.eco-web.com/cgi-local/sfc?a=/editorial/index.html&b=/editorial/00892.html

There is no need for a 10x slop factor to back up wind on a windless day.

http://www.hydro.com/en/our_business/oil_energy/new_energy/hydrogen/winds_change.html

http://www.fuelcelltoday.com/FuelCellToday/CommonServices/PrinterFriendlyPage/0,1872,Type=News&RecordID=4660,00.html

...and a mix of renewables can integrated into a grid that requires little back up...

http://www.energybulletin.net/6097.html

Finally: conservation ALWAYS pays for itself and provides real savings on investment - I don't care if it's a compact fluorescent light bulb or a Energy Star refrigerator.

ALWAYS

The Bush/Cheney/Reagan supply-side-"we-can-produce-ourselves-out-of-our-energy-crisis"-no-conservation energy policy is doomed to failure.

[NNadir]

12. Here is the problem with this claim:

Weather patterns generally cover huge areas. It is possible for much of the east coast to have doldrums at the same time.

If the distance between wind and the power demand is larger than the distance at which the power can be transported, you are really out of luck.

Also, it is not reasonable to expect that the wind will blow whenever it is cloudy or raining or night.

Actually I think solar power is much easier to balance than wind power, particularly because solar power is available most reliably when demand peaks: Hot sunny days when lots of air conditioners are running.

Everybody who is familiar with my writings will know that I am a big fan of wind power, but I note that during the heat crisis in Europe a few years ago, when a few tens of thousands of persons were killed by global change, it was a big problem because Germany, which has a pretty large wind capacity, had no access to power.

They bought electricity from France, which has reliable nuclear reactors. It is however worth noting that some nuclear reactors were also threatened with shut down in this particular crisis. This is because they were in danger of exceeding the permissible water temperature specifications.

If the variable production of wind plants leads to shortfalls that are met by burning fossil fuels, this can have a pretty powerful greenhouse consequence, since the ramping up and down of such output often requires the expenditure of energy to address the heat capacity of water below its boiling point.

A wind dissident discusses the circumstances under which wind power can be problematic in this interesting link, with which I was not previously familiar:

http://www.dartdorset.org/Unfriendly%20WF%2018%20Feb%202004.pdf

Here is an interesting excerpt discussing the situation in Denmark and Germany:

"Danish experience
Denmark is a small country with two unconnected grid systems, east and west of the Great Belt, respectively. Its western region has already achieved the renewables goal to which the UK aspires by 2020, so it is instructive to examine its experience of extensive wind power.

In 2003, Western Denmark had the highest concentration of wind turbines in the world, its c. 4,700 wind turbines having an installed capacity of 2,374 MW (Bülow, 2004), or about 62% and 85% of peak winter and summer loads, respectively (Sharman, 2003ab). It also possessed about 500 decentralized heat and power (CHP) plants, as well as coal-burning facilities. Of great importance, Western Denmark has interconnectors to Norway, Sweden and Germany Their total capacity (c. 2,400 MW) almost exactly equals the installed wind capacity. This allows the export of surges in windy conditions and the importation of power (including nuclear-generated power) during windless periods.

Regulation of the output of Western Denmark’s wind turbines and CHP plants is thus achieved by a combination of paying the region’s largest power company to ramp its coal or gas-fired output up or down, by exporting power (often at very low prices) (Sandøe & Thisted, 2003), or by importing electricity at premium prices. The system is very different from that of the UK, and survives by virtue of Denmark’s ability to transfer large amounts of power to and from the much bigger grids of its neighbors (Sharman, 2003b), who possess large hydro facilities (that can be switched off or on at short notice) and/or big markets.

