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Is Nuclear Energy the Answer?

michael sweet at 23:50 PM on 24 February, 2024

John Oneill at 357:

I note that you have made another post without a single cite to suport your wild claims.

Brandolini's Law certainly pertains to this exchange so I will be as brief as possible.

"Nuclear is not economic": All of the reactors currently being built are financed almost entirely by governments. The market has completely rejected nuclear power because it is not economic.

"Takes too long to build": According to the World Nuclear Industry Status report 2023 "For the 58 reactors being built, an average of 6 years has passed since construction start—slightly lower than the mid-2022 average of 6.8 years—and many remain far from completion." while "The mean time from construction start to grid connection for the seven reactors started up in 2022 was nine years," (my emphasis) This includes only construction time. The additional planning time, time to obtain construction permits etc is many years. Typical timeframes for nuclear are 10-15 years. By contrast, wind and solar projects typically take 2-4 years from proposal to completion.

"There is not enough uranium": According to Abbott (2012) as of 2012 there is only enough uranium in known deposits to power the world for 5 years. Nuclear supporters would not be attempting to obtain uranium from the ocean if there was enough uranium on land. You provide no references to support your wild claim that enough uranium exists. Frankly, this is common knowledge among informed people.

Your comments on renewable power are contradicted by experience. Educated readers here will not be fooled. Obviously in the 70's to the 2000's renewable sources did not contribute much because they were not economic at that time. Now they are the cheapest power in the world and are reducing carbon emissions more every day.

According to the World Nuclear Industry Status report, at least Italy, Japan and Sweden currently have no plans to build new reactors. Bertolini's Law applies, I have not checked the rest of your list. I note that France's much heralded announcement about building 6 new reactors will not replace their current 56 reactors that are at the end of their useful life. I note that over 50% of Frances nuclear fleet was offline in the past few years for unplanned repairs due to age. In addition, no money has been budgeted to build the announced reactors.

Meanwhile, according to the IEA:

"Over the coming five years, several renewable energy milestones are expected to be achieved:

In 2024, wind and solar PV together generate more electricity than hydropower.
In 2025, renewables surpass coal to become the largest source of electricity generation.
Wind and solar PV each surpass nuclear electricity generation in 2025 and 2026 respectively.
In 2028, renewable energy sources account for over 42% of global electricity generation, with the share of wind and solar PV doubling to 25%."

I note that the IEA has historically severely underestimated the amount of renewable energy that would be constructed in the future.

Whenever I examine nuclear supporters claims closely I find that they are not supported by the data.

Nuclear is not economic, takes too long to build and there is not enough uranium.

Is Nuclear Energy the Answer?

michael sweet at 00:24 AM on 24 February, 2024

John ONeill:

You link to a Nuclear Energy Agency report, hardly an unbiased source, that contains no data or analysis. They link to an IPCC report where the summary for policy makers alone is 24 pages long. The report is hundreds of pages. You must provide a link to an evidence based report and give me the pages that relate to the topic we are discussing. Most proposed future energy systems have a little nuclear since plants currently under construction will presumably still be running in 26 years.

Your other link, which I have previously debunked upthread, is a web piece by a completely uninformed person who has no education or experience in nuclear energy and learned everyting they know about nuclear from the internet. (If you read the rest of this thread you would stop repeating the mistakes nuclear supporters have made upthread). He models the current electrical supply in the USA. Since all cars and all heating by heat pumps will be electrical it is expected that electrical consumption in the USA will at least double. His system is much too small. He uses fossil gas for storage since the required storage would be too expensive to build. I note that a system using fossil gas for storage does not stop emitting CO₂ as required. Duh! The cost is prohibitive, he assesses cost incorrectly. The ignorant errors in this analysis are too numerous to address. The fact that nuclear supporters cite this blog proves that nuclear is not economic.

Do you really want to run Afganistan and Yemen completely on nuclear? A solution that does not work for most of the world is hardly a reasonable proposal. There is only enough uranium in all known deposits to run the entire world for 5 years. (Abbott 2012). Read Abott 2012 (linked in the op).

Here is free link to the Jacobson et al 2022 paper titled "Low-cost solutions to global warming,air pollution, and energy insecurity for145 countries". Note that Jacobson describes a solution suitable for the entire world and not just the USA. Upthread I have provided at least a dozen links to free papers that describe completely renewable systems to generate all energy for the entire world. If you read Jacobson you will have more knowledge of what we are talking about. You currently are not very informed.

Here is a free link to a paper titled "On the History and Future of 100% Renewable Energy Systems Research", one of the 59 papers that have cited the Jacobson paper. If you read it you will be more informed about what energy researchers think about future energy systems and make fewer ignorant statements online.

If you have not put in the work to learn how to find papers that support your position it is not my problem. It is not my job to spoon feed you information that you cannot be bothered to read yourself. You have to do your homework if you want to tell other people what they should do. Uninformed proposals do not help advance the discussion.

The fact that you cannot find anything to support your position demonstrates that the nuclear discussion on line is completely fantasy based and not fact based. If documents supporting the nuclear position existed than nuclear supporters would cite them. Nuclear supporters cite industry propaganda as if it were fact based information.

Whenever I examine nuclear supporters claims closely I find that they are not supported by the data.

Nuclear is not economic, takes too long to build and there is not enough uranium.

2023 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #30

John Hartz at 09:36 AM on 31 July, 2023

Michael Sweet:

Alas, the reality of renewable energy's performance in Texas is not acknowledged by the far right state elected officials who are beholding to the fossil fuel industry. The following article is illustrative:

Gov. Greg Abbott vows to exclude renewable energy from any revived economic incentive program by Patrick Svitek, The Texas Tribune, Mar 1, 2023

Is Nuclear Energy the Answer?

sekwisniewski at 01:55 AM on 3 September, 2022

Replying to 311:

1. You can't add opportunity emissions to lifecycle emissions, because it violates the conservation of mass, if those lifecycle emissions are then used to calculate physical emissions.

2. Another counterfactual to maintaining nuclear is replacing it with a mix of fossil and renewable sources. Fossil backup of renewables is suggested in Abbott (2012). Renewables replacing nuclear wouldn't reduce emissions either according to your logic, which does not seem to be a good framing.

3. Yes, but when nuclear covers new demand opportunity emissions of = 0.

4. Absolutely, we've got to take the overall picture into account, which is studied in the field of energy systems modeling.

Is Nuclear Energy the Answer?

MA Rodger at 04:48 AM on 27 August, 2022

John ONeill @289/290,
You can blame all them cooling problems on the fishes if you like and point to wondrous solutions, but the access to cooling water from rivers for existing nuclear reactors is a problem. Yet in the grand scheme of things, the various problems nuclear would have to address are all-of-them fixable with enough time and effort, even the uranium fuel constraint. And surely even the constraint which Abbott (2012) describes as the "harder one, ... An increased demand for rare metals" is not beyond the wit of man.
But time is a ticking and time-&-tide waits for no man, while there are also limited resources available to address AGW with the competing available technologies.
The challenge set by the OP above is for "nuclear proponents" to provide a demonstration of approaches for fixing all these problems, and fixing them all in a useful and timely manner such that nuclear can then play a significant part of the non-carbon-emitting power required by humanity (which Abbott 2011 totals as 15TW), this within the next couple of decades and without costing an arm and a leg.
Now that is quite a daunting challenge, but perhaps that is the measure of what is needed to set out a case for nuclear.

So as 2050 draws ever closer, while discussion of the different approaches to cooling nuclear reactors may be an interesting one, where would demonstrating cooling problems as being fixable (or not) get us?

Perhaps the question should be "How is the ramping-up of global nuclear capacity going?" (Note this is my 'Pudding Test' from up-thread.)

We do have a start-point in today's 0.39TW global nuclear capacity and as of today, the output of that nuclear capacity has been flat-lining for the last two decades.
Global nuclear capacity 1970-2021
So not an encouraging start. But maybe there is a new dawn for the technology.

The WNA list 53 reactors under construction completing 2022-28 (totalling 0.058TW and comprising 0.019TW, 0.008TW, 0.005TW & 0.009TW in successive years, so no sign of any accelerating in the building although an increase on the 0.004TW/yr average new capacity 2000-16 graphed in this CarbonBrief piece from 2016), this WNA listing seemingly smack up-to-date and pointing to a 0.01TW/yr of new capacity.
The WNA also talk of 0.09TW "on order or planned and over 300 more [that's 300 reactors = 3TW pro rata] are proposed."
Strangely, the WNA also quote numbers from the IEA for 2050 nuclear capacity variously as 0.525TW amd 0.669TW, neither of which seem to match the level of planned/proposed new nuclear described by WNA on the same webpage, a mismatch which goes without comment. But that is the nature of the WNA commentary.
I note they have a page in which it addresses the question "In practice, is a rapid expansion of nuclear power capacity possible?" and they argue in reply that the 1980s saw a large increase in nuclear capacity with a new reactor starting up "an average of one every 17 days. .... So it is not hard to imagine a similar number being commissioned in a decade after about 2015." The actual increase in nuclear generation seen 1980-90 was 0.14TW which would pro rata add 0.39TW 2022-50, less closures of 0.15TW, yielding simplistically a 66% increase to 0.65TW by 2050.
Perhaps it should be a more thoughtful analysis presented in the WNA's Harmony Programme which talks of a 0.033TW build rate 2025-50 and 1.25TW capacity by 2050, although if it is a more thoughtful analysis, that thought is not evident.

So "a nuclear realist" as described by Abbott (2011) who "would only suggest that we need about 1 TW of nuclear power as part of our world energy mix" has less daunting challenge, although Abbot (2011) does conclude that "one only has to divide the results, in this paper, by fifteen to see that 1 TW still stretches resources and risks considerably." And the rate of build is yet still deep in the inadequate zone.

Is Nuclear Energy the Answer?

michael sweet at 05:36 AM on 17 August, 2022

Sekwisniewski:

Thank you for the reference.

The NEA article you reference is a good start on answering the limited resource argument that Abbott 2012 makes. I note that the myriad different designs currently being pushed have different material uses than the single reactor type that they analyze. Your NEA article suggests that with an aggressive build out plan that enough nuclear plants to generate about half of all electricity needed might be built by 2085. source of needed electricity

SInce an aggressive build has not yet started and the paper is from 2011, it will be 2095 before enough nuclear plants to generate half of electrical supply would be built. That is too late. We need a system in place long before 2095. This alone eliminates nuclear.

They find critical shortages of two materials: uranium and cooling water. They find that the amount of uranium in the Earth is too small to supply more than about 30 years of high electricity supply with once through reactors and that after that breeder reactors will be required. I note that small modular reactors require more uranium than the reactors analyzed.

Breeder reactors are much more complicated than once through reactors. Current reactors are already very expensive to run because of their complexity. There are currently no breeder reactors commercially making electricity. The fuel has to be reprocessed for the scheme to work with very large proliferation issues. It is unlikely that a design to start building a commercial breeder reactor will be avaliable in less than 15 years.

We currently see in Europe that during heat waves and/or drought that many reactors on rivers have to be shut down due to lack of cooling water. So much for "always on". That leaves only sea front or a very few major lakes. Most sea front locations are threatened by sea level rise and unsuitable. Inland areas will be very far removed from the source of their electricity. I doubt that it will be possible to find enough suitable locations on sea front land to build out a significant number of nuclear plants. Closed cooling systems dramatically lower reactor efficiency.

Reading your citation with a critical eye makes me wonder who would think that nuclear power might be a significant electrical source in the future. The problems are too gteat. We have not even started to discuss the bombs currently exploding around the largest nuclear plant in Europe. No-one cares if a solar farm is bombed.

Nuclear power is too expensive, takes too long to build and requires too much cooling water and uranium.

What role for small modular nuclear reactors in combating climate change?

macquigg at 03:09 AM on 21 June, 2022

Michael: Quoting from my comment #38 "from your last comment, a challenge to the WNA statement that nuclear fuel is essentially unlimited." This is referring to the supply of fuel, not the cost. It is also not my statement. I am simply reporting on what WNA has said. Please stop misquoting me. Thank you, however, for pointing out a possible misunderstanding of the WNA statement. I have changed "it" to "the supply of urantium".

Thank you also for the substantive challenges to ThorCon's article and correcting my misunderstanding of the origin of Cs-137 in the gases. I wish I could get some nuclear engineers to participate in this forum, but it seems the world is divided into pro-nuclear and anti-nuclear "safe spaces". You are right about the FB forum being too pro-nuclear. I report comments I see there that are too disrespectful, even when the anti-nuclear visitor is just repeating what she heard about Fukushima, or whatever. The moderators have been very good at deleting inappropriate comments. Still, the forum is heavily pro-nuclear.

You are also right that I have taken the pro-nuclear side in some debates. Honest debate is a good way to get to the truth, and for the last year I have been engaging in these forums to learn more about the nuclear option. My participation in these debates does not mean I am "pro-nuclear". I am pro-science, and I try to avoid advocacy. My current belief, which has changed in the last 12 months, is that nuclear is going to be an essential part of the solution. That belief will change again if I see good evidence to the contrary. I have read Abbott 2012 and parts of the other anti-nuclear articles in our bibliograhy. I am not convinced.

I will be following up on your critiques by quoting from your comments in other forums, but only as "a discussion at SkepticalScience.com" not using your name. My goal for Citizendium is that it becomes the neutral forum we really need, where both sides can make their best case. Citizendium is what Wikipedia should have been, no mob editing, no industry shills or other advocacy groups "piling on", authors by invitation, based on their knowledge of the subject, like a tradional publishing company.

Again, please notify me at gmail, name macquigg, if you have anything further to say. There is no notification feature in this forum.

What role for small modular nuclear reactors in combating climate change?

michael sweet at 09:48 AM on 20 June, 2022

Macquigg,

You have acted as an advocate of nuclear here so I have responded in kind. The Renewables vs Nuclear Debate forum on Facebook seems to me like a lot of nuclear advocates slamming the "greenies". You frequently state there that you support nuclear power. I see little informed discussion. The nuclear proponents who come here to post usually have little knowledge about reactors. One poster, Ritchieb1234, was very informed and we had a good discussion.

As I have previously told you, Abbott 2012 describes the issue with uranium. He shows that with low uranium concentrations in the ore it takes more energy to mine the uranium than you get from using it in a reactor. Your WNA article assumes that future engineers will develop mining processes that are orders of magnitude more efficient than any currently known processes. I doubt that is possible. Nuclear supporters would not work on breeder reactors or thorium if they thought there was enough uranium. We could get unlimited supplies of hydrogen simply by syphoning off the surface of the sun, but that is impossible. I note that you said "the cost of uranium is unlimited", not the supply.

Thor Cons statement that they do not process the salt is obviously false since they remove the noble gasses from it. That is a chemical process by definition. You do not understand the difference between a chemical "process" and "reprocessing" nuclear fuel. Thor Con is misleading. That is not my problem. Chemical processing the fuel is not a proliferation risk. Reprocessing the fuel is a proliferation risk. It appears to me that you are decieved by misleading information from Thor Con.

¹³⁷Cs. As stated clearly in Lyman 2021, which I linked for you at least twice about this issue, giving you the page number (91) to read here, Thor Con would remove ¹³⁷Xe, a noble gas, from the salt as part of their scheme to remove the noble gasses. The Xenon then decays into ¹³⁷Cs in whatever storage system they have for the noble gasses. It would coat the inside of all the piping and the pumps. Thor Con has to answer the question of how they plan to deal with radioactive cesium-137 formed in the noble gas stream. Read the reference I have given for you to get the question that you are seeking. Lyman stated (in advance) that Thor Cons answer is misleading.

Your statement about Cesium being in column one is uninformed. If you had read the citation I gave you, you would know that the cesium is formed in the gas stream from radioactive decay, it does not evaporate from the salt. Since I am a professional chemist and I have read much, much more about reactors than you, I understand the chemistry of reactors better than you. If you framed your statments as questions I would be more helpful and less irritated.

Keep in mind that I have been having this debate with nuclear supporters for 15 years. From your posts I understand that you are a newbie. I researched most of your points years ago. Nuclear supporters online repeat the same old tired arguments that were already false 15 years ago. Back then renewables were more expensive than nuclear and there was a debate. Now renewables are much cheaper than nuclear. Informed debate ended several years ago, you have just not learned enough about nuclear and renewable energy yet to realize you are barking up the wrong tree. Read Abbott 2012 about 15 reasons why nuclear cannot work. His arguments have not been answered by nuclear supporters.

This discussion has become very repetitive. Since you do not read the references that I give, you do not understand the questions and answers. I note that I have read your citations, read your Facebook site and read your Citizendium posts. I have read Abbott, Krall and Lyman entirely and the response to Lyman on Facebook (the response is completely worthless). Why don't you come back when you have done your homework and can address the issues that I raise.

I have authored three posts on Skeptical Science about producing all the world's energy supply using renewable energy. Read them here here and here. All three say nuclear power is not necessary or economic. That is what scientists think about future energy supplies. You could use them as a basis of your renewable post. Dana Nucitelli also authored a post about renewable energy powering the world.

Nuclear power is not economic and the matrerials do not exist.

What role for small modular nuclear reactors in combating climate change?

michael sweet at 12:54 PM on 14 June, 2022

Macquigg,

You are mistaken. Scientists overwhelmingly oppose nuclear power. The last group studying future energy systems that supported nuclear power gave up on nuclear in 2021. The debate is over. Abbott 2012 is accepted by the scientific community.

2) Krall et al 2022 have shown that small reactors generate much more radioactive waste and it is a disastrous problem. We have not even discussed Krall's claim that the fuel waste from many modular reactors cannot be processed and stored in currently planned long term repositories (no long term repositories exist). You cannot find anyone who can contradict a paper in the PNAS written and peer reviewed by experts with over 200 years of experience designing reactors.

4) There are many elements that are in short supply besides beryllium. Helium and uranium come to mind immediately. Your reference on uranium is incorrect. Abbott 2012 shows that the energy used to mine low grade ores is greater than the energy you get from the reactor.

5) You claim that when Lyman says "MSRs generally require on-site chemical plants" he means "all MSRs". Generally doesn't mean all. Generally means most of the time, not all. You are completely wrong.

It is impossible to have a rational discussion when you insist generally means all.

6) Nuscale accused Krall et al of having an error in their paper. That is a very serious claim in science. Nuscale was completely incorrect. Their error was massive. Their letter was not written in good faith. I note that the Nuscale letter would not have passed peer review.

What role for small modular nuclear reactors in combating climate change?

michael sweet at 08:19 AM on 12 June, 2022

Macquigg:

Krall et al have responded to NuScales' letter (at the end of the article). It appears that NuScales' letter is completely without merit. I guess the reviewers at PNAS know more about nuclear reactor analysis than Nuscale does. I am not surprised.

You state somewhere that you want to post "what scientists think" and not nuclear propaganda. It seems to me that you consider anything that shows nuclear weaknesses to be propaganda and accept false claims from industry as what scientists think.

I do not have time to respond on other forums to baseless complaints that scientists are biased against nuclear power.

"What scientists think" is documented in the peer reviewed literature. If you want to discuss nuclear rationally you need to consider and post what the peer reviewed literature says. Krall et al 2022 is state of the art scientific thought.

Lyman 2021 is a 135 page, very well referenced report that summarizes what many scientists think about small modular reactors. It is grim reading. I suggest that you read it entirely, as I did, so that you know more about what you hope to moderate. At least it should be linked prominently on your pages.

On page 96 Lyman discusses MSR's that do not require reprocessing. On page 97 he discusses the Thor Con MSR reactor which also does not require reprocessing. Anyone who discredits Lyman with claims Lyman says MSR's require reprocessing is wrong.

On page 91 Lyman discusses the accumulation of ¹³⁷Cs in the noble gas stream of molten salt reactors. Cite his discussion on your pages. Lyman claims that there is too much radioactive noble gas to trap and store it as Thor Con claims they will do. I will have to see peer reviewed calculations (the NRC is ok) that show it is possible to trap all the noble gasses before I will believe Thor Con. I note that Thor Con keeps this data secret and refuses to say what they will do with the ¹³⁷Cs that will accumulate in the noble gas waste stream.

Abbott 2012 should be prominently discussed on your pages. People who discount Abbott using claims that hafnium is not used in commerical reactors are wrong.

Good luck in your efforts.

There is not enough uranium (and other rare elements) to build out a significant amount of nuclear power and the reactors are too expensive. I note Eclectic's concern about helium.

What role for small modular nuclear reactors in combating climate change?

michael sweet at 05:24 AM on 10 June, 2022

Macquigg,

In general, nuclear discussions on the web often degrade into repetitive posts with no conclusion. It seems to me that this discussion has reached that point. The comments policy of SkS is to refrain from repeating yourself once you have made your point. I will address your numbered points above.

1) As I have described in post 14 above, you are mistaken about what the abstract of Krall et al 2022 says. Please reread post 14. Krall et al say that the total radioactive waste from modular reactors is greater than current reactors, not the fission products only, like Thor Con claim.

2) Krall et al 2022 tell us that the issue of non fuel waste is a big problem. They also tell us that the developers have hidden this problem from public view.

In order to address this problem the developers of the reactors must release a complete analysis of their nuclear waste production including a complete discription of how they did the calculation. A new press release or email to the internet is not satisfactory. Why would a press release mean anything when we already know that they have hidden this problem from us for years?

3) Nuclear developers have lied about costs since 1950. Why would you think that I will believe them now? Why are you so trusting of people who have lied to us for your entire life and more? The reactors currently being built in Georgia were projected to cost $14 billion. They are now projected to cost $34 billlion and customers have paid additional billions of interest. Tell me more about cheap nuclear reactors. I note that 15 years ago all the small modular reactor developers said they would have designs by 2020, where are those plans?

4) Reactor developers must provide tabulations of all rare materials used in their construction. This data is currently kept secret. I noticed the beryllium issue.

Apparently nuclear supporters on the internet say hafnium is not used in current reactors and discredit Abbott 2012 because of this issue. The nuclear supporters are wrong here, not the peer reviewers of Abbott 2012. Hafnium is used in the control rods of most or all current reactors.

Nuclear supporters have not accurately quantified the amounts of rare materials used in reactor construction so it is not possible to determine which materials will be the first to run out. Supporters of renewable energy proved that the materials to build out an entirely renewable system exist after nuclear supporters claimed the materials did not exist. Nuclear supporters cannot prove the materials exist since nuclear developers keep secret the materials they use. Your claim that hundreds of years of uranium exist (on another site) is incorrect, read Abbott 2012 again until you understand the issue.

Criticizing peer review makes you look very bad on a scientific site like Skeptical Science. Especially since I have shown you to be incorrect on your issues where you criticized peer review. I suggest that you stop with this argument since it makes you look like you don't know what you are talking about.

5) Lyman only says reprocessing is required if the reactors want to reach the fuel efficiency that they claim. You are wrong. Since Lyman is a white paper it was not formally peer reviewed, although I am sure it was informally reviewed. When you critize peer review you look like you do not know what you are talking about.

