Nuclear power is one of the most polarizing topics in any discussion of our energy future. As someone who appreciates the potential of nuclear energy, I am torn about its prospects. On one hand, nuclear energy offers an always-on, low-carbon alternative to fossil fuels. On the other, its cost remains a significant hurdle, deterring new developments in this sector.

The central issue with nuclear power is its cost. Constructing nuclear power costs approximately $10,000 per kilowatt of capacity. This is ten times as expensive as solar and wind, which cost around $1,000 per kW. See this plot, from Lazard:

Critics of renewable energy often point to solar and wind’s intermittency — the fact that the sun doesn’t always shine and the wind doesn’t always blow. You can, of course, add storage to solar, which increases the cost to $1,600 per kW, still much cheaper than nuclear.

To the power plant operator, though, intermittency is completely irrelevant. They don’t care if they only get power 6 hours one day, zero the next, and 12 the next. What they care about is how they get on average, which determines their annual revenue. From the operators perspective, solar and wind and wind get the W, which is why the market is building so much solar and wind.

Why is nuclear power so expensive? A significant factor is the lack of scale. In most industries, costs decrease as production increases, benefiting from what experts call “learning by doing”: the more of a product you build, the cheaper and higher quality the products are.

The very first flat-screen TVs were very expensive. But, as we made gazillions of them, the price plummeted, so now you can get a ridiculous 86″ TV with WiFi and built-in Netflix for under $1,000 with which to watch important and educational shows like this.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Fukushima Daiichi adds Insult to Injury for the Pacific’s Coral Reefs.

October 15, 2023

Fukushima Daiichi adds Insult to Injury for the Pacific’s Coral Reefs.

As the El Niño builds to a terrifying crescendo, that won’t peak before April 2024, the Pacific’s Coral Reefs will become stressed, and a bleaching event will unfold as it did in the 2016 El Niño. What is our response? TEPCO and the Japanese government have decided to dump 1.3million tons of radioactive water into my beloved Pacific Ocean. After careful consideration the criminal cohort in Japan have decided to take the cheapest option and dump the radioactive sludge into the adjacent Pacific Ocean.

In the video below, I mentioned that Sea Surface Temperatures hit 38C off the coast of Florida. Here’s the evidence:
“Sea surface temperatures of more than 38C (100.4F) have been recorded off the coast of Florida – potentially setting a new world record.” Sea temperature off Florida reaches 38C- potentially a world record.

Almost every coral reef in the Northern Hemisphere is under stress.
Daily Global 5km Satellite Coral Bleaching Heat Stress Degree Heating Week

“A catastrophic die-off of emperor penguin chicks has been observed in the Antarctic, with up to 10,000 young birds estimated to have been killed.”

This is the consequences of the loss of Antarctic Sea ice in the winter.

What does everyone think will happen down there when the summer rolls around, holding hands with a strong El Nino? Climate change: Thousands of penguins die in Antarctic ice breakup

“This missing area is larger than the size of Greenland, or around ten times the size of the United Kingdom,” Dramatic images show why emperor penguins were hit with catastrophe

Not a chick survived in 4 out of 5 colonies. Not a single Emperor penguin chick survived spring in parts of the Antarctica.

…click on the above link to read the rest…

MIT Study: Nuclear Power Shutdown Could Lead To Increased Deaths

April 23, 2023

MIT Study: Nuclear Power Shutdown Could Lead To Increased Deaths

A new MIT study indicates that retiring U.S. nuclear power plants could lead to an increase in burning fossil fuels to fill the energy gap, resulting in over 5,000 premature deaths due to increased air pollution.
Nearly 20 percent of current electricity in the U.S. comes from nuclear power, with a fleet of 92 reactors scattered around the country.
If more renewable energy sources become available to supply the grid by 2030, air pollution could be curtailed, but there may still be a slight increase in pollution-related deaths.

A Massachusetts Institute of Technology new study shows that if U.S. nuclear power plants are retired, the burning of coal, oil, and natural gas to fill the energy gap could cause more than 5,000 premature deaths.