Even with its geographical advantages, however, Western Denmark’s principal TSO has reported that managing the unregulated production of electricity from its wind turbines and CHP plants can be akin to maneuvering a rapidly moving articulated lorry train without a steering wheel, accelerator, clutch or brakes (Andersen, 2003). Although its annual production of renewable (mostly wind) power is currently about 21% of local consumption, wind supply can exceed regional demand on occasion. Conversely stranded wind power production has been a frequent event, and even negative output has occurred when the steering requirements for the system exceeded wind output (Sharman, 2003ab). An acute challenge was experienced in Western Denmark on New Year’s Day 2002, when twelve wind farms were shut down for a 12-hour period for fear of over-capacity on the grid (Rostgaard, 2002). This problem arose because the export option was not available (industrial shut-down in a holiday period) and windy conditions prevailed at a time when the demand for electricity was low but cold weather dictated a high demand for heat from the CHP plants (Andersen, 2002). An inaccurate weather forecast caused another serious event on 27th October 2002, described under the heading <“More wind turbines cause chaos”> (Sandøe & Thisted, 2003). It is also becoming increasingly difficult for Western Denmark to export over-runs to Germany because of the large concentrations of wind turbines on both sides of their shared border. These countries often compete to export superfluous wind power for whatever low price the market can bear (Sandøe & Thisted, 2003)..."

All energy sources have risks, advantages and disadvantages. One needs to take a combinatorial approach to evaluate these systems, with multidimensional axes that might include: supply, cost, environmental impact, sustainability, health risks, reliability, and the legacy of future generations. Mathematically this is a relatively easy affair if all variables are easily measurable and easily weighted: One simply determines the length of a vector in some Rn space, where n is the number of variables. In practice however, there are likely to be many disagreements on both measurement and weighting. For instance, some people weigh the aesthetics of coastal views over the risks of global climate change. Some people rate the risks to bat populations lower than they rate the need to watch Seinfeld reruns on big screen TVs. There really is no pat answer to this kind of decision making. Ideally such decisions would be made by a well educated, informed, concerned citizenry in consultation with experts in the field. Unfortunately in the age of George W. Bush and Greenpeace, that is exactly what is missing: a well educated, informed, concerned citizenry.

It is very clear that a one size fits all approach - the historical approach that existed in the now ending age of fossil fuels - will simply not work. Our environmental problems will not be solved by simply manufacturing millions of wind turbines, nor will they be completely solved totally by my own favorite form of energy production, nuclear energy.

The three most promising areas in my mind do include conservation (my number 1 favorite), nuclear power (my number 2 favorite) and wind (my number three favorite.) Almost all other forms of energy, as they now exist are pretty much environmentally or economically unacceptable or both. Note that I regard hydropower as environmentally unacceptable - at least in most places. It is widely used, but it is unacceptable. Coal is also widely used, but it is also unacceptable.

[punpirate]

13. Which is one of the reasons, in a later post...

... I suggest a fully-integrated system.

BTW, all the problems related with wind turbines in Denmark and the inability to sell excess power are directly attributable to a lack of planning--that excess electricity, for example, can be used, instead, for space, process and water heating, thus reducing fossil fuel use for those purposes.

Wind isn't everything--and in a country this size, with the grid as it's laid out, that is an issue. No question about it. But, saying that having the source hundreds of miles from the area needing power is impossible isn't true--that's exactly the case today--how much of the power in the northeast still comes from Niagara Falls, for example?

Yes, one has to consider line losses--the lower the long-line voltage, the higher the loss, and there are limitations on how high one can run the voltage for lines in air due to inductive and electrostatic effects. Maybe part of that solution may be in materials science. Who knows?

But, if we don't start doing the work to make it come about, we're going to be in shit city. If we don't do it while we still have oil, how do we design and manufacture the necessary equipment when we don't?

Cheers.

[NNadir]

14. The problem is that redundancies have costs too.

The problem is that some Danes might wish to use hot water to take showers when the wind is NOT blowing. Therefore the installation of millions of electrical hot water heaters would require some alternate fuel.

In the Danish case, right now, they can buy electricity from Germany, France, and Sweden which have fossil and nuclear generators, but this alternate requirement has costs. If for some reason this capacity is NOT available, of course the Danes will be required to build back up units themselves. Since these plants will be running only part of the time (when the wind is not blowing) they will have to amortize themselves while they have considerable down time. This is not particularly economic.

