Firstly, let me clearly state that I do not necessarily think lack of Indium will be a determining factor in the adoption of PVs. Supplies will likely expand. But current consumption based on known reserves indicate that the world’s supply of indium will be depleted by 2020. Even before that of uranium, based on currently known reserves (1). Without indium, there are no economical thin film photo voltaic panels.

Indium is already more expensive than Uranium(!), $1,000 per kg for indium vs. $151.8 per kg for Uranium oxide (2). Sure, perhaps a different process could be used. But the same goes for Nuclear, they could use thorium.

Concentrated solar is a lot less sexy, pretty boring actually. But it’s a proven alternative which could provide base load power. If we’re not going to do nuclear, and environmentalists are going to block all new pumped storage, then we ought to do concentrated solar. Or at least build concentrated solar in equal quantity to PV, those two could ACTUALLY complement each other, since humans have direct control over when the power of a concentrated solar setup is used. Unlike the wind-solar pipe dreams, where the idea seems to be building lots of solar panels and windmills, crossing your fingers and hoping that whenever the sun doesn’t shine the wind will blow.

(1): http://environment.newscientist.com/channel/earth/mg19426051.200-earths-natural-wealth-an-audit.html
(2): http://www.uranium.info/

“Take on the other hand France, which has even the most ambitious of you wind proponents beat since 1980 when it comes to carbon free power. They have some of the cheapest electricity in Europe, and it’s 95% fossil fuel free (and 80% nuclear)! Not a single person has died due to radiation in either the civilian French or American nuclear industry. People have been injured by mechanical means, but that’s not intrinsic to the nuclear industry, which actually has a better on the job safety record than some office jobs (check OSHA).”

Would France and the world somehow be better off if they had instead continued to run oil power plants back in 1970 while hoping renewable energy became cheap and practical? Or should they have just run hydro power plants and forgotten about computers, high speed trains and so forth in the name of environmentalism (this would be quite hypocritical of you, given that you’re posting on the internet which is powered by computers powered mostly by coal). Tell me, inquiring minds want to know.

No, back in 1980 you couldn’t deploy solar in any meaningful way, since the development of modern panels stems from developments made in the computer hardware industry. Wind power could be making a larger contribution, but couldn’t replace their nuclear capacity given that Germany has almost reached onshore saturation and only get 8% of their electricity from wind.

If you could change the past would you have France in 1970:
A. Build nuclear as they did, saving lots of GHGs.
B. Forget nuclear, invest a bit more in renewable sources, but add six times the yearly GHG production of the US to our atmosphere.

> Your posts disturb me deeply because they suspiciously don’t provide any solution to the issue
> hand – climate change. I think you have missed the point of this entire debate. We already have
> massive amounts of baseload generating capacity, and most of it has a VERY serious flaw – it
> releases CO2. Any technology that has this flaw can no longer be considered as an acceptable
> generation technology… period. The problem is that bad. ”

Long posts need to be moderated. In the one above the short blurb I addressed the best solution. But you can’t see it yet because it hasn’t been moderated.

Anyway, that’s a cheap shot. We both want to solve the problem of coal power and GHGs. Read my above posts. Too put it succinctly, I think renewable sources are great for up to 20% of grid capacity, but environmentalists need to re-think their stance on nuclear. Before rebuking this point, see what I wrote above since I might have already addressed your points. Here’s a simple break down for you though:

Solar & Wind: Intermittent, capacity to replace coal is limited.
Nuclear: Great base load, low cost. But it has a long lead time so we need to start building now.
Coal: Polluting, twenty times more people than Chernobyl did every year. Not a solution.

I do believe there are solutions. Indeed, solely relying on solar power and wind power may be one of them for people who are willing to pay for the huge over capacity you would need for wind and solar alongside complex pumped storage or battery bank systems.

Perhaps you believe that I think there are no solutions, because you have already decided that nuclear is not a solution, and you interpret my saying “Solar, wind, hydro and Biomass(!?) alone are not practical or cost effective or indeed on average safer solutions than nuclear” as to mean “I like coal power.”

> Renewable energy tech has limitations – overstated in the original post – but these problems
> are solvable. I see posts like yours as either:

> 1. a naive assumption that engineers cannot solve the problems with employing renewable
> technologies

Wrong. It has nothing to do with solving simple engineering problems, such as one must solve when determining how to build bridges across a ravine. Efficient, low cost, electricity storage is not an easy problem to solve. We’ve been working on it for one hundred years. Right now the best thing is pumped storage, but as I’ve pointed out that doesn’t work throughout the mid-west since we lack large hills.

