Cost/benefit differences between nuclear and wind/solar

Erik von Nein · Post by **Erik von Nein** » 2008-03-17 08:40pm

I'm researching information about the differences between solar/wind and nuclear energy production for an assignment. I've got quite a few numbers but I'm trying to make sense of them all. So far I'm looking at the differences between energy-per-reactor/generator and the cost of building and maintaining said generators. I'm not sure whether or not I've got everything together properly and was just hoping for someone to give be a bit of a hand.

Now, I can't remember the exact numbers between nuclear reactors and the highest-end wind/solar. I keep getting varying numbers on the last two, but I can use the local nuclear power plant as an example for nuclear reactors. I just need proper comparisons.

This is all with the back-drop of convincing the California government (ho, ho) to open more nuclear plants for construction while also building desal. plants to cope with the increasing population taking more from the established reservoirs and what future climate change will do to said resevoirs.

If this seems disjointed or poorly worded I was in a bit of a hurry. I can make more sense of this later. My apollogies in advance.

madd0ct0r · Post by **madd0ct0r** » 2008-03-17 09:02pm

well, the effciency of both solar and wind turbines vary hugely depending the local climate.
Wind turbines in particular operate within a narrow band of wind speed, and the wind speed available can change quite dramatically if the wind changes direction (a forest 300m away will still take out a lot of the energy)

But you knew all that.

The key factor here is going to be the cost of decomissioning the reactors. Get that pushed low enough and you should be good. Remember, that'll be taking into account future H&S laws.

Post by **Darth Wong** » 2008-03-17 09:09pm

Some costs are harder to quantify. For example, wind and solar are not on-demand power technologies; they collect whatever they collect, and it's your job to match the supply to the demand. Nukes are different; you can control the output at will.

Suppose Ontario goes over to 100% wind and solar, but we need a lot of power and there's a lot of cloud cover with insufficient wind. Oops, we're not getting enough power from our wind and solar sources, so we have to go begging to other regions for their surplus power. This could work in theory if everyone on the grid has reasonable energy sufficiency and can spare extra power if other regions need it. But now you're essentially at the mercy of an energy market and other peoples' decisions.

That's not a cost you can assign a dollar value to.

Patrick Degan · Post by **Patrick Degan** » 2008-03-17 09:49pm

A nuclear power station will take up only a fraction of the land area required for a wind or solar farm of comparable power output (~1500MW).

fnord · Post by **fnord** » 2008-03-17 10:07pm

What numbers do you already have? Lifetime cost per kW of capacity? Discount rates to be used in the comparison? Capacity factors?

Patrick Degan · Post by **Patrick Degan** » 2008-03-17 10:25pm

fnord wrote:What numbers do you already have? Lifetime cost per kW of capacity? Discount rates to be used in the comparison? Capacity factors?

The numbers were quoted in previous threads on this subject (here in SLAM, I do believe) and based upon a simple measure of how many collectors/turbines would be required and how much land area to accomodate them to produce the equivalent output of a single nuclear generating station.

Ariphaos · Post by **Ariphaos** » 2008-03-18 02:17am

Darth Wong wrote:That's not a cost you can assign a dollar value to.

My uncle gets paid to assign dollar values to situations like that. Statistician.

Erik von Nein · Post by **Erik von Nein** » 2008-03-18 03:29pm

Thanks for the help. I'll try to post more later, but I've got classes for most of today. I'll post what info I have then.

Erik von Nein · Post by **Erik von Nein** » 2008-03-21 09:03pm

Sorry for the delay. Here's a site I've been looking through for numbers. This link is about breakdowns for variuos energy sources: http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf11.html

That really is the site I'm using for most of the figures on nuclear power in general. Hopefully it's not inaccurate.

I've apparently lost the website I was using for actual monetary costs of various power production means. Blargie. I'll go fishing around for it agian.

Eulogy · Post by **Eulogy** » 2008-03-21 09:15pm

The vast land required and the general unreliability of wind/solar makes it better suited as a decentralized operation - that is, there's a turbine and panel on everyone's roof rather than in one big desert or meadow.

Good luck actually getting everyone to put wind and sun on their homes, though.

Zixinus · Post by **Zixinus** » 2008-03-21 09:29pm

Good luck actually getting everyone to put wind and sun on their homes, though.

I recall reading about how it went surprisingly well in Germany.

salm · Post by **salm** » 2008-03-22 04:51am

Zixinus wrote:
Good luck actually getting everyone to put wind and sun on their homes, though.
I recall reading about how it went surprisingly well in Germany.

I don´t know about that. When i look out of the window i can see about 200 buildings within reasonable distance. None of them have either wind or solar power system installed. Perhaps you can beat my anecdotal evidence with a statistic but from here it doesn´t look like it went all that well in Germany.

daniel_gudman · Post by **daniel_gudman** » 2008-03-24 02:36pm

If you're doing cost-benefit, here's some stuff to chew on.

Nuclear is best for "baseline" power. That is, an industrialized society will always be drinking so-and-so-many Watts of juice just to keep going; for traffic lights and servers and whatever. Because fission generates a very constant amount of energy, it's really good for this.

However, during the day when everyone's at work and running the AC and the television and the lights there's a greater demand for electricity. You need "intermittent" power for this. Nuclear is terrible for this because changing energy output is just about the most dangerous thing (potential meltdown wise) a reactor does, and it takes hours to change. Not something you can or should do every day.

The biggest costs of nuclear power are really 1) nuclear waste that lasts longer than we've had letters and 2) the (public expectation of?) danger. The Yukka mountain facility died, so there's no long term solution solution for waste that I'm aware of.

In contrast, wind and solar power are cyclical in production. They don't generate all the time, so you usually either waste some or have to make up the difference.

Solar is most productive during the day, so it's good for that cyclical, intermittent demand. However! The big cost of solar is the photovoltaic cells used to transform watts (sunlight) into watts (electricity). The best bet is "passive" solar technology that's more concerned with managing the radiant heat of sunlight. In the American Southwest (Cali for example) houses that eat heat during the day and spit it back out during the night have lower HVAC costs (money & watts).

As for Germany, I'm given to understand they're more investing in the large-scale wind farms. So you'll be out driving along and see dozens of windmills along a ridge, which the utility company uses to generate energy to sell to you, the consumer.

That's actually a typical model for wind power. You want to find somewhere with a lot of strong, dependable wind and put up as many turbines as you can. It can be kinda ugly so there's "not in my backyard" claims (especially after a highly-publicized blade/house encounter). I understand Texas has had also had some success building wind farms.

Anyway, domestic units are only just now beginning to see efficiencies (40% range) that are worth the infrastructure investment. I think the biggest market for personal windmills is actually yachts (of all things) right now, but I have no numbers (only anecdotes) to back that last bit up.

Basically you're comparing apples to oranges. They're both fruit (they feed you Watts) but they're different sources of energy. As an advocate of non-petrol energy sources I have to say "clearly, the solution is all of them."

Hope that helps.

Coalition · Post by **Coalition** » 2008-03-24 07:07pm

Another idea might be to compare them for rapidly providing electrical power in an area, or recovering after a disaster.

A nuclear plant requires several months if not years to construct, while solar panels and turbines can be constructed in parallel at multiple sites, and shipped to the location.

After a disaster might be similar, where the solar and wind fields are flat (nasty tornado), and the nuke plant's cooling tower is damaged. The solar and wind systems can be replaced faster than the cooling tower gets repaired.