I’ll take you at your word on this, Paxus. So I have to ask: Why protest? If Dominion does this well with 60′s era technology, what makes you think Dominion won’t do just as well with a third, more modern nuclear unit at North Anna?

It seems that the Greenpeace folks have never worked a lead plant startup. The first one or two have problems, but if you stick with essentially the same design and crew, you get better. Yonggwang 3 (lead plant for that design, YGN 1 and 2 were older plants) had all kinds of issues to work out. However, Yonggwang 4 did much better, as did the others. EPR is certainly having issues and delays, but I am willing to wait and see how they do at Taishan (3rd EPR) before making any judgement. I have never said that nuclear is easy, but it is more manageable than most folks think.

I doubt anyone’s still reading this thread besides us anyway.

You final question is easy: http://www.ieer.org/carbonfree/summary.pdf – i have not even personally read the entire Exec summary – but i know these smart folx and trust them.

i assume you track this type of stuff. There is a less ambitious plan by Amory Lovins and the folks out at Rocky Mountain Institute: http://www.oilendgame.com/

The European Renewable folx have numerous plans.

i personally believe we need to dramatically change consumption patterns. I think it turns out that the environment cant handlethe demands we are collectively putting on it and we are going to have to do some pretty radical scaling back of our individual personal ownership of things (most of which are laying idle 90+% of the time) and actually figure out how to share things. But this is a bigger topic than we are going to get at in this fading Blog entry.

I’m in Am*dam now, with my old boss and dear friend Honza Beranek, who now heads Greenpeace’s International Nuclear unit. We have been talking abotu France – partly inspired by your praises.

i find it amazing that the leaks at 4 Avera reactors in France this summer did not make it to the US press at all. At one of which the regional governor closed off recreational access to the local body of water. Greenpeace was flooded with calls about whether it was safe to go to different parts of France.

But the real nuclear black eye is the construction of the EPRs in Finland and France. You must know these numbers. Huge overruns at both plants,significant delays already and they are barely started – oddly it seems to me over similar concrete mixing problems and welding problems. Clearly they shouldbe studying under the Japanese and Koreans. But this is the biggest nuclear construction company in the world. Promising 3rd Gens are not going to have the same cost overruns and delays at the last generation – and getting it dead wrong.

And ultimately,the whole thing maybe going up in smoke anyway, as the financial crisis dries up the extraordinary lending options needed to finance nuclear power.

good chatting.

Paxus in Am*dam
4 Falling Leaves 2K8

1) All of the major hydro projects are done. It is not scalable. In fact, hydro projects are actually being decommissioned. When looking to replace baseload electricity or meet increased demands, it is a dead-end street. To include it only serves as a distraction.

and most importantly,

2) That’s the way it’s listed on DOE’s web site. No disingenuousness intended.

Now, speaking of disingenuous…

“Domestically-produced renewable energy (biomass/biofuels, geothermal, hydropower, solar, wind) totaled 3.606 quads — an amount equal to 10.56% of U.S. electricity consumption that is domestically-produced. The nuclear share for the same period was 11.98%.”

Isn’t this the proverbial apples to oranges comparison? Here’s the breakdown of your “renewable” list:

• Biomass – 53% (predominantly transportation)
• Hydroelectric – 36%
• Geothermal – 5%
• Wind – 5%
• Solar – 1%

[Source: DOE/EIA, 2008]

You call this conglomerate list of “renewables” equal to 10.56% of the US electricity consumption, yet most of it is NOT being used for electricity production. It’s being used in the *transportation* sector. In case you didn’t notice, I’ve been talking about the various technologies that are available to meet our *electrical* needs – not our transportation needs. As I have heard you mention before, nuclear cannot [yet] be included in a comparison of energy sources used for transportation. When you lump them all together, as you did in that statement, you give renewables a 90% boost and make it look like wind and solar are competitive with nuclear for electrical production, which simply isn’t true.

Ironically though, nuclear is going to play a pretty significant role in transportation in the coming years, as it does already in France. (For your research project be sure to check out France’s zero-emissions commuter rail system, which is made possible by nuclear power.) GM and other companies are expected to roll-out the first, mass-produced, plug-in-electric hybrid cars by 2010. When that happens, the lines between transportation and electrical production will finally be blurred. Unfortunately, that will mean we need EVEN MORE electricity generation, which brings us back to these sobering facts: 91% of our current electrical supply comes from fossil fuels and nuclear power. We not only need to replace fossil fuels, but also meet the future demands. In order to do this, we’ll need ALL of the scalable forms of electricity we’ve got, including wind, solar, AND nuclear.

You seem to be an educated person who should have a firm grasp on the current energy situation. But here’s what you don’t seem to get (and for the life of me I don’t understand why): Even WITH renewables and nuclear we won’t be able to cover the demand, so as much as neither you nor I like it, we will need more coal power too. But wait! You’re steadfastly against nuclear, so it would mean a LOT more coal. You and many others here just can’t comprehend the magnitude of the energy shortage we will face without nuclear as part of the mix. That is why I am even bothering to post here. Ignorance is not an incurable condition. It’s not a bad thing to be ignorant. What is bad is ignoring the facts when they are made painfully clear.

So Paxus, thank you for not resorting to character assassinations as part of your message. But I would like to know: How does *your* energy plan address the replacement of 91% of our electrical supply AND meet the future demands as we shift from oil to electricity for transportation? Renewables and conservation alone? As an educated person, you must know that this idea is untenable.