The mythology that nuclear power is unacceptably expensive is rooted in a time that the plants were going through shakedowns, and the plants had considerable down time. This is because most nuclear engineers in the 1960's and 1970's had very little practical operating experience. Thus the plants were often off line, and consequently were not producing either power or revenue. A typical utilization factor in that era would have been around 70%. This was a time that people were predicting the eminent demise of nuclear power on purely economic grounds. In spite of the fact that no nuclear plants have come on line since the early 80's, US nuclear power production actually peaked (before leveling off) in the early 21st century, a few years ago, even though there are fewer operating reactors than there were in 1985. It is not usual to see reactors operating at higher capacities than their design rating. As a result, the price of nuclear power has fallen. In most places, nuclear's internal cost (what people pay) is roughly equal to coal. The external cost (the cost to the environment and health) of nuclear power, on the other hand is extraordinarily low when compared to coal.

Thus the back up plants for when the wind died would be very, very, very, very expensive indeed.

The planning that would be required to have each Dane take a hot shower when the wind was blowing for instance would be rather large, so this application of heating water when wind is available is of limited utility. It may actually have a negative environmental impact. Suppose we announced by email that all Danes would be well advised to take a shower at 2 pm on a particularly windy day because it would be an excellent time to "dispose" of excess electrical capacity to heat water. If all Danes drove home to take advantage of the low cost power shower, there would be an enormous greenhouse gas impact.

[punpirate]

15. Well, tell you what...

... you support nuclear (the hidden costs of which are quite high, not just including the subsidies and credits you pay with your taxes via Congressional appropriations to mature industries that don't need them), and I'll support a lower-tech approach, one that requires no fuel, or renewable fuels.

Uranium stocks are finite, too, and while we could go for some time with plants designed to run on old warhead fuel, that's not likely to happen as long as the current defense situation is maintained. So, that means breeders and a long reprocessing chain--and in this country--that means industry cutting corners wherever possible, with the attendant environmental problems that implies. And, no one's yet come up with a safe disposal solution that industry doesn't scream and moan about the costs. And, remember--cheap oil offsets the costs of all the above--mining, refining, fuel processing and reprocessing and transportation of those items. Those costs go up as oil goes up. Nuclear power doesn't exist in isolation from the oil economy.

And, with nuclear, as I suggest, the constructors and operators want an economy of scale that makes the plants more, not less, difficult to operate. I've had talks about this with nuclear engineers and plant operators, and they were willing to admit that the bigger the plant, the more the problems. A good example is Consumers Power in Michigan--the Big Rock plant, at a peak power of about 190 mW, ran neck and neck with Yankee Rowe (at 310 mW) for time without incident, in the entire industry, for almost its entire time of operation. By contrast, the Palisades plant was down all the time, and when it was running, they were getting fined constantly for venting from the containment. They told me that they could run the Big Rock plant with nine people per shift and the people in the plant could tell when something wasn't right before the people in the control room could. Bigger plants will mean more problems, and more downtime (which impinges on economic operation). Add in the newest wrinkle, helium gas-cooling, and it's going to get pretty expensive.

Hell, in this country, we can't even depend upon the government to do fusion research--they end up diverting the money for weapons research (which is one of the principal reasons why fusion research is badly lagging these days).

Cheers.

[NNadir]

16. What "hidden" costs specifically?

For the record, the United States will be burning Russian U-235 to from old warheads for many years. So much for the "current defense situation."

http://www.nti.org/db/nisprofs/russia/fissmat/fisscycl.htm

It happens that plutonium is somewhat more difficult to fission in nuclear reactors, although it clearly is done. The world supply of plutonium, 1000 MT, representing about 80 exajoules, is sufficient theoretically to meet the world's entire energy demand, at 600 exajoules, from all sources for 49 days, 49 days which the CO2 output and air pollutant output would be zero. Moving away from theory, the world nuclear capacity is 361 gigawatts. The fuel requirement for plutonium to provide 361 is easily shown to be around 15 grams/second. This translates to about 2.1 years of fuel supply. Since all nuclear reactors have a breeding ratio, not necessarily greater than one, the use of such fuel in a MOX setting with either a thorium or depleted uranium matrix would create even more fuel created during the use of this two year supply. While about 200 MT represents material prepared for nuclear weapons, the bulk of it represents accumulation in nuclear reactors. In the United States, this huge resource is identified by stupid people as so called "nuclear waste," and is often represented as a "hidden cost."

