[Peak Oil] Nuclear Power running down, no-one seems to care

[Androsphinx]

New Scientist, I know, I know

Rumours of a nuclear power renaissance have been greatly exaggerated. So says an audit of the nuclear power industry released on Wednesday.

The report, commissioned by The Greens, a European parliamentary group, points out that many ageing reactors are due to close before 2030, and that 338 new ones would have to be built just to replace them.
"The world has five fewer nuclear reactors operating today than it did in 2002"

The Paris-based nuclear consultants who compiled the report argue that the industry is growing too slowly to meet this target, and may even be shrinking. The world has five fewer reactors operating today than it did in 2002, they say. Only 91 reactors are now being planned, and a further 32 are under construction, mostly in Asia and eastern Europe. Construction work on 11 of those has been under way for 20 years or more.

The idea that nuclear power is about to experience major growth is "pure fantasy", says the report's author, Mycle Schneider. The industry is facing "a dramatic loss of competence, sceptical financial markets and the severe shortage of manufacturing capacity", he says.

It just gets better, no?

[Gil Hamilton]

The problem is they COULD be replaced and expanded by then. In fact, right now there is no less than 23 proposals for new power plants in the US alone. However, right now, according to the speaker who came to my school to give a talk on nuclear waste disposal, the problem isn't constructing and staffing or even fueling the plants, the problem are the NIMBYs who may even be in favor of nuclear power, but refuse for them to be located anywhere near them. This is a significant problem when EVERYWHERE is a Someone's Backyard.

In other words, there needs to be the political will and motivation to build them and that will happen when other options have dried up, rather than now when there is still plenty of power to go around.

[Androsphinx]

Indeed. Which sucks, and by which time it may well be too late.

[[R_H]]

But we'll have green/renewable energy !!!11!1!

Fuck the Greenies, if they keep their Luddite wankage they'll be the downfall of modern civilisation.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

Did anyone bother to notice that this "study" was paid for by a political party which has a campaign goal of eliminating all nuclear reactors in the EU? The Greens are lunatics, and this is just their hired help "concluding" what they want to hear. Particularly for the French this article is so far out of line with reality that it scarcely needs to be covered anymore, and it has as much validity (and connection with the truth) as a Republican press release from the White House.

[TithonusSyndrome]

The Greens must be more a cult than an environmental group if they haven't clued in yet that nuclear is the only fucking way to go. It's not like the research showing this is in short supply. Stubborn pride and a Marxist-like devotion to their creed in it's original form is the only thing I can think of that would lead them to reject such a potent solution as nuclear.

[[R_H]]

Did anyone bother to notice that this "study" was paid for by a political party which has a campaign goal of eliminating all nuclear reactors in the EU? The Greens are lunatics, and this is just their hired help "concluding" what they want to hear. Particularly for the French this article is so far out of line with reality that it scarcely needs to be covered anymore, and it has as much validity (and connection with the truth) as a Republican press release from the White House.

The irony was that all those nuclear powerplants that they've been decommisioning can't be replaced by the Luddite Greeniewankers planned renewable energy schemes and the German utility companies are having to build coal fired plants to makeup the shortfall (usually burning brown coal from Eastern Germany).

[[R_H]]

Sorry for the double post.

Wind energy is a report about that companie's experience with wind energy.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

Sorry for the double post.

Wind energy is a report about that companie's experience with wind energy.

The only sane way to use wind and solar energy in large quantities, which are both so extremely tied to unpredictable weather patterns, is in pumped storage facilities. But I bet the Greens would oppose those for the areas of land they'd submerge and potential habitat loss, since it involves creating dammed artificial resevoirs. With pumped storage you can easily, of course, create power output on demand at needed levels while still gaining the maximum efficiency from the solar cells and wind turbines even when they're operating best at periods of non-peak demand.

[Junghalli]

The Greens must be more a cult than an environmental group if they haven't clued in yet that nuclear is the only fucking way to go. It's not like the research showing this is in short supply. Stubborn pride and a Marxist-like devotion to their creed in it's original form is the only thing I can think of that would lead them to reject such a potent solution as nuclear.

[NIMBY/Greenie]But don't you understand, the nuclear waste and accidents will kill us all!!!![/NIMBY/Greenie]

[Gil Hamilton]

Solar and wind power are sanely used for LOCAL power. In places where they are somewhat reliable, they should be developed. I wouldn't mind covering large areas of Southern California in solar panels and many parts of the Appalachian mountains in wind farms. Use them to buttress the nuclear plants.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

Solar and wind power are sanely used for LOCAL power. In places where they are somewhat reliable, they should be developed. I wouldn't mind covering large areas of Southern California in solar panels and many parts of the Appalachian mountains in wind farms. Use them to buttress the nuclear plants.