If you want to claim that Lyman says all MSR's require reprocessing state the page number where the claim is made. I reread the entire section on MSR's and did not see the claim you suggest.

In post 8 you say you do not understand neutron leakage. That means that you do not know much about nuclear reactor design. Then you criticize peer review by people who have devoted their entire lives to reactor design. Does that really make sense?

What role for small modular nuclear reactors in combating climate change?

macquigg at 03:52 AM on 9 June, 2022

Michael Sweet, thank you for your detailed response. I understand your reluctance to debate "the entire Internet", and I am OK working with you in this forum. I will even put up with your personal attacks, if there is enough substance to your criticism to make it worth my time. Your comment above is a mixed bag, but allow me to deal with one issue at a time, and we can come back to the others later.

1) On the issue of fuel waste, we seem to be in agreement that all reactors have the same amount of fission products generated per unit of thermal energy. That seemed to me the main criticism, which I quoted from the abstract of the paper. Unless I got this wrong, let's move on to the next issue.

2) On the issue of non-fuel waste, I've spent several hours trying to get a clear concise answer to the general question, and what we have is too much generality, not addressing the question head-on for this particular reactor. I will relay your comments above to ThorCon, and to others on Quora.com, where I got the other answers I posted. I will ask ThorCon specifically - What happens to the "343 tonnes of irradiated steel (one of the 4 "cans") shipped out for refurbishment" stated in their article under the heading "Average per year for a 500 MW plant:" I don't think they are being evasive. More likely, they just didn't see it as a big problem.

3) On the issue of cost, again I think this issue can be left for buyers and sellers to resolve. If ThorCon says they can deliver a complete plant at $1200 per kW, don't argue with them. Place an order. Don't talk about the cost of old PWR designs, and don't assume that other countries will have the same regulatory burdens as the USA. Don't compare costs to wind and solar without storage.

4) On the issue of materials resources, specifically beryllium, I will ask ThorCon. I did read a discussion on this forum about a point in Abbott 2012, on the supply of hafnium. Most reactors, even the old PWRs don't need hafnium. That should have been caught by the reviewers of Abbott's paper.

5) On Lyman's major point that all MSRs require online processing (thereby posing a proliferation risk) what happened here? Either the MSR designers have made a major error, or Lyman's paper is another example of failed peer review. Elysium says their FNR can go 40 years without reprocessing (fast neutrons are amazing).

Skeptical Science has been an excellent forum on climate change, the best in my opinion. I hope it will be the same on nuclear energy. Put aside politics. Get to the facts.

What role for small modular nuclear reactors in combating climate change?

michael sweet at 02:02 AM on 9 June, 2022

Macquigg,

I applied to Citizendium but they have not sent me anything after a week. On mature reflection, I do not have time to explain reactor safety to the entire internet. I try to respond to people who post obviously false information on this website.

I have already stated above that Thor Cons' response to radioactivity in the paper is deliberately false. Obviously you do not understand the facts of the case.

In the abstarct of Krall et al 2022 it says:

""the intrinsically higher neutron leakage associated with SMRs suggests that most designs are inferior to LWRs with respect to the generation, management, and final disposal of key radionuclides in nuclear waste." (my bold)

This means all the radionuclides in the reactor i.e. the fission products and the reactor components rendered radioactive by neutron bombardment from high neutron leakage. The paper states clearly that reactor developers have not reported the amount of reactor components that become radioactive. The paper then claims that the reactor components are a major part of the waste chain and must be calculated. Obviously all radioactive waste has to be disposed of.

This calculation should have been done by reactor designers but they have been negligent and not provided this data. Why have the designers hidden this damaging information?

According to you, Thor Cons' response is "All fission reactors produce essentially the same amount of fission products" (my bold). Thor Con deliberately ignors the entire point of the PNAS paper. The extra waste is the irradiated steel and other reactor components. Where I was raised that is deliberate falsifacation. It is not my problem that you do not understand the quotes you post.

In your discussion on Citizendum poster Lyle Elhaney posts a long comment claiming that iron does not become radioactive under neutron bombardment. He concludes:

"Other materials - some do become radioactive when drenched with neutrons for an extended time. One would need to know what materials to analyze what happens."

Krall et al 2022 now tell us. The other materials cause a great deal of problems. For one example, ⁵⁸Ni is present in large amounts in the 316 steel and is converted into radioactive ⁵⁹Ni. There are other problematic isotopes formed. Analyizing the iron alone deliberately minimizes the problem. The comment should be updated to reflect that peer reviewed scientists think this is a big problem.

Roger Bloomquist states:

"There are small concentrations of activated structural elements like cobalt. These typically have half-lives of years, not multiple decades"

The ⁵⁹Ni mentioned above as one of the major isotopes formed in the irradiated 316 steel has a half life of 72,000 years. Since it will have to be isolated for over 10 half lifes to decay that is over a million years. Where I live that is way more than "years". Bloomquists post is false and should be deleted. A new post stating that the radioactive steel will have to be stored for over a million years should be put in its place.

Nuclear designers have been claiming since 1950 that nuclear power will be cheap and safe. They have failed to produce on their promises. You are obviously new to this conversation. I suggest that you carefully read Abbott 2012 (referenced on citizendium) which gives 15 reasons why nuclear power can never produce more than 5% of all power and Lyman 2021 "Advanced" isn't always better (white paper from the Union of Concerned Scientists). I spent two weeks reading Lyman and several hours reviewing it for these posts so I am unsympathetic to your using an hour reading Krall et al. 2022.

Neither you nor Thor Con has addressed my point that there is not enough beryllium to build out more than a few Thor Con reactors. I would like to see how they calculate that a disposable reactor that only lasts 4 years can compete on price with a wind generator or solar farm. I note that they claim only that they can produce electricity as cheaply as coal while wind and solar today are cheaper than coal.

Nuclear power is uneconomic and the materials to build the reactors do not exist.

Why and How to Electrify Everything

michael sweet at 00:57 AM on 10 May, 2022

Ianr@3

Many peer reviewed articles have been written about an all renewable energy energy system. For example see Connelly et al 2016. Connnelly reverences at least 20 other all renewable energy plans. Many more have been pubished since.

I am not aware of any energy plans that include more than 5% of all energy coming from nuclear power. Please ciite a peer reviewed article that uses nuclear power. Williams et al 2021 was the last group that I am aware of that supported an important place for nuclear. their 2021 paper says that renewable energ yill be cheapest.

Abbott 2012 lists about 15 reasons why nuclear can never produce more than about 5% of all energy. Can you tell us how you plan to get enough uranium for your wild scheme since all known reserves of uranium would only power the world for about 5 years.

Is Nuclear Energy the Answer?

michael sweet at 03:57 AM on 19 December, 2021

France has temporally closed 4 nuclear power stations because of cracks and corrosion found near welds. That is about 13% of France's nuclear power. There is also a natural gas (methane) shortage this winter in the EU. Electricity prices are expected to rise. If there is a cold spell there will be difficulty dealing with it. Hopefully it will be windy so wind can help out.

Tell me again about "always on" nuclear power. These plants also shut down during hot spells in summer because there is not enough cooling water.

Sekwisniewski: The paper you linked is an attempt by the nuclear industry to get certified as green. It does not address most of the objections to nuclear in Abbott (2012) (linked in the op) or Jacobson's problems with the very long build times for reactors. Opponents of nuclear will note that in the discussion of major accidents there is no mention of large expanses of land rendered unusable for decades in Japan and Russia.

John Hartz: In the article you link (originally posted in the Financial TImes of London) they claim nuclear fusion might be producing electricity in the 2030's. When I was 15 I remember reading an article about nuclear fusion that claimed they would produce electricity in 20 years. That was 50 years ago and their objective is no closer. I would not put a lot of weight on an article in a financial newspaper.

What role for small modular nuclear reactors in combating climate change?

michael sweet at 03:37 AM on 5 October, 2021

Doing a little background reading on modular reactors I found this:

"The Guardian reported in October 2018:22

"Backers of mini nuclear power stations have asked for billions of pounds of taxpayers' money to build their first UK projects, according to an official document. … But the nuclear industry's claims that the mini plants would be a cheap option for producing low-carbon power appear to be undermined by the significant sums it has been asking of ministers.

"Some firms have been calling for as much as £3.6bn to fund construction costs, according to a government-commissioned report, released under freedom of information rules. Companies also wanted up to £480m of public money to help steer their reactor designs through the regulatory approval process, which is a cost usually paid by nuclear companies. ...

"David Lowry, a nuclear policy consultant who obtained the document, said: "SMRs are either old, discredited designs repackaged when companies see governments prepared to throw taxpayers' subsidies to support them, or are exotic new technologies, with decades of research needed before they reach commercial maturity.""

The so-called Expert Finance Working Group on Small Nuclear Reactors in the UK laments "the financing sectors potential misunderstanding of nuclear specific risks and how such risks can be mitigated, and that nuclear specific risks aside, nuclear energy projects are no different to any other energy project."23 The finance sector might be in need of education on nuclear-specific risks, but its disinterest in SMRs suggests a clear understanding of the likelihood that they would be uneconomic."my emphasis source

Nuclear reactors are not economic. Baseload power will be of very low value is a renewable energy world. Peak power on windless nights will be most valuable. They do not address the lack of rare materials, like uranium, needed to produce a significant amount of nuclear power. Most of the remaining problems in Abbott 2012 are also not addressed. Without enormous government subsidies they cannot compete with renewables.

It's albedo

MA Rodger at 21:30 PM on 16 September, 2021

coolmaster @94+,
Trying to keep this on-topic for the thread (and I would have considered transferring this interchange on what is geo-engineering to another thread if it had a chance of being usefully continued), some Albedo issues which you raise.

☻ Firstly, within the deleted comment @95 (still visible to commenters), you state that "albedo is ... depends primarily on the wavelength of the light that hits the body/molecule." This is not correct. The reflected light is pretty-much independent of wavelength being no more than "bluish". The spectrum of reflected light is thus not significantly different from the spectrum of sunlight as Fig1 of Woolf et al (2002) demonstrates.

Woolf et at (2002) Fig 1

☻ Your annotated graphics @71 are probably taking the simplisitic calculations a step-or-two too far.
Want we can say from Wild (2014, 2019) is that Land Cloud albedo is shown as 19.7% with Land Surface albedo shown as 26.1%. Likewise Ocean Cloud albedo is given as 23.1% and Surface albedo as 8.1%.
The TOA radiation balance under clear sky conditions averaged globally by Wild (2019) shows 19Wm^-2 more cooling than his all-sky average. Yet this result does not mean that cloud and its resulting albedo is overall a cooling influence. Cloud is well-known to cool if low and to warm if high and the latitude is also important. The usual climatological consideration is whether today cloud presents a positive or negative feedback to a warming world, the present understanding being that it is very likely positive, a position reinforced by recent work (eg Ceppi & Nowack (2021) [Abstract] (@94 you cite resumably IPCC AR6 with a similar finding.)

We have up-thread shown very large increases in anthropogenic water 'use' on land and measured increases in evaporation over land. Thus to suggest an increase in evaopration over land would result in a higher cloud fraction and a strong cooling based solely on Wild's 19Wm^-2 is based on very shaky ground.

And the following back-of-envelope calculations suggest there would not be cooling but warming.

We see from Fig 2 Wild (2014) an all-sky Land Cloud albedo of 64Wm^-2. If cloud albedo were increased 1% that would pro rata present a global climate forcing of -0.19 Wm^-2 cloud albedo but with a loss of +0.05 Wm^-2 surface albedo. There is also reduced OLR cooling of +0.08 Wm^-2 pro rata suggested in Wild (2019) Fig14 and a water vapour forcing from the 1% increased humidity over land of roughly +0.12 Wm^-2. This would suggest a net warming from a 1% increase in Land evaporation of +0.06 Wm^-2, this a warming climate forcing larger than AGW.

☻ And to correct your bold assertions @94 concerning arithmetic. The 10% percent increase in land evaporation 2003-19 reported by Pascolini-Campbell et al (2021) multiplied by the 69,000/yr (+/-10%) land evaporation given by Abbott et al (2019) yields the 2003-19 increase of 7,000km^3/yr I present @93 (along with the references). The other values alongside which you object to are similarly derived.
Your own derivation of a greatly different value of 344km^3/yr uses solely Fig 3a of the former paper which gives an annual rate of increase as 2.3mm/yr (it should actually be 2.3mm/yr/yr) and for the 16-year period the increase would be thus 5,500km^3/yr, in the circumstance not a significant difference from 7,000km^3/yr.

It's albedo

MA Rodger at 21:56 PM on 12 September, 2021

coolmaster @92,

Your final paragraph is packed full of unsupported assertions which you say will result from your grand scheme of annually diverting 1,335km^3/y of water that would otherwise discharge into the oceans and thus radically increase global albedo through increased cloud. The "unsupported" nature of your assertions is easily demonstrated with the two references you provide.

♣ The graphic you present is from Wikithing but is adapted from Abbott et al (2019) 'Human domination of the global water cycle absent from depictions and perceptions' who provide the numbers in their Fig 3. Relevant to your grand scheme is the size of the various global water reservoirs. The giant reservoir is of course the oceans which hold 1,340M km^3. Next is ice with 25M km^3 and surface/soil water with 23M km^3 while trailing along far behind is the atmosphere holding just 0.0125M km^3 water.

Your proposed grand scheme seems to be assuming atmospheric water can increase by 0.001335M km^3 annualy, or a 10% annual increase. Note this 10% annual increase in atmospheric water would add to the GH-effect, perhaps by some 4Wm^-2 annually, so 100x stronger than today's AGW.

♣ The CarbonBrief reference describes Pascolini-Campbell et al (2021) 'A 10 per cent increase in global land evapotranspiration from 2003 to 2019' which is iteslf paywalled [Abstract] but the reported 10% increase in evaporation rate 2003-19 over land equates to some 7,000km^3/y while the reported 3% increase in rainfall equates to 3,300km^3/y and the decrease in direct discharge from land to ocean a further 3,000km^3/y.

This suggests your grand scheme wouldn't make a ha'p'orth of difference. Evaporation over land is shown to have increased five-time the amount you propose yet AGW and SLR continued apace.

Is Nuclear Energy the Answer?

michael sweet at 22:26 PM on 10 August, 2021

John ONeill:

I do not think that you will convince anyone to support widespread building of nuclear power by arguing about how many people were killed by the accidents at Chernobyl and Fukushima. Everyone knows that if you spread the damage around to enough people it becomes statistically impossible to detect how many people you have killed. That does not mean no-one was killed like James Conca claims. I have provided documention for 27,000 killed at Chernobyl and 1600 at Fukushima.

Abbott 2012 does not mention this issue besides pointing out that with the 15,000 reactors needed to provide All Energy to the world you would expect one major accident every month worldwide. I suggest that you stop wasting our time and move on to another point that Abbott makes that is more important.

Nuclear power is too expensive, enough rare materials (like uranium) do not exist to build out a significant number of nuclear plants and the plants take too long to build to significantly affect the problem before 2050.

Is Nuclear Energy the Answer?

michael sweet at 12:26 PM on 4 August, 2021

Engineer Poet:

You continue to waste our time discussing LRNT. I have pointed out to you that I have orders of magnitude more professional experience, professional training and radiation knowledge than you do.

As far as your assertion at 272:

"If it had been Sr-90 you would have had some serious beta burns and some gamma exposure from the decay of excited isomers to their ground states. Further, I'm certain that holding such things in your hands is a violation of safety protocols."

This demonstrates your complete ignorance of radiation. Sr-90 is a low energy beta emitter, not a high energy emitter as I described. I was using the daughter product of Sr-90, Yittrium-90, which is a higher energy emitter. You do not even know about the Cerenkov gamma radiation field which is a big issue with high energy beta emitters.

Strontium-90 has a halflife of 29 years and emits beta particles of
relatively low energy as it decays. Yttrium-90, its decay product, has a shorter half-life (64 hours) than strontium-90, but it emits beta particles of higher energy. source my emphasis

Since I am trained in the use of high energy radiation I was able to safely remove a sample from an unshielded vial containing a curie of Y-90. I got no burns, the exposure on my finger ring was minimal and it is not a violation of safety rules. Internet educated wanna-bees like you don't know what they are talking about.

The rest of your rants just serve to demonstrate that you do not care if nuclear power plants are unsafe. You cut off my point of sea level rise overwhelming the Big Bend power plant site. What about the effect of sea level rise on Big Bend and Turkey Point in Miami? 80% of current nuclear plants in the USA are threatened by floods they were not designed for. You do not care how many people you kill building dangerous power plants.

A consensus does is not the same as a unanamous consensus. We all know there are scientists like Linzden and Spencer who do not agree with the climate change consensus. Similarly, there are wackos like Calabrese who do not agree with the consensus of LRNT. Scientists have had a consensus on using LRNT for over 70 years. The nuclear industry has argued for that to be changed but the data overwhelmingly indicates that radiation causes harm at low doses.

I note that you have only one citation in your entire rant. That is to a paper published in 1958. Perhaps scientists have learned something in the last 60 years. You have produced nothing to answer the 15 points that Abbott made.

France loses money on every watt they generate using nuclear power. They have not paid off the original morgages and have not set aside funds to shut down their reactors. The government subsidizes the power prices to make people think nuclear was a good investment.

It is a waste of my time to respond to the rest of your Gish Gallop. There are to many ignorant mistakes and deliberate falsehoods to respond in a reasonable amount of column length.

Is Nuclear Energy the Answer?

Engineer-Poet at 11:18 AM on 4 August, 2021

Michael Sweet @265:

You are wasting your time talking about radiation safety.

Oh, I don't know. Putting your intransigence out there for all to see has value.

My experience is that people who do not like nuclear recognize that the scientific consensus is LRNT.

How much of said "consensus" is from people in the "radiation protection" business—in other words, people with an interest in maintaining and ever-tightening the rules so they can make money from "minimization"? Meanwhile, health physics deals with the REAL world, and workers at university research reactors routinely take many times the dose allowed at commercial nuclear plants, yet suffer no ill effects. Why is this allowed? It's because research reactors are not competing with the fossil fuel industry; nuclear electric plants do. Evidence-based radiation standards would seriously reduce the operating and maintenance cost of nuclear electric plants, and applying the same radiation standards to fossil fuels would require things like the handling of radium-rich petroleum well pipe scale as radwaste with all the same protection standards as at nuclear plants. Such cost shifts might even get people to build more nuclear and use less fossil.

There is a LOT of uranium in the ground, and the decay chain of U-238 produces Ra-226 and Rn-222. A lot of this uranium chemically deposits in the same strata which host coal, oil and gas, which is why natural gas from the Marcellus shale is so high in radon. Gas stoves dump the radon straight into the air people breathe. I don't see any major "environmental" organizations demanding protection from that,do you?

People who are avid supporters of nuclear, like you, do not care how many people nuclear power kills

That's libelous. I used to spend 2 weeks a year mere miles from a Generation I nuclear power plant, and the rest of the year not too far from a university research reactor. Neither ever killed ANYONE. Both are gone now, with only the casks storing the used fuel showing the former was ever there (I don't know about the latter). I now live year-round mere miles from this "danger". Do I sound like I don't care about lives? It's MY life on the line here. I walk the walk.

Know what I'd love? I'd love a new nuclear plant on the site of the old one, causing people with radiophobia to stay away and not buy homes here. It would reduce my property value and thus my property taxes. Pay less money for the same or better quality of life (less crowding and cleaner air)? Sign me up!

and cherry pick their references to the few scientists who disagree with the consensus.

Science is not determined by consensus. It's determined by evidence, and anyone who will not look at the evidence has no business calling themselves a scientist. The evidence is on the side of Calibrese. Those opposed are not scientists, whatever degrees they hold or what they call themselves.

We are all familiar with the scientific deniers of climate change. Citing the few outliers of the LRNT consensus does not prove your point. The National Academy of Science strongly backs LRNT.

The acronym is "LNT", and the NAS shows every sign of having been captured by special interests. Fossil-fuel interests are notoriously wealthy.

As you pointed out, dissenters of the consensus were allowed on the committee.

But not allowed a voice. Calabrese has published many papers on radiation hormesis and the errors in LNT. None of those objections made it into the BEIR VII section on radiation hormesis, and yes I read it from end to end. What does this mean? (lemme try list tags here)

The BEIR VII report reflects a majority view, not a consensus view and certainly not a view of the actual range of opinion in the field.

The majority view is subject to capture by various interests, especially wealthy ones.

Those interests are overwhelmingly benefitted by fossil fuels.

You need to acknowledge this. (love it, list tags rock)

Reviewing this thread I notice that opponents of nuclear power have never raised the issue of low level exposure to radiation as a reason not to build out nuclear.

That's implicit in the use of LNT to oppose nuclear energy.

It is raised by nuclear supporters.

Because we see no detectable increase in morbidity or mortality due to small increases in radiation; on the contrary, the evidence supports hormesis (when you can extend the median lifespan of rats from 460 to 600 days by irradiating them with gamma rays, it very likely has the same effect in all mammals including humans). We do see increases in morbidity and mortality with increases of criteria air pollutants and things like PM 2.5, neither of which are produced by nuclear energy. So why are you raising these issues? It's enough to make anyone think you're doing it in bad faith.

1) Nuclear plants are not economic. They cost too much to build.

France proved otherwise; France has some of the cheapest and cleanest electric power in Europe, while "renewable" Germany has some of the most expensive and continues to burn lignite. The way you make nuclear power cheaply is the same way you make automobiles cheaply: series production of stanard units. That's what France did in the 80's. That is not what France is doing now, which is why Flamanville costs so much.

2) Nuclear plants take too long to build.

They didn't used to. Ever ponder what's different now?

The breeder reactors you support have not yet been designed. Once they have a design (at least 5 years from now), the approval of the design takes 3-5 years.

So you admit that the regulators are a big part of the problem.

3) There are not enough rare materials to build a significant number of nuclear plants.

Nonsense. Nuclear plants do not require rare materials; they've just been convenient for the way we've been doing things since the 1950's. We don't have to keep doing things that way, and there are a great many reasons not to. Many of the new reactor concepts use other physical mechanisms than e.g. control rods to control the rate of reaction, so they have no need for the elements which go into them.

You admit in your post 260 that there is not enough uranium for your plan.

No, I said there's not enough land-based uranium to start the required fleet of fast-neutron reactors. There's more than enough in the oceans, and the depleted uranium already on hand in the USA would suffice to run the entire world for about a century on fast reactors. Also, there's more than enough thorium available to do the job (3-4x as abundant as uranium and it's almost 100% convertible to energy with thermal neutrons).

4) Your responses to Abbott are grossly inadequate and uninformed. For examply you claim "pretty much ANY site that has ever hosted a coal plant is suitable for a nuclear plant." Only 10 miles from my house is the Big Bend power plant (it is switching from coal to gas). This plant is too close to a city to be converted to nuclear

It's "too close" for nuclear, but far more dangerous and polluting coal (with far more radioisotope emissions from the tramp actinides) was just fine? Ye gods, if it wasn't for double standards, anti-nukes wouldn't have any standards.

