Climate change: The Critical Decade

Mostly nukes.

Reaction to the mess at Fukushima is the reason most of these nukes are still off line, even after passing safety checks and so forth. Only a few were so severely damaged by the event they could not be restarted by now - those few are major expenses, of course, and likely more or less permanent losses.

Japan lost 60% of its nuke power generation, and 15% of its electrical power supply, in one natural event - an event long predicted, and with ample historical precedent. That vulnerability is a risk, and risk is entered into honest accounting either as a (discounted) cost or as an insurance premium payment.

 

Log in or Sign up to hide all adverts.

Log in or Sign up to hide all adverts.

Now you are just making shit up.

 

Log in or Sign up to hide all adverts.

Making more BS up.

Yup, Ice, a 14 meter Tsunami was long predicted so to deal with it they built a 6 meter sea wall.

Arthur

 

Meanwhile:

"According to the most recent issue of the "Monthly Energy Review" by the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), renewable energy has passed a milestone as domestic production is now greater than that of nuclear power and is closing in on oil. "

 

No: the point I am making is that one natural event, a single occurrence of a natural environmental event reasonably common and long predicted to be factor, took out 2/3 of Japan's nuclear power generation indefinitely - long enough to need complete backup of some kind, long enough to overwhelm temporary gap filling resources, or suffer the costs of deprivation.

Other means of power generation, specifically solar, wind, etc, have no such vulnerability. That kind of vulnerability is a significant cost factor - omitting it from cost calculations and comparisons invalidates them.

Fukushima's disaster is the reason the plants are still offline. No such safety checks or concerns are necessary for, say, thermal solar plants or windmills - when they have trouble, they don't threaten human life and civilization for a thousand miles in every direction.

 

windmills are decimating our eagle population out here in cali

/frown

 

That's sorta playing with statistics though.

This was just a 3 month snapshot (Jan, Feb, March) and HYDRO was HUGE this winter compared to last winter, indeed Hydro accounted for 60% of the renewable gain, but again that's just statistics because we aren't actually building any new large hydro plants.

And of course, Nukes and Renewables (when you include hydro) have long been very close, so this is nothing new, but the three months of this report include the regularly scheduled low time for Nukes and the high time for Hydro but even so, renewables at 2.2 Quads was the same as our high last Summer 3 month output of Nukes (Nukes are putting out almost 6 times as much energy as Geo, Solar and Wind combined).

And the "renewables are catching up with Oil" is misleading because it was actually Domestic Oil they said they were catching up with, but that's only 1/3 of our oil use. Indeed, our use of fossil fuels in the first 3 months grew nearly twice as fast as renewables of all types and nearly 5 times as much if you don't include the statistical anomaly that was Hydro.

http://www.eia.gov/totalenergy/data/monthly/#summary

See table 1.2

Arthur

 

Ignoring the fact that Japan has been deprived of most of its nuclear power by the effects - whatever they may be - of one earthquake, catastrophically and without warning, misleads.

Valid cost estimates for nuclear power must include the risk of these kinds of situations, and the preparations (including backup, etc) for them. They are among the significant and characteristic vulnerabilities of nuclear power.

 

No it doesn't.
They elected to shut them down, they didn't have to shut them down.

And it does.
Good news, most of us don't live in such an earthquake/tsunami vulnerable area as Japan, so the risk is substantially less.

Arthur

 

What is?

That Japan lost, and continues to be without, 60% of its nuclear power capability in less than 48 hours, due to a single earthquake event and its aftermath, is simple physical fact.

If we are designing power systems, choosing where to invest in future power generation capabilities, we have to include the possibility of this kind of event in our cost estimates for nuclear.

We have, for example, more than thirty nukes of Fukushima general design in the US - something like a quarter of our nuke generation capability. If one of them crashes catastrophically, it's quite likely that the others will have to be shut down for inspection and only re-opened if the neighbors are sufficiently reassured of its safety given whatever happened at the crash. So one serious event in any of thirty locations quite plausibly takes out a quarter of the US nuclear power generation indefinitely. Failure to include that possibility in the cost comparisons invalidates them - it's an expensive one.

 

Nope.

We've just had 3 of them crash catastrophically and yet none were shut down in the US.

In reality just the opposite is occuring in the US, our reactors are being uprated to ever higher power outputs, their licences are being extended and our output is over 90% of capacity.

Arthur

 

That is not true.

We haven't had a catastrophe since 1979. Just a series of near misses.

And we are sitting on two reactors in prudential shutdown, from the recent flooding.

Relaxation of safety standards, dismissal of known problems and newly recognized vulnerabilities, and extension of service lives, is not the opposite of what happened at Fukushima.

It's the same prelude.

 

It is true.

As you said, we are running the same reactors as Fukushima, and indeed the NRC was involved, and NO, we did not shut down our nearly identical nuclear plants.

 

Ah, so you are not specifying US catastrophe, as I was assuming, and are ignoring the two prudential shutdowns of flooded Fukushima-type plants we have now, because they don't count.

Then you are claiming since we did not suffer mass shutdowns from a Japanese tsunami risk as at Fukushima, we would definitely not shut our reactors down in the wake of any US-type catastrophe at one of them, because - - - here it gets a bit vague.

Until it is clarified, we should include the risk of prudential shutdowns in our cost estimates. To do otherwise would be nonstandard and dishonest bookkeeping.

 

Which two reactors are you talking about as I couldn't find but one that was shut down because of flooding?

Cooper in Nebraska apparently didn't shut down, though it did declare an emergency (Unusual Event) on the 19th

http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/event-status/event/en.html

But the status reports indicate it stayed at 100% power

http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/event-status/reactor-status/2011/20110624ps.html

Ft Calhoun also declared a similar emergency (Unusual Event) but it was already in Cold Shutdown for refueling, so while it remains shut down due to the flooding, it didn't shut down because of the flooding and hasn't actually been harmed by the water.

http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/event-status/event/2011/20110606en.html
http://www.omaha.com/article/20110713/NEWS01/707139892

There is no evidence we don't.

The industry averages 91% of rated capacity which includes ALL shutdowns.

I'm sure the investors make a rational assumption of expected uptime using those annual figures as a guideline.

Arthur

 

Yes, I was counting the Nebraska plant, from memory of its "state of emergency". One, then.

We haven't had a catastrophe in a while. (and the "rated capacity" is a manipulated number - we see many plants running at more than 100% of "capacity" at times, and similar symptoms of dubious accounting)

So?