Why? Because coal must be stopped if we are to halt global warming.

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David McLellan at SolveClimate crunches the numbers and shows that wind is closing the gap with nuclear in cost per kilowatt. Further, the price of proposed nuclear plants keeps soaring, sometimes doubling or tripling, while the cost of wind doesn’t.

However, the primary reason for the gap closing is that nuclear plants take many years to get permits for, then build, and the money must be borrowed.

The average financing costs of the nuclear plants [described in the article] is 71% of the pre-financing price.

Bottom line: Nuclear and wind energy right now — from a purely financial perspective — seem to be about neck and neck, but increasing capital costs and unknown disposal and security costs are quickly going to put nuclear energy out of reach if present trends continue.

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The Hyperion nuclear power module is the size of a hot tub, gets buried in the ground, and creates enough power for 20,000 homes.

Hyperion modules have no moving parts to wear down, and are delivered factory sealed. They are never opened on site. Even if one were compromised, the material inside would not be appropriate for proliferation purposes. Further, due to the unique, yet proven science upon which this new technology is based, it is impossible for the module to go supercritical, “melt down” or create any type of emergency situation. If opened, the very small amount of fuel that is enclosed would immediately cool. The waste produced after five years of operation is approximately the size of a softball and is a good candidate for fuel recycling.

Earth2Tech has more. Nuclear is staging a huge resurgence. Once built, nuclear outputs prodigious amounts of cheap power, something the planet badly needs. Let’s hope it gets done safely (because it is going to happen.)

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CleanTechnica thinks so, detailing how Pickens’ planned mega-wind farm and Ogallala water rights could be used, at least in part, to power nuclear plants in Texas Panhandle. Thus he would have steady nuclear power and intermittent wind power traveling on his new transmission corridor from the Texas Panhandle to urban areas.

Texas has their own self-contained electrical power and grid. They don’t need power from anyplace else. Nor, I’m guessing, would there be much protest were multiple nukes to be built in the Panhandle.

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Red Charlie comments in our recent post about nuclear power.

Nuclear waste is the elephant in the room when it comes to nuke power. Everything else pales in comparison. A nuke plant has at most a 50 year lifespan, the high level waste will remain “worse than natural ore” for at least 10 to 100 times that long, and if you think natural ores are safe go test your basement for Radon.

But there is one technology that would make me a fan of nuclear power. Converting radiation directly into electricity (reminds me of solar panels).

If this stuff works, it would allow for completely solid-state, passive, and safe nuclear “batteries” that would produce power for as long as their contents are radioactive.

Storing nuclear waste in (very) long term facilities where it generates electricity for the foreseeable future is definitely turning a liability into something that is mostly an asset.

BTW, Processing nuclear material to be reused does not result in weapons grade material, as I’d surmised from reading various articles. An engineer who has worked on nuclear projects tells me the process can be used to create weapons grade material, but what is used by nukes is not.

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Pete Domenici (R-NM) is calling for recycling of nuclear waste in the US. Many other countries already do this. If you’re going to have nuclear power, why not use as much of the fuel as possible? There are currently 31 application for new nukes in the US, which will no doubt create monumental opposition as well as support.

Nukes are not a long-term solution, but they do produce huge amounts of cheap no-carbon energy. Oddly, recycling the fuel then makes it become weapons grade, so secure storage is certainly problematic. Matthew Simmons, investment banker to the energy business, says nukes take so long to build and so much carbon is emitted in doing so, that they need to run for decades to become carbon-neutral again.

No easy answers here.

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The Oil Drum points out that while coal is falling into disfavor in the US, it is widely used by developing countries because it is freely available and cheap.

The reality is that many of the nations that are switching to coal to provide the power for the next 20 years or more are doing so in part to bring their people closer to the living standard of the West. When villages have no power, we do not have the right to tell their government that they cannot provide it, even if coal is the only power source available.

If we don’t want hundreds if not thousands of new coal plants in the coming decades then alternatives need to be planned for now. Renewables like wind, solar, hydro, and wave can certainly play major roles, as can an emphasis on smart electronics and appliances that conserve energy. But what if spent nuclear rods could be reused? GE thinks this is economically feasible and is working on it. And yes, only a deep-pockets company like GE can fund something like this.

The market opportunity to recover the vast amount of useful energy in spent nuclear fuel remains available if a firm, such as General Electric, can develop the technologies to safety recover it without the environmental issues associated with aqueous recycling methods.

Maybe one day the government will be funding research into cleantech and cheap power. The fast developing Third World will be requiring vast amounts of power, and they will do it either with cleantech or with coal. If the developed countries make the right choices now and provide the technology for developing countries to produce clean power at a reasonable cost, then they won’t have to use coal. If not, then they have little or no choice.

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Scan the recent posts on Idaho Samizdat and you’ll see how nuclear power is enjoying a huge renaissance worldwide, with a multitude of countries - Turkey, Japan, South Africa, Britain, the US, and more - planning to build new plants.

Why? Nuclear plants create prodigious amounts of cheap energy and emit very little carbon.

