Can Nuclear Succeed Without the Failure of Wind Energy?
“It is not enough to succeed; one’s best friends must fail.”
– variously attributed to Gore Vidal, La Rochefoucauld, Somerset Maugham, Genghis Khan (pictured), and Larry Ellison
People who think this way must have very sorry lives. Personally, I’ll be very happy to succeed and take as many people as possible with me–especially my friends. But sadly, many advocates for nuclear energy seem insistent that other forms of low-carbon energy fail–at least insofar as a great number are so profoundly and irrationally anti-wind and anti-solar.
Here’s another in a series of discussions on this subject, this one with a very intelligent (though misinformed) gentleman:
Craig: ….. Something else to keep in mind is cost-effectiveness. PPAs signed in 2014 for wind energy in some places in the U.S. are under $0.02 / kWh (and those places are getting more numerous with each passing month). That’s about half of the cost of generating a kWh by burning coal.
Reader: Whether or not this is true, the real estate occupied by wind machines exceeds that occupied by a nuclear reactor producing the same average power by about a factor of 600. How much do wind farm developers value open space and biological diversity, Craig? How many animal and plant species must be driven to extinction by wind farms before they take notice?
Craig: You’re suggesting that land use is the main factor in establishing the validity of a source of sustainable energy? Can you defend that in some reasoned, scientifically valid way? If so, you’ll need to take into consideration that:
• To the large degree that wind and solar offset fossil energy, they mean commensurate reductions in CO2, CH4, oxides of sulfur and nitrogen, arsenic, cadmium, selenium, mercury, and a wide variety of radioactive isotopes. The burning of coal killed over a million people last year alone. You’re going to show that the land mass required for renewables is more lethal than that? Good luck. Yes, its toll on biodiversity is somewhat harder to measure, but there are tons of scholarly reports on this as well.
• In 2013, totalled across the 51 countries with wind energy installed worldwide, about 1500 square miles of land was converted to 36 gigawatts of wind farms, an area less than 1/100th the size of Montana.
• On average, the Earth receives just over 1 KW/square meter of power from the sun, meaning that we can satisfy the energy needs of the entire planet with a land mass of 1/6000th of its surface. Humankind is, rightly, I think, looking for a clean way to harvest that energy, and wind is far and away the front-running technology at this point. It’s front-running not in terms of its fairly benign environmental externalities, but also in terms of $/MWh; cost is a huge factor in determining the practicality of an energy source.
Is it possible for advanced nuclear to do this better? Of course. And I’m certainly hoping that happens; the sooner the better for all concerned.
In the meanwhile, to all of you who, like me, really care about advanced nuclear, let me leave you with a reminder: we’ll do very well to knock off the rant on wind and solar; it’s embarrassing, it defames us, and it impedes our efforts.
Nuclear’s issue is waste. and sourcing uranium I don’t see those as any benefit to our environment.You say advanced nuclear ,have they mitigated those issues?.
What is meant by, “advanced nuclear” ?
I don’t doubt that there are places where wind and solar power make sense. It’s just that I seriously doubt that they can make an important contribution to the power requirements of most large prosperous countries. Even with storage, the intermittent nature of wind and solar power would require considerable overbuilding of capacity and that, combined with storage costs, would greatly increase costs. Although R & D could change things, it’s not clear that the technology currently exists to make adequate storage practical.
There are places which have considerable hydro power available but which often run low on water. In that situation, wind and solar power could be used when available. They would reduce the water consumption of the hydro installations then, when wind and solar power are not available, the hydro systems could assume the load. That could make good economic sense and either eliminate or reduce the need for fossil fueled systems to pick up the load when the hydro systems run low on water.
Regarding nuclear power, I think we can agree that our current pressurized water reactors are at best mediocre, although if they were the only alternative to CO2 emitting sources, they would be tolerable. The waste is a serious problem, but tolerable. However, there are better nuclear technologies available about which the public is largely ignorant because the media has failed to inform the public. There are organizations trying to inform the pubic, but have limited financial means and the media, including even PBS, are not interested. Some environmental organizations have categorically condemned nuclear power in principal and will not even consider it regardless of advances made.