Nonsense.

I hear a great deal of mythology about "hidden costs," but I very seldom see them demonstrated. There have been zero people killed by the storage so called "nuclear wastes" for instance, although people routinely, in a kind of mystic chanting, refer to spent fuel as "dangerous nuclear waste." Dangerous to whom exactly?

Similarly one hears from time to time that the enrichment of uranium consumes more electricity than it produces, but when you ask people to identify an enrichment plant that consumes 600 billion megawatts-hours of electricity, they can't do so.

As for your conversations with nuclear engineers about plant dynamics, I'm sorry to inform you that it doesn't ring remotely true. A 190 megawatt plant may be huge when compared with some natural gas plants, coal plants and is vastly larger than just about any solar plant on the planet, but as a nuclear plant it is tiny.

The Catawba nuclear station in South Carolina is rated at 2,200 Megawatts, which is more than 10 times of what you, in alleged conversation with "nuclear engineers," identify as a big plant.

http://groups.msn.com/AAEA/nuclearplants.msnw

This plant, which by itself represents more capacity than the entire solar PV capacity of the entire United States, produced the cheapest power in the United States, at $11.33 Megawatt-hour or $0.01 kw-hr. Unit one operated at 82.5% of capacity and Unit 2 at 94% of capacity.

http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/nuclear/page/at_a_glance/reactors/catawba.html.

http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/nuclear/page/at_a_glance/states/statessc.html

The record for continuous operation of a nuclear power plant without refueling is 707 days (almost two years) set by Brunswick unit 1.

http://www.nei.org/doc.asp?catnum=3&catid=13

This plant, which operated at 103.5% of its rated capacity factor (these ratings are very much effected by scheduled refueling) is rated at 847 Megawatts. It's sister unit on the same site is rated at 811 Megawatts. The capacity rating for unit 2 was 98.7%

If you have really met nuclear engineers, you probably didn't understand exactly what they were telling you, since it is very clear that large nuclear stations operate more efficiently than small stations.

For the record, also, any one who is remotely knowledgeable about fusion power will recognize that it is impossible to employ without fission power. All of the world's supply of tritium has been produced in fission reactors. The overwhelming bulk of tritium is found in Canada, where it has been isolated from the operations of CANDU plants. Since a T + D reaction produces exactly one neutron fusion breeding is impossible. According to the DOE, a 1000 MW(th) fusion reactor would require 55.8 kg of tritium per year. The world supply is less than half that. Thus even if workable fusion power plants were available now (and they aren't even close yet) their impact on global energy would be severely limited by the availability of fuel.

http://public.lanl.gov/willms/Presentations/Tritium_Supply_Considerations.pdf

Fusion power has great mystical power in some people's minds, but we have no time to wait for this mystical power source. The global climate change crisis is now. Almost everyone who tells me about the promise of fusion power has no idea what they are talking about.

It is easy to find people who support magical solutions, "a lower-tech approach, one that requires no fuel, or renewable fuels" but in fact these systems are very, very, very, very unreliable overall. Because they have such a huge place in the popular imagination, so much good will, if they were really doable they would probably already been done. With the exception of wind energy, which has made huge strides, most renewable sources have mostly been represented by decades of blather and empty promises.

This blather reminds me of certain governors of California who started their careers as actors. While for certain periods they have been (by some people anyway) considered to be sexy, the one startling consistent fact that one finally appreciates when assessing them is that however sexy they might have been, at the end of the day, they were just plain dumb.

The only way we are going to make renewable fuels viable is to reduce the earth's population. The only way we are going to (ethically) reduce earth's population is to reduce poverty. The reduction of poverty, in turn, will require available reasonably priced energy. However nobody is going to manage very much at all involving energy, population or any other thing if the collapse earth's atmosphere is allowed to persist unchecked. All these facts are clear. Nuclear energy is the obvious solution.

[punpirate]

17. Very good...

... relating a common-sense approach to renewables to Reagan's mind. Cute.