Oh, they could be used on a wider scale, the trick is, like I said, to simply use them to pump water uphill, so that when power is needed, the water can be pumped downhill through the generators. Such installations are extremely common, actually, and serve basically as giant hydroelectric batteries; you store the energy from the wind and solar panels in the resevoir, and then drain it at a different rate to meet grid demand.

[Shinova]

The problem is they COULD be replaced and expanded by then. In fact, right now there is no less than 23 proposals for new power plants in the US alone. However, right now, according to the speaker who came to my school to give a talk on nuclear waste disposal, the problem isn't constructing and staffing or even fueling the plants, the problem are the NIMBYs who may even be in favor of nuclear power, but refuse for them to be located anywhere near them. This is a significant problem when EVERYWHERE is a Someone's Backyard.

In other words, there needs to be the political will and motivation to build them and that will happen when other options have dried up, rather than now when there is still plenty of power to go around.

Didn't the Supreme Court somewhat recently make a ruling that if it's for clear public benefit, someone's private property can be taken over by the government and development could start?

I wonder if that can be applied here.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

That would be amusing, seize all the property in the area of the reactors to quiet protests.

Another alternative I suppose would be investing in immense power-lines going up into the middle of nowhere in Alaska and building huge clusters of nuclear reactors there. Except then the Greens would protest even harder. Maybe that would work in northern Nevada, however....

[Androsphinx]

Did anyone bother to notice that this "study" was paid for by a political party which has a campaign goal of eliminating all nuclear reactors in the EU? The Greens are lunatics, and this is just their hired help "concluding" what they want to hear. Particularly for the French this article is so far out of line with reality that it scarcely needs to be covered anymore, and it has as much validity (and connection with the truth) as a Republican press release from the White House.

So the French will be fine. The point is that nuclear power isn't going through the large-scale growth that will be necessary. There are several non-sequiturs even in the short press report (338 reactors to shut down by 2030, only 120-odd in the works), but the most important point was that we've gone almost nowhere compared with 2002.

[CmdrWilkens]

That would be amusing, seize all the property in the area of the reactors to quiet protests.

Another alternative I suppose would be investing in immense power-lines going up into the middle of nowhere in Alaska and building huge clusters of nuclear reactors there. Except then the Greens would protest even harder. Maybe that would work in northern Nevada, however....

Which helps SoCal and the SW United States but does dick all for the Eastern Seaboard since the long distance power network for all intents and purposes no longer works and everything is regional now.

[Junghalli]

Another alternative I suppose would be investing in immense power-lines going up into the middle of nowhere in Alaska and building huge clusters of nuclear reactors there. Except then the Greens would protest even harder. Maybe that would work in northern Nevada, however....

I think a lot of them are going to make a fuss no matter where you put the reactors. There's just this knee-jerk "nukes = evil" mentality you have to deal with.

[Gil Hamilton]

Oh, they could be used on a wider scale, the trick is, like I said, to simply use them to pump water uphill, so that when power is needed, the water can be pumped downhill through the generators. Such installations are extremely common, actually, and serve basically as giant hydroelectric batteries; you store the energy from the wind and solar panels in the resevoir, and then drain it at a different rate to meet grid demand.

I suppose that way you could get some kWh free from rainfall too. That's a slick idea.

Didn't the Supreme Court somewhat recently make a ruling that if it's for clear public benefit, someone's private property can be taken over by the government and development could start?

I wonder if that can be applied here.

What they ruled on recently was that public domain could be used to take land in order to give to private developers, obliquely for the public good.

However, building nuclear reactors is the reason public domain is in the Constitution. Securing the power necessary to keep the country going is certainly in the public good. What would be "fun" to watch is the political firestorm that would come if the government actually did that. Use of public domain to go "Hey, screw you, we are building a damn nuclear plant here five miles out from your dirt farm. Here's the cash value for the land, deal with it" would just piss so many people off. There lies in the problem that politicians want to be re-elected and lack the cajones to do anything that bold.

Another alternative I suppose would be investing in immense power-lines going up into the middle of nowhere in Alaska and building huge clusters of nuclear reactors there. Except then the Greens would protest even harder. Maybe that would work in northern Nevada, however....