(Mods: there's a bug in the way the post editor JS handles closing bold and italic tags when switching from "Source" back to "Basic" after pasting in HTML; a trailing space is deleted even when it's explicitly in the source.)

Is Nuclear Energy the Answer?

John ONeill at 19:18 PM on 1 August, 2021

Michael Sweet , Post 265

'Reviewing this thread I notice that opponents of nuclear power have never raised the issue of low level exposure to radiation as a reason not to build out nuclear. It is raised by nuclear supporters. I have never raised this point in debate about nuclear power. It is a waste of time. Neither Abbott or Jacobson mention this issue.'

In fact, Jacobson has co-authored at least one paper on risk of low radioactivity emissions from Fukushima - https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlelanding/2012/ee/c2ee22019a

It's based on LNT, not clinical data, of course. They want 42 pounds to read it, or I'd do so.

Is Nuclear Energy the Answer?

michael sweet at 23:23 PM on 31 July, 2021

Engineer Poet:

You are wasting your time talking about radiation safety. My experience is that people who do not like nuclear recognize that the scientific consensus is LRNT. People who are avid supporters of nuclear, like you, do not care how many people nuclear power kills and cherry pick their references to the few scientists who disagree with the consensus. We are all familiar with the scientific deniers of climate change. Citing the few outliers of the LRNT consensus does not prove your point. The National Academy of Science strongly backs LRNT. As you pointed out, dissenters of the consensus were allowed on the committee.

Reviewing this thread I notice that opponents of nuclear power have never raised the issue of low level exposure to radiation as a reason not to build out nuclear. It is raised by nuclear supporters. I have never raised this point in debate about nuclear power. It is a waste of time. Neither Abbott or Jacobson mention this issue. I suggest you concentrate your efforts on the arguments that matter:

1) Nuclear plants are not economic. They cost too much to build. It currently costs more for operation and maintenance of a nuclear plant than to build a new renewable plant with a mortgage. Nuclear plants are shutting down because they cannot make money at the price of renewable energy.

2) Nuclear plants take too long to build. The breeder reactors you support have not yet been designed. Once they have a design (at least 5 years from now), the approval of the design takes 3-5 years. Than it is 10-15 years to build a test plant. The earliest that a pilot plant will be built is 20 years from now. Production of many plants can not start before 2050. The entire energy system will be renewable by then. A few nuclear plants cannot make money against renewable energy.

3) There are not enough rare materials to build a significant number of nuclear plants. You admit in your post 260 that there is not enough uranium for your plan. Nuclear plants use many other exotic materials that are already in short supply.

4) Your responses to Abbott are grossly inadequate and uninformed. For examply you claim "pretty much ANY site that has ever hosted a coal plant is suitable for a nuclear plant." Only 10 miles from my house is the Big Bend power plant (it is switching from coal to gas). This plant is too close to a city to be converted to nuclear and it is very seriously threatened by sea level rise. For both reasons it is unsuitable for nuclear power. This disproves your "ANY site" claim and I didn't even have to look past the nearest plant to my home. The Turkey Point Nuclear plant in Miami is almost isolated by sea level rise already. Its location is unsuitable for nuclear power.

Is Nuclear Energy the Answer?

michael sweet at 02:06 AM on 31 July, 2021

Engineer-Poet:

Congratulations on getting your first warning on your first post! A new record.

I note that in your 6 post rant that you have referred to only two peer reviewed reports, both in post 259. One report, published in 1958, is apparently an attempt by the nuclear industry to argue against using the LInear Response No Threshold model of exposure to harmful radiation. You post this in response to my citing the most recent National Academy of Science BEIR VII concensus science report on the topic of LRNT, published in 2006. This report was specifically written to determine the consensus of scientists on the effects of low level exposure to radiation and resolve the LRNT argument. They strongly endorsed LRNT. You are welcome to your opinion, but the consensus of scientific experts is LRNT. Upthread a nuclear supporter said the data supporting LRNT was too old. Here you use ancient data to argue against the most recent NAS report which used no data older than 1990. Even in 1958 the consensus was LRNT. You also link a 1982 paper that describes the medical effect of radiation. That seems unrelated to LRNT exposure in large populations.

In post 256 your comments on entropy are designed to start an argument. You do not add anything to the defination of heat, energy and entropy.

Post 256: your speculation on how future reactors might be designed is irrelevant to the question that was asked. Again you are trying to start an argument and not answer the question asked.

Post 256: you make the unuspported claim that nuclear reactors are safe. The Union of Concerned Scientists estimates 27,000 deaths from Chernobyl alone. The nuclear industry denies responsibility for the people they kill.

Post 257: Peer reviewed papers state that not enough materials exist to build out more than an insignificant number of nuclear reactors. See Abbott 2012 linked in the OP. It is the job of nuclear proponents to show that enough material exists for your proposed system. Claiming there are many undesigned, proposed reactors that might use less materials is not an answer. You must show materials exist for your proposal. Nuclear proponents claimed that enough materials did not exist for a renewable system. Jacobson 2011 (free copy for those who don't know how to find papers) shows all the materials needed for a renewable energy system exist.

Post 258: Arguing that it is a good idea to build cheap, unsafe nuclear reactors will not get you many supporters. If you think that is a good argument go for it.

Post 260: I note you have only your own, unsupported opinion to argue with Abbott 2012. I note that you have no experience designing or operating a nuclear power plant and have no related educational experience either. I guess you learned a lot watching videos on the internet.

Post 261: I linked the same copy of Jacobson 2018 the moderator found at least 3 times upthread like here and here and here. It indicates how familiar you are with the peer reviewed literature that you are unable to find a copy of a linked paper yourself.

I will not respond in more detail to your extended Gish Gallops. I know that your system to issue long, repetitive, opinion statements unsupported by any data. Eventually the moderators will ban you for sloganeering. They have already started warning you for not adhering to the comments policy. If you do not start producing data to support your insane claims they will not allow you to post any more.

Is Nuclear Energy the Answer?

Engineer-Poet at 12:35 PM on 30 July, 2021

Michael Sweet @126:

Abbott 2012 gives about 15 reasons why nuclear cannot produce more than 5% of world power.

Thanks for the link. It's much easier to debunk something that's ready to hand, rather than having to dig for it. If Abbott was serious, he'd put his strongest points first and last. Yet what's his first objection? Site selection! Never mind that pretty much ANY site that has ever hosted a coal plant is suitable for a nuclear plant. How weak is that? Next, he goes into neutron embrittlement. So what? A plant is eventually going to become too expensive to keep refurbishing, though Rosatom has already changed that game with its innovative annealing technology. Adding an additional 30 years of RPV life to a plant which can run for 80 years without it, you've got the potential for over a century of operation. Reactors like FLiBe, Thorcon and Elysium have none of Abbott's supposedly-insurmountable elemental scarcity problems. So far as I know, none of them even HAVE control rods and none use burnable poisons either; they just drain the reactor to tanks in a sub-critical configuration. Neither do they use zirconium. And what's the big deal with end-of-life reactor vessels? Just throw the metal into an electric furnace and forge it into new ones. As for "radioactive waste", a great deal of that can either be recycled or has plenty of valuable uses (yes, even Sr-90 and Cs-137). Frankly, after seeing how pathetic Abbott's objections are, I'm astounded that anyone is still citing him. I'm not going to bother reading any further in his paper, I have better things to do such as refilling my drink.

If there's any real obstacle to scaling nuclear energy to world-powering levels, it's the immediate supply of fissiles. Fast-spectrum reactors can generate net fissiles from uranium, but the fission cross-section of transuranics gets pretty small at high neutron energies so the concentration has to be much higher than in thermal-spectrum reactors. You can see this in the proposals for both standard and high-burnup cores for the S-PRISM reactor; even the standard core requires almost 2.5 tons at over 21% total Pu at the beginning of a fuel cycle and the doubling time is almost 42 years. The potential for rapid scale-up exists with thorium, however. IIUC, the total fissile inventory of a 1 GW(e) Th/U-233 reactor is around 100 kg, it consumes about 0.8 tons/year and has a breeding ratio of about 1.03. Ergo, every year such a reactor would consume 800 kg of fissiles and generate an extra 24 kg or thereabouts. This leads to a doubling time of less than 3 years at scale. 30 years of doublings every 3 years scales up roughly 1000x. This is the sort of rate we need to make things happen.

(Note that tone comes across VERY poorly in text, even given emojis and pseudo-tags like . Sticking to the meaning of the straight text instead of assuming what was very likely not meant is generally a good policy.)

Is Nuclear Energy the Answer?

Engineer-Poet at 11:26 AM on 30 July, 2021

Michael Sweet @8:

You say “Um, you mean heat? Why wouldn't you just call it heat?” No, Abbott means entropy. You obviously did not take college chemistry or physics. Heat and energy are similar. Entropy is complicated but for this discussion it is similar to randomness.

I know I'm coming very late to this discussion, but I do happen to have a bunch of physics, chemistry AND thermodynamics under my belt. I wouldn't be surprised if I'm the first poster in this thread to have done a detailed analysis of a steam-cycle power plant as well as picking apart the thermochemistry of the reforming of methane and solid carbon to syngas (I got partway to a patent on that, I took a refund from Harness, Dickey and Pierce on the patent work because I delayed too long and the SOTA got ahead of me). Coincidentally, I have not only done my best to explain entropy to the ignorant, I wrote a blues about it in the early years of this century. I can not only summarize the science, I can make it humorous too. That's more than you can do; at your best, you come across as a scold.

In the scenario you describe the water coming in contact with the extremely hot salt would instantly cause a steam explosion that would destroy the facility.

Hogwash. In a molten salt reactor, the steam generator would be fed from a secondary salt loop and likely be sited outside the containment. In the case of the Elysium concept, water never ENTERS the containment; superheated steam is used to boil the feedwater to saturation, and only steam enters the containment (enters saturated, leaves superheated). This is one of the more elegant solutions to the various issues that I've ever seen; Ed Pheill has my admiration.

In the explosion a lot of hydrogen gas would be generated from the highly reducing salt solution.

You're full of crap; the salts are fully oxidized. Metallic sodium would generate hydrogen in mixture with steam, but chloride and fluoride salts cannot.

Abbott describes how many reactors would need to be built to illustrate the size of the problem.

Abbott overstates the number of reactors by a factor of 3. He makes errors which would fail a high-school physics exam, and his reviewers weren't competent enough to catch them. This disqualifies all of them; their institutions should revoke their degrees, and should be publicly shamed for having granted them.

For myself, I would prefer that reactors were made safer and not cheaper.

Nuclear reactors are orders of magnitude safer than any other source of electric power on the planet. I want them cheaper, because I want them to replace all the generation that's more dangerous. If that requires accepting a bit more danger from nuclear energy, it's still better than the alternatives.

Is Nuclear Energy the Answer?

Engineer-Poet at 06:01 AM on 28 July, 2021

Michael Sweet @8:

You say “Um, you mean heat? Why wouldn't you just call it heat?” No, Abbott means entropy. You obviously did not take college chemistry or physics. Heat and energy are similar. Entropy is complicated but for this discussion it is similar to randomness.

Coincidentally, I have not only done my best to explain entropy to the ignorant, I wrote a blues about it in the early years of this century. I can not only summarize the science, I can make it humorous too. That's more than you can do; at your best, you come across as a scold.

In the scenario you describe the water coming in contact with the extremely hot salt would instantly cause a steam explosion that would destroy the facility.

In the explosion a lot of hydrogen gas would be generated from the highly reducing salt solution.

You're full of crap; the salts are fully oxidized. Metallic sodium would generate hydrogen in mixture with steam, but chloride and fluoride salts cannot.

Abbott describes how many reactors would need to be built to illustrate the size of the problem.

For myself, I would prefer that reactors were made safer and not cheaper.

Is Nuclear Energy the Answer?

Engineer-Poet at 05:58 AM on 28 July, 2021

Michael Sweet @8:

You say “Um, you mean heat? Why wouldn't you just call it heat?” No, Abbott means entropy. You obviously did not take college chemistry or physics. Heat and energy are similar. Entropy is complicated but for this discussion it is similar to randomness.

In the scenario you describe the water coming in contact with the extremely hot salt would instantly cause a steam explosion that would destroy the facility.

In the explosion a lot of hydrogen gas would be generated from the highly reducing salt solution.

You're full of crap; the salts are fully oxidized. Metallic sodium would generate hydrogen in mixture with steam, but chloride and fluoride salts cannot.

Abbott describes how many reactors would need to be built to illustrate the size of the problem.

For myself, I would prefer that reactors were made safer and not cheaper.

(No preview, SS? Come on, get with it! That's been a standard feature at serious sites since the 90's!)

Is Nuclear Energy the Answer?

michael sweet at 20:36 PM on 21 October, 2020

Philippe Chantreau,

When I was young I believed the promises of nuclear engineers. After 45 years of following nuclear power I no longer trust their paper designs and promises of safe reactors. If they ever build a pilot plant we will see if their scheme actually works as they claim. Upthread I cite the French Nuclear Regulatory Agency which does not see safety improvements in these new designs and the Union of Concerned Scientists who fear that false claims of inherent safety will lead to removal of expensive safety features in reactors. There are reasons that they have not yet built even a test reactor or pilot plant after 13 years of work.

I note that NuScale is losing customers now that they are actually trying to build their reactors. The cost is too great. It is not clear to me if their reactor price has increased or if renewable energy is now so cheap that they cannot compete. Probably both.

Nuclear power is uneconomic. It takes too long to build. Even if they achieve their goals it will be 2050 before TRW reactors are ready for a large scale buildout. I see no reason to believe that reactors with complicated double cooling systems can control the problems of using liquid sodium in a cost effective manner. They have not addressed the problems of Abbott 2012. I am especially concerned about the extensive use of rare materials.

In a renewable energy world baseload power is very low value. Peak power on windless nights is most valuable. Current baseload plants are dinosaurs.

Is Nuclear Energy the Answer?

michael sweet at 04:34 AM on 5 September, 2020

Preston Urka at 216:

This is another post where you state your unsupportted ideas. Since you have no training, experience or education in nuclear power or power systems this post is entirely sloganeering. You are simply cherry picking data to fit your arguments. If your arguments had any weight you would find some references to support them. This is a completely unscientific post.

At 217: Every point you make is started "I believe". You have only one reference from 2012. Experience in wind power worldwide since 2012 shows that your reference is incorrect. Once again you are simply sloganeering. This is a completely unscientific post.

218: Here you actually have citations!!! Unfortunately, all are to news articles (including one at WUWT!!!) and not peer reviewed articles. You primarily discuss grid expansion costs. Fortuantely, this is covered in the peer reviewed literature cited upthread. If you had carefully read the background you would know that grid expansion typically costs 10-15% of total costs. This turns out to be a reasonable cost. Here is another link to a peer reviewed paper that discusses grid costs. Nuclear supporters used to make this argument several years ago until it was proven incorrect. Please try to catch up to current knowledge. Citing outdated papers and debunked arguments makes you look bad.

At 219: The point is that your claim that low carbon intensity in Sweden is due to nuclear was deliberately false.

At 220: Everyone wants to reduce the carbon intensity of economies. The peer reviewed literature indicates that the best way to achieve this goal is by building out renewable energy as fast as possible. This link contains the abstracts of 47 papers that describe how to provide 100% of energy to the entire economy world wide using renewable energy. They come from 13 different research groups with 91 different authors. This list demonstrates a consensus among energy system researchers that renewable energy is the way to go. (Hat tip to Postkey. You need to describe why your link is useful to be compliant with the posting rules.)

Your claims that renewable energy cannot supply 100% of world power are supported only by your opinion as someone who has no education, training or work experience in power systems and is completely informed by reading on the internet (and who cites WUWT as a reliable source). Coonstantly repeating your unsupported opinion is sloganeering.

Please cite one paper that suggests it might be possible to supply even half of world energy using nuclear power. Such a paper does not exist. According to Abbott 2012, it is impossible to supply a significant amount of world energy (more than 5%) using nuclear power.

We've been having the wrong debate about nuclear energy

nigelj at 08:01 AM on 7 August, 2020

Michael sweet @14

"You are not familiar with scientific discussion. In a scientific discussion I say "this paper supports my position". Then you say "this paper supports my position".

Please don't be ridiculous. Yes its good to quote papers when appropriate, but It's possible to have a scientific discussion without having to mention papers. It happens all the time all over the place and by highly qualified people. Realclimate.org a highly reputable leading edge climate website and they dont demand that people posting comments have to quote scientific papers. It would just shut down discussion. People dont always have the time and relevant papers might not exist.

That said, I post references to peer reviewed papers quite often, with respect to this websites rules, and because it is good to back up claims with a source, but its absurd to have to constantly quote scientific papers all the time. I notice you never demand it when people make claims about the benefits of renewables or expound on the dangers of climate change. You appear to apply double standards.

You have also utterly ignored what I said. Sometimes there are valid criticisms of a scientific issue and no relevant published research to quote in support.

"In this discussion I have provided a paper that supports my position, Abbott 2012. You say you do not like that paper and we should all agree with you. You have provided no reason why we should all agree with you."

I did not say that.

"You must support your claims with at least white papers from industry. "

I provided a white paper above at comment 12 being a lengthy criticism of Jacobsons work. I provided a published study on renewable energy. I provided entirely credible material on why nuclear projects are being built. So why do you go on misrepresenting me?

Regarding Abbot, there is no need to provide studies on the known scale of earths mineral resources, this is common knowledge easily googled. Do I need to provide studies that the moon goes around the earth?

"Your unsupported opinion as a person who claims no training or professional experience in the field"

Where do you get that from? I have never claimed that. I have said several times on this website I did physical geography at university, which covers the introductory basics of weather and climate. I also have a design degree in architecture and I may have mentioned that here, cant remember. I also did psychology and some basic maths and chemistry at university. Not that any of this makes me right or wrong about anything, but since you raised the issue I have to correct your error.

"Bringing in information that you pick up in unmoderated forums on the web also does not advance the discussion."

This is not a valid argument. Its illogical, and pretty much an ad hominem. Whether a forum is moderated or not clearly does not make information either right or wrong.

And you are wrong to claim Realclimate.org is not a moderated forum. It has a moderation policy, and comments get deleted, or sometimes thrown into the junk file.

"Clack 2016 does not rebut Jacobson 2018."

Whatever. Who cares. Maybe its because hes tired of arguing with Jacobson. Maybe he's got better things to do.

"If you cannot find published critism of someones work then you must look harder for support for your wild claims. "

Ridiculous statement.

"Since you have no training or experience in any power systems, and you refuse to read the published literature on the topic, why should I care what you think?"

I have read some of this material. I have told you that already. I'm trying to find the time to read more.

"If you want to speculate on these topics many non-scientific boards, like the unmoderated thread at RealClimate, exist."

All threads at RC are moderated as per previous comments. More lightly than here but they are still moderated.

"The moderators want to encourage discussion of nuclear power so they have allowed nuclear proponents to make many wild, unsupported claims. I respond to these claims. Since you make many unsupported, uninformed claims I respond so that casual readers do not think that your arguments have merit."

People make wild unsupported claims about renewables and other matters on this website. I never here you complain about that. You apply double standards.

"I linked the incorrect Jacobson paper on materials for renewable energy. It is actually Jacobson 2011. He shows that all materials for a renewable energy system exist. Please provide data to support your deliberately false claim that not enough materials exist for a renewable system."

I have never disputed this so why do you keep implying otherwise.? My point was whether they would last for a thousand years. As far as I can recall Jacobson never considered this. Its a discussion we should be having.

"Your point that renewable energy projects use more tons of concrete and steel than nuclear power plants was popular with nuclear supporters in 2005 (I remember when they first used this argument). Since Jacobson 2011 was published, all informed people know that it is a false argument. You show your lack of preparation when you cite an argument that is 10 years out of date."

I never said that. I said renewables look like they use a larger volume of all materials in total, so concrete, steel, copper, fibreglass etcetera combined.

"By contrast, Abbott 2012 described the lack of rare materials used in the constructions of nuclear plants (especially uranium and "unobtainium"). ..... All known uranium reserves will only produce 5 years of power for the world. "

I assume you mean land based reserves. Uranium is abundant in sea water, with billions of tons enough to power the world for many centuries assuming we can extract it. Table of quantities here. Uranium has been experimentally extracted from sea water here. Even if the costs are high they would inherently form a very small proportion of the costs of running a nuclear power plant. Abbot looks like it might be out of date in respect of this.

"Renewable systems use little of the rare elements,"

That is just a huge understatement, and ignores other materials in relatively limited supply like copper and aluminium ( bauxite reserves could all be gone in a century or two) required for generators and a vast network of new trasmission lines to enable power to be shared regionally.

I was not going to respond to you, but I dont like it when people missrepresent my position hence the response.

Moderator. I have a history here of quoting studies, more so than other people. Indisputably so. I will make the effort to quote more papers bearing in mind there are only so many hours in the day.

However I'm getting really tired of the way M Sweet repeatedly and blatantly 1) puts words in my mouth (hes done it to others as well) and 2) missrepresents my position and 3) misrepresents by background and 4) intellectually bullies people he doesnt agree with, and 5)falsely accuses me of making things up. And the way you let him get away with it.

We've been having the wrong debate about nuclear energy

michael sweet at 05:37 AM on 7 August, 2020

Nigelj,

Skeptical Science is a scientific site. Apparently you do not understand the method of scientific discussion. This is common with nuclear supporters. On the other nuclear thread at post 14 I described the scientific method of discussion to Barry:

"You are not familiar with scientific discussion. In a scientific discussion I say "this paper supports my position". Then you say "this paper supports my position". Then I provide more papers to support my position and show why it is more accurate. You provide papers to support your position. Others read the papers and decide who they think has the best argument.

You should read the entire post linked above.

You must support your claims with at least white papers from industry. Your unsupported opinion as a person who claims no training or professional experience in the field does not contribute much to the discussion. Bringing in information that you pick up in unmoderated forums on the web also does not advance the discussion.

You linked the Clack et al paper which actually is a peer reviewed criticism of Jacobson 2015. It is common in science for papers to be rebutted in this way. Clack disagreed with Jacobson on the use of hydro power, the most flexible renewable power. Jacobson responded with his 2018 paper (linked above) and answered all the questions that Clack raised. I have not seen any references to any criticism of Jacobson 2018 so I conclude that Clack felt that Jacobson et al 2018 answered his questions. Clack 2016 does not rebut Jacobson 2018.

If you cannot find published critism of someones work then you must look harder for support for your wild claims. Since you have no training or experience in any power systems, and you refuse to read the published literature on the topic, why should I care what you think? If you want to speculate on these topics many non-scientific boards, like the unmoderated thread at RealClimate, exist.

The moderators want to encourage discussion of nuclear power so they have allowed nuclear proponents to make many wild, unsupported claims. I respond to these claims. Since you make many unsupported, uninformed claims I respond so that casual readers do not think that your arguments have merit.

I linked the incorrect Jacobson paper on materials for renewable energy. It is actually Jacobson 2011. He shows that all materials for a renewable energy system exist. I believe this paper has never been challenged. Please provide data to support your deliberately false claim that not enough materials exist for a renewable system. If you cannot find data to support your wild claims stop posting here.

