@MattM Can’t sum it up better myself well said

Most people have no comprehension of how energy dense uranium is because it is so far removed from anything we encounter in our daily lives. A small pellet of uranium that you could hold between your thumb and your forefinger has as much potential energy as one ton of coal. Yes, enriching uranium requires a lot of work, but the energy payoff is enormous. A coal fired power plant must be refueled every hour, whereas a nuclear plant can produce twice as much electricity and run for 18 months before needing to be refueled.

The 60,000 tons of used fuel still contain enough recoverable plutonium to power the entire U.S. reactor fleet for seven years with existing technology. Though uranium is a parts-per-million contaminant in coal, the uranium that can be recovered from the fly ash contains more potential energy than the coal released when it was burned. Most of the difficulty surrounding disposing of used fuel comes from the alpha-emitting actinides that produce a lot of heat, but can be recycled into reactor fuel.

I – a mid-career professional – was recently a part of an emerging grass-roots effort with folks in their 30′s. Then, the leftover hippies found out about us and wanted to join. One woman interrupted our discussion and said, “I’m an old grass-roots organizer from the 60′s, and the way you do it is…” These folks wouldn’t listen to anything anyone without gray hair suggested and the ones who were retired seemed to think they needed something to keep them busy as they appeared to want to take over. The whole thing dissolved.

Another time I attempted to become part of an organization that had spent the past 15 years or so trying to save a particular green-space. After a few months of involvement, I felt comfortable enough to say to one of the leaders, “You’ve made great efforts to save this green-space, but if you don’t pass the baton to younger people then the green-space will be gone in another 10 years.” He argued and told me that some of the gray-hairs in the group had a lot of spunk left. I upped my estimate, “OK, then 15 years.” Today, 10 years later and as we speak, the green-space is being plowed up!

Every asset has an inherent disadvantage.

The personality traits that propelled the environmental movement were assets 50 years ago, but have become the fatal flaw of the environmental movement today.

Many environmental groups are asking the same question… how do you get younger people involved? But that question was not asked early enough. While grass-roots environmental groups are so concerned with environmental sustainability, they’ve not given a thought to their own institutional sustainability. By time they figured it out, the the 70′s+ grass-roots activist can’t well recruit a college student in her 20′s. The determination and persistence that propelled young people in their 20′s 50 years ago into a national environmental movement are the same characteristics that prevented organic evolution within their own movement.

Another commenter noted that mega-NGO’s are not like that. But relying on that becomes a top-down institution. How do you revitalize people on the streets?

The Occupy Movement gave a glimpse of hope. But as I sat and watched an older city worker (with a very long braided pony tail that extended to his pants) as he disassemble one Occupy encampment, I thought – they just don’t get it!

“…We are pro-technology when appropriate but largely anti-nuclear for the very good reason that there is still no safe way to deal with waste stream….”

Some environmentalists are not pro-technology and some are pro-nuclear. The debate about environmentalists is nonsensical. There is no agreed upon definition of what an environmentalist is. In a world where almost all non-nuclear electric power generation comes from coal, how can anyone who is anti-nuclear call themselves an environmentalist?

Anti-nuclear groups are responsible for the fact that nuclear power plants have to store their waste on site. The fact that they can store their waste on site is proof that they generate very little waste. It can be stored in safer places if anti-nuclear environmentalists would allow it to happen. It can also be reprocessed to reduce volume ten fold and turned into solid glass blocks. It may eventually be used as fuel by breeder reactors in the future.

“…this does not and should not mean pretending that nuclear energy has suddenly become clean when any reasonable study will show that it is not…”

I suppose we now have to define “clean” but nuclear energy is very clean by my definition and especially when compared to fossil fuels. Renewables can’t do it all.

The old guard enviros have been indoctrinated by anti-nuclear propaganda which is easy to disseminate because it’s so easy to sensationalize by our readership /ad hungry lay media.

So the upshot is we do have to find new ways to create clean(er) energy to maintain our current consumption rates but must accept that unless there is some fantastic new source that is not likely to happen unless we choose to ignore reality and choose to continue down the path that environmentalists have been working to change since at least the 1970s.

“…I also agree with you that an increase in renewable energy does not necessarily mean the end of baseload power…”

Necessarily? Three out of the five forms of renewable (hydro, biomass, geothermal, wind, solar) are usually used as baseload.

“…It concluded that four nuclear plants would go ahead, based primarily on subsidies available at the time, and that no more were economic. Four plants are going forward today…”

More than likely, the number of projects presently going forward is just now passing through four …which has to happen to get to five and six etc. I seriously doubt that your study had anything to do with the decisions to launch these projects.

You just expended almost 300 words and provided five links to support the straw man argument I pointed out in my previous comment.

Again, I’m not defending the economics of building custom designed, one of a kind conventional nuclear power plants just as I would not defend spending a million dollars for a custom designed car. That argument was settled by the market in the seventies and eighties by the failed attempts to fund that economic model for nuclear power. Your study as well as the studies you link to are a superfluous, non-novel, feeding frenzy on a band wagon. And, as I said before, the missing link in the nuclear cost argument is the fact that renewables are at least just as expensive. Fossil fuels are cheap as long as we don’t have to pay external costs.