But, but, Marina, reindeer occasionally migrate there! Why do you hate Rudolph the Reindeer, and by extention, Christmas and Our Values? Monster.

[[R_H]]

What's hilarious about the renewable energy wank is that going through with the shit they propose would definitely have a worse environmental impact than many think, even when compared to those nuclear reactors of mutating evil (please, think of the barbarian, ignorant fucks that would come with the decline of civilisation due to the Greens that would stumble across haphazardly buried nuclear waste, in those sealed casks buried hundreds of meters underground). I've got an article by the Gaia theory environmentalist (James Lovelock) that says that covering x square kilometers to provide for the majority of the energy need would seriously fuck with albedo of the earth...you know, mess around with the environment (more so than with nuclear reactors). Not to mention the horrible energy density of anything other than nuclear power.

[Darth Wong]

the most important point was that we've gone almost nowhere compared with 2002.

Why would anyone expect us to have gone anywhere since 2002? It takes a long time to plan, approve, construct, and commission a nuclear power plant, and in 2002 the Bush Administration was still waxing poetic about how "blessed" America was with natural resources. The idea of actually worrying about how much power we'd have was totally off the radar screen at the time.

[Androsphinx]

the most important point was that we've gone almost nowhere compared with 2002.

Why would anyone expect us to have gone anywhere since 2002? It takes a long time to plan, approve, construct, and commission a nuclear power plant, and in 2002 the Bush Administration was still waxing poetic about how "blessed" America was with natural resources. The idea of actually worrying about how much power we'd have was totally off the radar screen at the time.

Well, it's a report comissioned by a European party from a French company, so while important, the US' policies are not the only relevant ones.

[Darth Wong]

the most important point was that we've gone almost nowhere compared with 2002.

Why would anyone expect us to have gone anywhere since 2002? It takes a long time to plan, approve, construct, and commission a nuclear power plant, and in 2002 the Bush Administration was still waxing poetic about how "blessed" America was with natural resources. The idea of actually worrying about how much power we'd have was totally off the radar screen at the time.

Well, it's a report comissioned by a European party from a French company, so while important, the US' policies are not the only relevant ones.

The world at large was barely waking up to the pressing environmental issues that we talk about today. It wasn't just the US.

[Gil Hamilton]

According to the speaker who came to our school, when dealing with a nuclear issue that everyone agrees with and thinks it is a good idea, it can easily take ten years for a proposal to get through all the handshaking and bureaucracy. The proposal he mentioned was an OSHA proposal that everyone thought was great.

Take the Yucca Mountain nuclear disposal site, which was established in the early 80s as the nuclear waste repository still hasn't seen any nuclear waste from all the bureaucracy and the state of Nevada politicians (amongst others) blocking its opening or transporting waste through their state (in the case of other states). Further note that Yucca Mountain was originally suggested in the 50s as the nuclear repository. So what they do with nuclear waste is throw them into big pools of water and let them bubble away. Not recycle, reprocess, separate out the useful stuff for hospitals and such, or even bury in a damn mountain... just sits in a pool of water being radioactive.

[DrMckay]

Well, hell, I'm a (newly-minted) card-carrying member of the Sierra Club, who still sees the necessity for nuke plants, and believes that, for the time being, Nuclear energy is ABSOLUTELY FUCKING NECESSARY to get through Peak Oil. (only tenable alternative.)

In addition to locating the plants safely (I believe there is a nuke plant near Tomales Bay, that is practically built on a fault line.-i think that's where it is at any rate.)

In addition to the problemwhere to put the waste-for tens of thousands of years.

One of my friend's mothers works for the Department Of Energy, on the surveying and use of Yucca Mountain. and I remember her discussing with me the problems with using Yucca mountain as a storage facility for waste-it is not 100% stable, and will probably not remain so for the years the waste needs to be stored-so the problem remains:

Where to dump the waste?

I'm gonna suggest a certain ranch in Crawford Texas for starters.

[Sea Skimmer]

I suppose that way you could get some kWh free from rainfall too. That's a slick idea.

Typically pumped storage loses more energy from evaporation more then it gains from rainfall. The locations you get to use generally just don’t have much of a drainage basin, or else you’d already have a waterway to dam up. Partly as a result of evaporation losses typical pumped storage efficiency is in the range of 75-85%, though under optimal conditions (short pipes, minimal evaporation, best equipment ect…) this can go as high as 98%.