The MIT team took on the questions in the text following in a new study appearing in Nature Energy.

Nearly 20 percent of today’s electricity in the United States comes from nuclear power. The U.S. has the largest nuclear fleet in the world, with 92 reactors scattered around the country. Many of these power plants have run for more than half a century and are approaching the end of their expected lifetimes.

Policymakers are debating whether to retire the aging reactors or reinforce their structures to continue producing nuclear energy, which many consider a low-carbon alternative to climate-warming coal, oil, and natural gas.

Now, MIT researchers say there’s another factor to consider in weighing the future of nuclear power: air quality. In addition to being a low carbon-emitting source, nuclear power is relatively clean in terms of the air pollution it generates. Without nuclear power, how would the pattern of air pollution shift, and who would feel its effects?

…click on the above link to read the rest…

No, Nuclear Energy Won’t Save Us

April 3, 2023

No, Nuclear Energy Won’t Save Us

Soon to be mementos of a lost age. Photo by Lukáš Lehotský on Unsplash

Ever since the first commercial reactors have started to produce electricity for the grid in the 1950’s (um, about 70 years ago now…) we keep hearing how nuclear is the clean, green power of the future. No emissions, no limits, just the infinite power of the atom. Even M. King Hubbert, the renowned petroleum geologist who pointed out the reality of peak oil production, has seen it as an infinite and stable energy source. (Don’t ask me how he could hold these two contradictory thoughts in his head at the same time.)

Today we know — although many still try to deny — that he was spot on with his first observation. Oil is a finite resource and it’s extraction follows a rise, peak, plateau and fall curve. Conventional oil (the scope of Hubbert’s studies) has peaked around 2005, and is on a bumpy plateau ever since, with growth only provided by unconventional and increasingly difficult and energy expensive to get resources. I have wrote many articles on the not so fantastic prospects this has in store for us, so now let’s examine the proposed alternative to fossil fuels: nuclear energy.

Hubbert’s idea about the energy use of humanity. Hubbert, M. King. Nuclear Energy and the Fossil Fuels. American Petroleum Institute. June 1956.

I’ve mentioned in the introduction to this article how Hubbert has presented a glaring contradiction between the reality of peak oil and his expectations towards nuclear power supposedly providing us all the energy we need for countless millennia to come. I say glaring, because as a geologist it should have been obvious to him that nuclear power is coming from Uranium, a mineral found in finite quantities, in finite reserves on this finite planet…

…click on the above link to read the rest…

EU Members Clash Over Nuclear Energy’s Role In Climate Policy

March 29, 2023

EU Members Clash Over Nuclear Energy’s Role In Climate Policy

The EU is in the process of expanding its renewable energy targets to reduce CO2 emissions.
Countries are divided over whether nuclear energy should be considered a part of renewable energy targets.
France leads the campaign to recognize nuclear energy as a CO2-free contributor, while Germany, Portugal, and others oppose it.

The European Union needs to work on a divide among its member countries regarding the role of nuclear energy in achieving their renewable energy goals. This disagreement may delay the progress of one of the EU’s primary climate policies.

On Wednesday, negotiators from EU countries and the European Parliament will engage in their final round of discussions to establish more ambitious EU objectives to expand renewable energy throughout the next decade. These goals are crucial for Europe’s commitment to reduce CO2 emissions by 2030 and to become independent of Russian fossil fuels. However, the negotiations have become bogged down by a dispute over whether fossil fuels produced using nuclear power should be considered part of the renewable energy targets.

France is spearheading a push to classify “low-carbon hydrogen” – hydrogen produced from nuclear energy – as equal to hydrogen created from renewable electricity. France is joined by countries such as Romania, Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic, all of which seek greater acknowledgment of nuclear energy’s CO2-free contribution to climate objectives.