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The state of New York wants to shut down a nuclear plant. They and Connecticut currently oppose an offshore LNG platform in Long Island Sound. Electricity and heating costs in the northeast US are already extremely expensive. Development of alternative power is puny. Yet any attempt to get more power, whether it be nukes, LNG platforms, or wind turbines off Martha’s Vineyard is met with NIMBYs.

To all you rugged, individualist New Englanders - you might wish to consider that freezing in the dark will be a much worse fate than having the Kennedys suffer the admittedly gross indignity of having to look at wind turbines in the ocean from their Chappaquidick estate. Oh, the agony. As for that aging electrical connection point in the southwest of Connecticut where major grids meet, the one that is aging, can’t take the load, and is already causing blackouts. Golly, let’s not actually do anything to fix it. After all, someone might have to look a new power transmission line then. How frightfully inconvenient.

And when the brownouts stretch into blackouts, when average citizens who once could rely on reasonably priced and readily available electricity from the grid are subject to wild price fluctuations as their electricity providers go begging on the spot market, when the Northeast becomes an energy colony of Canada - then maybe, just maybe, these fools in the political establishment will wake up.

Utah is going full-bore on wind energy. California gets it too. Texas built themselves a self-contained grid for electricity and petroleum years ago. They don’t need energy from any other state. But the Northeast stands alone in their obstinate refusal to do anything substantive about their ever-growing heating, petroleum, and electricity problems.

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Progress Energy has filed applications with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to build two nuclear reactors in North Carolina that would be online by 2018 at the earliest. The NRC expects applications for 30 reactors soon.

The resurgence of interest in nuclear power is happening worldwide, as nukes emit no carbon, produce gigantic amounts of electricity and, oh yeah, they’re still working on that tricky long-term, safe storage problem for the spent nuclear rods.

It’s a given that more nukes will be built across the planet, and soon. So let’s build them right.

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John Couzin in Scotland commented in our recent post about nuclear power that it is problematic in the UK. I emailed him asking for more information. Here’s his reply.

All nuclear power stations have leaks of some kind, some internal some external, some pass without comment others create news. They also have “glitches” which don’t result in a leak but a shutdown, which in a normal power station is a nuisance but in a nuclear it could be the start of a disaster. The Sellafield problem is two fold it is a nuclear reprocessing plant as well as a power station, hence the big problem with the clean up there. It has had several leaks over a long period of time, at least one rather nasty fire. Several areas of the beaches around it are contaminated. Even the water that they discharge into is contaminated, Norway and Ireland have complained to the British government about the radio active contamination of their waters. The very use of radio active material means that what it comes in contact with also becomes radio active this in turn creates problems in containment and decommissioning.

I don’t have any information on the French situation but going by historical evidence in every other country they must have had leaks and/or problems of some sort and nobody has said they have found the answer to the decommissioning problem or surely we would be doing something similar. Don’t be fooled by thinking that you can run a nuclear power station for years and not have a radio active problem on the site. Everything man made breaks down, aircraft fall from the sky, ships sink, bridges collapse but we are suppose to believe that it won’t happen in a nuclear power station, (Three Mile Island). All of these other accidents are a tragedy, in a nuclear case it can be a catastrophe for years and/or generations to come over an incredible distance, (blowing in the wind).

All the information that I have is easy available from the British broadsheets The Independent, Guardian, Herald, The Times, etc. all on line now, and what I can find on the web.

While nukes could keep the lights on until we figure out what comes next, an alternative is energy conservation coupled with massive renewable energy development. We can certainly do both. Conservation doesn’t mean we all have to live by candlelight, but with smart grids, use of CFLs and LEDs, and other such measures, we could probably cut energy consumption 10-20% without much noticeable difference in our lifestyles.

The question is, can renewables provide enough clean non-carbon-emitting power to keep the grid going? Keep in mind that China and India are developing fast and will use coal if other low-cost alternatives aren’t available. Even an industrialized country like South Africa says they need up to twelve new nuclear plants because their electrical production is woefully short of what’s needed, causing ongoing rolling blackouts everywhere.

There are no easy answers here.

PS Apropos to the discussion: Rolling blackouts for mid-Atlantic states and the coming State of New York energy shortage.

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South Africa is experiencing severe, ongoing power shortages. Nuclear power, however controversial, can deliver huge amounts of energy - way more than any other source. And that’s what South Africa needs and wants now.

Yes, we need all kinds of renewable clean, power, and plenty of conservation and smart grids too. But as Jim Kuntsler has said, nuclear will keep the lights on until we figure out what comes next.

80% of the power in France comes from nuclear. They’ve never had the slightest problem, and their third-generation nukes are state of the art.

Yes, the storage problem for the depleted fuel is troublesome. But we also need to keep the lights on without emitting huge amounts of carbon.

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The British government has invited companies to construct new nuclear power stations to meet its climate-change goals and will not set a limit on how many are built.

The move is expected to add momentum to a worldwide revival in nuclear energy.

France currently gets most of its electricity from nuclear. They’ve never had even the remotest problem with it. As Jim Kunstler says, nukes may be the best way to keep the lights on until we figure out what power source comes after it. Renewable power isn’t yet at the point where it can deliver huge amounts of cheap energy. Let’s work towards making that happen. But in the meantime, India and China will either build hundreds of carbon dioxide spewing coal plants - or they maybe they could build a few nukes instead.

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