I’m critiquing your contention that nuclear should not receive government assist on the grounds that it is a mature industry. Read Nuclear Energy is Not a Mature Industry:

http://www.consumerenergyreport.com/2012/04/30/nuclear-energy-is-not-a-mature-industry/

“…If you want to place a faith-based bet on a nuclear future go right ahead. I’m betting on renewables…”

I’m betting on both. “Faith-based” would better describe your contention that renewables can or will scale as much and as fast as you predict. The percent of our energy that comes from renewables has gone from roughly 11% to 10% in the last 20 years: 6% hydro, 1.3% biomass, 0.4% geothermal, 2.2% wind, and less than 1% from solar. Wind has made the biggest inroads, going from 1% to 22% of renewables contributions.

http://grist.org/wind-power/how-wind-power-fits-into-our-energy-diet/

I’m very supportive of getting renewables to scale as far as is economically feasible. I suspect that I own more solar panels than you do. I’m just also very supportive of getting nuclear to scale as far as is economically feasible. It is our only proven weapon capable of going toe to toe with King Coal when it comes to providing baseload.

The National Renewable Energy Laboratory calculated that by 2020, wind energy production variability could be almost 60 times more than the variability of power demand. There is no known technology capable of dealing with that magnitude of variability.

http://www.nrel.gov/wind/systemsintegration/pdfs/2010/wwsis_final_report.pdf

As a common sense test of the price of solar, I encourage readers to Google one of the solar cost estimators used by solar installers to drum up business. They are likely biased to underestimate costs but even so, the price tag you will end up with to replace 100% of your electricity without government subsidy will knock your socks off, depending on your zip code. In Seattle the cost is enormous ($76,000), especially if you are hoping to offset your Nissan Leaf, as I am. Just keep in mind that for solar to scale to any meaningful quantity, would also require massive expenditures to alter the grid, resulting in a combination of taxes and monthly grid use utility bills for solar users and probably for everyone else as well.

http://www.findsolar.com/index.php?page=rightforme

The magnitude of the problem is bigger than most realize. Here is a graph from a study where they held the contribution of nuclear constant so as to not loose membership:

http://home.comcast.net/~russ676/Graphics/img34.gif

The odds of success are obviously very low with or without nuclear so discussions like this are mostly academic.

First, let me clarify that I no longer work at the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) and speak only for myself. Since I supervised the analysts who prepared the electricity section of the 2009 UCS Climate 2030 Blueprint, though, I refer to that report as “ours.”

I’ve reordered some of your comments to make it clearer where we agree and disagree. In comment 51, you said:

“This article might help explain to you the problem with 40% renewables and no nuclear:
http://www.consumerenergyreport.com/2012/04/05/a-base-load-free-power-system/ “

Interesting article. We both disagree with David Roberts on his view that the nuclear phaseout in Germany makes sense from a climate perspective. I also agree with you that an increase in renewable energy does not necessarily mean the end of baseload power, and that energy storage enables higher levels of baseload on the grid at least as much as it enables higher levels of intermittent renewables. As you point out, it comes down to the economics of each of the options. That’s where we disagree.

“The idea that you would throw a proven technology like nuclear out of the solution set is utterly naive and irresponsible.”

Agree. The UCS Blueprint didn’t throw nuclear out. It looked at costs and benefits with the best assumptions available at the time. It concluded that four nuclear plants would go ahead, based primarily on subsidies available at the time, and that no more were economic. Four plants are going forward today.

“I’ve read a number of those studies [such as the UCS Climate 2030 Blueprint.] They are for the most part, spreadsheets populated with lots of assumptions.”

The EIA National Energy Modeling System used in the Blueprint is far more complex than a spreadsheet model, but results can vary considerably depending on assumptions, of course. The UCS analysis transparently compared key technology cost assumptions with actual data on project costs available at that time (the last quarter of 2008). See for example, the graph on Appendix D, p. 19 comparing UCS’ conservative nuclear cost assumption with the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) projections at that time, and with actual project cost estimates at the time. http://www.ucsusa.org/assets/documents/global_warming/climate2030-app-d-electricity.pdf

UCS’s nuclear construction cost estimate of $4,400/kW in 2006 dollars is equal to about $5,000/kW in today’s dollars for “overnight” costs, i.e., pre-financing. EIA has raised its overnight nuclear cost projection considerably since that time, to where it is now $5,275/kW, slightly higher than the UCS 2009 assumption. Table 8.2, http://www.eia.gov/forecasts/aeo/assumptions/pdf/electricity.pdf

You probably saw the news two days ago that nuclear construction costs continue to rise, and that total costs, including financing, for the Florida Progress Levy plants are now projected to be in the range of $10,000/kW, even though customers are already paying over $5 per month toward nuclear construction that won’t be completed until 2024, at the earliest. http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/05/02/utilities-progress-levy-idUSL1E8G28LQ20120502

Meanwhile, while nuclear (and coal) capital costs have continued to rise, the cost of wind turbines has significantly decreased, and is substantially lower than UCS’ 2009 projections. Cf. Slide 4, http://eetd.lbl.gov/ea/ems/reports/lbnl-5119e-ppt.pdf vs. Fig. D-4, p. 6, in the UCS Blueprint Appendix D.

The cost of solar photovoltaics have also declined by about 20% from what UCS projected in 2009. Cf. Slide 9, http://eetd.lbl.gov/ea/ems/reports/lbnl-5047e-ppt.pdf with Figure D-6, p. 9 in the UCS Blueprint Appendix D.

Of course, the recent trends are highly consistent with long-term trends. When I started studying energy economics, in the mid-70s, nuclear costs were about $1,000/kW, compared to as much as $10,000/kW today. Solar PV modules (pre-installation) had just declined from $100,000/kW to $20,000/kW, compared to as little as $1,000/kW today.

If you want to place a faith-based bet on a nuclear future go right ahead. I’m betting on renewables.

Alan