CSP plants are said to be quick to build. Is it possible that the factors that make them quick will eventually be revealed as the same factors that make them cheap? The nuclear power industry is mature. Solar is not. In 30 years, we will realize that solar power was cheap all along and we didn’t know it because it had not been fully commercialized.

I think the aliens would be able to see this immediately.

http://caltecheql.library.caltech.edu/15/

which explores means and method for building nuclear power plants underground. I am considering that ’slightly new’ scaled-up fission designs that make intelligent use of gravity/earth for containment, located in geologically stable areas — might well be the ONLY CHIP on the table that could bring us past oil and coal dependence for the grid. The only real question is who will come up with the best-fit means and method — first.

I go on the my-child rule.

Putting primary focus on any energy “solution” that hinges on sunlight reaching the ground or assumed-reliable wind patterns is simply, in my book, a NO GO.

Because any catastrophic sky cover and/or climate change stops the music. It does not matter what form it would take, it can and will probably happen. When it happens my child (and yours) would perish.

Oil will cease, gas will cease. Fission driven steam in our time will keep the electricity ON for as long as it takes for my-child (and yours) to refine the process and up-scale it until they have attained a responsible objective: an INEXHAUSTIBLE SURPLUS of energy for the foreseeable future.

Pure energy to do with as they see fit (not us). Want to sink CO2 from the atmosphere? Extract hydrogen to pellet form to fuel safe transportation? Charge those hybrids? Survive a volcanic winter? Bring the grid to every corner of Africa, which is what they really want? Heal the planet? These all require the additional input of human know-how… and applied energy.

Whether my-child (and yours) has access to that degree of energy, or even the amount necessary to survive a natural or man-made calamity, is not just a good thing… for me it is the only thing.

Thanks for listening.

In addition, electric utility restructuring (deregulation) that has occured in nuclear powered states over the past decade was most likely based on nuclear bankruptcy restructuring because large customers refuse to pay the high market cost. So costs were socialized to the smaller ratepayers.

Furthermore, the technology is based on nuclear weapons systems since the reactor was invented by the military for the production of plutonium used in the second bomb dropped on Japan. (One would have seemed sufficient.) Plutonium is a small part of the “waste” which is just jargon, since waste is something you “throw away” and we can never throw plutonium away (half life 24,000 years). The spent fuel liability for taxpayers is measured in hundreds of billions of dollars so far just in this country, including the energy and materials required for its indefinite management. Corporate owners want the public to take responsibility of this cost (assume possession) in addition to their market liability. Look at your homeowners insurance – nuclear damages (such as radiation contamination) excluded.

These problems and the substantial concerns about nuclear weapons proliferation across the world can be addressed by a phase out and moratorium of this technology. Then the $trillions of future funds can be invested in sustainable energy paths that promote peace and are far more cost effective than the falacy, fraud and liability of using atomic fission for electrical services.

J. Newberry for People’s Action for Clean Energy

Everything, including yourself, is made of atoms. All atoms have nuclei. You have many atomic nuclei inside yourself since you are made of atoms. The simplest nucleus is one proton [hydrogen]. That would be a hydrogen atom. An oxygen atom has 8 protons and either 8, 9 or 10 neutrons in its nucleus. All other nuclei also have neutrons. Uranium has 92 protons and either 143 or 146 neutrons. If it has 143 neutrons it is U235. If it has 146 neutrons, it is U238. Nuclear fuel is only 2% to 8% U235, the kind that fissions/divides, providing energy. The rest is U238 that doesn’t fission. A nuclear reaction happens when a neutron is captured by a nucleus. If a U235 nucleus captures a neutron, the nucleus and the atom split approximately in half and 2 or 3 neutrons are released because the 2 smaller nuclei don’t need so many neutrons. If a U238 nucleus captures a neutron, it ejects an electron and the neutron becomes a proton. The U238 thus becomes Plutonium 239 [Pu239]. In a power reactor, the Pu239 quickly captures another neutron, becoming Pu240. Pu240 is useless for making bombs, which is why governments that have plutonium bombs have their own special reactors to make Pu239. Plutonium is fissionable, which means that plutonium is a good fuel. If you add Thorium to the fuel, you can make more fissionable uranium. If a Thorium atom nucleus captures a neutron, it ejects an electron and the neutron becomes a proton. The Thorium atom thus becomes U233. U233 is fissionable.

Depending on the design of the reactor and the mix of the fuel, the fuel % in the reactor can either grow or shrink. It is kind of like the fuel gauge can go either up or down, but it is more like the reactor can run hotter or cooler over time. The temperature is kept constant by adjusting the control rods. A breeder reactor is a reactor designed to make the fissionable part of the fuel load grow rapidly. In the US, fuel is left in the reactor for about 10 years, or 10% of the fuel is replaced eachyear. The reprocessing step sorts out the fuel and puts the percentage of fissionable fuel back to the starting percentage. In the process, plutonium may be removed and either wasted or used as fuel. If we add thorium to the fuel, we can make more uranium than we put in. Since the earth contains more than twice as much thorium as uranium, it would be wise to make thorium into uranium. By reprocessing nuclear fuel, we get an enormous, many centuries long fuel supply.