Your point that renewable energy projects use more tons of concrete and steel than nuclear power plants was popular with nuclear supporters in 2005 (I remember when they first used this argument). Since Jacobson 2011 was published, all informed people know that it is a false argument. You show your lack of preparation when you cite an argument that is 10 years out of date.

By contrast, Abbott 2012 described the lack of rare materials used in the constructions of nuclear plants (especially uranium and "unobtainium"). Renewable systems use little of the rare elements, unlike nuclear plants which depend on these rare materials. 100 million tons of concrete is a small amount compared to world production of 10 billion tons. All known uranium reserves will only produce 5 years of power for the world.

We've been having the wrong debate about nuclear energy

michael sweet at 03:24 AM on 6 August, 2020

Nigelj:

I note that you have provided no references, even to industry propaganda, to support your wild claims. I have directly cited at least 3 peer reviewed papers in this thread and in the past I have given you many more peer reviewed papers to read. I recognize that you claim you do not have enough time to read peer reviewed papers and prefer to read the unmoderated forum at RealClimate to get information.

Your claim that nuclear power will be comparable in price to renewables plus storage is completely false. You rely on unsupported industry propaganda for your nuclear estimates. Connelly et al and Jacobson et al 2018 show that renewables are at least a factor of three cheaper than nuclear power. I note the largest pumped hydro storage plants in the USA were all built to store excess nuclear power. You have not added in the necessity of storage for nuclear power in your wild claims.

Abbott showed that no more than 5% of All Power can be generated by nuclear. You have just made up your 20% claim. Abbott showed that a 100% nuclear system would use up all known uranium reserves in 5 years. That means for a 20% system the uranium would run out in 25 years, way before fossil fuels.

It is possible that in 5,000 years steel will run out and we will have to all go back to using stone. I doubt it. You are simply speculating without any support. Jacobson 2009 showed all materials exist for a renewable system. Since then renewable systems are built with less materials so even less materials would be used.

Moderators: it is very tiresonme to have to respond to Nigelj's false posts every time nuclear is mentioned. I understand that you want to promote a nuclear discussion but allowing repeated postings of completely unsupported falsehoods is sloganeering. Nigelj should be required to support his claims like everyone else.

Nuclear supporters commonly make the false claim that renewable energy cannot generate enough energy (or is too expensive, etc) and then claim that we have to use nuclear instead. This is a false argument. Even if renewables could not supply enough future energy that does not mean that nuclear would work.

Nuclear plants are being shut down worldwide because nuclear is not economic. Nuclear proponents have been saying that in 10 years they will have solved all nuclear's problems ever since I was born and I am an old man now. Jacobson 2009 shows that any money spent on nuclear increases carbon emissions since that means less money will be spent on cheaper wind and solar power that can be built much faster.

We've been having the wrong debate about nuclear energy

michael sweet at 03:10 AM on 5 August, 2020

Nigelj:

At post 3 you say: "For example, Nuclear power is expensive compared to wind and solar and gas, but probably cost competitive with wind and solar and mass storage, at current costs of mass storage."

Connelly et al 2016 (reviewed at SkS here) and the references in it show that the bigger the system the lower the storage cost. This means that an electricity only system requires relatively much more storage than a system that provides all electricity, heating, transportation and industry. That means a system that provides ALL POWER requires much less storage than an electricity only system. They show that a well designed All Power system might require zero storage. Obviously if we want to get to zero carbon dioxide emissions we require an All Power system. Electricity only systems, as nuclear supporters describe, are not helpful in reaching zero carbon emissions.

I wrote that summary specifically to address your complaints that storage for renewable energy would be too expensive. Nuclear supporters, like those on the RealClimate thread you frequent, do not discuss All Power systems because electricity only systems make renewable energy look more expensive. The OP has the same problem since it is written from a nuclear point of view.

I have shown your claims of expensive storage are false as described in the peer reviewed literature. If you want to claim expensive storage you need to find peer reviewed sources to support your repeated, false claims.

Your claims at post 3 " Nuclear power relies on a non renewable fuel, but several of the metals used to make wind and solar power plants will obviously not last for all eternity either" are also false. I have referred you repeatedly to Jacobson 2009 which shows that all the materials to build out renewable energy exist is adequate amounts, except for rare earth elements in the turbines. Since then the turbines have been redesigned so that they do not use excess rare earth elements. By contrast, Abbott 2012 shows that many rare elements in nuclear plants, including uranium, do not exist is sufficient amunts to build out more than 5% of All Power. The nuclear industry has not replied to Abbott which shows they agree with his assessment. In general, renewable plants use common materials which are not in short supply. By contrast, many exotic materials are used in nuclear plants to attempt to counter the extreme conditions of heat, corrosivity and radiation field found in nuclear plants.

If you want to contradict the accepted, consensus science you need to provide references to support your wild claims. Constantly repeating false claims does not make them true.

Nuclear supporters constantly repeat false claims about renewable energy. It does not make nuclear look better to falsely claim renewables have problems.

We've been having the wrong debate about nuclear energy

michael sweet at 10:39 AM on 4 August, 2020

This article does not respond to most of the items in Abbott 2012. It is simply an amalgam of various nuclear industry fantasies with little to support the claims.

I note that the author describes generating part of electricity. Jacobson 2018, Connelly et al 2016 and many other peer reviewed articles searching for future energy systems describe using renewable energy for 100% of ALL POWER used in the economy. Electricity is only about 20% of all power. Even if nuclear was able to generate 50% of current electricity it would only be 10% of the necessary power needed. Renewable energy would be required for the other 90% of All Power.

Abbott 2012 shows that even for 10% of All Power nuclear cannot meet the need. There is not enough uranium. If fantasy breeder reactors are attempted to be used (using "unobtainium" for critical parts) it will be even more expensive and the designs cannot be commercially available for even longer.

Re-reading the headings in the OP gives a better look at nuclear power:

Smaller and more flexible … but when?

Long lead time misses the key window for action

High and uncertain price tag

But what about nuclear waste?

Funding and political will … uphill battles ahead

This article is just nuclear industry propaganda uncritically presented. I note there are no citations of peer reviewed material in the OP. The OP shoud be deleted. If the writer actually read scientific research like Jacobson 2018 and Connelly 2016 they would not write such drivel.

Is Nuclear Energy the Answer?

michael sweet at 02:49 AM on 30 July, 2020

Baerbel,

The article you linked gave a reasonable summary of the pro-nuclear argument. Those who read it will note that proposed nuclear options will not be available until the 2030's and the cost is unknown. Many other problems are left unaddressed.

The author of the piece is a free lance writer and ski instructor. Why should I think she knows more about nuclear energy than I do? By contrast, Abbott is a well known electrical engineer who has studied nuclear power for years. Most of the points Abbott makes are not addressed in the Climate Connection article.

Is Nuclear Energy the Answer?

michael sweet at 03:24 AM on 24 July, 2020

Preston Urka,

I believe all your arguments have already been made and answered upthread in the discussion with poster Barry. Your posting style is similar to Barry.

Cherry picking wind projects that had long planning stages before wind was the cheapest power do not support your argument. Your reference states that for the London Array: "Construction of phase 1 of the wind farm began in March 2011 and was completed by mid 2013." For Hornsea 1 your reference states: "Construction of the first phase started in January 2018, and the first turbines began supplying power to the UK national electricity grid in February 2019"

By contrast, at the Vogtle nuclear plant in Georgia (USA) according to Wikipedia, construction on unit 3 started on August 26, 2009 and will not be complete before the end of 2021 in the unlikely event that they stay on the current schedule. The original completion date was in 2016. The cost is currently estimated at $28 billion for 2 units with more expected additions (original estimates $14 billion) source .

Jacobson 2009 estimates build times for nuclear as 10-19 years. Vogtle is already at 14 years and is not finished yet. Build times for wind and solar plants are 2-5 years including planning. Since 2009 planning and approval times for wind and solar have decreased as regulators learn what is needed to approve wind and solar plants. Wind and solar projects are often delivered ahead of time and under budget.

Nuclear plants sell power at night for much less than the cost of generating the power.

You are arguing that your inability to find a reference cited by Jacobson 2009 means that Abbott 2011 is low quality. This is not a logical argument. The basic calculation of area needed for a nuclear plant is described in Jacobson 2009. Your example of Palo Verde does not include the land needed for mining, refinement and disposal of uranium and radioactive wastes. The 16 km2 you calculate is very similar to Jacobson's 20.5 km2. Since Jacobson 2009 says "as much as 20.5 km2", even if you corrected your error it would not contradict Jacobson. Palo Verde would never be allowed to be water cooled today. They would further purify the water and drink it.

Is Nuclear Energy the Answer?

Preston Urka at 02:52 AM on 24 July, 2020

Eclectic @ 174

As per my thanks to MA Roger, I appreciate your tone and argument as civil and engaged.

water-cooling

I doubt I can be succinct in my article on this issue, but I can list some items here.

It is really only an issue in plants without cooling towers or their own reservoirs.

We have existing solutions to that issue: build plants with cooling towers or their own reservoirs.

We have existing uncommon solutions, such as Palo Verde's use of sewage.

As Gen IV reactors produce higher-temperatures, one needs water-cooling less and less. In particular, Brayton cycles can be air-cooled.

prime real estate

This is a false argument (no, that is not a slam against you) for several reasons. What is the definition of prime?

I accept rooftop solar makes excellent use of otherwise non-prime real estate, but rooftop solar can barely meet half of residential demand. We won't get utility-scale solar on rooftops.

Are deserts and low-grade farmland non-prime? In my opinion, no. In your opinion, perhaps yes, but I'm fairly sure we can agree this is in the eye of the beholder.

NPPs (particularly smaller Gen IV) can be sited within cities, where the power is actually needed.

Lowers transmission costs

Improves reliability

Concentrates the human footprint on the earth

NPPs in cities may be a use of prime real estate - my contention is that it is a high-value use of prime real estate. Is there any point to a low-value use of prime real estate?

So, I hope you see what I mean by a false argument. There may be a true argument in there somewhere, but I fundamentally do not really understand the position at all as presented.

This is another example of Abbott's low-quality - he simply makes an assertion. No methodology, definitions, or model.

anti-terrorist security

I am not sure this is definitive, but I believe the only known terrorist attack against an NPP was against one under construction by an environmental terrorist, not a political group. Chaim Nissim

Should we arrest all members of the Green Party? Perhaps not.

Existing NPPs are super-difficult targets. Even if a group can pass the guards, fences etc, the reactor is difficult to blow-up/disable/sabotage due to its massive reinforcement and boundaries. (I believe we can rely upon regulators ensuring equivalent protections for smaller Gen IV NPPs).

At Fukushima a magnitude 9 earthquake and a 14 m tsunami unleashed far more energy than a terrorist with a backpack, or even thousands of pounds of explosives on a truck could hope to achieve. It still took nearly 24h for the first explosion - in an area crippled from receiving outside aid by the tsunami.

I contend that it would take hours for terrorists to take over enough of the plant, having to kill/capture 100s of workers to do so, and in that time the police (baring square kms of natural disaster) will have arrived and mounting a counter-strike, to do any damage.

Cooling pools are easier to access. You just have to know how to operate specialized equpment and be prepared to cut massive safety corners. Even so, again, it will take hours of uninterrupted work to access the spent fuel. Maybe you just want to leave behind a mess - again Fukushima shows us how contained even a massive amount of damage is.

Try your luck with the dry cask storage. These things have 5 layers to crack through, and it would take specialized equipment and hours to do so. After all, they are meant to withstand massive accidents and to last for 50-100 years.

You might steal a cask, and crack it afterward at your leisure - so you need a crane capable of lifting 20-50 tons, and a flatbed truck, and at least an hour to manhandle it aboard. The guards and police have no worry about ricocheting rifle rounds off these canisters so you will be under fire during the theft.

Or, you can make anthrax (hint you need dirt from your garden) or sarin (easy enough to make that 2 attacks so far by terrorists). This sort of sneaky route is low-tech, low-cost, low-training, and worst of all low-visibility to the police.

real rivals

Nuclear is the rival of coal. Where nuclear is built, coal disappears. Ontario ends coal

Natural gas is the rival of nuclear. Where nuclear disappears, natural gas replaces it. Indian Point replaced with gas - go to the EIA if you want official data.

What is the rival of wind/solar - not natural gas, natural gas is wind/solar's companion, not rival. That is because pretty much only gas can deal with wind and solar's intermittency. (Note, this is intermittency, not load-following; nuclear can deal with load following, a few MW/minute ramps; it can't deal with intermittency, 100s MW/minute ramps)

Not nuclear as per above. The rival to wind/solar is - yes, wind and solar!

the tragedy of negative pricing

People tend to view nuclear and wind/solar as rivals because grids with high % of wind/solar tend to have lots of low or negative pricing. The negative pricing hurts nuclear more due to investment subsidies for solar, production subsidies for wind, and higher finance costs for nuclear.

Simultaneously people also tend to view negative pricing as a good thing. It is not a good thing.

Value of commodity goods like electricity is roughly equal to their price (note I am really talking marginal price here, which is a bit different, but let's forge ahead anyway). Thus a negative price means negative value. Another phrase for negative value is 'destoying value'. I am fairly sure SkS is going to howl about this, but please, just stop and think really hard about what negative prices mean.

examples: garbage/sewage - waste has a negative value, which is why we pay to get rid of it

But is this really bad? Yes - think about the motivations of the following 2 actors:

Imagine you run a utility and someone comes to you with a project that will charge negative prices. You won't invest.

Imagine you run a public utilities commission and your staff projects a need for more electricity. How do you encourage the investment to make that happen?

In other words, we need positive prices to encourage investment to meet demand. That doesn't mean the investor can charge a huge premium, but it does mean they can make a bit of coin to justify the investment.

These scenarios hold for wind and solar just as much for nuclear.

Is Nuclear Energy the Answer?

Eclectic at 01:15 AM on 24 July, 2020

Preston , if you are looking to submit a "pro-nuclear" OP article to SkS, then it will need to be a well-considered article ~ in both senses!

Succinct, yes. Well-argued, yes. The article would not need to be perfection: but it would need to rise well above being tendentious or opinionated, and it would need to give a well-rounded summary of the present state of knowledge. In other words, it should be a resource, a valuable educational asset [this being the basic purpose of SkepticalScience].

To that end, the article should analyse the weaknesses as well as the strengths of the Nuclear path.

Best to avoid being side-tracked into Abbott's land-area issue. Though M. Sweet's water-cooling and "prime real estate" issues would need proper assessing. And I think my point about anti-terrorist security must be addressed too ~ because the world is changing politically & philosophically, and what was almost unthinkable (before Al-Qaeda) has become increasingly probable (and might even involve covertly state-sponsored terrorist acts). A huge increase in numbers of small reactors does have a disproportionately large multiplying effect on all issues.

Future rivals to Nuclear do not include "hydro" (because relatively little room for large expansion in dams). Similarly not including wave energy or tidal flow or geo-thermal energy ~ which have their own "Pudding" problems.

The real rivals to Nuclear are the combo of wind/solar. Add to that, the crucial timeliness issue and all the various economics aspects. And NIMBY.

Is Nuclear Energy the Answer?

Preston Urka at 01:09 AM on 24 July, 2020

michael sweet @ 170

Quite the biodiversitist are you not? I am not so sanguine that someone else's desert turtle is an impediment to progress.

Also, I think you still do not grasp my argument:

in @ 160 I argue that Abbott 2011/2012 are a low-quality papers (I do not state any qualitative opinion, pro or con about Jacobson 2009)

in @ 163 michael sweet argues that I am tearing down Jacobson 2009

note to moderator - an example of a polemic (contentious rhetoric that is intended to support a specific position) is when an argument is made against a set of statements never made

in @ 168 I continue argument that Abbott 2011/2012 are a low-quality papers (specifically noting Jacobson 2009 is OK scholarship)

now in @ 170 michael sweet argues that Abbott something or something, but at least he isn't making a .... darnit!

"Your argument about total land occupied is a straw man."
I am not aware that I made such an argument. Look, I don't know whose post you are referencing, but it isn't mine.

Ahhh! Found it - I am quoting Abbott and then Jacobson in @ 160. Those are not my arguments buddy. Are you arguing against them now? Or just continuing your polemic?

All of @ 160 simply traces through to a dodgy citation.

However, I still don't see why Abbott 2011/2012 is anything other than low-quality papers - again, I will not argue within that artificial paradigm.

My point in @ 160, @ 168 and this post is that Abbott has produced some shoddy work as evidenced by his poor research. Perhaps Abbott should be let off the hook as per your note that Abbott shouldn't be responsible for citations within (I do not agree, as usually the buck stops where it ought to) - however, then Abbott is crediting Jacobson 2009 with the work of Spitzley and Keoleian 2005 - definitely poor scholarship.

When writing a 'peer-reviewed paper' one cites original sources when possible. Jacobson 2009 was quite clear he was not the original source for 20.5 km2.

I will cite (gasp! a non-peer reviewed paper) Wikipedia on Palo Verde for a total size of 1,600 ha (normalized to 2,021 kWh/m2 - this is the maximum boundary, the core plant itself is on 100-200 hectares, the great majority of the 1600 hectares is unused, and potentially available for expansion - possibly the space for the 2000 extra reactors already exists!), in the freakin' desert, where they use sewage to absorb the waste heat.

Wow! Abbott's article really falls apart now - using sewage in the desert over 16km2 (or only a 100-200 hectares core) is pretty flexible. This is far different from Abbott's 20.5 km2 of prime real estate.

Does every NPP use sewage for waste heat? - no. But can many NPPs use sewage for waste heat? - yes. Is every NPP i the desert? - no. But can many NPPs be sited in 'unproductive land'? - yes. Sure, sue me, I admit existing usage is different from what is possible. On your part, admit what is possible.

Ok, just to close the loop: The nearby Ivanpah Solar Power Facility is 1460 ha (normalized to 51 kWh/m2, and no, there isn't a lot of idle parkland).

Are the plant reservations of 1600 and 1460 hectares similar? Sure, if you count 4000 MW @ 83% capacity factor as similar to 392 MW @ 24% c.f. Squinting against the desert sun may help square that circle.

"I note your complete inability to find any peer reviewed papers that support your position."
Again, I think Abbott is low-quality. Again, I will not argue within that paradigm of half-truth and shadow.

Can you explain why you think Abbott is high-quality scholarship? (yeah, I get it is 'peer-reviewed', do you have any other argument there?)

Is Nuclear Energy the Answer?

michael sweet at 06:00 AM on 23 July, 2020

Preston Urka,

Rereading Abbott 2011 I find this is his argument:

"each nuclear power plant surprisingly requires an extended land footprint area of as much as 20.5 km2. While this is a little less than the area it would take for a typical desert-based solar thermal farm (with suitable storage) to generate the same power output, the advantage of solar thermal is in its much lower complexity and its use of unused desert area, whereas nuclear stations tend to take up prime area adjacent to sources of coolant water. Coupling the difficulty
of strategic choice of location (as in Section I) with this large area requirement questions the ability to scale up to 15 000 reactors"

The primary issue that Abbott raises is not the total area occupied by nuclear plants, which is similar to solar thermal plants that Abbott supports. His issue is that the land occupied by nuclear plants is prime real estate. By contrast, solar plants are frequently located in deserts, on top of buildings, providing shade over parking lots or on poor farm land. Wind generators are located in remote locations. Your argument about total land occupied is a straw man. I note that in Abbott 2012 he has refined his argument and lowers considerations of area even more.

Please provide a list of sites where 2,000 reactors could be located in the USA (that is enough reactors to generate only half of US energy use). I note that the Vogtle reactors in Georgia are currently in the 11th year of a 5 year build and are not expected to be finished for several years.

It is not Abbott's responsibility to check all the references of all the papers he cites.

I note your complete inability to find any peer reviewed papers that support your position.

Is Nuclear Energy the Answer?

Preston Urka at 04:51 AM on 23 July, 2020

First, let me publically thank Baerbel (who sent me a very nice note via email). Let me also note Eclectic's kind advice on continuing to press ahead.

I appreciate the challenge MA_Rodger has thrown down. True debate!

Sadly, this makes the tone of michael_sweet all the more glaring in its contrast.

MA Rodger's Pudding Argument

#1 Nuclear has achieved the second-largest contribution to low-carbon electricity (I will confine myself pretty much to electricity vs. total energy) for over 60 years, let alone the last 30. Yes, renewables (when you include hydro) have done more. However, the expansion of renewables over the last several decades has not been in hydro, and hydro has problems:

hydro tends to be environmentally destructive

hydro has limited scope for expansion

most of the best places for hydro are already taken

However, when comparing the areas of Nuclear vs. other Renewables (Wind/Solar), we might ask just what other renewables are doing for us - not much apparently! I do not subscribe to that view - clearly they have made a low-carbon juice difference in the last few years - just as obviously as Nuclear has.

https://ourworldindata.org/

#2 Let us not conflate the (lack of) addition of Nuclear with its contribution. The US is a more obvious example.

https://ourworldindata.org/

Think about it. Over the last 20 years (closer to 30), the only real addition to the nuclear fleet is Watts Bar 2 in Tennessee. With just 100-odd NPPs, mostly 30 years old, Nuclear is still equal to the renewables (including Hydro! truly astonishing!) industry in provision of low-carbon electricity in the US. And compared to the Wind-Solar industry, crushing it. Crushing it. Wow!

If we had kept on building NPPs at the rate of the 70's and 80's, it is quite obvious (peer-reviewed citation or not) that doubling the amount of low-carbon electricity was possible.

Alternatively, I suggest to you, MA Rodger, why hasn't the Wind-Solar industry caught up to infrastructure that has stood in stasis (excepting Watts Bar) over the last 20-30 years?

Moral: Never bet against the energy density of nuclear power.

#3 However, MA Rodger, if you want to take your argument to its logical conclusion: Why hasn't any low-carbon (hydro, nuclear, wind, solar, etc) generation source managed to win your Pudding Argument against Natural Gas?

It is rather clear that over the last 20-30 years Natural Gas has been the main (new source) reducer of GHG emissions (by displacing coal) rather than any other generation source, renewable or nuclear.

Don't get me wrong, I think Natural Gas is only half as bad as coal. Which is to say, bad. But I view the goal as reducing GHG emissions, and so I will take the non-growth (due to politics) of nuclear, the mini-growth of wind and solar (due to intermittency and lack of installed capacity) and even the only-half-as-bad-as-coal-growth of natural gas in lowering GHG emissions.

michael sweet's argument? polemic? something like that

#1 I never stated Jacobson 2009 was inaccurate or bad science. Let me be more clear: Jacobson 2009, publishing a year prior to the retraction of Spitzley and Keoleian 2005 in 2010, did their due diligence. Jacobson et al appear to be careful researchers. In contrast, Abbot 2011 and 2012 are not. It was Abbot's responsibility to follow this stuff up. It was also the responsibility of his journal, Bull. Atomic Scientists to follow this stuff up.