On the other hand, Germany, Spain, Denmark, Portugal, and Luxembourg oppose this view, arguing that including nuclear power in renewable energy targets would divert attention from the urgent need to expand solar and wind energy across Europe significantly.

…click on the above link to read the rest…

“These Are The Manipulations That Will Be Common Now That The World Is Transitioning To Squeezing Scarce Resources Out Of A Globalized Economy”

February 13, 2023

“These Are The Manipulations That Will Be Common Now That The World Is Transitioning To Squeezing Scarce Resources Out Of A Globalized Economy”

Kishida’s cabinet formally adopted a policy to extend the life of its nuclear plants beyond the self-imposed sixty-year limit. Japan’s engineers had originally put a cap in place for all sorts of safety-related reasons. But times change, risks change, societies too.

With the Ukraine war reshaping the global energy map, Japanese memories of energy shortages in the run up to WWII apparently outweigh more recent scars from Fukushima.

And besides, when you count sixty years in the life of a nuclear power plant, you probably shouldn’t count the time it was turned off for maintenance. Right? It’s odd that the engineers who counted sixty in the first place overlooked that. But whatever. If you strip out the years these nuclear reactors were on vacation, you can extend their sixty-year life to seventy. Presto. New capacity.

Japan also announced $152bln in green transformation bonds to build new nukes, renewables, etc. Kishida’s government announced that $1.14trln in public/private investment will be needed over the coming decade.

But Japan was not alone, of course. Macron is trying to extend the life of France’s work force past the age of sixty-two. Apparently, when the policy was first implemented, French engineers failed to take into consideration maintenance and vacation time. Were you to add this downtime back in, the productive life of a French worker would extend to something north of a century.

But unlike Japan’s nuclear reactors, French workers can strike and vote, so Macron sought only an extra two years. Hundreds of thousands are now striking, which if properly counted would push out the work life of a French worker another ten years.

And these are the sorts of manipulations that will be more common now that the world is transitioning from decades of financial over-engineering to a world of squeezing scarce resources out of a globalized economy that was over-optimized for peak profitability.

Fusion Breakthrough is a Nuclear Nothing Burger

December 15, 2022

FUSION BREAKTHROUGH IS A NUCLEAR NOTHING BURGER

The U.S. Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory kicked off its year-end Go-Fund-Me drive last week announcing a nuclear fusion breakthrough.

“The fusion energy breakthrough by US scientists boosts clean power hopes. Net energy gain indicates technology could provide an abundant zero-carbon alternative to fossil fuels.”
–Financial Times, December 11, 2022

These claims are nonsense. The Wall Street Journal called the fusion announcement nuclear fusion hype noting that nuclear power stations are at best decades away.

The experiment used lasers to put 1.8 megajoules (MJ) of energy in and got 2.5 MJ out – proving that energy can be successfully released and gained by a Deuterium-Tritium fusion reaction. Unfortunately, they had to use 500 MJ of energy into the lasers so the EROI was 0.005. That’s the worst net energy ratio ever.

No electricity was produced in the experiment. The energy released was mostly waste heat.

But the announcement was timed to support a huge funding measure by the U.S. Congress:

“I’m…proud to announce…the highest-ever authorization of over $624 million this year in the National Defense Authorization Act for the ICF [Inertial Confinement Fusion] program to build on this amazing breakthrough.”
–U.S. Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer

Let’s suppose for a moment that this experiment proves that fusion is now a commercially viable new source of energy.

Building fusion nuclear power stations for the country is a big project and big projects take time. If, for example, there were full funding and permits to build a major new airport, it would take about nine years to complete.

“Building a major nuclear site with the handling of radioactive waste would make things many times harder. For an experimental and totally unproven nuclear technology like fusion, the problems are nearly insurmountable and would require decades at a minimum.”
–Thomas Overton, nuclear scientist and publisher of PowerMag

…click on the above link to read the rest…

Nuclear Power Is No Solution For the World’s Energy Problems

February 18, 2022

NUCLEAR POWER IS NO SOLUTION FOR THE WORLD’S ENERGY PROBLEMS

Nuclear power is no solution to the world’s energy problems. Not even close.