Besides, it seems far more naive to consistently believe the promise of venture capital companies which are always promising some revolutionary technology which will make renewable energy cheap, consistent and low impact. Companies are always promising vapor-ware, but when you’re talking about infrastructure investments which lead times of decades then you need technologies which can be deployed now. Wind can to a limited degree. Nuclear certainly can.

> 2. the intentional defeatist fogging of the issue based on personal ties to the old line coal
> or nuclear industry (trolling)

Ah, now you admit it. You’re not even willing to discuss nuclear power. In fact that’s pretty much the definition of trolling: Instead of giving a substantive argument or rebuttals to my point you simply insult me. I supposedly represent the “nuclear industry” whatever that means. Well, you are probably a lobbyist for the multi-billion dollar solar industry, who is trying to get massive subsidies from US taxpayers so your client can make a nice fat profit.

> Either way, remember – if your solutions don’t include an immediate and massive reduction in
> GHG emissions – they have NO VALUE whatsoever, and certainly no place on this blog.

Agreed!

If you elimminate all regulatory delays, then certainly a wide variety of technologies are available (even nuclear) to supply low carbon power.

Your posts disturb me deeply because they suspiciously don’t provide any solution to the issue at hand – climate change. I think you have missed the point of this entire debate. We already have massive amounts of baseload generating capacity, and most of it has a VERY serious flaw – it releases CO2. Any technology that has this flaw can no longer be considered as an acceptable generation technology… period. The problem is that bad.

Renewable energy tech has limitations – overstated in the original post – but these problems are solvable. I see posts like yours as either:

1. a naive assumption that engineers cannot solve the problems with employing renewable technologies

2. the intentional defeatist fogging of the issue based on personal ties to the old line coal or nuclear industry (trolling)

Either way, remember – if your solutions don’t include an immediate and massive reduction in GHG emissions – they have NO VALUE whatsoever, and certainly no place on this blog.

Base load power. Pumped storage is the only currently economic method, and cannot be used in much of the world or anywhere in the mid west.

Conservation sounds nice, but it’s a one time thing. If we shut off 10% of our coal plants because we’ve increased conservation we still have not solved the problem of base load power or energy storage. Conservation does not generate electricity, it saves it.

Please note, I’m all for renewable energy. But people need to be realistic about what it can provide, because we need to build a RELIABLE energy infrastructure if we’re serious about replacing coal. Otherwise all we’ve done is provide some nice cheap peak power production and offset some CO2 use. That’s a good start, but it’s not the solution.

The question is not the technical feasibility of something, but the cost of doing it relative to the benefit. As an engineer I personally enjoy all sorts of difficult problems, but the existence of a potential problem does not

> 1. It takes well over 10 years on average to design and install a new nuclear plant, making it > impossible to respond to market needs, or the need to immediately address climate change.

What? The electricity market is not the market for teenage girls clothing. We are demanding electricity today, we will be demanding more tomorrow, and even more ten years from now. Current nuclear power plants are extremely profitable, including the tax paid for Yucca mountain (Yucca is not paid by tax payers). That’s a totally bunk point. You also did not explain why it cannot address climate change, or even what you mean by that statement.

> 2. Nuclear power plants are by far the most expensive form of base-load generation.

Wrong. Nuclear is one of the cheapest,

> In Ontario
> where I live, electricity consumers must pay a monthly “debt servicing fee” of more than $20
> which pays only the interest on our $20billion in stranded debt from nuclear cost over-runs.
> Every nuclear project we have ever attempted has significantly exceeded expected costs.

The last plants were the last precisely because they were the most delayed. This is also why they were so expensive. Insinuating that this is predictive for the cost of new plants is dishonest of you.

Perhaps you could apply the same methodology to wind turbines? Find the most mismanaged installations and determine the cost/kW of averaged capacity. I suspect the number you get would not be very flattering for wind. The construction in Ontario encountered repeated re-design due to the instance of your politicians to use Canadian home grown CANDU reactor technology instead of taking off the shelf designs from France or the US. That was compounded by repeated foot-dragging by environmentalists who forced repeated increases and changes to reactor safety mechanisms.

Currently there is a lot of interest in British power, since it would offer foreign operators a quick path to building Nuclear power plants. This is without any promise that the government will pay cost over-runs, which is now unheard of for nuclear power, or even loan guarantees. Texas also has a few plants which will probably be constructed once applications go through, with limited loan guarantees, no financial support from the state or local government, and limited subsidies (maximum $125 Million) from the federal government. Don’t give nuclear power any subsidies for all I care, it doesn’t need it. With electricity prices continuing to increase investors can see that they’re only going to go up from here, nuclear is a great investment (assuming environmentalists like you don’t change the laws half way through or stop finished plants from actually being run).