#2 I never stated Jacobson 2009's main or significant point was land area. I did state this was one of the main and significant points of Abbot 2011 and 2012. I was questioning the quality of the Abbott papers, not the Jacobson paper.

#3 to address your comment "I have never seen a nuclear opponent argue that area is a problem with nuclear" - I suggest you read Abbott 2011 or 2012 again. Abbott is clearly a nuclear opponent and Abbott is clearly listing area as a problem.

Abbott's 2011 section title is "II. THE LAND AREA PROBLEM". An entire section is devoted to arguing that area is a problem, but you have never seen it?

Abbott's 2011 section "CONCLUSION ... There are fundamental limits imposed by ... land resources ...". I believe most readers would view this statement as referring to section II and interpret it as meaning 'area is a problem with nuclear'. In any case, that is how I have.

If I take you at your word, should I conclude you did not read Abbott's paper. (I have, tip: not worth it - there are much better anti-nuclear papers, Jacobson (not 2009) springs to mind).

Heaven's to Betsy! I haven't included any (not a single one) peer-reviewed citations in this post. Call the gendarmes out!

Is Nuclear Energy the Answer?

michael sweet at 21:26 PM on 22 July, 2020

Preston Urka:

The question of the area used by a nuclear plant was discussed at great length by poster Barry earlier in this thread. Reading your link to Jacobson 2009 (which I linked upthread during the discussion with Barry). I see that the area of a nuclear plant is not important in Jacobson's evaluation of nuclear plants. He argues that biofuels are impractical because of area used but for nuclear area is not a concern. I have never seen a nuclear opponent argue that area is a problem with nuclear, only nuclear supporters are concerned about area. You are wasting our time by pursuing an issue that is not significant.

Jacobson 2009 currently has 1405 citations (!!!) according to Google Scholar. Perhaps you might want to pick a more obscure article to claim is inaccurate.

I recommend that you write an article with peer reviewed citations and then send it to contact us at Skeptical Science. Since your posts above do not contain references to argue against Abbott you need to raise your game a lot or the article will be rejected.

Abbott 2012 was published by invitation in the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists. The editors read Abbott 2011 and thought it was important for nuclear scientists to read so they republished it. The fact that it was published by invitation means that the editors peer reviewed the article and thought it was worthy of publication.

Is Nuclear Energy the Answer?

Eclectic at 11:49 AM on 22 July, 2020

Preston Urka @ 159/160 ,

thank you for your comments. And as you say, you would not want to be "locked into the Abbott paradigm".

The question of 20 Km2 of land per nuclear plant is a dubious matter. To me it seems quite inappropriate to "burden" each nuclear plant with the background support structure of land area involved in mining / ore processing / waste storage. Even more so, with regard to [future] small-scale plants. Here, whatever the size, the major concern is that plants be air-cooled, and not requiring lake/river or ocean-front access. (Just as it is quite feasible for solar farms' panels to be "thinned out" to permit mixed agriculture & pasture usage.)

I hope you will press ahead with your comments, and disregard the Abbott land-area aspects. The real heart of the nuclear question is economics & timeliness. Timeliness is the developmental problem, in view of the current rapidity of global warming and the rising CO2 load. And the basic economics: resource allocation and costings of delivered Kwh ~ levelised costing including the short-term and long-term security costings (anti-terrorist, particularly).

If you can make a good case, then it would certainly be worth your composing a concise article. Sorry, I am not in a position to comment on [lack of] response from the SkS "head office" ~ but please remember that SkS is a shoestring operation run by volunteers, who are stretched thin for time. Perhaps they don't have time for "a pig in a poke", yet I am confident that a well-argued presentation would be welcome . . . even if it takes some weeks of time for the wheels to turn over.

Is Nuclear Energy the Answer?

Preston Urka at 02:48 AM on 22 July, 2020

One consistent current running through this blog topic is the wonderful peer-reviewed Abbott 2011 and 2012 papers. But they just are not of a high quality.

First, the two articles are pretty much the same.

Second, as sauerj's post at Should a Green New Deal include nuclear power? 00:29 AM on 24 April, 2019 points out, Abbott 2012 is an opinion piece, published in their Point of View features, which "The scope of this section ranges from opinions on the importance of particular new concepts or discoveries to discussion of educational and professional trends to personal positions and predictions on various technical topics." - opinions, discussion, personal positions - not peer reviewed science.

Third, lets go thru the underlying references of Abbott:

"It can also be argued that nuclear power has a key role to play in meeting emissions targets (Brook, 2012) for mitigating climate change."

Ok, so the first citation is 'here is an opinion, and here is the citation to that opinion'.

It can be argued. Fine. Seems fairly innocuous.

"A nuclear utopian goes much further and suggests that nuclear power can potentially supply the bulk of the world’s energy needs for many thousands of years to come and that perhaps a mix of renewables with nuclear power as the backbone supply is the long-term energy future (Manheimer, 2006)."

Ok, so the second citation is 'here is an definition, and here is the citation to that definition'.
Now we know what a nuclear utopian is. Seems fairly innocuous.

"Currently, the total global power consumption is about 15 terawatts (EIA, 2011)."

Ok, the third citation is data. Global power is .... Seems fairly innocuous.

"Today there are about 430 commercial nuclear reactors worldwide (Schneider et al., 2012)."

Ok, the fourth citation is more data. There are X number reactors. Seems fairly innocuous.

"Taking into account not just the footprint of a nuclear power station but also its exclusion zone, associated enrichment plant, ore processing, and supporting infrastructure, Stanford's Mark Z. Jacobson (2009) has shown that each nuclear power plant draws upon a total land area of as much as 20.5 square kilometers."

Ok, the fifth citation is more data. Seems fairly .... wait a minute, 20.5 km²? That is a lot of land. Nuclear is very dense, so the cognoscenti are immediately suspicious. Better check this citation.

In Abbott 2012, "Jacobson (2009)" refers to "Jacobson, MZ (2009) Review of solutions to global warming, air pollution, and energy security. Energy & Environmental Science 2: 148–173." I believe this is an electronic copy of that very paper: Jacobson (2009)

And let us see what Jacobson writes, section 6.4: "Estimates of the lands required for uranium mining and nuclear facility with a buffer zone are 0.06 ha yr GWh1 and 0.26 ha yr GWh1, respectively, and that for waste for a single sample facility is about 0.08 km2 [footnote] 31. For the average plant worldwide, this translates into a total land requirement per nuclear facility plus mining and storage of about 20.5 km2."

Let's look at footnote 31: D. V. Spitzley, and G. A. Keoleian, Life cycle environmental and economic assessment of willow biomass electricity: A comparison with other renewable and non-renewable sources, Report No. CSS04–05R, 2005, http://css.snre.umich.edu/css_doc/CSS04-05R.pdf. The link has changed, but this is where the report cannot be found CSS04-05R.pdf

What do you mean, cannot be found??? Why are you posting a link then?

Well, as the Univ. of Michigan states (in 2010, a year (and 5 days) before the first Abbott paper)

"LIFE CYCLE ENVIRONMENTAL AND ECONOMIC ASSESSMENT OF WILLOW BIOMASS ELECTRICITY: A COMPARISON WITH OTHER RENEWABLE AND NON-RENEWABLE SOURCES
CSS PUBLICATION NUMBER: CSS04-05R
AUTHOR(S): David V. Spitzley Gregory A. Keoleian
ABSTRACT:
EDITOR's NOTE: This report is temporarily unavailable and will be posted again once a correction on a metric pertaining to the nuclear fuel cycle is made. - October 25, 2010."

Naturally, I sent a note to the Univ. of Michigan, and they still haven't gotten around to their, um, shall we say retraction? and subsequent repost yet.

Basically, in Abbott's first claim, versus uncontested data, he starts lowering the paper's quality with a dodgy reference. Does this mean that all of Abbott 2011 or 2012 (where he repeats the claim at the beginning of the paper) is garbage? Or just that section?

Well, it certainly means that Abbott is not the most careful of researchers, and that at least one of his paper's major claims is suspect.

Also, my life is too short to go through the rest of Abbott pointing out the other opinions, poor research and sketchy logic. Maybe Abbott should write a proper paper which has less opinion-stated-as-fact, and more fact. Of course, it is fine if in his conclusion he states his opinion, but conflating the two really reduces the quality of this paper.

Is Nuclear Energy the Answer?

Preston Urka at 02:03 AM on 22 July, 2020

The introduction for this blog topic states: "We have repeatedly asked for nuclear proponents to provide an article for this site which puts the case based on published science but so far we haven't had a taker."

I am a taker.

Using the Contact Us form, I submitted a request to provide a nuclear proponent's case for nuclear. On 21 June, 2020. Well, a month later, SkepticalScience hasn't even bothered with the courtesy of a reply - denial or acceptance.

One thing I mentioned in my note, is that I would not be locked into the Abbott paradigm - as I will explain in my next post.

Is Nuclear Energy the Answer?

michael sweet at 12:29 PM on 1 July, 2020

At post 90 in this thread I commented on a Shellenberger video. Shellenberger is a paid shill for the nuclear industry. His presentations are filled with falsehoods and misinformation.

I recommend you read Abbott 2012, linked in the OP. Abbott is a peer reviewed critique of nuclear power. Abbott shows that there is no hope of a significant (more than 5% of all power) amount of nuclear power in the future. Shellenberger has not attempted to answer the issues raised by Abbott. Who do you believe, a peer reviewed paper or an unreviewed paid shill?

I note that even Shellenberger only claims that 50% of current electricity (about 10% of all power) can be generated using nuclear power. The remainder would have to be generated by renewables.

Is Nuclear Energy the Answer?

michael sweet at 10:27 AM on 20 January, 2020

DougC,

This is the third time you have challenged Linear Response no Threshold (LRNT) in discussions with me here at SkS. The answer is the same as the past two times.

LRNT is accepted, consensus science. The data in support of LRNT is overwhelming. The National Academy of Science Beir VII expert consensus report was written in 2006 and only considered data after 1990. Nuclear industry claims that 1940's and 50's considerations were adopted are deliberate falsehoods. You and others who claim your self-education on the internet makes you smarter than the professionals at the National Academy of Science are just denying the science. I doubt many readers here at SkS will believe a self educated person over consensus science from the NAS.

I have extensive industrial experience working for years with large amounts of radiation. You are a self educated person on the Internet with no experience or training in radiation. Suggesting that I am "afraid of" radiation is ignorant and insulting. I oppose nuclear power because it cannot possibly significantly affect the response to AGW. Any money spent on nuclear power is wasted. In addition, nuclear supporters like you and Nigelj make repeated, false claims about renewable energy. These false claims make people think that the only solution we have might not work. Deniers like the two of you need to be told you are making false claims.

As usual, your numbers on deaths from Chernobyl are about two orders of magnitude off. The Union of Concerned Scientists estimates that approximately 27,000 people will be killed by Chernobyl. (95% 12,000-57,000 deaths). About half of these deaths are from UN reports and half are estimates from worldwide radiation exposure. This does not count the deaths caused by the evacuations (which the Russian government deliberately did not count). You parroting the nuclear industry excuses for killing so many people prove that you do not care about how many people nuclear kills. In general, I do not discuss radiation safety or how many people the nuclear industry kills because you do not care how many people you kill so it is a waste of time.

I do not know any opponents of nuclear who argue too many people are killed or that radiation safety is a big issue (Abbott only mentions the waste disposal issue). You brought up these issues.

I personally always argue that nuclear is uneconomic and that the materials to build a significant amount of nuclear do not exist.

Reading a little further in your chosen nuclear plant I see that they require 5 tons of bomb grade uranium for startup. Since we require solutions that are implemented worldwide how do you plan to secure the 5 tons of bomb grade uranium per reactor in Iran, North Korea, Zimbabwe and Syria? With plans like this what could possibly go wrong??? (/sarc)

It is impossible to have a conversation with nuclear supporters like because you argue that black is white and up is down. Suggesting we should put our hopes on a reactor that has not yet been designed, uses "unobtainium" for many critical parts and uses 5 tons of bomb grade uranium for startup is insane.

Are you a sock puppet for Doug Cotton who was banned many years ago from SkS?

Is Nuclear Energy the Answer?

michael sweet at 14:40 PM on 19 January, 2020

Nigelj,

You need to read your own citations.

Claiming that the US National Academy of Science is wrong and saying you will not provide any citations to support your claim is completely unscientific. Their review, published in 2006, is the most up to date consensus report on low level radiation. If you wish to substitute your personal opinion for the National Academy of Science scientific consensus you should stop posting here. This is a scientific site, citations are required.

I read the original paper for your pv magazine citation. I gave you a reference to the paper. They model only wind and solar power for electricity only in the USA. They do not model a renewable energy system that anyone would propose for the USA. They do not model All Power. Nuclear power is not modeled at all in the paper. At the end they speculate that adding nuclear might help but they provide no data or citations to support that wild claim. They do not model costs of their renewable system and they do not give nuclear costs either so speculating that nuclear would lower costs is completely unsupported. I quoted from a peer reviewed paper, you cited a popular magazine.

It is common for nuclear supporters to make up a fake renewable energy system that is very expensive. Then they claim, without data, that nuclear should be added since renewable is so expensive. Even if it were true that renewable was expensive that would not mean that nuclear is reasonable. As Abbott shows, it is impossible to build out more than a trivial amount of nuclear power.

You did not read your reference for nuclear cycling. The first paragraph stated that no reactors in the USA load follow because it is not economic. They say no reactors in the USA can load follow. They suggested that future reactors could be designed to very slowly load follow. It will never be economic. It will never be possible to load follow in real time. In France they shut down reactors on the weekend. For nuclear that is "load following". It is not economic.

Your claims that storage is too expensive is simply ignorant. You have not read the papers I cited that show a well designed renewable system can store all needed power using electrofuels in existing storage facilities. If replacement facilities need to be built it is over 1,000 times cheaper to build liquid electrofuel storage than to build out the pumped hydro you favor. (In any case it is impossible to build out major pumped hydro storage because the environmental damage is too great). Liquid electrofuels are stored in the same tanks that you see if you drive by any chemical storage facility worldwide. "Working prototypes" are everywhere and the costs are well known. Jacobson also documents storage for an all power system without electrofuels and the cost is reasonable. Jacobson details all storage down to the last battery and builds exactly zero pumped storage. Anyone who proposes using extensive pumped storage is trying to mislead you.

Is Nuclear Energy the Answer?

michael sweet at 07:06 AM on 18 January, 2020

BobinNH and Tallguy 1000,

I am posting here because this thread has many posts about nuclear energy. The thread the moderator linked is much shorter. Please read the previous posts so that we do not have to reargue points that have already been decided.

Abbott 2012 gives about 15 reasons why nuclear cannot produce more than 5% of world power. Nuclear supporters have not responded to this article indicating that they agree with his assessment. Please address the problems Abbott describes including: finding locations for the 15,000 reactors needed to produce all power (if you use modular reactors you need 50,000), the fact that uranium will run out in 5 years if that many reactors are built, there are many rare materials used in the construction of nuclear power plants that will run out if 15,000 plants are built.

In addition nuclear is not economic and takes decades to build.

Tallguy: Nuclear power zealots have been arguing for a long time that renewable energy will take up too much space. Jacobson 2018 has calculated the amount of space required and found that it is very moderate. As Abbott points out, if you build out a nuclear power system you will expect a major accident like Fukushima once a month worldwide and 1-2 times per year in the USA. The restriction zones will quickly become larger than the amount of land used for wind and solar power.

BobinNH: you have obviously not read any papers (there are hundreds) that describe future renewable energy systems. Jacobson et al 2018 above, Connelly et al (unfortuntely now paywalled) and Brown et al (lists many other studies that describe renewable energy systems) answer some of your questions. You worry about "airplanes, trains, shipping and trucks".

Many trains are already electric, problem solved. Much trucking can be shipped in electric trains. Local deliveries can use electric trucks. That could solve all trucking but if some small amount remained electrofuels could be used (although they are ineficient). Airplanes are hard. Designers have announced electric planes with ranges of 1500 miles. Jacobson suggests hydrogen fueled planes. Long haul flights could use electrofuels or people could go by train and ship. Shipping could use electrofuels, biofuels or smaller ships could be fully electric.

If you ignore the solutions discussed in the peer reviewed literature it is easy to claim that nothing can be solved.

Is Nuclear Energy the Answer?

michael sweet at 05:48 AM on 15 December, 2019

John ONeill,

According to Metalpedia, approximately 1.5 million tons of zirconium was mined in 2013. World reserves were estimated at 60 million tons (from the US Geological Survey. Your reference does not have a reserve number, it seems you made it up) so if current usage continued they would last about 40 years, less than the claimed lifetime of a nuclear reactor. Adding on the nuclear use you claim would substantially reduce the life of the reserve. Your estimate of lifetime of reserves appears to be approximately 200 times too long.

It appears to me that your reference only counts the usage of zirconium metal and not zirconium alloys and compounds. Obviously we need to count all uses of an element. Livescience's article on uses of zirconium does not even mention nuclear. This article from MIT lists 5 metals as rare including zirconium. Apparently zirconium is a byproduct of titanium mines and not directly mined. Prices are unstable due to shortages.

This example clearly demonstrates the futility of using GOOGLE to argue scientific points made in peer reviewed articles. The first hit that sems to fit your preconcieved notions is not necessarily accurate. Since Abbott is a peer reviewed source you need to provide peer reviewed data to argue with it.

It is a waste of time to exchange GOOGLE hits, neither of us is expert on amounts of rare metals. Provide appropriate references to your claims.

In any case, you are claiming nuclear can supply all world power. If we build out the 15 terrawatts of power needed, the known reserves of uranium would run out in only 5 years (according to Abbott 2011).

Is Nuclear Energy the Answer?

michael sweet at 08:18 AM on 11 December, 2019

John ONeill,

Thank you for the information on how hafnium is obtained.

Unfortunately, that was not what we were discussing. Abbott 2012 (also linked in the OP), states that there are many rare elements used in the construction of nuclear plants that do not exist in enough quantity to build a lot of nuclear plants. The lack of these materials means that nuclear can never produce more than a very small (<5%) fraction of world power. Hafnium is one of several materials mentioned by Abbott (others list additional materials).

Unfortunately, zirconium is also one of the materials that cannot be obtained in quantity. Obviously you cannot purify hafnium from zirconium if not enough zirconium exists. (Alternately it does not matter if you have enough hafnium if you do not have enough zirconium).

In about 2005, nuclear supporters claimed that renewable energy could not be used to power the world because there was not enough concrete and steel to build the wind turbines. Renewable advocates responded with a peer reviewed paper (Jacobson 2009) which showed all the materials needed to build a renewable system existed except for rare earth metals for the turbines. The turbines have now been designed so that they do not use rare earth metals.

Abbott challanged the nuclear industry with13 problems building out a large amount of nuclear that he felt cannot be solved, The nuclear world has responded with answers like yours. No data and hand-waving suggestions to produce required materials from mines that do not exist.

If you want to answer the question: "Does enough hafnium exist to build out (amount of nuclear you want to build)" you need first to find out how much hafnium is in each reactor. Then you need to find out world hafnium production and consumption. Then you can determine if there is enoug hafnium left over from other uses to build out the nuclear plants.

Then you can do the same for zirconium and beryllium. Since there is only enough uranium in known economic reserves to provide all power to the world for 5 years you should probably only build out a small amount of nuclear or you will run out of uranium.

Nuclear supporters' constant use of the amount of materials in the Earth's crust indicates to me that they do not want to seriously answer the question. There is a gigantic amount of nickle in the Earth's core, a virtually unlimited amunt of helium in the Sun and billions of tons of uranium in the ocean. The problem is that it is not possible to economically obtain any of these materials.

In the Earth's crust some materials have formed economic deposits and are economically available. Others have not concentrated and are not economic to mine in quantity. You must provide information on proven reserves of materials like hafnium, zirconium and uranium to support the claim that enough of these materials exists. So far the nuclear industry, and nuclear supporters on line, have made no attempt to answer Abbott's questions.

Good luck.

Market Forces and Coal

nigelj at 14:12 PM on 21 August, 2019

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_pricing_in_Australia#Effect_of_the_carbon_price

A carbon pricing scheme in Australia, commonly dubbed by its critics as a "carbon tax", was introduced by the Gillard Labor Government in 2011 as the Clean Energy Act 2011 which came into effect on 1 July 2012. As a result of being in place for such a short time, and because the then Opposition leader Tony Abbott indicated he intended to repeal "the carbon tax", regulated organisations responded in a rather tepid and informal manner..."

Despite this it did have some effect as I noted: "Because the Australian carbon tax does not apply to all fossil fuels usage, it only had an effect on some of the emitters of greenhouse gases. Among those emitters to which it applied, emissions were significantly lower after introduction of the tax. According to the Investor Group on Climate Change, emissions from companies subject to the tax went down 7% with the introduction of the tax, and the tax was "the major contributor" to this reduction."

Is Nuclear Energy the Answer?

barry17781 at 08:55 AM on 1 August, 2019

"For the average plant worldwide, this translates into a total land requirement per nuclear facility plus mining and storage of about 20.5 km2. The footprint on the ground (e.g., excluding the buffer zone only) is about 4.9–7.9 km2" M sweet

Moderator Response:
[PS] Standing back for a moment. Barry, I believe you are trying to dispute the validity of Abbott's objections. Abbott raises the land area issue (and especially the need for a particular type of land) using Jacobson's figure for area based on plant, buffer zone, mining and waste requirements. Abbott states a figure of as much as 20km2 per plant (ie a maximum of 20km2). Abbott is not disproved by showing some plants are smaller (especially if your examples fail to account for mining and waste area as well). Furthermore, as Michael Sweet has pointed out, the land area is a rather trivial issue in the context of Abbott. I would prefer to see more substantive issues addressed if there is to be a case made for nuclear energy. - moderator

Dear moderator, your comments are more apt to Mr sweet;s comments who clearly is diputing the actual areas of power stations, such as hinkley point

Is Nuclear Energy the Answer?

michael sweet at 10:02 AM on 14 July, 2019

Msmith:

I do not usually discuss safety so I did not have citations at hand. Reading some background information I find that the National Academy of Science BEIR VII report, the most recent of 7 NAS reports on radiation, very strongly supports the use of linear response no threshold. The US Nuclear Regulatory Commision also uses LRNT. Apparently every health organization in the world and every nuclear regulatory organization in the world use LRNT. Your claim that you think LRNT is bunk just proves that you do not care how many people the nuclear industry kills.

Apparently nuclear industry shills in the USA oppose the use of LRNT without any supporting data. The nuclear industry does not want to accept responsibility for the people they kill with their nuclear catastrophes.

Since the NAS report shows your claims on LRNT are false I have absolutely no confidence in your wild claims that unbuilt designs will be safer than current unsafe reactors. In any case, it is extremely unlikely they will be available before renewable energy has been built out for all energy. And they will be too expensive. Nuscale executives have publicly stated that they require a several hundred billion dollar contract from the government to build their factory. Some free market.