It’s important for electric power but electric power is not even 40% of the world’s energy supply—nor is it expected to increase much over the next 30 years.

IEA projects that nuclear power will account for only 5.5% of world energy supply in 2050 (Figure 1). That’s an increase of only 0.5% from 2020.

Figure 1. IEA most-likely scenario is for nuclear to account for 5.5% of world energy supply in 2050—an increase of 0.5% from 2020. Source: IEA & Labyrinth Consulting Services, Inc.

Nuclear power has limited application beyond electric power generation and some heating capability. Yet the outlook is not much better for nuclear to increase as a major source of electric power either. IEA’s most-likely scenario is for nuclear to account for only 12.5% of electric power supply in 2050 (Figure 2).

Figure 2. IEA most-likely scenario is for nuclear to account for 12.5% of electric power supply in 2050. Source: IEA & Labyrinth Consulting Services, Inc.

Electric power currently accounts for about 39% of world energy supply (Figure 3). IEA estimates that it will only increase to about 41% by 2050.

Figure 3. Electric power will increase from 39% to 41% of world energy supply by 2050. Source: IEA & Labyrinth Consulting Services, Inc.

EIA’s International Energy Outlook 2021 is largely in agreement with IEA’s assessment of both electric and nuclear power. Unlike IEA, however, EIA provides data to account for the considerable energy losses during power generation, transmission and distribution. The losses amounted to 64% in 2020 (Table 1).

Table 1. EIA electric and nuclear net power to the electric grid and energy losses. Source: EIA and Labyrinth Consulting Services, Inc.

When losses are included, net electric power to the grid is expected to increase from 19% in 2020 to 28% in 2050 (Figure 4) instead of 41% in IEA’s evaluation shown above in Figure 3.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Experts Say Nuclear Energy as Climate Solution Is Total ‘Fiction’

January 27, 2022

A protestor gestures during an anti-nuclear demonstration on October 1, 2016 in Siouville-Hague, northwestern France. (Photo: Charly Triballeau/AFP via Getty Images)

Experts Say Nuclear Energy as Climate Solution Is Total ‘Fiction’

“The reality is nuclear is neither clean, safe, or smart; but a very complex technology with the potential to cause significant harm.”

As global scientists continue to warn of the urgent need to keep fossil fuels in the ground, a quartet of European and U.S. experts on Tuesday made a comprehensive case for why nuclear power should be not be considered a solution to the climate crisis.

“The central message, repeated again and again, that a new generation of nuclear will be clean, safe, smart and cheap, is fiction.”

While the experts recognize in their joint statement that “the climate is running hot,” they push back forcefully against those who argue nuclear could be a “partial response to the threat of global heating.”

With four signatories—Paul Dorfman, former secretary of the U.K. government’s Committee Examining Radiation Risks of Internal Emitters; Greg Jaczko, former chairman of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission; Bernard Laponche, former director general of France’s energy management agency; and Wolfgang Renneberg, former head of the reactor safety, radiation protection, and nuclear waste at Germany’s environmental ministry—the statement comes as a direct challenge to a nuclear industry trying to bill itself as a reliable part of the world’s transition to a more sustainable energy system.

“As key experts who have worked on the frontline of the nuclear issue,” their statement explains, “we consider it our collective responsibility to comment on the main issue: Whether nuclear could play a significant role as a strategy against climate change.”

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The Long Term Perspectives of Nuclear Energy: Revisiting the Fermi Paradox

June 3, 2021

The Long Term Perspectives of Nuclear Energy: Revisiting the Fermi Paradox

This is a revisitation of a post that I published in 2011, with the title “The Hubbert hurdle: revisiting the Fermi Paradox“ Here, I am expanding the calculations of the previous post and emphasizing the relevance of the paradox on the availability of energy for planetary civilizations and, in particular on the possibility of developing controlled nuclear fusion. Of course, we can’t prove that nuclear fusion is impossible simply because we have not been invaded by aliens, so far. But these considerations give us a certain feeling on the orders of magnitude involved in the complex relationship between energy use and civilization. Despite the hype, nuclear energy of any kind may remain forever a marginal source of energy. (Above, an “Orion” spaceship, being pushed onward by the detonation of nuclear bombs at the back).