Okay, hidden costs:

1) Government subsidies. If the power is cheaply produced and is competitive in a free market environment, why are they necessary? But, the manufacturers and operators of the plants say they can't do without them. Those include government research grants, subsidies for operation, tax credits and loans, of which 50-60% are later forgiven. And, that's at the federal and state levels. Those subsidies are estimated, for nuclear power, to be about $145 billion through 1999--and that's without consideration of the fact that no license for a nuclear plant has been requested since 1979. Had a similar amount of money been invested in alternative energy and conservation over the same time period, questions about nuclear energy development might well be moot.

2) Insurance protection and subsidies. If the plants are inherently safe and effective, why is the Price-Anderson Act necessary (and, if technology has improved, why is it being reapproved and expanded in the latest energy bill)? In 1968, EPRI issued a consumer publication assuring the public that actuarial and engineering studies showed that the public could expect a serious nuclear plant accident once every 400 years. Eleven years later, a control malfunction caused the Three Mile Island plant to melt 43% of its core. EPRI was off by well more than an order of magnitude in their estimate.

3) Waste disposal. A very small percentage of the wholesale price of nuclear-generated electricity has been set aside for waste disposal. That amount is grossly insufficient to meet safe disposal requirements. The remainder of the cost will be absorbed by taxpayers, and failure to provide for the safest known disposal (such as vitrification, which has thus far been rejected for all federal depositories) risks the water supplies of many people.

4) Decommissioning. Those costs ultimately accrue to the ratepayers. Recent experience shows that initial plans for decommissioning, when most plants were built, do not meet current environmental standards and decommissioning costs are higher than expected.

5) For those of us in the west, where most uranium mining has occurred, tailings and uranium processing have ruined a number of small rivers and streams. In a place where water is at a premium, that's yet another hidden cost.

6) Fuel processing and reprocessing clean-up. This is an on-going process and much of those costs are being borne by taxpayers.

7) Large nuclear plants are centralized operations and lose 10-15% of the power generated on long lines. Smaller decentralized operations would minimize those losses.

8) Government oversight. The NRC is a taxpayer-funded operation, and its necessity is largely a function of the presence of the private nuclear industry which would not police itself adequately if not required to do so by such an agency. Davis-Besse immediately comes to mind in this regard.

9) Design flaws. You mention a few success stories, but you avoid mentioning the failures. The Palisades plant run by Consumers Power that I mentioned was fraught with problems and downtime for years. Heat-exchanger tube ruptures at New York's Indian Point plant have plagued them for a very long time. Diablo Canyon in California had extended shutdowns in 2003 due to heat exchanger and pump problems for which replacement power was required. Davis-Besse was down for over two years. Palo Verde in AZ had a string of problems in its first several years of operation, and just when it seemed those were sorted out, plant 2 required the replacement of a steam generator at a cost of a quarter of a billion dollars. That same new steam generator required shutdown and repairs a year later. TXU South Texas was down for months for leaks. Columbia in Washington state was shut down in 2003 at precisely the time that BPA needed power because drought had reduced hydro power. Approximately half the power of Three Mile Island is gone entirely, since there are no plans to repair or replace Unit-2.

All those and many other unexpected shutdowns cost ratepayers in replacement power and unexpected maintenance costs.

10) Health effects from nuclear program activities. No one is sure of those because of the time delay between problems and onset of disease, but, as with most any industrial activity, those health effects are present. How to quantify them is a problem, given current law and epidemiological method.

11) Security concerns. These days, that's a matter for consideration. The costs aren't easily determined, but in the event of an attack, they could be substantial. And modifications for security throughout the nuclear industry will add to the cost to taxpayers and ratepayers, if they are ever implemented by HSD.

It's not as cheap as you describe.

[NNadir]

20. Ohhh boy.

1) What government subsidies?

2) The Price Waterson act has never (zero times) been called into operation. A person who insured 100 nuclear plants for 20 years at a 10 million dollar premium would make 200 billion dollars without filing a claim. If the argument against nuclear power is that insurance executives are stupid, it's pretty weak.

3) So called "nuclear waste," unlike coal waste which kills continuously, has never killed anyone anywhere at any time. Thus the idea that it is unsafe is dumb.