You have not addressed Abbotts claims that enough rare metals do not exist to build out a significant amount of nuclear. To start out there is not enough uranium, beryllium, hafnium, zirconium or vanadium.

The nuclear industry is responsible for the people they killed during the required evacuations from Chernobyl and Fukushima. No responsible person would leave people next to burning and exploding reactors. Your excuses only show you do not care how many people the nuclear industry kills.

I suggest again that you should change the subject to something that will support your argument better. From my position you have just proven that nuclear supporters do not care how many people they kill. There is an overwhelming scientific consensus for LRNT among health professionals who care how many people are killed.

Is Nuclear Energy the Answer?

MSMITH at 11:49 AM on 11 July, 2019

Michael Sweet

I am late to this conversation, as I just found it today. There is much I would like to respond to, but I'll start with your comment #90. Specifically the claim that "the waste must be stored for longer than civilization has existed."

I will not initially cite peer-reviewed articles. I will present facts, and if one of those facts is disputed, I will work to provide the support needed to establish the fact. For background, I have a Master's Degree in nuclear engineering.

The nuclear fission process produces something radioactive from something already radioactive. The splitting of U-235 after absorbing a neutron produces two different particles, each with it's own half-life. Most of these half-lives are measured in terms of seconds, minutes or hours. As a result, the radioactivity level drops rather quickly the first few days after fission stops, and then much more slowly.

So, a pertinent question is "how slowly?" Well, the answer is mostly the result of two isotopes that can be produced by fission (or the decay of another fission product with a shorter half-life.) These two are Sr-90 and Cs-137, both with a half-life of about 30 years. At the time they are discharged from the reactor, they are incredibly more radioactive than the Uranium they started as. But if you do the math, at the 1000 year point, they've dropped in intensity by about 10 factors of 10, or to 1 out of 10,000,000,000.

At that point, the radioactivity level of everything that remains is on the order of the natural uranium that started. WIll it be stored anyway? Yes, of course. But will it present a greater hazard to a person 1000 years from now than natural uranium left unmined?

No. If the source term is lower, the consequence of a leak, if one were to occur, can be no worse than leaving the natural uranium buried.

My quibble is with your use of the word "must." The waste "must" be stored until it is about the same radioactivity level as natural uranium. At that point, further storage is optional, at least from a risk perspective. We may establish a higher storage period, without technical merit, but we should recognize that a chosen period beyond about 1000 years lacks that merit.

And the Egyptians stored wheat in clay pots buried in pyramids for 1000 years. I think technology has advanced a tad since then.

One further comment, directly at the Abbott papers you cite in #90. The "limited available locations." Abbott was writing about the requirements for the locations of large light water reactors. Recently the NRC has reviewed a request for an Early Site Permit for Clinch River near Oak Ridge TN. They, after reviewing all of the technical data for a proposed Small Modular Reactor at the site, have concluded that the site is suitable for a SMR facility with a site-boundary sized Emergency Planning Zone. This one fact opens up the number of suitable locations by several orders of magnitude. I can easily meet Abbott's challenge to find 10 sites that would be suitable in just a few moments. I could find hundreds.

I am not claiming that Abbott was wrong. Simply that he did not have the precognition to apply the requirements of the future technology to the paper he was writing in 2012.

Is Nuclear Energy the Answer?

michael sweet at 22:48 PM on 6 July, 2019

Letchim,

The video you link would be deleted as a post at SkS because they make many unsupported claims that are transparently false. They dismiss the peer reviewed literature in favor of their unsupported personal opinions.

Schillenberger states at the end that nuclear waste is not a problem because no-one is killed by it. He does not mention the widespread problems of nuclear waste like the Hanford site in Washington state and dismisses the concern that the waste must be stored for longer than civilization has existed.

Hansen and Schillenberger suggest that new designs manufactured in factories will make nuclear "cheaper than coal". Big deal. They answer none of Abbotts questions. If their new designs work out as planned, a first for the nuclear industry, the manufactured units will not be available until 2040. That is too late to help.

Hansen damages his credibility with obviously false claims about nuclear.

Is Nuclear Energy the Answer?

richieb1234 at 23:58 PM on 26 June, 2019

Michael Sweet

It has been a pleasure to correspond with you. I think there are many things we agree on; most importantly that we all need to VOTE CLIMATE.

On the subject of nuclear energy, we will probably continue to disagree on some important issues. That's ok. My bottom lines are: new nuclear is far better than old nuclear; the problems raised by Abbott can all be addressed if nuclear is to be of use; solar and wind do not have the energy density to solve climate change by themselves; and we need to use every tool at our disposal. But I respect your viewpoint.

I am going back to the question that originally got me onto this site; namely the scientific basis for climate predictions.

Good luck to you. Best regards.

Is Nuclear Energy the Answer?

michael sweet at 22:31 PM on 26 June, 2019

Riecieb11234,

I recognize that you are an expert at nuclear safety. I do not like to debate safety because no-one ever changes their minds so it is a waste of time. Barry has started citing James Conca who is a lying nuclear shill. I will state my position.

I have seen the data you describe against the Linear-no-threshold model. While your position that LNT overestimates deaths can be strongly defended, I think that claiming that the radiation released at Fukushima willl cause no damage to anyone, as widely claimed by James Conca and the Breakthrough Institute, is transparently false. Lack of accuracy of LNT does not mean no damage is caused. The radiation will do some damage. The claim that no-one was or will be harmed is false and shows that the nuclear industry does not care how many people they kill.

The claim of 1000 deaths is more accurate than Conca's claim of zero.

I have seen reports recently (sorry no cite) that the combination of many small exposures to different materials, each too small to have a measurable effect, can have a large affect on health. This claim makes sense to me. Why add more radioactivity to the pile?

In 1975 I was a nuclear supporter and thought the plants were engineered to be safe. After the Three Mile Island disaster I began to question the safety culture of Nuclear plants. I realized the plants are extraordinarily complex and operate with a small safety margin. The Chernobyl disaster enforced those questions. We are talkiig world power, don't limit to the USA.

The nuclear industry claims they design to 1in 10,000 year events. The actual tsunami danger in Fukushima was:

"Three tsunami deposits have been identified within the Holocene sequence of the plain, all formed within the last 3,000 years, suggesting an 800 to 1,100 year recurrence interval for large tsunamigenic earthquakes. In 2001 it was reckoned that there was a high likelihood of a large tsunami hitting the Sendai plain as more than 1,100 years had then elapsed.[71] In 2007, the probability of an earthquake with a magnitude of Mw 8.1–8.3 was estimated as 99% within the following 30 years"

Where is the safety culture? This data was ignored to make more money.

When Conca says nuclear waste is no problem, no-one was killed at Fukushima and massive releases of radiation do not hurt anyone I think the nuclear industry executives are a pack of liars (that does not apply to safety professionals).

Sidds article says 90% of US nuclear plants are underdesigned for flooding by their own reckoning!! What would an independant study find!! And the NRC overrules safety experts (like you) and says do nothing. Tell me again why NuScale is so safe when the IRSN says they see no benefit.

Every atomic armed nation in the world has civilian power plants. More nuclear in the world will lead to more bombs. Iran is a perfect example.

The nuclear industry has a long, poor record on safety.

I always argue that nuclear is too expensive and takes too long to build to contribute to a solution to Global Warming. Abbott makes the case that there are many technical reasons why nuclear cannot be widely adopted. I would like to continue the discussion on those arguments.

Is Nuclear Energy the Answer?

richieb1234 at 20:47 PM on 23 June, 2019

Michael Sweet

"Ten years ago I had little hope for change. The situation has completely changed because wind and solar energy are now the cheapest energy on the planet."

I hope you are right.

"If you could comment on one more section of Abbott each week we eventually would have discussed them all."

Here are my views on Abott's issues VII "The Prolifieration Problem" and XI "Fast Breeder Reactors."

In the late 1970s at Los Alamos, a group of us did a comparative analysis of nuclear fuel cycles including the current light- water once-through; the plutonium breeder; the Uranium-Plutonium-Thorium hybrid; and the fusion-fission hybrid. We looked at technical feasibiity, economics, environmental factors, proliferation and societal issues such as public acceptance. Unfortunately the reports are not publically available and some of the analyses are out of date now. However, there are two conclusions that have held up.

Regarding proliferation, we concluded that reactors would not be the preferred route to proliferation in the coming decades. Although proliferating countries had used reactors combined with reprocessing in the previous decades, we felt that the coming availability of centrifuge enrichment technology would give proliferators an equally attractive option of enriching Uranium. That seems to be borne out by experience since then. In today's world, I believe proliferation is now a political problem, not a technical one. So I do not consider proliferation a convincing argument against nuclear power.

Regarding breeder cycles in general, we noted that they all require a sustained national commitment to assure the high degree of coordination required among breeder reactor, burner reactor and reprocessing plant construction, including regultory approval for all facilities. A high degree of national commitment is not the hallmark of democratic governments except in time of war. The Clinch River demonstration breeder reactor was cancelled in 1983. So I agree with Abbott that implementing a breeder cycle to capture the benefits of U-238 fissionable material is not a likely outcome.

Best regards

Is Nuclear Energy the Answer?

michael sweet at 11:15 AM on 23 June, 2019

Ritchieb1234,

Ten years ago I had little hope for change. The situation has completely changed because wind and solar energy are now the cheapest energy on the planet. Very few new coal plants are being started. Unfortunately, coal plants planned 5-10 years ago are being fiished.

Even with Trump trying to support coal, more coal plants have shut down in Trumps first two years than Obama's first 4 years. Gas is only cheaper because of fracking. I think fracking is a Ponzi scheme, they have never made a profit. Once fracking crashes, renewable will be by far the cheapest energy.

As you know, energy planing is generally long range. It takes 5-10 years to build baseload fossil and nuclear plants. That means it takes 5-10 years to stop the train and get renewable energy on board. Renewable has only been cheapest for 3 or 4 years. No-one anticipated the phenominal drop in wind and solar power.

Over 50% of all new electricity in the world in 2017 was renewable energy IEA report for 2018. 10 years ago that looked impossible. Plans like Jacobson 2018 and Connelly 2016 linked above show that it is possible to generate all power using renewables. It saves money compared to BAU!! More heat and industry is being converted to electricity. The IEA report linked describes large increases in bioenergy which Jacobson does not use at all (he thinks it is too polluting). I like the idea of electrofuels to store excess power long term and power industries like airplanes and ships.

Renewable energy also avoids much of the pollution we are exposed to every day. That is especially important in developing countries and is a great reason by itself to convert to renewables.

I think that if we go all in with renewable energy we can reduce the damage caused by fossil fuel use. The sooner we start the more damage we dodge. Unfortunately, the Republicans stand in the way. Every record hot day in summer or record flood more people are convinced we need to do something. Will it be enough by 2020??

I do not think nuclear will be able to help out. It is too costly and takes too long to build. Even if NuScale works out it will be 2030 before they are in limited production, and I doubt it will be as cheap as solar and wind. That is too late. I think Abbott is correct that enough materials to build the plants do not exist. If nuclear provides less than 5% of all power it is simply a distraction. (currently nuclear is about 2-3% of all power).

We should put all our money on the cheapest energy today: wind and solar PV. Using existing gas peaker plants 90% of electricity can be generated using wind and solar. Then we convert all cars, industry and heat to electric. Once we have 90% of the economy renewable we will have to figure out the last 10%. Perhaps some electrofuels.

Is Nuclear Energy the Answer?

barry17781 at 11:00 AM on 23 June, 2019

My considered comment

"as for hafnium in civilian reactors I stand by it that it is currently not used to any significant extent"

Barry 6:25 11 June 2019

Yet Mr sweets comment were

"Your primary objeciton to Abbott and here 2011 is your claim that hafnium is not used in civilian reactors.

michael sweet at 21:28 PM on 14 June 2019"

A compete distortion of my post which was to point out that halfnium was just one element that can be used as a control or scram rod and there were pleanty of other materials available and boron was cheap cheerful and abundant, and readily obtainable, and so there was no restraint on the availbilty of absorber materials, which seemd to go agaist the preconceptions that if it was mentioned in Abbott, peer review paper then it must be essential!

"The high cost and low availability of hafnium limit its use in civilian reactors, although it is used in some US Navy reactors."

Indeed we may well regard ourselves be in asituation, now in where Halfnium being limited simply by the military having the first pick and deeper pockets than the civilians

Is Nuclear Energy the Answer?

michael sweet at 22:52 PM on 22 June, 2019

Richied1234,

I look forward to your responses to Abbott's paper. I have grave doubts that NuScale can deliver on their claims. It will be interesting to see what the response is to Abbotts remaining issues.

As you can see from Barry and Dpeppigrass's posts on this thread, the normal level of discussion of nuclear on line is very low. In my mind it makes nuclear look bad when the only people who favor nuclear are so uninformed. If the nuclear industry wants to start over they need to address people like SkS who want to make informed decisions.

I have only read a handful of academic renewable all power plans (like Jacobson 2018, Connelly 2016 and Aghahosseai et al 2019 (Connelly and Aghahosseai use electrofuels). My impression is that all of those plans incorporate zero nuclear power. If all the long range plans by skilled engineers omit nuclear it is hard for me to see a path where significant nuclear is used. An industry that can lose $2 billion on the cancelled Wales plant Barry references and $1.5 billlion on a plant at Crystal River, Florida (near where I live) where they never even applied for a permit to build, should be able to find a few million to produce academic papers that show it is a real option for the future.

Many newspaper articles I see make nuclear builds look like a giant scam to rip off utility customers (for example Crystal River and large numbers of generals selling nuclear plans to Saudi Arabia).

I think the logarithmic relationship of CO2 concentration to temperature comes from Beers Law. Concentration = k[-log(transmission of light)]. There are some different formulations of Beers law, the key is log transmission is proportional to concentration. (Absorbance is directly proportional to concentration).

One important point to recognize is the concentration of CO2 at the surface is not as important as the concentration at the escape altitude of radiation (about 10 km up in the atmosphere). The escape altitude is very important.

Is Nuclear Energy the Answer?

richieb1234 at 22:11 PM on 22 June, 2019

Michael Sweet

"In your first post you said the current fleet of nuclear reactors has an accident rate of 1 per 10,000 reactor-years."

I believe there are two tiers of operating Gen III plants: those where the operating company has a strong safety culture, and the regulatory body is independent and competent; and those where these two criteria are not met. In round numbers, I think operating experience justifies a core damage frequency in the range of 1 in 10,000 reactor years for the former group and 1 in 1,000 reactor years for the latter group. The historical data includes full and partial core melt accidents, as well as precursor events; i.e. close calls. The TMI, Fukushima and Chernobyl accidents fall into the second category. So, I am in general agreement with Abbott. I believe that most nuclear countries today fall into my first catagory, but I cannot provide evidence to support that claim. I am pretty confident that the curent situation in the US is favorable, and there is good reason to believe the US Gen III plants can complete their life cycles wihout another core damage accident. [But I have been wrong before. :-)]

"If you built out 50,000 modular reactors with an accident rate of 1 in 100,000 reactor years, you would have a big accident every other year somewhere. That would be 100 times safer than Abbott claims. How safe are those modular reactor designs?"

My basis for believing that [at least some] small modular reactors are qualitatively safer than GEN III plants is outlined in previous posts; i.e., elimination of the most challenging accident sequences, much slower accident progression and heat removal by natural processes.

Yes, with a postulated 50,000 plants spread around the world, it is easy to imagine core damage accidents occurring on a more regular basis, although I would be reluctant to assign a frequency number. As I have said elsewhere, I believe the greatest threat to SMRs is deliberate sabotage. Great pains will have to be taken to assure security.

Best regards

Is Nuclear Energy the Answer?

richieb1234 at 12:12 PM on 22 June, 2019

Michael Sweet

"If you could comment on one more section of Abbott each week we eventually would have discussed them all."

I have enjoyed the dialogue with you, and I will be happy to take a stab a some of the other topics.

"Does Nuscale have more data that was not available to the French in 2015? Does the US NRC differ from the French analysis?"

I retired from NRC in 2007, so I am not in on the most recent thinking. However, I know that NuScale Power has submitted its application for Design Certification. The application covers every aspect of reactor safety and comprises multiple volumes of information. The contents of the application are specifically mandated in NRC documents RG 1.71 and RG 1.205. The NRC has nearly completed its technical review of the NuScale application in accordance with the agency's Standard Review Plan (SRP). The SRP is an exhaustive procedure for reviewing a design, comprising thousands of pages of guidance and covering nearly 300 distinct technical topics from reactor physics to materials effects to radiation protection. The safety review takes three and a half years and involves dozens of technical experts. I will see if I can get my hands on the NRC's preliminary safety evaluation report (SER).

I have worked with IRSN during my NRC tenure, and it is a very credible organization. But I cannot speak to which design they were discussing.

"The Union of Concerned Scientists was concerned that safety is not much better in modular reactors. The savings in manufacture and operations came mainly from leaving out current safety mechanisms"

Some of the savings in small modular designs are probably from eliminating safety systems that are designed to respond to specific accidents. But if those accidents are precluded by the design, it makes sense not to design for them. For example, the most challenging accident in a GEN III plant is the postulated rupture of one of the 30" diameter reactor coolant pipes, and the provisions to mitigate this accident are a major part of the safety design. The NuScale design has no reactor coolant pipes. I think it is safer to eliminate a challenging accident than to have a system to mitigate it.

Best regards

Is Nuclear Energy the Answer?

barry17781 at 10:30 AM on 22 June, 2019

Halfnium is neutron absorber, it says so in Abbott

Beryllium is a reflector likewise.

There are well over a dozen other neutron absorbers available boron is probably the commonst used.

There i hardly any shortage of boron and it can be readily extracted from the sea water

Is Nuclear Energy the Answer?

michael sweet at 10:23 AM on 22 June, 2019

Richieb1234,

In your first post you said the current fleet of nuclear reactors has an accident rate of 1 per 10,000 reactor-years. Abbott claims 11 accidents (before Fukushima) in 14,000 commercial reactor years so his rate is about ten times yours. How many reactor years do you use for your calculation? It must be much higher than Abbott's number. Just Fukushima, Chernobyl and Three Mile Island is 5 accidents.

If you built out 50,000 modular reactors with an accident rate of 1 in 100,000 reactor years, you would have a big accident every other year somewhere. That would be 100 times safer than Abbott claims. How safe are those modular reactor designs?

Is Nuclear Energy the Answer?

michael sweet at 09:48 AM on 22 June, 2019

Richieb1234,

Thank you for your informed comments. I think you can contribute a lot more to the conversation. We have great difficulty finding anyone who can comment positively on nuclear and make sense.

Your approach of posting on one topic at a time works very well. If you could comment on one more section of Abbott each week we eventually would have discussed them all.

On safety I have these two references. In 2015 the French Nuclear Regulatory Agency (IRSN) said:

"At the present stage of development, IRSN does not have all the necessary data to determine whether the systems under review [generation IV reactors] are likely to offer a significantly improved level of safety compared with Generation III reactors"

The Union of Concerned Scientists was concerned that safety is not much better in modular reactors. The savings in manufacture and operations came mainly from leaving out current safety mechanisms.

What do you think about these positions? Does Nuscale have more data that was not available to the French in 2015? Does the US NRC differ from the French analysis?

Is Nuclear Energy the Answer?

richieb1234 at 04:53 AM on 22 June, 2019

Michael Sweet

Thank you for bringing my attention to the Abbott 2011 paper. I have tried to comment on those ares where I have expertise and leave the rest for others to evaluate. Nevertheless, I can see that the paper outlines many important problems which must be addressed by anyone advocating a nuclear solution to climate change.

My original reason for seeking out Skeptical Science.com was to find out the basis for the logarithmic relationship between CO2 concentration and global temperature, but got diverted when I saw the commenting on nuclear energy. I want to get back to that original question. I will continue to follow the nuclear energy string, but will probably not be a prolific commenter.

Best regards

Is Nuclear Energy the Answer?

richieb1234 at 04:38 AM on 22 June, 2019

Michael Sweet

I continue to study Abbott 2011. Here are my commens on his topic VI: "The accident rate problem." In this section, Abbott uses historical accident data from the nuclear industry to conclude that there would be a full or partial core melt accident every month if nuclear plants were used to meet the entire worldwide energy demand. I think the rate would be closer to one accident a year, but that is still unacceptable. Thus, Gen III nuclear reactors should not be used to address the global warming issue.

Gen IV reactors are qualitatively more safe. They do not used electrically powered systems to respond to accidents, as Gen III plants do. They do not even use passively powered systems, as Gen III+ plants do. They respond to accidents with natural cooling. No systems are used. A well designed Gen IV plant requires little or no intervention.

For these reasons, the principal threat would be deliberate acts of sabotage. It is difficult to estimate the likelihood of these because they are inherently non-random. Security measures would/will be most important for these plants. This includes design measures as well as a security force.

Best regards

Is Nuclear Energy the Answer?

richieb1234 at 01:35 AM on 22 June, 2019

Michael Sweet

I am still studying Abbott 2011. Here are my views on topics III: "The Embrittlement Problem" and IV: "The Entropy Problem."

These two topics focus on materials issues with nuclear power, and conclude that these issues will limit average life of a plant to about 50 years.

The situation related to materials issues is not as alarming as it might seem. The embrittlement problem relates only to older plants. Changes to weld metallurgy have solved it for new plants. Other cracking mechanisms are managed via non destructive examination during outages. For metal-cooled reactors, there is no pressure in the vessel, and experience with sodium cooled reactors has been that degradation is not a problem. Gas cooled reactors are at high temperature and pressure, but the cooling medium is Helium, a non-reactive gas.

Nevertheless, Abbott is right, the lifetime of a facility will be measured in decades [although probably longer than 50 years]. And then it becomes a decommissioning problem. If each reactor is only 300 MWe, there would be 50,000 reactors worldwide. That would mean between 2 and 3 reactors going into decommissioning every day!! I don't see how that would be sustainable. Maybe someone can correct my math or my logic.

Best regards

Is Nuclear Energy the Answer?

richieb1234 at 23:06 PM on 21 June, 2019

Michael Sweet:

I have read Abbott 2011 several times since my last post. It is very well researched and well written. It will take me a while to get up to speed. I will add Jacobson to my reading list.

"I am surprised the NRC is not aware of Abbott. Don't they read the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists?"

The NRC is not concerned with the development of nuclear power, just the regulation of safety, security and emergency response. Under US law, the Department of Energy is concerned with nuclear development.

"Why should I believe that generation IV will succeed when generation III failed? The fact that nuclear is starting over with generation 4 suggests the technology is too complicated to work."

The new nuclear technologies are far simpler than the Gen III designs. They use far fewer systems, have eliminated the most challenging accident sources and use natural cooling processes. Here is an overview of the NuScale system: https://www.nuscalepower.com/technology/technology-overview. Time will tell whether these innovations lead to commercial success. That kind of question will be determined over time by free markets. There are dozens of companies in several countries who are betting their own money and effort that GEN IV has a bright future.