Post revised and readapted from “The Hubbert hurdle: revisiting the Fermi Paradox” — Published on “Cassandra’s Legacy” in May 2011
The discovery of thousands of extrasolar planets is revolutionizing our views of the universe. It seems clear that planets are common around stars and, with about 100 billion stars in our galaxy, organic life cannot be that rare. Of course, “organic life” doesn’t mean “intelligent life,” and the latter doesn’t mean “technologically advanced civilization.” But, with so many planets, the galaxy may well be teeming with alien civilizations, some of them technologically as advanced as us, possibly much more.

The next step in this line of reasoning is called the “Fermi Paradox,” said to have been proposed for the first time by the physicist Enrico Fermi in the 1950s. It goes as, “if aliens exist, why aren’t they here?”…

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The Great Turning Point for Humankind: What if Nuclear Energy had not been Abandoned in the 1970s?

May 28, 2021

The Great Turning Point for Humankind: What if Nuclear Energy had not been Abandoned in the 1970s?

The Italian translation of Walt Disney’s book, “Our Friend, the Atom,” originally published in 1956. It was a powerful pitch of the nuclear industry to sell a completely new energy system to the world. It could have been a turning point for humankind, but it didn’t work: nuclear energy was abandoned in the 1960s-1970s. It was probably unavoidable: too many factors were staked against the nuclear industry. But we may wonder about what could have happened if it had been decided to pursue nuclear energy and abandon fossil energy. (In the background: a completely different concept, that of “holobionts,”)

I remember having read Walt Disney’s book, “Our Friend, the Atom,” (1957) in the 1960s when I was, maybe, 10 years old. That book left a powerful impression on me. Still today, when I visualize protons and electrons in my mind, I see them in the colors they were represented in the book: protons are red, electrons are blue or green. And I think that one of the reasons why I decided to study chemistry at the university was because of the fascinating images of the atomic structure I had seen in the book.More than 60 years after its publication, “Our Friend the Atom” remains a milestone in the history of nuclear energy. You can easily find on the Web the Disneyland TV episode from which the book was derived. It is still stunning today, as it was in the 1950s, in terms of imagery and sheer mastery of the art of presentation. The nuclear industry was in rapid expansion and it saw itself as able to grow more. Hence, a pitch for the “Atomic Age” that would have brought cheap and abundant energy for everyone, perhaps even energy that was “too cheap to meter.”

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

US Experts to Trudeau: Your Nuclear Dream May Turn Nightmare

May 26, 2021

US Experts to Trudeau: Your Nuclear Dream May Turn Nightmare

Rethink backing the Moltex reactor, urge nine non-proliferation heavyweights.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau at the 2016 Nuclear Security Summit in Washington, DC. His government is backing a new generation of reactors US experts now warn could fuel nuclear weapons proliferation. Photo by Sean Kilpatrick, the Canadian Press.

A blue-ribbon group of American nuclear non-proliferation experts warns that Canada’s investment in new nuclear technology could lead to the spread of nuclear weapons and new threats to the environment.

“We write as U.S. non-proliferation experts and former government officials and advisors with related responsibilities to express our concern about your government’s financial support of Moltex — a startup company that proposes to reprocess CANDU spent fuel to recover its contained plutonium for use in molten-salt-cooled reactors.”

The warning came in the form of an open letter to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau that was delivered on Tuesday and signed by the nine experts.

The group is spearheaded by Frank von Hippel, professor and senior research physicist at Princeton University; it includes Matthew Bunn, the Schlesinger professor of the practise of energy, national security, and foreign policy at the Harvard Kennedy School; and Thomas Countryman, former U.S. assistant secretary of state for non-proliferation.

