Nuclear and coal, coal and nuclear - two sides of the same coin 2

[kristopher]

This article from CoalGeology.com has some very familiar sounding claims regarding the role of renewable energy, doesn't it. The same sources that make the false claims below regarding renewables also routinely assert that the nuclear and coal industry are mortal enemies. That is a hard to reconcile with the way this coal industry magazine seems to be willing to serve as an outlet for the nuclear industry's public relations arm, the Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI).

For the most part, the stakeholders for nuclear power and coal are identical.

Comparing Nuclear Energy to Coal and Natural Gas: Searching answer for America’s energy independence

January 21, 2011, (Coal Geology/NewsUSA) – As climate and energy bills work their way through Congress, it’s clear that the Obama administration wants to assert America’s energy independence. No single electricity-generating technology can meet America’s future energy needs by itself. But nuclear energy must play a significant role in any viable plan to meet the nation’s energy needs and reduce carbon emissions.

Nuclear energy can compete from a cost standpoint with other sources of electricity. While coal and natural gas plants may be less expensive to build — new nuclear plants are estimated to cost $6 billion to $8 billion — nuclear energy produces electricity using less fuel and with lower operating costs.

snip

Space constraints and reliability issues prevent renewable sources of electricity from becoming primary power sources. While renewable sources of electricity should pay important roles in a diverse energy profile, an emission-free future will require nuclear power. This position has been embraced by a bipartisan majority in the U.S. Congress and by various environmental groups. Tony Kreindler, media director of the Environmental Defense Fund, put it succinctly when he recently said, “Given the scope of the climate problem and the emissions problem, we need to look at all the energy options we have, and nuclear is one of them.”

For more information, visit www.nei.org

http://coalgeology.com/comparing-nuclear-energy-to-coal-and-natural-gas-searching-answer-for-americas-energy-independence/11584/


A more complete and accurate account of the Environmental Defense Fund's stance on nuclear power is here (where you will not be surprised to learn that they oppose expansion):
http://www.edf.org/article.cfm?contentid=4470

[Dogmudgeon]

1. Ah! This explains it!

I read your EDF post first. This, however, is most illuminating.

First, you use the "Nukes Is Coal" argument again. Nobody's buying it. Just because a small publication for coal geologists has a section on nuclear energy doesn't confirm your argument.

GE, Mitsubishi, Areva, Siemens, and several other large electric technology firms produce solar cells, wind turbines, and nuclear energy technology. Hmmm ... "Nuclear and Wind/Solar -- two sides of the same coin". That version at least makes sense.

I think I also figured out why you're posting so many older information sources; they are more aggressively anti-nuclear:

2006: (From your EDF Green Electricity article, "where you will not be surprised to learn that they oppose expansion")
"Although generating electricity from nuclear fuels emits little CO2, nuclear power poses grave risks to both human health and the environment. Safely storing nuclear waste is an extremely difficult problem."

2010: (From Coal Geology)
"Tony Kreindler, media director of the Environmental Defense Fund, put it succinctly when he recently said, 'Given the scope of the climate problem and the emissions problem, we need to look at all the energy options we have, and nuclear is one of them.'"

And this statement is just plain silly:
"... this coal industry magazine seems to be willing to serve as an outlet for the nuclear industry's public relations arm, the Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI)."

The article was actually written by the editor of Coal Geology. How, then, do we know that some other anti-nuclearists didn't start Coal Geology as a website and stock it with a half-dozen nuclear news bits to "prove" that nuclear energy controls the coal business? Same bogus (il)logic. That's why we pro-nukes prefer to argue from science and engineering; not rhetoric, not 35-year-old political philosophy, and not "gotcha!" logic.

Did you see http://coalgeology.com/accessorize-your-bathroom-on-a-budget/11888/">Accessorize Your Bathroom on a Budget? Could it be that the bathroom accessories industry seems to be willing to serve as an outlet for the coal industry? (Answer: No.)

This isn't one of your stronger arguments. Relying on Coal Geology as your new silver bullet would be a mistake. But by all means, if you think it's a winning argument, have at it.

--d!

[kristopher]

2. Centralized nuclear and coal serve different systems than renewables, which are distributed.

Therefore your argument has no basis in reality.

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&newwindow=1&q=advantages+of+distributed+generation&btnG=Search&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&oq=

It is worth noting that the new REPUBLICAN controlled legislature in Minnisota has just pushed through committee a bill to lift the Democratically implemented ban on building nuclear power plants.

Their next goal is to get the ban on coal plants lifted.

Coincidence?

[GliderGuider]

3. So does hydro.

In fact all power generation sources are distributed to some degree. It's not the distributed nature of the generation per se that makes as much difference as the grid management requirements imposed by the intermittency of wind.

Oh, and the fact that every wind turbine (even in a highly diffuse distribution) brings with it a requirement for natural gas turbine capacity to ensure load matching - a requirement, I add mischievously, that is not shared to nearly the same extent by nuclear power plants that provide base load power.

[kristopher]

4. Your remarks are false.

I gave you this link with lots of references that can highlight those differences.
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&newwindow=1&q=advantages+of+distributed+generation&btnG=Search&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&oq=

Natural gas is completely replaceable with biofuels; a move that in most cases will not even require additional investment in generation since we can derive methane from biologic waste streams.

Also your claim that renewables require such a large amount of dispatchable natgas style generation is bull. Today's grid is exactly what one based on nuclear power would look like sans the coal since nuclear would not replace natural gas.