More later when I have time to address the continuous hydra headed nonsense.

[jpak]

23. What government subsidies????

Who built the uranium enrichment plants - the private sector???

Who provided enrichment services to nuclear utilities AT COST (until 1983) - the private sector???

Who paid for all the research that went into developing commercial nuclear power plants - the private sector???

Who paid nuclear plant owners to produce plutonium (the Plutonium Production Credit program) - the private sector????

Please tell us all about the sweetheart deal (and financial disaster) this is the US Enrichment Corporation - nope, no taxpayer ripoff there.

http://www.earthisland.org/yggdrasil/uep112_01.html

Who is paying the $450 million dollar cost of decommissioning a SINGLE uranium mine near Moab Utah - the private sector???

Who is paying $3 billion for the disposal of depleted UF6 at US enrichment plants - the nuclear industry???

Who will ultimately pay the $23 billion dollar cost of decommissioning existing nuclear power plants - nuclear utilities???? LOL!!!!

Who is paying the $5 billion cost of producing and irradiating MOX fuel - the private sector????

Who is shelling out $6 billion to build three new nuclear power plants - the private sector????

and if the "Price-Waterhouse Act" (sic) is so unnecessary - why did our wonderful Republican Congress just reauthorize it????

In the Fairy Tale World of Delusional Pronuclear Twits, the nuclear power industry sprung from the good earth like mushrooms after a rain - without government subsidies.

LOL!!!!!

[jpak]

25. Stupid me

I forgot Yucca Mountain ($60 billion and climbing - taxpayer liability $30 billion) and the $56 billion in "damages" that nuclear utilities are seeking in court cuz the federal government didn't dispose of the spent fuel THEY generated and THEY made a profit with...

Who pays for that?????

No nuclear subsidies????

:rofl:

Oh, and I forgot the $4-8 billion in clean up costs for the defunct West Valley New York commercial reprocessing plant.

All taxpayer money

Doh!

[Name removed]

28. Deleted message

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

[jpak]

29. If it's so cheap - why aren't utilities building new nuclear plants

If the cost of spent fuel disposal is so cheap - why doesn't the nuclear industry pay for it itself????

Why are nuclear plant operators suing the DOE for $56 billion because the DOE hasn't disposed of the spent fuel they created and made money on????

"In any case....The DOE collected 17 billion dollars in the last 20 years to dispose of nuclear fuel in the stupid and wasteful Yucca Mountain project. "

The estimated cost of Yucca Mountain is $60+ billion - who pays the difference??? Nuclear plant operators???? (LOL!!!!!)

"Now I love to point to the appalling, almost criminal ethics of the anti-environmental, anti-nuclear crowd and I point out that 200 billion dollars has been spent in just two years killing men, women and children in Iraq to support fossil fuels. Anti-environmental anti-nuclear activists, who uttered not one peep while crying loudly, whining continuously, quivering in their stupid boots"

****stupidest.strawman.ever*******

I actually protested against war, wrote and met with my asshole repug fundie congressman to express that view. I opposed the war and everyone familiar with my prewar posts on DU knows this well...

...and only pro-nuclear twits opposed the War????

:rofl:

Do YOU support the Bush/GOP subsidy plan????

Please tell us you oppose it....

[NNadir]

31. Um, 25 nuclear plants are under construction, 39 planned, 73 proposed.

http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/reactors.htm

The total capacity in these three stages represents 118,896 megawatts of new construction. This represents a construction/ordered/proposed 32% increase in nuclear capacity. Since nuclear capacity represents about 20% of the world's electrical capacity overall, a rather large number, this construction/ordered/planned capacity (crudely) represents a 6.4% increase in world electrical capacity increase.

I guess it works, nuclear energy.

Let's see - if Arnold Schwartzenegger's big window dressing fantasy plays out - and most likely it won't - there are one million solar roofs in the SUNSHINE there will be 3000 megawatts at the peak of day. Unlike the nuclear capacity mentioned above, it will work at best, half the time on average, assuming that it never rains in Southern California and that global climate change doesn't black out the skies with smoke from fires.

Now what's 3000/118896?

