A nuclear power primer

[bananas]

A nuclear power primer
Jan Willem Storm van Leeuwen
8 - 6 - 2005

Renewable energy from photovoltaics, biomass and wind will solve the world’s energy and climate problems, not nuclear-power giantism, argues Jan Willem Storm van Leeuwen. Click on one of the titles below to access all you need to know about nuclear power and the alternatives.

1. Greenhouse gas emissions from nuclear power

2. Nuclear power and the world energy mix

3. The energy required to extract uranium

4. How much uranium is there?

5. Uranium from granite

6. Uranium from seawater

7. A nuclear renaissance?

8. Breeder reactors

9. Thermonuclear fusion

10. A safe nuclear reactor: the sun

11. Conclusion

The case against nuclear power: a summary

http://www.opendemocracy.net/globalization-climate_change_debate/2587.jsp

[longship]

1. Excellent summary.

:kick:ed

[NNadir]

2. Jan Willem Storm van Leeuwen can't count.

On the other hand, the EIA can count.

http://journals.democraticunderground.com/NNadir/19

To show that he can count - which he will never do - Jan Willem Storm van Leeuwen would have to explain why after 50 years of promises like his dopey remark "Renewable energy from photovoltaics..." just one nuclear reactor can produce the entire energy output of photovoltaics in the United States in just ten days.

The fact that he starts that sentence with the word "photovoltaics" shows exactly how clueless he is. Rated on a continuous basis, the 2005 photovoltaic output of 541 thousand megawatt-hours is the equivalent of a single 61MW coal plant. But it's not energy produced like a coal plant produces, since a coal plant runs continuously.

Lord knows, no one is trying to stop solar power. Everybody's been hyping it for decades. Jan Willem Storm van Leeuwen himself has been at it for quite some time. At some point some one has to ask about solar photovoltaics: Where are they?

Here's what science involves: You make a prediction; you do an experiment; and you see if the results of your experiment conform to your prediction. Here, again, is the US experiment with photovoltaics: After 50 years, it produces less energy than the first nuclear reactor at Shippingport produced in 1958.

On this ground, it would seem that Jan Willem Storm van Leeuwen is engaged in prayer, not science.

[jpak]

3. Here's another experiment

Use the entire expertise and industrial infrastructure of the Manhattan Project and Naval Reactor Program to produce civilian power reactors.

Provide government uranium enrichment services to the private commercial nucuclar industry for 35 years at cost (until Ronald Reagan ended the practice).

PAY nuclear plant operators for plutonium they accumulated in spent fuel.

Then spend >$66 billion each year on nuclear power research and subsidies over 60 years

What do you get????

103 reactors built - with the last few taking >20 years to build at final costs of $5-7 billion each.

110 canceled reactors that saddled rate payers with >$112 billion in stranded costs.

Two meltdowns (TMI and Fermi 1) and a near catastrophic fire (Browns Ferry) that cost tax and ratepayers billions.

A failed commercial reprocessing plant that will cost taxpayers (not the failed plant owners) $4-8 billion to decommission and clean up.

750,000 tons of toxic corrosive UF6 stored in tens of thousands of corroding containers that will take 25 years to dispose and bury at a cost to taxpayers of $4 billion.

Hundreds of millions of dollars spent to compensate thousands of uranium workers for morbidity and mortality DIRECTLY related to the exposure to uranium and beryllium at mines, mills and enrichment plants.

A failed privatized United States Uranium Enrichment Corporation that cannot compete with foreign uranium enrichment consortiums that has cost taxpayers hundred of millions of dollars to keep afloat.

75,000 tons of spent fuel that NO ONE wants - that will cost federal taxpayers >$30 billion to bury in a state that did not want it (also, it will cost Nevada several billion dollars to provide security and other costs for Yucca Mountain).

A collapsed domestic uranium mining industry that can provide <4% of US uranium requirements resulting in an energy industry nearly wholly dependent on uranium imports.

and how does one build a new nucular power plant in Bushamerika????

Get Dick Cheney to meet with the nucular industry behind closed doors.