The products of fission are also removed when fuel is reprocessed. These are just other atoms that are no longer useful as fuel. The quantity is very small. We should reprocess fuel to keep the fuel load at the correct percentage of fissionable fuel for the particular reactor design. Instead, we go through the expensive process of making more “virgin” fuel for each new fuel load. This greatly increases the price you pay for electricity. We are not reprocessing nuclear fuel for political reasons. France reprocesses fuel and France has a nuclear waste repository.

I have zero financial interest in nuclear power, and I never have had a financial interest in nuclear power. My sole motivation in writing this is to avoid extinction by H2S gas. H2S is how global warming kills everybody if we don’t act. The H2S is made by sulfur bacteria in hot oceans.

Reference: “Google and the myth of universal knowledge” by Jean-Noel Jeanneney 2007 The original is in French.

When you do a Google search, you get “sponsored” links on the right side and “non-sponsored” links on the left. The “NON-SPONSORED” links on Google ARE LISTED IN THE ORDER OF THE HIGHEST BIDDER to lowest bidder. Companies pay dollars to Google to get web sites other than their own that lie in favor of the paying company to be at the top of the “non-sponsored” list. Google search results in your getting nothing but corporate propaganda. Since the coal industry has a $100 Billion per year income at stake, they can and must share a lot of money with Google.

Page 32: 62% of internet users questioned make no distinction whatever between advertising and other information, and only 18% proved capable of telling which data were paid for by companies for their promotion and which were not.”
“92% of users of search engines have full confidence in the results of their search, and 71% (users for less than five years) consider that information from this source [Google] is never biased in any way.”

Suggestion: Use only Google Advanced or Google Scholar. On Google Advanced, specify either the .gov domain or the .edu domain.

George W. Bush messed up as many government web sites as he could get away with, but your chances are still clearly better than going to the richest propagandist .com or .org.
Better yet: Get a degree in science so that you can figure it out for yourself.

There should be a law requiring Google to disclose the above and the donors and the dollars for each “non-sponsored” link. Environmentalists should work on Google legislation first.

Book: “Power to Save the World; The Truth About Nuclear Energy” by Gwyneth Cravens, 2007 Finally a truthful book about nuclear power. Gwyneth Cravens is a former anti-nuclear activist.

Book: “Environmentalists for Nuclear Energy”, by B. Comby
English edition, 2001, 345 pp. (soft cover), 38 Euros
TNR Editions, 266 avenue Daumesnil, 75012 Paris, France;
ISBN 2-914190-02-6
order from: http://www.comby.org/livres/livresen.htm
Read a review of this book by the American Health Physics Society at:
http://www.comby.org/ media/ articles/ articles.in.english/ HealthPhysics-NUC-July2002.htm

Web:
Oak Ridge National Laboratory:
http://www.ornl.gov/ ORNLReview/ rev26-34/ text/ coalmain.html
Coal contains so much uranium and thorium that more energy goes up the stack than into the wires.
http://www.ornl.gov/ info/ ornlreview/ rev26-34/ text/ colside1.html

http://www.pittsburghlive.com/ x/ pittsburghtrib/ news/ specialreports/ buriedlegacy/ s_87948.html
Spent fuel is so valuable that Israel steals it.

Conference report:
OUR NUCLEAR FUTURE: THE PATH OF SELECTIVE IGNORANCE
by Alex Gabbard
Oak Ridge National Laboratory
Oak Ridge, TN
Selections from the 19th Annual Conference
SOUTHERN FUTURE SOCIETY
March 14,15,16, 1996
Nashville, Tennessee
Published by the
SOUTHERN FUTURE SOCIETY
1996
Edited by Jack D. Arters, Ed.D.
Conference Director

Nuclear reactor FACTORY advertisement:
http://www.hyperionpowergeneration.com/

“Ban coal, let the market of renewables do the rest without subsidies (that is: biomass will win, wind comes second, CSP maybe third, photovoltaics are out of the loop), and subsidies the carbon-negative technologies and actions which we really need to achieve the obligatory target of 350ppm.”

This is the same argument used against renewables in general.
The idea that renewable are not right because they need subsidies is absurd for the simple reason that every form of energy they are competing with is heavily subsidized.
You don’t take into account how fast the prices for PV are falling.

“Nanosolar’s founder and chief executive, Martin Roscheisen, claims to be the first solar panel manufacturer to be able to profitably sell solar panels for less than $1 a watt. That is the price at which solar energy becomes less expensive than coal. With a $1-per-watt panel,” he said, “it is possible to build $2-per-watt systems.According to the Energy Department, building a new coal plant costs about $2.1 a watt, plus the cost of fuel and emissions.”
http://www.grinzo.com/ energy/ index.php/ category/ solar

Let the market decide? Yeah and maybe we should let the market decide which species we should allow to go extinct. If conservatives have their way, we’ ll be waiting to see if the market decides if it’s worth it to stop global warming or not.