Now I suppose the way the game works for stupid solar only people is that stupid people ask questions of nuclear advocates and the nuclear advocates are not supposed to ask the stupid solar only people the same question.

If solar is so great why is the tax subsidized construction of solar plants (and that at their one hour peak rating, no less) only equal to 0.02% of nuclear power now under construction, planned, or proposed?

By the way, let's go to the under construction part. Right now 19,208 Megawatts of nuclear power plants are being built. Instead of talking like a Greenpeace moron about what could, would, might happen, let's talk about what IS happening.

Now, because the sun goes down on average for half the time everywhere on earth, I'm not going to play the dopey game of pretending that solar PV capacity is really what the hucksters rate it as. Every installed watt needs to be divided by two (at least, neglecting rain and clouds) because on average the sun is up for half the day. So, then where are the 38,416 megawatts of new solar capacity being built?

Anywhere?

Oh, wait, I get it, we're only allowed to talk about the United States and the rich (but soon to be impoverished) middle class people who can afford solar power at $372.60/megawatt hour (on sunny days only - cloudy days its $891.70, and infinite cost when the sun is down (as opposed to about $30-50/megawatt-hour for nuclear plants even in the dead of night.)

(The figures come from solar buzz - a solar industry promotion site:

http://www.solarbuzz.com/SolarIndices.htm. I'd better explain this because "solar only" people are so bad at math: I have multiplied by 1000 to convert kilowatt-hours to megawatt-hours.)

The answer to that question is that Americans can't think very clearly, which is why Greenpeace nonsense, day-dreaming "coulda woulda mighta" thinking is so popular here. Americans think that energy is produced by magic. Actually it isn't though. Americans right now are spending $100 billion dollars a year to kill Iraqis to steal their energy. Typical of American responses to energy it is: 1) Immoral 2) Conservative 3) Isn't working very well.

Now, if this $100 billion dollar (per year (did we all get that, per year?) subsidy were applied to nuclear power, we'd have a tremendous load of bullshit flying here. How do we know? Because rather dumb people are pretending that there is a $100 billion dollar subsidy (they don't do math very well at all) on nuclear power. Moreover, because they can't think, they are not recognizing that even if such a subsidy existed, it would represent the entire history of nuclear power - over 40 years, or $2.5 billion dollars a year. Given that nuclear power typically produces 600 billion megawatt hours of electricity, this is less than 0.004/megawatt-hour or roughly a difference of a factor of 100,000 difference between what it costs to produce energy from a solar system at the peak of day!

The failure to build new nuclear plants in the United States and embrace "renewables", which is totally due to mysticism and is in no way connected to reality is: 1) Immoral 2) Conservative 3) Isn't working very well. (See above, paragraph on committing murder for energy.)

Anyone who supports a "solar only" approach to energy is actually favoring the status quo, because there is very little solar capacity actually being built. People talk about it all the time - you can hear all kinds of prattle year after year decade after decade - but they don't actually build it. There is certainly not enough to close one refinery. It is not enough to save one Iraqi life, not one.

I regard claims of opposition to the Iraqi war from "solar only" Greenpeace anti-environmental anti-nuclear activists much as I regard their proforma claims to give a shit about global climate change: Just words. Empty words. Words with no plan about how to actually change anything. Twittery. The fact is that by opposing nuclear expansion they are supporting the status quo, coal and oil, because they are not really in position to deliver anything at all. $891.70/megawatt-hour indeed!

I repeat. It is immoral to oppose nuclear energy. With construction/orders/proposals on the table to increase worldwide nuclear capacity by 30%, it is clear that the rest of the world gets it. It is also clear that there is an intellectually weak magical thinking subset of Americans who oppose the exercise of our last best hope. I don't know how they look in the mirror in the morning. One supposes that this represents a class of people that must prefer getting drunk or high to facing reality.

[jpak]

33. inflammatory extreme incoherent broad-brush bigoted statements

Please tell us about the 100+ US nuclear power plants that canceled since the 1970'a and the number under construction today (zero).

But this might change (barring a Democratic Congress in 2006 and a Democratic president in 2008) as Bush and Cheney, and their sycophant GOP Congress, have rewarded the wannabee nuclear utilities that shoveled millions at them during the last campaign with $6 billion of someone else's money.