Getting back to Abbott 2011, here is my view of his first objection to nuclear power; namely that there are not enough sites in the world with large enough water supplies. The Palo Verde plant in the southwest US has 4,200 MWe of installed nuclear power on a desert site. It uses municipal wastewater piped in from nearby cities for process water and emergency cooling. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palo_Verde_Nuclear_Generating_Station. The Gen IV plants have low capacities (300 MWe or less) and can be installed in clusters that are sized to the available water sources. Where there's a will, there's a way.

This is great fun. I will continue to study the many excellent issues that Abbott has raised, and I will take a look at Jacobson.

Best regards.

Is Nuclear Energy the Answer?

michael sweet at 20:14 PM on 21 June, 2019

Richieb1234,

Abbott 2011 and Abbott 2012 are available at these links (also linked in the OP). The links are free. They are very similar. They are easy to read. I am surprised the NRC is not aware of Abbott. Don't they read the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists?

Jacobson 2009, cited 1200 times, rates 12 different technologies. Nuclear comes in about 9th for different reasons from Abbott. These issues need to be addresssed.

I remember nuclear proponents claiming that generation III plants would be built much faster because sections would be built in factories, similar to your description of Japan. The plants in Georgia and South Carolina were supposed to demonstrate this success. Obviously this did not happen.

Why should I believe that generation IV will succeed when generation III failed? The fact that nuclear is starting over with generation 4 suggests the technology is too complicated to work.

Some of the plans I have read for future energy systems use electrofuels. Connolly 2016, Smart Energy Europe uses methane (or methanol) as storage and fuel for some parts of the economy. Nuclear power would have to be as cheap as renewable energy and overcome the issues Abbott and Jacobson describe.

In a renewable energy system the most valuable energy is stored energy for windless nights. Most of the time there will be extra energy that needs to be stored for the slow nights. Baseload is therefor low value. Nuclear will be competing at the lowest level of the energy system most of the time. Do they realize they will be bottom feeding and not top feeding?

If nuclear can only generate 2-5% of all power (all power is about 5-6 times current electrical power) is it worth dealing with the problems of uranium supply, safety, waste and weapon expansion? We need look no further than current Iran and North Korea problems to see these future issues.

Is Nuclear Energy the Answer?

richieb1234 at 19:13 PM on 21 June, 2019

Michael Sweet:

Lots of great questions. I will have to do some research to get the answers. And I will have to read Abbott. Here are some partial replies:

"How will the factory be different from the manufacturing unit for the generation III reactors?"

Gen III plants are not built in factories; they are constructed on the site, which is an inefficient, costly and untimely process that involves armies of skilled workers crawling around a hugh site. Some countries, notably Japan, have perfected modular construction techniques to improve the costs and scheduling of construction. The Japanese assemble large sections of the plant in factories on site and lift them into place. I have seen one of these opertions at Shika, where they were using a 1,000 Ton crane! The new modular reactors will be completely assembled in factories and delivered to the site on trucks or barges. The site will require some construction to accommodate the reactor, and I believe the nuclear fuel will not be added until the reactor is installed (although theoretically the entire package could be assembled in the factory, given prior regulatory approval).

"Can you coment on how much it would cost to build a reactor factory?"

"I saw a comment by someone at NuScale that in order to buiild their factory they needed to have a very large number of reactors on order (hundreds of billions of dollars worth), presumably from the government."

I am not familiar with the costs of the factories. I will see what I can find out.

"Can you comment on Abbott's 13 reasons why nuclear is not practical? I am especially interested in Abbott's claim that rare materials like hafnium and beryllium do not exist in sufficient quantity to build out a sigificant quantity (enough to supply more than 5% of all power) of reactors."

"Why has the nuclear industry chosen not to reply to Abbott?"

I will get a copy of Abbott and see what I can find out. Regarding the industry's lack of response to Abbott, that is not surprising. The operating companies are focused on sustaining the viability of the current fleet of reactors in an unfavorable economic environment, and the reactor vendors are focused on getting new construction orders. Starting a dialogue on using nuclear power to address climate change would not be a priority for them right now.

"What fraction of all power (all power, not electricity only) do you think could be delivered by reactors by 2050?"

Answering this question will require some research, which I am happy to do. The concept that I have been reading about is the "carbon-negative" approach, which would use nuclear power plants in remote locations to make gaseous and liquid fuels by combining CO2 extracted from the air with Hydrogen from water. The concept is to keep our current infrastructure for using fuels, but to supply the fuels by recycling CO2. The plan also calls for seqestering CO2 in order to get some reduction in the current atmospheric concentrations. Proponents of this approach believe it is the only way to stop global warming, because they believe that all other plans involve continuing indefinitly to take fossil fuels from the earth. Carbon-negative technology is under development in the UK and in the US/Canada. [I realize that most Skeptical Science commenters are probably already familiar with carbon-negative]

Thanks for the positive feedback. I will be back when I have some answers.

Is Nuclear Energy the Answer?

michael sweet at 09:48 AM on 21 June, 2019

Richieb1234,

It is very interesting to have someone who has reactor experience commenting.

I saw a comment by someone at NuScale that in order to buiild their factory they needed to have a very large number of reactors on order (hundreds of billions of dollars worth), presumably from the government.

Can you coment on how much it would cost to build a reactor factory?

How will the factory be different from the manufacturing unit for the generation III reactors?

Can you comment on Abbott's 13 reasons why nuclear is not practical? I am especially interested in Abbott's claim that rare materials like hafnium and beryllium do not exist in sufficient quantity to build out a sigificant quantity (enough to supply more than 5% of all power) of reactors.

Why has the nuclear industry chosen not to reply to Abbott?

What fraction of all power (all power, not electricity only) do you think could be delivered by reactors by 2050?

Thanks for your help.

Is Nuclear Energy the Answer?

barry17781 at 11:30 AM on 20 June, 2019

barry at 10:27 AM on 14 June, 2019
Michael,
Abbott is not a definitive paper, it is an engieering "solution".
his 20.5 km^2 number as the requirement of a single reactor is false. It is based 70 % of the area being a buffer Zone, It also is based on only one reactor being placed in this site,
The paractce is much higher and a single reactor is the exception. Typically 6 reactors are nowerdays placed in a facility for infrastructure savings. He also does not take into account hat this buffer Zone is only applied in the USA not in the rest of the world.
Please could you be more circumspect when quoting Abbott
Work it out yourself
0 0
Moderator Response:
[PS] We are desparately wanting an definiitive paper. Abbott is best we have unless you can provide something else. You are also making statements without providing sources to back them. Any further posts without supporting publications will be deleted.
[JH] Argumentative statement struck.

Moderator could you please tell me where in this statment have I not been justified?

Is Nuclear Energy the Answer?

barry17781 at 11:27 AM on 20 June, 2019

his topic is about whether nuclear energy can be answer to global warming. Economic and technical aspects are welcome. Particularly welcome would be a peer-reviewed response to Abbott from the industry but apparently you are also unable to find one.

Ah but original source material is being found and we did find that Abbotts area is not traceable.

Is Nuclear Energy the Answer?

scaddenp at 08:07 AM on 20 June, 2019

in no way is this peer-reviewed, but here at least is one attempt to answer Abbott.

Is Nuclear Energy the Answer?

barry17781 at 07:06 AM on 20 June, 2019

It seems that ABBOT 1 and ABBOTT 2 are the topic and that economics is elsewere

"Abbott 2011 and Abbott 2012 doesn’t think so but perhaps there are better analyses? For discussions of economics, levelized cost estimates of various electricity technologies can be found here and here".

I also seem to have had a photo of Graveslines deleted, could anyone give reason

Moderator, could you be specific?

barry at 08:32 AM on 19 June, 2019

0 0
Moderator Response:
[PS] Over the line. Note comments policy on No inflammatory line. You have pushed this hard enough.

Is Nuclear Energy the Answer?

barry17781 at 06:15 AM on 20 June, 2019

Skeptical Science asks that you review the comments policy. Thank you.

"You are apparently arguing that renewables cannot generate enough power so we are stuck with nuclear. This is a completely false argment. Even if renewables could not generate enough energy that does not mean that nuclear can."

NO I AM NOT, I AM LIMITING MY DISCUSSION ENTIRELY ON THE ABOTT PAPERS

THE ABBOTT PAPERS ONLY MENTION RENEWABLE?SOLAR IN PASSING, SIMILARLy WITH ECONOMICS/COSTS THEY ARE ONLY IN PASSING.

If you stuck to the Abbott and did not spread about spurious arguments we could proceed.

NOW TO THE POINT did you see the Graveslines photo

1/ six reactors

2/ no buffer zone

Both of which those who recklessly quote Abbott completly ignore do not consider.

Is Nuclear Energy the Answer?

michael sweet at 11:11 AM on 19 June, 2019

Barry:

You posted "The industrial group Uniden said that the [France's] proposed 2015 wholesale price of €44/MWh would be €14 higher than Germany’s." my emphasis

That I must agree with. Higher prices for nuclear are not generally considered a positive trait. In the USA we prefer lower prices.

As of April 2018 there were 449 reactors operating in the world with a total power rating of 394 GW source. The same source lists all plants by country and location. There are 7 locations with 6 or more reactors operating. A total of 46 reactors. There are 46 locations where a single reactor is operating. You can hardly claim that 6 is normal. Both Hinkley and the cancelled Wales reactor stations only had 2 reactors. Your photo must be at Gravelines, the only location in France with 6 reactors.

It is my understanding that locations with only one reactor lose money even faster than locations with multiple reactors. The 46 locations with only one reactor are probably all on the chopping block.

Just for fun I worked out how much cooing water 6 1000 MW reactors need. (If this was your question about Abbott it is answered). The World Nuclear Organization says a 1600MWe nuclear plant in the UK uses 90 m3/sec. (In warmer locations more water is needed). To generate 6000 MWe you would need 340 m3 per second. The average flow of the Thames river is only about 97 m3/sec so you could not even cool one 1600 MWe reactor during the dry season from the Thames. France had to shut down at least 4 reactors last summer and France, Spain and Germany in 2003 , and Illinois and Michigan 2006, and France 2009, and Browns Ferry USA in 2011 because high water temperatures and drought meant enough cooling was not available. So much for "on demand power".

With six colocated plants only ocean front and a few very large lake locations are practical. Low lying areas like Florida, Louisiana, Bangladesh and the Nile delta are threatened by sea level rise and unsuitable. Please describe where you woud find sufficient locations for 4,000 plants in the USA that are not near a city, are on beach front and not threatened by sea level rise. The enormous thermal pollution would require that the plants were not too close together or the 9,000 GWth of heat from one location would prevent cooling at the nearby plants.

Renewable wind and solar are cheaper than new build gas and coal in 2/3 of the world today. Even with no subsidy or carbon tax. Joe Rohm does not even bother to mention nuclear because it is so expensive.

Is Nuclear Energy the Answer?

barry17781 at 07:49 AM on 19 June, 2019

PS] As indicated, I am cutting and pasting the numbers directly from Jacobson to save people looking it up and to give the complete picture about what Jacobson is stating. The units are ha yr/GWh. Ie the consumption of land per year for each GWh of electricity produced. Jacobson is also simply using numbers from other studies.

So Hinkley C is 3.2 GW (

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hinkley_Point_C_nuclear_power_station

a year is for production say 270 days at 24 hours = 6480 hours,

at 3.2 GW the station in one year produces 6480x3.2 = 20736 Gwh

so in one year you /Abbott and Jacobson are saying that at 0.08 ha we get 0.08 x 20736 =1658.9 ha

and for say 40 years of operation we get 40 x 1658.9 = 66 000 hectares

Is this your figure?

Is Nuclear Energy the Answer?

michael sweet at 20:20 PM on 17 June, 2019

Barry:

So nothing peer reviewed to support nuclear power. Your inability to find anything peer reviewed to support your claims tells me a lot.

My handle is Michael Sweet. It is disrespectful to use something different.

You have made approximately 13 posts on the subject of reactor station area. Your claims hinge on your interpretation of a single line of Abbott 2012. We differ in our reading of Abbott.

Frankly, I have never before seen anyone argue that nuclear power plants occupy too much land. Even Jacobson, who does not like nuclear, only counts land area as 3% of his rating system. Examining figure 6 of Jacobson 2009

jacobson graph

I see that area is only an issue for biogenic ethanol. Nuclear area is small. If this is the most important issue you can find I think we can all reach a conclusion.

You have made your point, I have made mine. Everyone reading will be able to judge our arguments. It is long past time to move on to new issues.

Is Nuclear Energy the Answer?

barry17781 at 09:08 AM on 17 June, 2019

PS] Sweet is pointing out that Abbott says "as much as" which establishes a maximum in my understanding of English. Examples of smaller sites do not refute Abbott.
[DB] Please limit image width,

well actually no in here Sweet claims that reactors cannot occupy a small area and ie 20 km^2

now as we can see hinkley is 1/20 th of that abbott and sweet are misleading.

work you lecture us what we should think. Abbott is correct, no citation needed.
"Abbott correctly describes the footprint of a nuclear plant to counter incorrect industry propaganda that nuclear plants only occupy a small area." sweet

anything up to 20 km^2 well that could be anything even a small area.

Very good, how can any size up to 20 km^2

Is Nuclear Energy the Answer?

barry17781 at 08:59 AM on 17 June, 2019

PS] Sweet is pointing out that Abbott says "as much as" which establishes a maximum in my understanding of English. Examples of smaller sites do not refute Abbott.

let us see what Jacobson says "for the average plant world wide this translates to a total land requirement oper nuclear facility plus mining and storage of about 20.5 km^2" Clearly those people who approved Hinkley point did not hear of this and built one of 2 km^2 and used a planning map, which is actually very much peer reviewed.

Is Nuclear Energy the Answer?

barry17781 at 06:21 AM on 17 June, 2019

Sweet

You say that a

"From Abbott 2012:
"each nuclear power plant draws upon a total land area of as much as 20.5 square kilometers." My emphasis
Abbott is correct."

No it is utter rubbish

Wylfa Newydd footprint is under4 km^2 for 2 reactors!

references have been posted earlier MODERATOR Mr sweet is now denying actual source material,.

barry at 04:35 AM on 16 June, 2019

barry at 09:03 AM on 16 June, 2019

Go and look at the UK documents the footprint of Wylfa newydd is less than 2 km^2.

Now Sweet, this is not a paper it is actual original source material.

you clearly have not bothered to open it

Wylfa newydd is bounded by the grid squares SH 3594, SH 3593, SH3493 and SH3693, which makes the footprint less than 4 km^2

have a look at this one

https://www.dailypost.co.uk/news/plans-clear-300-acre-site-14019871

N power footprint

Is Nuclear Energy the Answer?

michael sweet at 02:26 AM on 17 June, 2019

Barry:

From Abbott 2012:

"each nuclear power plant draws upon a total land area of as much as 20.5 square kilometers." My emphasis

Abbott is correct.

Your link to Jacobson 2009 supports Abbott's claim:

"In the case of nuclear power, a buffer zone around each plant is needed for safety. In the US, nuclear power plant areas are divided into an owner-controlled buffer region, an area restricted to some plant employees and monitored visitors, and a vital area with further restrictions. The owner-controlled buffer regions are
generally left as open space to minimize security risks. The land required for nuclear power also includes that for uranium mining and disposal of nuclear waste. Estimates of the lands required for uranium mining and nuclear facility with a buffer zone are 0.06 ha yr GWh−1 and 0.26 ha yr GWh−1, respectively, and that for
waste for a single sample facility is about 0.08 km. For the average plant worldwide, this translates into a total land requirement per nuclear facility plus mining and storage of about 20.5 km2. The footprint on the ground (e.g., excluding the buffer zone only) is about 4.9–7.9 km2"

I am astonished that your only peer reviewed citation contradicts your claims. Your claim that the calculation is hidden in the references directly contradicts the scientific method which Abbott follows. You need to understand the scientific method before you make comments.

Even if there was a problem with Abbott's area claim, you cannot expect to be able to say you do not like Abbott's entire paper and you want to substitute your personal opinion, without any data, for all the facts.

You have cited no papers that support the use of Nuclear power in the future. I have cited at least 6 papers that support phasing out nuclear in the future.

If you cannot find peer reviewed papers in the future I will stop treating your posts as serious. To date you have not presented any argument beyond you think your opinion should be accepted by everyone, apparently because you are smarter than everyone else on the planet. I am surprised you have not been warned by the moderator since you have provided no new information to the discussion.

I am astonished that you continue to refer to the cancelled nuclear plant in Wales. It demonstrates prefectly why nuclear is being abandoned: nuclear is not economic.

It is very difficult to engage with nuclear supporters because they have such a poor knowledge of the background, they insist that they know everything and they do not accept peer reviewed data. They insist that youtube videos, their personal opinion and ignorant blog posts are better than peer reviewed papers.

The opening posts on this thread are a perfect example of this type of behaviour. Nuclear supporters have used their personal opinion to argue against Abbott 2012 and have provided not a single reference to anything beyond industry propaganda to support nuclear.

Is Nuclear Energy the Answer?

barry17781 at 23:55 PM on 16 June, 2019

sweet

let us look at your assumption, that a published piece of literature is correct.

Abbott is claiming his paper applies to the world

I have already provided data that his power station footprint of 20.5 km^2 is incorrect and that a figure less than a tenth of this is acceptable in Western democracies

ie Wylfa newydd has an exclusion zone of less than 4 km^2 with currnt plans for 2 reactors making the footprint less than 2km^2.

From this it can be seen that your initial premise that a piece of literature is correct is has got misleading.

The paper in my opinion has obscured how the numbers were obtained, in burying it amoungst the references.

You can ask yourself the question did Abbott know about this discrepany . If he did why did he not correct it the second time round? was he never told? Did he not look up the footprint of other power stations? It is very easy just go to google maps. Or if you want grid lines go onto Bing maps as they show grid lines.

It is in my opinion difficult to envisage how this number of 20km^2 has got any creedence, yot you have used it in several argunents against nuclear power. To anyone who is an expert to use this number for sites outside the US to me is astonishing, especially sonce in the US multple occupancy is possible.

One cannot take a paper even peer reviewed at face value.

this was summed up by arguably the greatest American scientist Feyman who never took anything on trust but checked it out for himself.

As a further aside Enrico Fermi in the 1930s wrote a paper on the origin of the Doppler shift. His formula agreed with Doppler equation and so it was taken as read. Nevertherless in the spectroscopic community in the 1970s it was apparent that the formula given by Fermi was an approximation. the correct formula was only publish by someone from Stratchclyde only some ten years ago.

The change is subtule and does not apply to macroscopic emittors, but for particles of atomic mass measurable differnces from the Fermi equation can be observed.

Th lesson in this is that even the Great sometimes let errors go through.;

And as for me providing you with the Fermi paper and the Strathclyde paper, life's too short to pander to someone who is willing to take on trust whatever that is written and then draw completly the wrong conclusions from it.

One can therefore conclude that reliance on a paper already shown to erroneous cannot be assumed to be correct in any other parts. that is not to say that there are other errors

Is Nuclear Energy the Answer?

michael sweet at 20:17 PM on 16 June, 2019

Barry,

You are not familiar with scientific discussion. In a scientific discussion I say "this paper supports my position". Then you say "this paper supports my position". Then I provide more papers to support my position and show why it is more accurate. You provide papers to support your position. Others read the papers and decide who they think has the best argument.

In this discussion I have provided a paper that supports my position, Abbott 2012. You say you do not like that paper and we should all agree with you. You have provided no reason why we should all agree with you.

Abbott was published in the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists by invitation. You must provide data to contradict Abbott and not just loudly state your unsupported opinion. The argument you and DPeppigrass make that you do not like Abbott without providing support for an alternative is a waste of everyones time. Abbott 2011 was published 8 years ago. You cannot even find an industry white paper that addresses his claims. The absence of a rebuttal indicates that the Nuclear industry agrees with Abbotts assessment.

It does not matter that you do not like Abbotts claims about hafnium. Abbott claimed that rare metals used in nuclear plants do not exist in enough supply to build out nuclear plants. You have not shown that enough beryllium, vanadium, zirconium or uranium exist to build out the plants you support.

You originally claimed "halfnium as a control (which is limited to military reactors) civilian reactors use boron and some gadolinium which are far more abundant than halnium". I have provided two examples of hafnium use in civilian reactors so you have shifted the goalposts. We do not know how much hafnium is used in civilian reactors because you have provided no references to show its use is limited.

If you wish to argue that enough enough metals exist for reactors you must provide a peer reviewed report that details all the metals used in nuclear plants and shows they exist. That was done for renewables by Jacobson 2011 after nuclear supporters complained that renewables used too much steel in their construction. We know all materials exist for renewables. Provide a report that all materials exist for nuclear.

You are also confused about citations. Scientific papers are written for peope who have done their homework and understand the subject that is being discussed. Material that is accepted by everyone that is informed is not required to be cited. For example, Abbott is not required to prove the Earth is round or that all material is made of atoms.

You and DPeppigrass are asking Abbott to cite the obvious. Everyone informed knows that it is unsafe to build reactors in Tokyo harbor, that it is unsafe to build reactors on the San Andreas fault in California and that reactors require massive amounts of water for cooling (especially if you build 6 in one location). It is not necessary to cite a reference. If you really want to claim that you think one of these obvious factsneeds support you can ask for references (your complaint above does not specify which of these obvious facts you do not know). If others agree with you it might help your argument. My position is that eveyone who has done their homework knows these facts.

According to Wikipedia, the village of Cemaes in Wales has a population of 1,357. Where I live that is considered unpopulated and suitable for a nuclear reactor. I note that they only planned to build 2 reactors and not the 6 you claim is normal. In any case, the project has been cancelled and the $2 billion they spent was wasted. The fact that the project has been cancelled shows that nuclear is on the way out and not a suitable source of power for the future. The money should have been used to increase the size of their wind farm. If they had spent the money on wind it would be generating power now.

Is Nuclear Energy the Answer?

barry17781 at 04:35 AM on 16 June, 2019

Jut thought that I would include some real references,

Here we have the plans for a 2 reactor power station and the area can be scales from the map, or by comparisom with the British OS maps (sheet 114)

https://www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/ about 4 km^2 now Abbotts figure was 20 km^2 per reactor. This real case is at a tenth of that.

If you notice the village Cemaes goes right up to the boundrary

LINK

Is Nuclear Energy the Answer?

barry17781 at 01:44 AM on 16 June, 2019

Moderator,

You are staing that unsuported statements will be struck.

I have not disputed Abbotts numbers, only their interpretation,

if you wish to stick with those so be it

1/ Abbott has used a buffer zone in his calculation and a single occupancy to calculate his area. All I have pointed out is that nuclear sites nowerdays have multiple occupancy Other peole have used Abbotts density to erroneous conclusions. Indeed M sweet states multiple occupancy is used ' but sticks with Abbotts density figures Ah the reference! other commentators are excempt

" no citation needed." - M Sweet

Neverthless here is the one that Abbott cites as his source, stating clearly that most of the area taken by abbott is due to a buffer zone and that the area requirement can be reduced to a fraction using multiple occupancy which is the norm. There is no use citing US because on multiple occupancy as they have only built one facilty (NEF in New Mexico) since the 3 mile island incedent. (

LINK

(ref 6 of Abbott)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Enrichment_Facility

2/ Abbott quotes materials that are used in nuclear reactors . I have pointed out that a number of these are not essential materials . Abbotts reply to me was that they were examples of materials used in a reactor.