I’ve seen two estimates for oil subsidies $39 billion annually and $84 billion annually. Nuclear has had over $100 billion as Joe said. Coal is about $3 billion a year.

Why are these estimates so far apart? They’ve been adding them as earmarks for decades for one thing.
It takes a Sherlock Holmes to find them all.

The $84 billion number is from
http://www.setamericafree.org/saf_hiddencostofoil010507.pdf

According to a study- Koplow’s 2007 report to the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development:
“Estimating U.S. oil and gas subsidies is very challenging. Subsidies rarely involve cash payments. Instead scores of U.S. government agencies and departments create hundreds of programms to support the U.S. energy sector. And there is no requirement for the federal government to keep track of all this.”

“Energy subsidies are often simply hidden from public scrutiny. It’s only recently been revealed that 40 companies granted leases between 1996 and 2000 for drilling in the Gulf of Mexico do not have to pay royalties for the publicly-owned resource. This is worth nearly a billion dollars a year in lost revenue to the federal government, according to a 2008 study by Friends of the Earth (FOE), a U.S. environmental NGO

“Subsidy programmes from 1918 are still in place. “I’m not aware of any oil and gas subsidy that has ever been phased out,” said Koplow, the leading expert on U.S. energy subsidies”
“In a time of skyrocketing oil prices and profits, why did the George W. Bush administration in 2005 authorise an additional 32.9 billion dollars in new subsidies over a five-year period?”

“This massive government intervention distorts energy markets, making it very difficult for alternative energy sources to compete without similarly massive subsidies. “And it promotes America’s addiction to oil,” Larsen added.”
http://www.heatisonline.org/ contentserver/ objecthandlers/ index.cfm?ID=7124&Method=Full

The security issue with nuclear.
Rick Bowen talks about having military personel guarding the power plants. Can we expect this much security all over the world if nuclear power proliferates everywhere?
If you need that much security, you are only proving how dangerous nuclear power could be.
To cite the lack of harm done by nuclear plants in the last 50 years as proof that they are safe is not convincing.
And Chernoble certainly does not fit the image of having done no harm. Sure it was a lousy design, but it shows that it only takes one mistake with nuclear to have devastating consequenses. We haven’t had a nuclear holocaust yet either, but that doesn’t make me feel any better about nuclear weapons.

We are told that the oil industry is safe. How safe if safe? We’ve had at least 3 oil spills this year alone. Do you honestly think no one will ever make a human error with nuclear power? With nuclear power there is NO room for error ever. Can you guarantee that? I doubt it.

The Argonne National Lab has said that an airliner crashing into a nuclear plant could cause a complete meltdown, even if the containment building isn’t compromised. Think the twin towers was bad?

Does that mean we should have no nuclear? No, but we have cheaper, safer options that are quicker to get up and running. And in the public policy debate, nuclear should not get any more subsidies, not when it will take dollars that would be better spent elsewhere, developing new technology and getting them up to scale, like CSP.

Peter Foley Says:
“Unfortunately that part of CSP is still under development(heat storage)”

Hamilton Sunstrands Rockedyne subsidiary has developed a good system for molten salt that is ready for commercial development now. In fact, they’ve started their own solar thermal company, Solar Reserve.

I think Todd McKissick has it right when he points out that 99% of Americans and reporters haven’t even heard of CSP. The lack of awareness is a big factor.

David McMahon
You are making unfounded and incorrect statements about wind and solar. They are nonsense.
Wind cost about $1400/KWH to build. Nuclear cost about $4000/KWH to build.

You are just perpetuating the myth that the fossil fuel industry is trying to fool the public with, the idea that renewables can’t power much of the country is simply not true. Period

You are a perfect demonstation of just how uninformed, misinformed and disinformed the public is about renewable energy.

If nuclear will be the only solution, I’d like to know where the fuel will come from, the moon?
You hear nuclear proponents talk of getting uranium from sea water. Sounds good until you find out that we would have to filter 40,000 cubic mile of seawater every year to supply 200 reactors. The low hanging fruit of rich uranium deposits won’t be there, which would require more and more cost and environmental damage from the mining of uranium from less rich deposits. And we now import most of our uranium. How does that equate with energy independence?

The proposal published by Scientific American, A Solar Grand Plan, says we could have a 69% solar powered grid by 2050 and 100% by 2100. They propose subsidies of $400 billion over about a 35-40 year period, with subsidies ending about 2040 or 2050. That’s roughly $10 billion a year.

If we take the lower estimate of $39 billion a year in subsidies and tax credits for oil, then for 1/4 of those giveaways to oil, we could power most of the country with solar, as far as tax dollars.

And that doesn’t even count all the other hidden costs of the fossil fuel industry, which make the subsidies seem small by comparison.