“We understand your government’s motivation to support nuclear power and to reduce fossil fuel use but saving the world from climate disaster need not be in conflict with saving it from nuclear weapons. Also, like other reprocessing efforts, Moltex, even in the R&D stage, would create a costly legacy of contaminated facilities and radioactive waste streams, and require substantial additional government funding for cleanup and stabilization prior to disposal,” they wrote.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Gen IV SMR nuclear reactors

April 18, 2021

Gen IV SMR nuclear reactors

Preface. Peak conventional oil, which supplies over 95% of our oil, may have peaked in 2008 (IEA 2018) or 2018 (EIA 2020). We are running out of time. And is it really worth building these small modular reactors (SMR) given that peak uranium is coming soon? And until nuclear waste disposal exists, they should be on hold, like in California and 13 other states.

And since trucks can’t run on electricity (When Trucks Stop Running: Energy and the Future of Transportation 2015, Springer), what’s the point? Nor can manufacturing be run on electricity or blue hydrogen (Friedmann 2019). Once oil declines, the cost to get uranium will skyrocket since oil is likely to be rationed to transportation, especially agriculture.

***

Cho A. 2020. Critics question whether novel reactor is ‘walk-away safe’. Science 369: 888-889

Engineers at NuScale Power believe they can revive the moribund U.S. nuclear industry by thinking small. Spun out of Oregon State University in 2007, the company is striving to win approval from the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) for the design of a new factory-built, modular fission reactor meant to be smaller, safer, and cheaper than the gigawatt behemoths operating today (Science, 22 February 2019, p. 806). But even as that 4-year process culminates, reviewers have unearthed design problems, including one that critics say undermines NuScale’s claim that in an emergency, its small modular reactor (SMR) would shut itself down without operator intervention.

NuScale’s likely first customer, Utah Associated Municipal Power Systems (UAMPS), has delayed plans to build a NuScale plant, which would include a dozen of the reactors, at the Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) Idaho National Laboratory. The $6.1 billion plant would now be completed by 2030, 3 years later than previously planned, says UAMPS spokesperson LaVarr Webb. The deal depends on DOE contributing $1.4 billion to the cost of the plant, he adds.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

In Promoting New Nuclear Power, Biden-Harris Back Fiction Over Science

November 14, 2020

In Promoting New Nuclear Power, Biden-Harris Back Fiction Over Science

Nuclear fuel assemblies being inspected before entering a pressurized water reactor in the United States – Public Domain

Although possibly a sad comment on his predecessors, incoming U.S. president, Joe Biden, is offering the most progressive climate policy so far of any who have previously held his position.

As Paul Gipe points out in his recent blog, the Biden-Harris climate plan uses the word “revolution” right in the headline — a bit of a departure from the usual cautious rhetoric of the centrist-controlled Democratic Party.

But ‘revolution’ is proceeded by two words which let us know we are still lingering in conservative ‘safe’ territory. They call it a “clean energy revolution”, which Gipe rightly refers to as “focus-group shopped terminology.” He goes on:

”Clean energy is a term forged by Madison Avenue advertising mavens in the crucible of focus groups. It ‘polls well,’ as they say. It means one thing to one interest group, something else to another. So it’s perfect for politics in America.

“To environmentalists, it means wind and solar energy, often only those two forms of renewable energy, and sometimes only solar. It also means good times to the coal and nuclear industry. (Ever hear of ‘clean coal’?)

“So clean energy is one of those misleading words that party leaders and, importantly, fundraisers can use to elicit money from donors of all stripes. Why say renewable energy, when you want to raise money from the coal and nuclear industries?”

The Biden-Harris energy plan hits all the right notes in its opening paragraphs, focusing on a goal of net-zero emissions by 2050 and emphasizing infrastructure, international collaboration and the protection of poor communities of color, who suffer the most harm from unfettered polluters.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

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