It's called Corporate Welfare.

This differs from homeowners who might receive a tax credit on their PV systems (most states don't have them, and there are no federal PV tax credits thanks to Ronald Reagan). These people actually purchased their systems with their own money and might receive a credit on taxes they actually paid.

The vast majority of the 220,000 PV equipped US homes in the US bought them without federal tax credits and most without state tax credits.

States that have solar rebate programs currently rely on utility buy-backs - not direct subsidies. A big difference.

In contrast, all the nuclear power industry has to do is spend a few million on GOP candidates and they get billions back in return.

I will tell what is "immoral" - US homeowners that pay $3000+ household energy bills each year. These people are profligate energy hogs and the sole reason why the US leads the world in greenhouse gas emissions.

Not only are they hypocrites...

THEY ARE THE PROBLEM.

"Our last best hope"????

The Chimp claims that nuclear power is a "domestic" energy source even though >70% of the uranium use by US nuclear power plants is imported.

If the US had to rely solely on its domestic uranium reserves, they would be depleted in 26 years.

"Our last best hope"????

I don't think so...

Finally, please tell us how net metering works.

[Massacure]

27. Fossil Fuels are heavily subsidized as well.

Half of our oil has to be protected by the most powerful military on Earth.

0.7% of our natural gas has to be protected by the most powerful military on Earth (in 2002 anyways). This is expected to raise by 15% per year. This will be 2.3% by 2010, 4.62% in 2015 and doubles about every five years.

The coal, oil, and natural gas industries all get dirt cheap if not free land from the federal government.

Oh, and don't tell me the military and free/dirt cheap land cost less than the nuclear subsidies unless you can prove it.

[NickB79]

38. How do the government subsidies differ from the solar rebates?

I was listening to a very interesting program on NPR yesterday, where they interviewed a man who installed solar panels on his California home at a cost of $12,000. Without the numerous tax rebates and other incentives he recieved, it would have cost $24,000.

How much money in rebates and incentives would the US government have to pay out to convert a substantial number of US homes to solar? How many homes would have to be outfitted with solar panels to replace, say, 10% of conventional electrical usage in the US? How much would that cost for government rebates and incentives?

[Name removed]

19. Deleted message

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

[jpak]

24. The last 2 nuclear power plants actually built in the US

cost $7 billion a piece - they are excessively expensive.

That's why ChimpCo - the pro-nuclear twit's natural ally - is subsidizing the construction of three new nuclear plants with $6 billion of taxpayers money.

Only a fool thinks that a "Baby-Eating Greenpeace Conspiracy" is blocking the construction of new nuclear plants in the US...

[phantom power]

26. That reminds me

You've mentioned that nuclear reactors aren't well suited for adjusting to fluctuations in demand. They work best when run at a continuous level.

That made me wonder about how you would solve the peak-load issues. Solar can be used in some places, but not all peak loads are due to sun-related demand, like air conditioning.

[Vogon_Glory]

21. Wind Power: Not For The US Alone

As OT as it may seem, I support wind power and other forms of energy to help the rest of the world to get off the fossil fuel standard. I not only want to see Gee Dubya's "awl bidness" buddies lose some clout, but I'd also like to help the rest of the world to de-fund Wahabbi hobby-horses like Al Qaeda.

Some places could really exploit their wind-power potential. Argentina shares a long coastline with the South Atlantic "Roaring Forties."

I don't believe that wind power can totally replace fossil fuels. But it can help a great deal, and renewables are a lot more moral than the "I've got my oil wells and my air-conditioned Ivory Tower and you Third Worlders can Drop Dead" mindset found in some right-wing circles.

[Endangered Specie]

37. you also forgot the loss in power transfer...

and the fact that, if not every day is going to be windy, (say half the days its windy enough to make 3.6MW) that means youll need 2x as many, and youll also need HUGE batteries.


The point is is that wind power cannot supply all our needs (as a matter of fact, NO one system of power plant can or should be implemented). We should instead, have wind power make up a small fraction (say 1-10%, where its ecomincally viable (windy places)) of our power needs.