The liquid fluoride thorium reactor (LFTR), which is a subset of metallic salt reactors, looks very promising but it is too soon to be certain that it is the way to go. It was successfully tested in prototype form, but that is insufficient to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that it is the way to go. It’s fuel is thorium tetrafluoride which, except at high reactor temperatures, is a crystalline solid. The reactor does not require a pressure vessel since it can operate at atmospheric pressure. Thorium is about four times as abundant as natural uranium. Because thorium occurs with rare earth elements and has few uses, enough has already been mined and discarded to last for many years. Because the fuel is a liquid at reactor temperatures, melt down is impossible. The reactor can be designed to be self-regulating without a control system so that as it heats up, the fission rate will decrease and vice-versa. Because of the high operating temperature, the Brayton (gas, perhaps helium) cycle can be used instead of the the Rankine (steam) cycle and air cooling can be used instead of water cooling. With on-site continuous fuel re-processing as the fuel circulates, waste is less than 1% as much as with our current reactor technology. It can also use our current nuclear waste as fuel. Even now China, with some assistance from other countries, is doing R & D on the LFTR.
Lest anyone excoriate me for leaving out important information on the LFTR, I shall acknowledge that it requires a considerable amount of U233 to get it started. After that, the thorium, through a few steps, transmutes to U233 and it is the U233 that produces the power. Once the reactor is started, no more U233 needs to be added. Contrary to what some people seem to think, the U233 is not conveniently stacked in bars to make it convenient to steal for use in weapons. Moreover, the U233 is contaminated with highly radioactive impurities making it impractical to use for weapons. The most practical source of enriched weapons-grade uranium is the centrifuge, not nuclear reactors.
If the LFTR proves to be impractical, there are other variations of the metallic salt reactor that could work well. They would use a fusible uranium salt instead of thorium tetrafluoride. Again, melt down would be impossible and, because the fuel is a liquid, it could be reprocessed continuously as the fuel circulates. It would also produce little waste.
There are also several other types of reactors, including the integral fast reactor, pebble bed reactors, gas cooled reactors, etc. The fact that our pressurized water reactors have vexing problems does not mean that all reactor types would have vexing problems.
Unfortunately, a few decades ago, the U.S. government unwisely stopped funding R & D for other reactor types thereby leaving us stuck with the pressurized water reactor using enriched uranium as fuel. We are paying a heavy price for that decision.
I should have mentioned the new Westinghouse AP1000 reactor and a similar European reactor.
The new AP1000 reactor is a pressurized water reactor using enriched uranium as fuel. In that respect, it is identical to our current reactors. However, it has a passive emergency cooling system that does not require power to operate. One will recall that the Fukushima disaster occurred because those reactors required power to operate their emergency cooling systems and the power to operate them became unavailable when the Diesel generators became flooded because of the tsunami. Locating the Diesel generators well below the height of previous tsunamis was sheer idiocy.
The AP1000 reactor has huge water tanks above the level of the reactor. That makes it possible for the water tanks to feed the emergency cooling system without any power. If the Fukushima generating systems had used AP1000 reactors (which, of course, did not exist when the Fukushima reactors were installed), there would have been no meltdowns.
The AP1000 reactor type is no doubt much safer than our current reactors, but it is still a pressurized water reactor with nuclear waste problems.
Unfortunately, wind turbines are killing massive numbers of eagles, hawks and other raptors and other birds and though the industry is trying to cover this up or publish bogus studies downplaying the killing, the truth is beginning to come out. Expect to see many new projects cancelled and currently producing farms shut down.
Well, I remember hearing this story years ago, just as the first crop of wind turbines were coming online in the UK; at the time I thought I would check it out, so I went and visited a few… and there were no dead birds to be seen, nor any sign of anything like this happening. There were various investigations by wildlife protection groups like the RSPB, and these stories turned out to be nonsense. Just another scare story, put about by the opponents of renewables: bit of an embarassment to them nowadays, really; no credibility at all.
Thanks, John.
The truth is somewhere in the middle. The wind industry is steadily improving its safety record with birds and bats, but it’s a long way from perfect. Meanwhile, birds are many hundreds of times more likely to die by flying into cars or plate-glass windows, or to be eaten by cats.
You’re perfectly correct in what you’re saying, however: the claim that wind turbines represent an unacceptable level of carnage to birds and should therefore not exist is nonsense, or, more properly, anti-wind propaganda.
There are two considerations you ask us to debate. Nuclear vs Renewables in a general and then specific way (the conversation.)