Your mention of airliner attacks supports my original point: airplanes were used to kill almost 3000 people, but nobody called for the permanent shutdown of air travel. We increased security and continued to fly because regular people feel a tangible benefit to using airplanes. Nuclear’s benefits (abundant fuel supply, cleaner air) are not something that the average person really feels.

By the way, light water reactors cannot undergo the type of large-scale contamination accident that Chernobyl or Windscale had. A LOCA at the vessel head at Davis-Besse would not have caused any release because the leak was above the core and easy to replentish. As for taking out a nuclear plant with an airplane, you would need higher speeds than those that hit the Pentagon, a pilot with much more training than those of 9-11, and the right weather conditions (don’t forget all those disaster scenarios the computers cook up assume much stronger and more stable inversion layers than exist at the plants).

As for the push away from safety, the Institute of Nuclear Power Operations (INPO) is actually pushing more inspections on the utilities, not less. When I talk to my colleagues, they are all busy increasing their inspection regimes. There are a lot of misconceptions about the nuclear business.

Similarly, it seems a bit disingenuous to pull hydro out of renewables, but perhaps that is not your breakdown. What i know is that the latest DOE EIA monthly report (Sept 24, 2008)
Domestically-produced renewable energy (biomass/biofuels, geothermal, hydropower, solar, wind) totaled 3.606 quads — an amount equal to 10.56% of U.S. electricity consumption that is domestically-produced. The nuclear share for the same period was 11.98%.

And nuclear power dropped by one percent during the first half of 2008, compared to the same period for 2007 (4.091 quads, down from 4.119 quads), renewable energy’s share increased by five percent (3.606 quads, up from 3.439 quads).

Michael, i am not saying you are not a real person or that you work for Dominion’s PR department. The purpose of my story was to point out that people who are in industries which are under attack (like the oil industry i used to work for) often find themselves defending their industry even when the right thing (from a justice or economics perspective – or what ever value set you might choose) would be to shut it down.

I am sure you place the safety of your family highly. I am sure you want North Anna to run safely, not just because it is your job, but because you believe in nuclear power. All fine. I am also sure this is true of almost all of the engineers who work at Davis Besse which came within 1/2 an inch of breaching its pressure vessel in 2002.

We disagree on how to make the lives of our kids and our communities best.

Thanks for the info on France, i’ll get back to you on that one.

Robert – the fairness argument is not just about routine releases and leaks at waste sites (tho i am quite convinced my radwaste colleagues have quite something to say about this) it relates to the scale of accidents and the longevity of the problems. We have a 30 km exclusion zone around Chernobyl, we could have had one which included much Toledo if Davis Besse had a beyond design basis accident in 2002. NRCs position is that terrorist with airplanes need to be stopped at airports, unfortunately the airports might well not succeed in this and reactors – despite some terrible studies to the contrary, can’t handle jet liner crashes.

I believe you joined the nuclear industry because of your ideals. I also recognize you took a risk in choosing this profession and i appreciate people who take risks. And i agree that you will have work for your entire life being in the cask business. And you would certainly prefer new reactors and to be part of a vibrant nuclear industry. But one huge problem, from my perspective, is that the safety of these plants is increasingly be pushed away from the NRC and onto the industry which is very uneven in its self policing practices. Dominion does a great job at North Anna of running a safe and inexpensive plant. I really believe this – i hear it not just from the folx who work at North Anna, but from my friends at Union for Concerned Scientists, who regularly rank US reactors and North Anna is often in the top 5 plants. Congratulations.

Sadly, it is not just the operation of North Anna which we are talking about. Uranium tailings, high level waste transport, terrorist attacks, degrading of civil liberties (we have seen this especially clearly in Europe, where nuclear protesters have been spied on in violations of those countries constitutions), decommissioning and long terms waste storage problems are all part of nuclear power. For me it is unfair, despite your careful cask designs to give 10, 20 and 50 generations from now the uniquely toxic problem of high level rad waste. Theoretically it will all be stored safely. Theoretically the industry will regulate itself – we’ve seen how well that worked in the financial markets these last weeks.

Reactors are part of an increasingly competitive energy business. Profits to shareholders and cutting expenses are what managers get bonuses for. One way you can can increase this quarters profits is by telling your safety engineers that you want to run longer between inspections. As you well know these reactors make so much electricity and thus money every day even small increases in performance factor are very valuable. The gravity is towards pushing this hard. Every reactor operator says safety is job number 1. But in reality, profits are job 1, that is how capitalism works and unfortunately, our form of it rewards most highly this quarters profits.

Per your request, here is a breakdown of federal subsidies from 1950-2006:

Oil – $335 Billion
Natural Gas – $100 Billion
Coal – $94 Billion
Hydro – $80 Billion
Nuclear – $65 Billion
Renewables (primarily wind and solar) – $45 Billion
Geothermal – $7 Billion

Source: Management Information Service, Washington, DC, September 2008

Here is a breakdown of electricity supply for 2006:

Oil – 3%
Natural Gas – 18%
Coal – 50%
Hydro – 7%
Nuclear – 20%
Renewables (wind, solar) – 1%
Renewables (municipal solid waste) – 1%

Source: Department of Energy, Energy Information Administration