Get them to throw millions at the GOP

and pay them back with $9-12 billion to build 6 new nucular plants BY 2030.

and then PAY each plant up to $2 billions to produce electricity to be sold back to the taxpayers (who paid to build the plants in the first place).

This experiment has FAILED

QED

[hunter]

4. The USA is an experiment that is failing.

What do we do right anymore?

Nuclear Power Development - Failure

Manned Space Flight - Failure

Public Health Care - Failure

Public Transportation - Failure

Private Automobile Innovation - Failure

Personal Electronics Innovation - Failure

Public Education - Failure

etc., etc., etc...

Your argument against nuclear power isn't an argument against nuclear power, it's another demonstration of U.S. incompetence and corruption. We are very much a nation of stale and incurious MBAs like George W. Bush who don't actually know how to make anything. If we don't choke on a pretzel we consider that a successful day.

Has nuclear power failed in France?

Has it even failed in the United States where many plants are run without serious problems?

It hasn't.

[jpak]

5. In France???

They import all their uranium.

In 2004 global uranium demand was 67,000 tonnes (of yellowcake) but only 39,000 tonnes were produced at mines.

By 2020, global uranium demand is projected to increase to 75,000 tonnes per year.

The US, France, Spain, the UK, Germany, Finland, Sweden, Lithuania, Belgium, South Korea, India, Japan and China are wholly or severely dependent on imported uranium and are in keen competition for foreign uranium supplies.

Global uranium mine production will decline as ore bodies are depleted and ore quality declines.

Unlike Germany and Denmark, France has put all of its eggs in the nuclear basket.

Was this a wise thing to do????

France also had major problems keeping some reactors on-line this summer (heat related) and had to import electricity during a heat-related demand spike.

As global warming progresses these problems will only get worse.

So has nuclear failed in France??

We'll have to wait and see....

[Dead_Parrot]

7. What the problem with imports?

NZ imports nearly all it's steel, so should we should building windfarms? We could use coal, there's shit loads of that here.

[dcfirefighter]

8. energy independence is an appeal to nationalism

and a reaction to globalism

Nations shouldn't be independent. They should be interdependent, each producing what it's best at, and peacefully trading with other nations.

[jpak]

9. When you are 100% dependent on a finite energy resource (uranium)...

that supplies 80% of your electricity...

...and you are in competition with half the planet for those dwindling uranium supplies...

...this is not a problem???

I think it is.

What's going to happen to New Zealand's economy when the Maui, Pokohura and Kapuni gas fields go belly up and Peak Oil disrupts oil imports???

Bad things man...bad things...

[hunter]

10. France knows where their electricity is coming from for the next 100 years

We don't have any bloody idea what we will do, except for coal, which is certainly leading to disaster.

Rising seas and rougher weather are going to change everything.

Retrofitting nuclear power plants to operate in a changing climate is not a big problem compared to moving entire cities away from the coasts.

But wait and see what, I might ask? If I'd been sitting around to "wait and see" what happened at San Onofre or Diablo Canyon all I'd be seeing was a whole lot of electricity generated. The worst of these plants seems to be related to the seawater cooling systems and management of this has been much improved over the years.

[NNadir]

11. This is especially true given their work on advanced fuel cycles.

France may prove to be the first nation that really gets the full energy worth out of a kilo of uranium, all three natural isotopes, 235, 238 and 234.

I don't know that they're going to get into U-233, but they will certainly have the technical ability to do whatever they want cleanly and safely.

The real exciting stuff is happening in France. They've made tremendous headway in plutonium inventory control for instance, and they will almost certainly have plutonium with nearly ideal isotopic mixtures in the case that the world makes it to the middle of the 21st century. It seems to be coming down to them deciding exactly how much plutonium they want in inventory, and what they want it to look like physically.

It's great stuff.

http://www.cea.fr/gb/publications/Clefs46/pagesg/clefs46_36.html

[jpak]

6. Edit

"Then spend >$66 billion each year on nuclear power research and subsidies over 60 years"

should read...

"Then spend >$66 billion on nuclear power research and subsidies (~$0.66 billion per operating reactor)"