First regarding land use the figures remind me of stats used for Petrol car efficiency. 35% is suggested but this is a bench or theoretical figure not a real world usage. Similarly Land use for Nuclear energy could include the immediate buildings, the buildings plus the mandatory exclusion area (said to be larger than the land taken up by a Solar thermal plant) or the immediate environment plus what is required to mine and process the fuel. With the widest definition Nuclear fails on any land use test. Like fossil fuels what you see is not what you get.
A curious aspect of fossil fuels not discussed is the political impact of having a concentrated source of energy. I would suggest that concentrated forms of energy like fossil fuels and Nuclear energy lead to concentrated control and management. Concentrated control can be useful. Military control of nuclear power may be more efficient than domestic control. A benevolent dictatorship saved the Dominican Republic from those who would have cut down all the forests and left it barren like Haiti on the other half of the island of Hispaniola. However such focused control and management also tends to lead to a somewhat calloused and superior perspective. This might also describe the drawbacks of a dictatorship. The histories of both the fossil fuel industry and the Nuclear industry are full of examples of eliminating adversaries rather than competing with them, abuse of power, knowledge is closely held and there is a failure to disclose, fraud and scandal. At its core there is an “us vs them mentality” which has lead to some distrust.
Renewable resources however generally present a diffuse energy source that are used that way or are concentrated for utility scale. Dams (concentrated water) give us hydroelectric, mirrors give us solar thermal, many turbines give us wind, many PV cells are combined into arrays. This is inherently a democratic pattern similar to the relatively weak but collective voice of a people becoming a concentrated movement. This might be characterized as a “We” mentality where cooperation is required, knowledge is shared collectively. This is not just an adversarial relationship.
It might then not be too much of a stretch to suggest that concentrated forms of energy will attract a different sort of character than renewables. So don’t be surprised when an advocate of Nuclear energy is not particularly interested in a collection of renewables that might undermine their concentration of power.
I want everyone to have at least the quality of life I have. I’m not missing any meals, I have a warm house, warm bed, and a loyal three-legged cat to share it all with me. I’m not rich, but I’m in no danger of being homeless or hungry anytime soon. Some weekends, I volunteer to help feed the homeless. I come home after facing as many as 700-800 people who keep saying, “God bless you,” or staring vacantly at their plates and the cup of coffee or Tang I hand them, and am emotionally spent.
This is in the richest country on earth. The UN says the median net worth in the world is $2,200. That means half the world doesn’t have enough of its own wealth to buy a big screen TV or a really crummy used car. I think of what our food line would look like in Zimbabwe or Burma.
If everyone can have enough: food, shelter, health care and the freedom to think what they want, we’ll all be better off. We won’t be spending our money on massive armies or police forces, because nobody will be coming to take it all away from us. We might end up being friendlier and more open toward others without these economic disparities. Maybe we could learn enough trust and contentment to actually all get along.
Take into consideration that wind farms can share land with farm farms. The land between the windmills can be planted with crops. So not all wind farms need to take away wild lands that contribute to biodiversity. And they could probably share a lot of land with plants and critters too.
As for birds, I think I read somewhere that feral cats kill a lot more birds than windmills.
Within farmlands if roads are built and windmills elected with road access only for farmers & windmill operators will the farm lands be affected,by howmuch?.
Nuclear Energy is doomed and will be made obsolete. I am building a small WindJammer Energy Generator Prototype to prove the theory of my patent . WindJammer Generators are Eco friendly to all People, birds and wildlife. If you went to the People’s Climate March in NYC you would understand the amount of dedication the Anti Nuke Movement has to end Nuclear Power. New innovation for wind and solar will end all of the dirty and dangerous types of energy. That includes Natural Gas and Hydroelectric Dams. Pursuing nuclear power is a waste of money. The money could be better spent developing wind solar and geothermal energies.
Nuclear waste: what will happen to all the nuclear waste when the ice sheets return and their weight cracks all the rock in which it is encased? Nuclear waste remains toxic for a long long time. The sun will expand into a red giant one day, and our nuclear waste will still be decaying, long after we are gone..
Fast breeder nuclear reactors will not be around for at least another 50 years (if at all). We cant wait that long.
Conventional reactors cannot energize the world. There is not enough mineable fissile uranium on planet earth to meet all humanity’s energy needs for more than three to five years.
Uranium costs money, it will become very expensive quickly and cause wars.