In the end, the final product with renewables has far fewer opportunities for carbon than one built around nuclear.

Also see: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=115&topic_id=272225&mesg_id=272243

[GliderGuider]

5. The peaker fuel of choice at the moment is NG. It's likely to stay that way for quite a while

And your comment that "Today's grid is exactly what one based on nuclear power would look like sans the coal" is exactly what makes nuclear so attractive in the short and medium term. Replacing either or both of coal and nuclear with wind would raise the requirement for peak generation capacity. And if fracking gas is cheaper and easier than building biofuel peaker plants, that's what will be used.

[kristopher]

6. That doesn't change the role of natural gas under a nuclear scenario

You STILL have MORE room for fossil fuels in a centralized thermal grid than in a distributed renewable grid.

[XemaSab]

8. What do you think "distributed" means?

Here in Shasta County, we've got a bunch of hydropower plants, a couple cogeneration plants, a few small geothermal plants, a large wind farm, and a natural gas plant.

The farthest one away from the population is the wind farm.

How does that make it less distributed?

[kristopher]

9. What do YOU think it means.

You could actually read a paper or two for a change. Google is a wonderful thing.

[XemaSab]

15. You're the one throwing the term around

I'm sure that anything I learn from Google will not match your definition, so I won't bother.

[XemaSab]

7. Where are these magic biofuels supposed to come from?

And how many more WTE facilities need to be built?

[kristopher]

10. Biofuels are "magic"?

Biofuels are a bad choice for personal transportation but they are what we need to meet heavy duty applications for portable energy (ships, planes, agriculture, construction etc) and as a fuel for dispatchable power generation in some regions.

They include current generation and advanced ethanol as well as biodiesel and methane from waste.

As to how many waste to energy facilities we will need I'd argue that we need enough to recycle all agricultural and human wastes for anything they can be mined for - including energy.

Of course that presupposes that a sustainable society is what you are hoping to arrive at.

[Confusious]

11. Biofuels are another of your magic dreams

Along with the distributed grid.

Most take more energy to make then they give back. Hard energy, not sunlight. Petroleum. The only one that doesn't is algae. How's that production windfall going?

I'd argue that we need enough to recycle all agricultural and human wastes

and a prototype plant of that is where? Producing what? Is there one even on a drawing board somewhere? If you don't have one, it's magic thinking.

Shit ( pardon the pun ) will pop out of nothingness seems to be a running thing with you.

"No need to worry about space, materials, time. It'll all happen magically!!"


As for your article, you just found something that fit your theory, and then said "well that's that." Really. Do you know the scientific method at all?

The theory is suppose to fit the data, not the data fit the theory.

[kristopher]

12. I agree that biofuels are largely just an energy storage medium but...

... there are distinct differences compared to other energy storage mediums; they usually have a small positive net energy balance and they possess a high energy density in portable form. There is no reason that the input energy needs to be petroleum.

That makes them worth developing.

[Confusious]

13. Don't jack me around

You can't make enough to drive all the motors (Just the big haulers, oh, and the airplanes, oh, and the ships) on the road AND have people eat.

The other item is most biofuels are like gasoline. Most big haulers are diesel. You can't put that type of fuel in a diesel engine.

So more energy is required to replace all the diesel engines, because there isn't enough bio-diesel to go around.



Magic thinking. Pipe dreams.

Maybe they are worth developing

Bu global warming is right now, and they aren't going to save the day.

[Confusious]

14. Really

If the entire arable land area of the USA (470 million acres, or 1.9 million square kilometers) were devoted to biodiesel production from soy, this would just about provide the 160 million tonnes required (assuming an optimistic 98 US gal/acre of biodiesel). This land area could in principle be reduced significantly using algae, if the obstacles can be overcome. The US DOE estimates that if algae fuel replaced all the petroleum fuel in the United States, it would require 15,000 square miles (38,849 square kilometers), which is a few thousand square miles larger than Maryland, or 1.3 Belgiums,<54><55> assuming a yield of 140 tonnes/hectare (15,000 US gal/acre). Given a more realistic yield of 36 tonnes/hectare (3834 US gal/acre) the area required is about 152,000 square kilometers, or roughly equal to that of the state of Georgia or England and Wales. The advantages of algae are that it can be grown on non-arable land such as deserts or in marine environments, and the potential oil yields are much higher than from plants.

Really. Biofuels are going to save the day. That's all of the United States for just the diesel fuel needed, not any other bio-fuels What about the solar farms or the wind farms?

Everything you promote is either a) no existent b) not ready for prime time, or c) unrealistic.

They all may be prime time technologies, if we're still here, at the 1/4 century or the middle, but not now.

[GliderGuider]

16. Let's look at scale and net energy

20% of the world's electricity is produced from natural gas. We would need to replace that much gas - the equivalent of about 13 billion barrels of oil per year - with biofuels. Biofuels typically show a net energy of 0 to 25%, meaning that we would need to shift the equivalent energy of 10 billion barrels of oil a year or more into their creation. This approach takes that amount of energy out of the global energy economy, or would force us to expand the energy economy to cope with it.

Even if only some of the natural gas used in peakers would be replaced by biofuels, the problem doesn't go away, it just gets smaller while in place leaving the original problem that we're burning fossil fuels to subsidize wind.

It’s even worse than that – the energy used to create biofuels isn’t going to come just from renewable electricity. Economics dictates that a lot of it will come from oil, natural gas, coal and teh nucular – the very stuff we were trying to get rid of in the first place.