M Sweet has helpfully provided a note on this matter in which control rods can be made ith halfnium as a very minor constiuent and completly without halfnium. Your requst to provide a reference for somthing not to used is rather difficlt. It is like I cannot prove the absence of Big Fot nor the Loch Ness monster. What I can state is that Halfnium is used as a neutron absorber, which Boron is the normal civilian material for this use and as MS reference shows civilian control rods contain boron. As I stated before

"as for hafnium in civilian reactors I stand by it that it is currently not used to any significant extent" M Sweet has atated that some halfnium is used but in no way does this assetrion that I an wrong hold water.

"Apparently Westinghouse did not get the memo. Westinghouse was one of the largest manufactures of nuclear plants in the world and all of their control rods contain Hafnium." no Michael they can also make them without halfnium so halfniun is not essential control rods are perfectly functional without halnium

LINK

"Westinghouse began developing BWR control rods in the mid-1960s. The first control rod, CR 70, was in operation in a BWR plant in 1970. After 45 years, many original rods are still in operation. A vast majority of hafnium-tipped rods (CR 82), the first to be used in the United States in 1983, are still in operation. The CR 82M-1 design was introduced in 1995. The main feature of the CR 82M-1 rod is the change of structural material to 316L stainless steel with high resistance to SCC and a very low-cobalt content. Westinghouse has delivered more than 6,700 BWR control rods worldwide. Out of these, more than 2,300 are the CR 82M-1 design. Westinghouse BWR control rods are licensed in the United

Mr Sweet you citation does not support your assertion that "Westinghouse was one of the largest manufactures of nuclear plants in the world and all of their control rods contain Hafnium." only about a third of them.

Moderator you critcise people for not providing references, what do you do when these references are mis quoted?

It is only an exmple of Gish Gallop

Is Nuclear Energy the Answer?

michael sweet at 02:10 AM on 15 June, 2019

DPeppigrass,

It looks like your post will not be deleted by the moderator even though it has no citations to peer reviewed studies to support your wild claims. You have two posts. I will address the second one first. They are long posts with many factual errors so my response is necessarily long.

In your second post you start with several links to long youtube videos of nuclear industry propaganda. I do not have time to waste watching them. Please cite peer reviewed written sources so they can be checked.

You then have a long screed on the topic of radiation safety. I note that I have extensive training and experience using radioactivity while you have claimed no experience or training beyond your reading on the internet. In general, I do not debate radiation safety with nuclear supporters because they do not care about reactor safety or how many people they kill. It is thus a waste of my time to discuss safety.

However, for other readers I have this reference from the French Nuclear Regulatory Commission (the IRSN) .

“At the present stage of development, IRSN does not have all the necessary data to determine whether the systems under review [generation IV reactors] are likely to offer a significantly improved level of safety compared with Generation III reactors”.

The claims you parrot about “safe” generation IV reactors are simply propaganda from the nuclear industry.

According to the Union of Concerned Scientists, the Nuclear Industry claims their new designs are safer so that they can reduce safety factors to make more money. There is no factual basis for the claim the reactors are really safer. This is generation IV of nuclear reactors because the first 3 generations were not safe as advertised and were too expensive.

In your first post you start out calling “citation needed” for Abbotts claim that “nuclear reactors must be placed "away from dense population zones, natural disaster zones, and near to a massive body of coolant water" It takes a lot of brass to call for a peer reviewed paper to provide citations when your post contains none. Let us examine these issues.

It is illegal to locate nuclear reactors in cities. In light of the safety issues cited above it is unlikely that rule will change in the foreseeable future. Abbott is correct, no citation needed.

You are suggesting that it is OK to locate nuclear reactors on top of earthquake faults, in flood zones and in locations that are likely to be inundated by sea level rise. I do not think anyone will agree with you. Your claim strongly supports my claim above that nuclear supporters do not care about the safety of the reactors they build. Abbott is correct, no citation needed.

You claim “ the third one in particular does not really apply to Molten Salt Reactors which can rely on air cooling or on relatively modest amounts of cooling water.”

Reading your link and your discussion it appears that you have confused the amount of water needed in an emergency to shut down the reactor and the amount of water that is needed every day for normal operation. The nuclear designers claim without evidence that their designs can do an emergency shutdown with little water or air cooling. Your calculations may indicate how much water that is. According to you, for normal operations the reactors must remove approximately 1.1 GWth at all times. That can only be done with massive amounts of water. Air cooling is too expensive and inefficient for normal use. Your claim that massive bodies of water are not needed is false. This error demonstrates that you have no idea how a nuclear plant works. In spite of the fact you do not know how the plants work you lecture us what we should think. Abbott is correct, no citation needed.

Abbott correctly describes the footprint of a nuclear plant to counter incorrect industry propaganda that nuclear plants only occupy a small area.

You say “I'd love to hear anyone come up with a theory of how an MSR could produce a hazardous radioactive gas cloud (in all seriousness, e.g. I'm waiting for a chemist to speak up about what would happen if a supersonic jumbo jet mysteriously aims itself directly at the below-grade reactor, and then let's say it had a water-based cooling system that now pours uncontrollably onto the exposed salt.”

Fortunately, I am a professional chemist. In the scenario you describe the water coming in contact with the extremely hot salt would instantly cause a steam explosion that would destroy the facility. In the explosion a lot of hydrogen gas would be generated from the highly reducing salt solution. This would cause a hydrogen explosion. Massive amounts of fallout would be released into the environment. Since the industry does not want to build an expensive containment building the explosion would be uncontained. This supports my claim of lack of care about safety.

Abbott describes how many reactors would need to be built to illustrate the size of the problem. Since only a handful of reactors are currently built each year the rate of building would have to increase by a factor of about 100.

You say “the usual debate over nuclear power is not whether we should build 15,000,000 MW of nuclear capacity, but whether we should build any whatsoever”. Abbott discusses building only 1500 reactors at the end of his paper.

If less than 1500 reactors were built than almost all power would have to come from wind and solar. In a renewable world the most valuable energy is peak power on windless nights. Baseload is not valuable at all. It would be much more cost effective to build out more renewable or storage. We would not need to worry about radiation safety, nuclear waste or weapons proliferation.

You say “Um, you mean heat? Why wouldn't you just call it heat?” No, Abbott means entropy. You obviously did not take college chemistry or physics. Heat and energy are similar. Entropy is complicated but for this discussion it is similar to randomness. As heat increases the drive to increase randomness increases. This causes materials to corrode, crack and fail much faster. The problem is especially bad for MSR’s because the salt is also especially corrosive. Alloys that can withstand the heat and corrosion of MSR”s, for example in the valves that control the salt solution, have not been found. They may not exist. The reactors you favor cannot be built until after the alloys for the valves are discovered. This is another example of something you are lecturing us about that you do not understand at all.

You say” My God, is that a citation? Great, now I have to go look at it to see if it has merit. I need to go to sleep momentarily.” Abbott provides citations for all his claims. If I were moderator I would warn or ban you for making game of citations. Where did you get your PhD in reactor design that you are qualified to determine if the citation has merit??? Since you have proven that you do not understand how reactors work, how will you determine if the citation has merit?

If an airplane crashes it does not cause hundreds of thousands of people to be removed from their homes and businesses. In any case, for only two faults the Boeing 300 airliner was grounded until they fix the problem. If that standard was applied to reactors all the reactors in the world would be shut.

You say “anyone who wants to make nuclear reactors cheaper must necessarily also make them less complex; good Gen IV designs are simpler than Gen III.” For myself, I would prefer that reactors were made safer and not cheaper. If your priority is profits for the nuclear industry that is your choice.

Nuclear is uneconomic. The total costs for a new wind or solar plant including the mortgage is less than the costs of operation and maintenance without a mortgage of a nuclear plant. Industry claims of greater inherent safety are not supported by data. You rely entirely on industry propaganda to support your argument.

Is Nuclear Energy the Answer?

michael sweet at 21:28 PM on 14 June, 2019

Barry:

Your primary objeciton to Abbott and here 2011 is your claim that hafnium is not used in civilian reactors.

Apparently Westinghouse did not get the memo. Westinghouse was one of the largest manufactures of nuclear plants in the world and all of their control rods contain Hafnium.

This is conclusive proof that your claim hafium is not used in civiian reactors is false. Since that was your primary complaint about Abbott you have no ground for any complaint.

That fact that Abbott 2012 is so similar to Abbott 2011 indicates that the editors of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists invited Abbott's paper because they felt it was important. Your complaints about Abbott are not supported.

Reviewing your previous posts I see that you have provided no citations at all to support your claims, not even industry propaganda. Apparently you want to throw away the published literature and argue based on what you think instead.

Since I have shown that you are not a reliable source of information about reactors that seems to me to be a bad idea. In addition, it is in contradiction to the comments policy here.

You must provide links to confirmed data to support your wild cliams.

Is Nuclear Energy the Answer?

DPiepgrass at 17:07 PM on 14 June, 2019

Michael sweet, Abbott 2011 is an opinion piece, not a study, and while Abbott is clearly intelligent, so is climate science denier Richard Lindzen, who has "published more than 200 scientific papers and books".

Nuclear issues are clearly not Abbott's main academic focus. He has made claims that are obviously unreasonable, and when such claims are not backed by citations, I see no reason to give them as much weight as the information I've seen in technical presentations by, say, Jesse Jenkins, expert in energy systems, or Dr. Brian Sheron, former Director of the Office of Nuclear Regulatory Research, or MSR engineers such as Kirk Sorensen or Ian Scott, or even this discussion of how radioactivity decreases over time in HLW. While fair and reliable sources are hard to find, I've been around the block enough times to know roughly what's what.

Anyway, I'll certainly share what I've been able to find from the scientific literature on nuclear issues. Chiefly:

On Radiation Risk

The main disease caused by radiation is non-CLL leukemia (in some cases there are other risks, e.g. radioactive iodine can cause thyroid cancer.) Here is a "meta-analysis of leukemia risk from protracted exposure to low-dose gamma radiation". It concluded, based on 23 other studies, that the excess relative risk (ERR) of non-CLL leukemia from 100 mGy of radiation is roughly 19% (it is unclear to me if 100 mGy is different from 100 mSv). Based on a typical non-CLL leukemia rate of 10 cases per 100,000 people per year, ERR=0.19 would increase this by roughly 1.9 cases per year (1 in 53,000 people). The risk varies as a function of time since exposure, but this particular study seemed to completely ignore the issue. If one assumes ERR=0.19 every year for 25 years after exposure, the chance of cancer from exposure to 100 mGy would be about 0.05%. "25 years" is a guess on my part, so if you can find any study that quantifies the risk more clearly as a "1-in-X chance" or as a loss of DALYs, I'd love to see it! For reference, the natural environment gives an average radiation dose around 2.4 mSv per year (Hendry et al 2009 citing UNSCEAR), though I've heard urban environments tend to block some of this. The Canadian NSC limit for radiation workers is 100 mSv over 5 years.

Waddington et al 2017 concluded that "relocation was unjustified for the 160,000 people relocated after Fukushima," since the radiation dose most residents would have received (after returning from a brief evacuation period) was quite small and the loss of life expectancy was 3 months. The paper notes that

No radiation deaths occurred during or following the accident, however there were a number of deaths directly attributed to the relocation and subsequent relocation of the Fukushima population. Hasegawa et al. (2015) summarise that “After the accident, mortality among relocated elderly people needing nursing care increased by about three times in the first 3 months after relocation and remained about 1·5 times higher than before the accident.”

It also says "Relocation was unjustified for 75% of the 335,000 people relocated after Chernobyl."

It is considered unlikely that cases of thyroid cancer in children have increased around Fukushima due to radiation (Suzuki 2016) as most I-131 disappears within weeks of an accident.

See also the EPA's Q&A for Radiological and Nuclear Emergencies.

Various sources mention that uncertainties remain regarding the risk of low doses of radiation. UNSCLEAR recommends, for example, that

Increases in the incidence of health effects cannot be attributed reliably to chronic exposure to radiation at levels that are typical of the global average background levels of radiation.
The Scientific Committee does not recommend multiplying very low doses by large numbers of individuals to estimate numbers of radiation-induced health effects within a population exposed to incremental doses at levels equivalent to or lower than natural background levels.
Increases in the incidence of hereditary effects among the human population cannot be attributed to radiation exposure.

I would submit that the reason for this uncertainty, despite much study, is that the effects are just too small to measure precisely.

Is Nuclear Energy the Answer?

barry17781 at 10:27 AM on 14 June, 2019

Michael,

Abbott is not a definitive paper, it is an engieering "solution".

his 20.5 km^2 number as the requirement of a single reactor is false. It is based 70 % of the area being a buffer Zone, It also is based on only one reactor being placed in this site,

The paractce is much higher and a single reactor is the exception. Typically 6 reactors are nowerdays placed in a facility for infrastructure savings. He also does not take into account hat this buffer Zone is only applied in the USA not in the rest of the world.

Please could you be more circumspect when quoting Abbott

Work it out yourself

Is Nuclear Energy the Answer?

michael sweet at 21:14 PM on 13 June, 2019

DPiepgrass,

you summarize the entire pronuclear argument when you say:

"Granted I'm not a nuclear expert and I have only found numbers like these on the web and in YouTube presentations; if someone can find a scientific paper that looks at nuclear waste and/or other nuclear issues"

We have a scientific paper that addresses nuclear issues. It is Abbott 2011 and Abbott 2012. Abbott 2011 is more readable for me while Abbott 2012 is in the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists. Your reply of " I would think", " I thought I heard" and "My God, is that a citation? Great, now I have to go look at it" describe everything I have heard from nuclear supporters.

It is up to you to provide citations to peer reviewed papers to support your claims. Saying that you think the paper is incorrect does not mean anything.

Referring to wild claims you think you read somewhere on the internet does not compare to a peer reviewed paper written by an Engineer who has over 16,900 citations and an h index of 61.

Undemonstrated wild claims by nuclear designers are also not an appropriate response to a paper.

Perhaps this post should be left as an example of the type of post that is worthless.

Is Nuclear Energy the Answer?

DPiepgrass at 17:00 PM on 13 June, 2019

The mentioned paper Abbott 2011 says nuclear reactors must be placed "away from dense population zones, natural disaster zones, and near to a massive body of coolant water" - I call "citation needed" on all three of those claims, but the third one in particular does not really apply to Molten Salt Reactors which can rely on air cooling or on relatively modest amounts of cooling water. I would think high-temperature reactors, in general, have modest water requirements.

To be more specific, I thought I heard from one source that an MSR produces 1% of its output after shutdown, but I know I heard a guy from the NRC say that a LWR produces 7% of its output right after shutdown. Given a 2 GW-th MSR plant (about 900 MW-e) I calculate that in the worst case - at 7% output and with secondary coolant water that mysteriously starts out already being at the boiling point - it would boil 62 kg of water per second / or 223 tons per hour. But the radioactivity would drop pretty quickly so that the rate of water loss should be much lower within a few hours, and I assume cooling towers can be designed to recapture much of the water vapor. For comparison an Olympic swimming pool's capacity is 2,500,000 L or 2500 tons.

Taking into account not just the footprint area of a nuclear power station itself, but also its exclusion zone, associated enrichment plant, ore processing, and supporting infrastructure, work at Stanford University, Stanford, CA [6] has shown that each nuclear power plant surprisingly requires an extended land footprint area of as much as 20.5 km2

Its exclusion zone, meaning the evacuation area in case of a disaster? First, it is unreasonably pessimistic to say no one should live near a nuclear reactor - sign me up! Every nuclear disaster in history has been an old Generation II plant (AFAIK). Modern reactors are hella safe, that's half the reason they cost so much more than the old ones. Second, you know how it's unreasonable to count wind farms as taking up a huge land area because in reality there can be farms underneath them? The same applies to nuclear. Third, I'd love to hear anyone come up with a theory of how an MSR could produce a hazardous radioactive gas cloud (in all seriousness, e.g. I'm waiting for a chemist to speak up about what would happen if a supersonic jumbo jet mysteriously aims itself direcly at the below-grade reactor, and then let's say it had a water-based cooling system that now pours uncontrollably onto the exposed salt. Given a molten salt filled with dozens of solutes, do some solutes enter the atmosphere when water is added?)

Thus, if nuclear stations need replacement every 50 years on average, then in the steady state for 15 TW, one nuclear power station needs to be built and another decommissioned somewhere in the world every day. This is questionable, given that nuclear stations are complex as evidenced by the fact they take on the order of 6–12 years to build, and then around 20–50 years to decommission.

This is an emotional argument, not a scientific one. It's like saying we have a worldwide epidemic of flesh-eating disease, given that 144 human beings die from it every single day. Almost anything looks like a lot when scaled up to the entire population of planet Earth. Anyway, reactors won't take 6-12 years to build if they are built at scale, and the usual debate over nuclear power is not whether we should build 15,000,000 MW of nuclear capacity, but whether we should build any whatsoever.

In a nuclear power station, entropy is an unavoidable byproduct of the generation of large amounts of energy

Um, you mean heat? Why wouldn't you just call it heat?

Maintaining order while subjected to a high entropy condition is a challenging situation, and this leads to a tradeoff between reliability and efficiency. In the same way that any electrical device or machine heats up and eventually fails, the same is inexorably true for a nuclear station.

Um, humans have built many machines that work at their designed operating temperature for many years without failing, including reactors.

Together with embrittlement, the metal structure is also subject to corrosion, oxidation, thermal creep, irradiation creep, phase instability, volumetric swelling, void swelling, grain boundary sliding, intergranular degradation, fracture, cavitation, and radiation-induced segregation (RIS) [7]. It is all these aging factors acting together that unavoidably lead to plant shutdown after 50–60 years of operation.

What businessman won't build something because the profits will stop 50-60 years after construction?

The situation in proposed Generation IV reactors is worsened where the vessel is 1) exposed to higher temperatures, 2) higher neutron doses, and 3) a greater corrosive environment [7]. There are thus significant challenges to materials selection...

My God, is that a citation? Great, now I have to go look at it to see if it has merit. I need to go to sleep momentarily... but I have a feeling that experts in GenIV tech are better qualified to comment than this guy.

After 60 years of nuclear technology, there is still no universally agreed mode of disposal [9] and nuclear waste still raises heated controversy.

Among laymen, sure. But what do nuclear experts say?

...there is not only the problem of spent fuel, but the problem of where to put all the decommissioned reactors. Burial of waste has uncertainty in terms of unforeseen geological movement and radioactive leakage into groundwater.

The reactors simply aren't large in relation to their stupendous power output (and those giant domes around the reactors aren't radioactive). For reasons that escape me, waste burial is a big concern for some people, but let's consider the length of time for which high-level waste is more radioactive than the natural uranium ore it originally came from. Right now, that length of time is several thousand years, but by building waste-burning reactors, we can burn the long-lived actinide / transuranic waste, leaving us mostly with waste that is significantly radioactive for 300-500 years. (Granted I'm not a nuclear expert and I have only found numbers like these on the web and in YouTube presentations; if someone can find a scientific paper that looks at nuclear waste and/or other nuclear issues in a less biased way than Abbott, I'm eager to read it.)

Because a nuclear station is a complex system, and where redundant subsystems are necessarily colocated, redundancy can fail and can even have a negative impact.

A great exercise with any anti-nuke argument is to check if it still makes sense with airplanes: "Because an airplane is a complex system, where redundant subsystems are necessarily colocated, redundancy can fail and can even have a negative impact."

Or if someone says "There have been nuclear accidents, so we should stop making reactors." No one says "There have been plane crashes, so we should stop making airplanes."

Now, anyone who wants to make nuclear reactors cheaper must necessarily also make them less complex; good Gen IV designs are simpler than Gen III. But often redundancy is still needed.

Maybe I'll read the rest of this when I have more time. But Phil, I share your desire for better expert analyses and so far I've been frustrated at the difficulty of finding reasonable, authoritative analysis of nuclear claims on both sides of the issue, based on evidence and facts.

Effects of Global Warming

barry17781 at 06:25 AM on 11 June, 2019

moderato, thanks for the link, I is a long time since i read the paper.

i hope that this will answer your question

nigel, your figures on the relative abundances of halnium are misleading.

you have used crustal concentrations by mass, and wikipedia gives typically 2 to 3 times highe amount
of boron than halfnium.
however for nuclear absorption use one should use mol, since it is by atom that these materials absorb neutrons

so this brings the factor of 3 up by 178/11 = 48.

Coupled with the fact that boron is mainly found in lake deposits not in the crust makes this very irrelevant, on top of this there is avast amount of boron in the ocean some 4.5 -4.8 mg/kg which is readily available
I suggestquantity is easily extractable and exceeds the born quantity in the crust so there is a factor of 100 more for the abundance of boron assuming every drop of halfnium is extracted from the crust

so Boron is far more abundant than halfnium, and can be readily seperated after use, the unreacted isotope slvaged by distillation and so will become non radioactive.

as for hafnium in civilian reactors I stand by it that it is currently not used to any significant extent

The moltex reactor

"Modest funding now will see Moltex through these approval processes,
initially in the UK and Canada, and through to the construction of the first reactor.
Thereafter the market is almost inconceivably large.

Mr Sweet the reactor has not been built! It is a future projection. please do not insult people.

As for Abbotts figure of 20.5 km^2 per reactor, Abbot does not explain the calculation of these figures but his citation does

The originator, Johnson uses US figures, a coutry which has the largest redundant areas for its nuclear facilities nevertherless he states that the
area occupied by nuclear facity and its supprting infrastructure of enrichment, mining and disposal in the states is between 4.9 and 7.9 km^2.
Now a facility can have several reactor typically nowerdays say 6 giving a reactor area of 4.9/6 = 0.8166 km^2 a long way from Abbots 20.5 km^3 a factor of 25!

Abbott inflated his figure to include the us buffer zone which can still be used for agriculture or say a solar farm, which Abbott claims is n either or not both!

Please treat Abbotts figures with great caution . It is as I said and he has communicated to me only a demonstration

Effects of Global Warming

michael sweet at 20:38 PM on 10 June, 2019

Barry:

The moderator has asked that the discussion be taken to other locations. I will not go, it is a waste of my time. I think the regular readers of this forum have already made up their minds one way or another. My experience is these discussions rarely change minds.

Abbott 2012 was published in the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists by invitation. You cannot be serious in your comments.

The isotope was Yttrium-90. We were making anti-cancer treatments. Are you knowledgable enough that this makes a difference to you??

Effects of Global Warming

barry17781 at 10:57 AM on 10 June, 2019

michael sweet

Abbot did a demostration paper it was not meant to be taken too literally, for example he mentions the limited abundance of halfnium as a control (which is limited to military reactors) civilian reactors use boron and some gadolinium which are far more abundant than halnium, a completly irrelevant FACT that you should know.

please put out the abbott reference so that others can judge it

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