Wind and sunshine are free. Free energy forever is possible. All it takes is a small upfront investment
We have wind, we have solar thermal, photovoltaics, geothermal, enhanced geothermal, smart building construction, south facing windows in the north, north facing widows in the south, energy conservation, urban planning, smart transportation…. we have everything we need, right here, right now, except political will.
Greed, denial and laziness are our biggest enemies.
Fossil fuels (and nuclear fuels) provide energy storage. To replace them renewable energy sources like wind will need to incorporate a means of storing the energy. One inexpensive method for doing that is described in the November issue of the journal Sustainability:
http://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/6/11/8297/pdf
70,000+ metric tons of waste that will be radioactive for a minimum of 25,000 years. Some for ten times that long.
In the USA the “spent” rods are stored in double the number that the water containers were designed to hold “safely”, ‘until a method could be devised to “handle” the waste!’
The power plants have outlived their design lifetimes and are definitely on “band aids”, the truth be known.
The longest recorded “civilizations” lasted only hundreds of years.
We cannot keep control of our own Nuclear weapons stock piles safely for only fifty years. Fact.
Chernobyl is already decaying into more of an unsolvable Nuclear mess. In how many short years?
Reopen Yucca Flats storage is under consideration? Even when we know that it is built over a potentially disastrous earthquake fault.
An eighty year old Nun and two teenagers entered our “secure” abandoned Nuclear Materials refining site, with out detection. They were penalized for showing the world how ‘secure” we keep our Nuke Paraphernalia.
It goes on.
These are not misconceptions of the problem and they may need some correction, but please tell the truth when you do the corrections.
Greed and Nuclear power are not good bedfellows. Deliberate ignorance and Nuclear power are worse bedfellows
Seems to me that when power production is greatly centralized it will be drawn into corruption. In our capital leveraged government aided economic system, those with the marbles make the rules. The profit from “centralized cheap energy” will be leveraged for all it can proffit, not for what it costs to produce. The advent of government funding sources only seems to make this more prominent as the interested parties will affect the laws, risk, and safety rules for their gain. Waste storage, construction, and fuel refinement costs are all govt subsidized already, and proven to be no guarantee of long term safety or low costs. The simple truth seems that the investor class greatly fears “distributed energy” and the “distributed proffits” it makes possible…… Contrary to some popular opinion, the distribution of energy supply among the GP will serve to ensure its viability instead of increasing risk. The Ute’s role may well serve as a storage and distribution leveling component, land if democracy is adequately restored, may require much more government oversight.
Typically, in a wind farm, the proportion of land actually given over to the turbines and related access routes is no more than around 1%. The rest of the land can be used for all the normal agricultural purposes without hindrance – in fact, in some cases, the tracks giving access to the wind turbines also benefit the farmers by improving access to their land.
Animals generally become quickly habituated to the turbines, and are not usually scared or upset by them.
One more point, farmers are increasingly needing every diverse revenue they can get – and typically receive rental of between 1 and 2% of the value of electricity generated by wind turbines or solar arrays on their land so making a substantial contribution to farm revenues. (Substantially more if the farmer owns or invests in the turbines).
The coming of a safe nuclear reactor is coming, fast and furious, as energy is key to industry
commerce, serviceses and homes. The money required will be notable, for reactors to last 100 years. Thorium promises reactors which are large and small, maybe down to 10 MW.
Competition for wind machines is transmission lines, becoming very expensive with the cost of metal, manufacturing and greedy unions of workers. Wind machines can easily be mass produced to become the 1st choice, and to match up with photovoltaics to provide dependable 24 hour energy, abundantly. Sun and wind are free, we are close to finding the best path to make systems last 100 years of private charging to provide free energy.
Blue Sky you say……I say both are valuable and coming fast.
Here is my usual reply to the “bird kill” problem. I have never found a dead bird near my turbine. All of the studies I have read rate wind turbines as the 18th thing down on the list of things that kill birds and falling due to continually improving design. Above turbines are buildings, windows, vehicles, power wires, cell towers and cats. I say get rid of the other 17 things that kill birds and we can start worrying about turbines. My guess is the cleaner air due to less pollution making it possible for more eggs to reach adulthood is a benefit that offsets the perceived danger.
Also, for what it’s worth, I have read several studies that said the Exxon Valdez spill killed more birds in a single event than all of the wind turbines in the US could kill in 100 years.
I think birds have bigger problems than wind turbines.