> 3. No insurance company will insure nuclear power plants (the potential cost and likelihood of > an accident make it far too risky) Nuclear plants have to be insured by taxpayers (imagine the > one-time cost of even a small accident).

Imagine the chance of even a small accident (nearly zero). There hasn’t been a single one in the history of the US civilian nuclear industry. Compare this with the very real healthcare costs we are already paying which have been incurred during accidents which occurred during the construction of wind mills.

> 4. Global uranium supplies have likely already peaked relative to demand, resulting in steady
> increases in the cost of fuel over comparable energy sources.

Another common Greenpeace myth. Nuclear fuel amounts to less than 1% of the cost of running a plant, prices could go up 50 times and it would have less than a 10% increase on the cost of running a plant. Secondly, how could supplies have peaked relative demand if Uranium prices are going down?

http://www.uranium.info/prices/overview.html

Secondly, nearly nothing has been spent on exploration in the last twenty years. Much was prior to Chernobyl, but after that there was massive over capacity, so we’ve had a global Uranium glut for the last twenty years. Only now, because of China’s expansion of capacity, was their any increase in price. However that was short lived, a little capacity expansion occurred, and prices are again down. Capacity expansion for any mineral, especially one like Uranium, doesn’t happen over night. The primary reason for the massive increase during 2007 I outlined above, plant owners wanted to secure supplies going ten years out, they’d rather pay ten times more than the spot price if it means they can avoid letting a plant idle, since running them are so profitable.

http://www.uic.com.au/graphics/explorprice.gif

> 5. No long-term solution has been devised to address the problem of nuclear waste. Reprocessing
> only accounts for the removal of a tiny fraction of overall waste created.

Wrong. Reprocessing removes at least 60% of the volume of the waste.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PUREX

> It itself creates nuclear waste which cannot be reprocessed.

Wrong. Never even heard that before. It results in waste which cannot be reprocessed, since that by definition is what you have left over after reprocessing that which can be processed. Reprocessing is not a fission process, so by definition it cannot create more fissile material than previously existed.

> No cost benefit analysis undertaken adequately incorporates the permanent long-term costs of
> storing nuclear waste, including security.

Depends on what you’re thinking of by security and storage. Storage in Yucca mountain has already been paid for by taxes the nuclear industry paid. If you want armed guards standing there for the next 100,000 years, then no, you can’t run a cost benefit analysis for that since we don’t know what the wages of security guards will be 1,000 years from now. But that’s not necessary anyway since anyone wanting to build a nuclear bomb or something would be better off just mining Uranium and running it through centerfuges, as Iran and North Korea have demonstrated.

> By the time the Yucca mountain storage facility is created, more waste will have been generated
> in the U.S. alone during construction than the facility will hold.

Wrong. Yucca mountain is expandable and already is finished. There are just political obstacles to actually storing anything there.

> 6. Nuclear does not have a perfect safety record. Take a look at a list of “significant”
> accidents here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_accident

The US is a country in North America, the proper name is The United States of America.

Civilian means non-military.

I don’t mean to be patronizing, but I tried stating before that I was talking about the US civilian nuclear industry, but you continue to confuse the issue by bringing horrible Russian reactor designs or incidents. There have been operational issues in US plants. But there has not been a single injury due to radiation in the history of the US civilian nuclear industry (or in the Canadian too I think, but I’m not sure about that). There may have been some mechanical injuries, but I don’t think anyone gathers statistics on that.

>> 7. No nuclear power plant has EVER been fully decommissioned. The costs of taking apart a
>> reactor are estimated to between 2 and 10 times the cost of initial construction when all
>> factors are considered. “Decommissioning” requires that the rector is cut into small pieces
>> which are sealed in shielded containers and shipped off-site to be disposed of… somewhere.
>> Many plants are in some stage of decommissioning, but none have seen completion.

Wrong. I don’t blame you for believing this, since it seems to be a common perception. It is however entirely wrong (Though you would have done yourself a favor to check your “facts” before posting them, since it discredits your other points to be so totally proven wrong like this). To my knowledge at least ten former nuclear sites in the US have been returned to Greenfield status (entirely decommissioned, returned to wild state). This is such a routine thing in industry in general, as well as the nuclear industry, that it’s not even news worthy.

http://www.worldenergy.org/publications/survey_of_energy_resources_2007/nuclear/683.asp