http://tinyurl.com/5buujc

Anything which is decent for the environment has high capital costs, but enormous returns on that investment if you care to wait for long.

Before you criticize nuclear power, you should realize that these very arguments are applicable to energy efficiency, solar panels, or for that matter, twisty light bulbs.

[JR: Uhh, no. Efficiency pays for itself. Nice try.]

Markets don’t invest in nuclear power because they don’t have enough patience for their ROI. (More important than that, there is a lot of bureaucracy in USA that scares the shit out of any investor). But that is fine. I wouldn’t want nuclear fissile material under the supervision of any private individual or corporation. The best way to run a nuclear power station is by the government. It is in public interest to do so.

And the capital costs are completely justified. If anybody cares, they can compare the capital costs (piece by piece : construction, labour, raw materials, iron, cement, land, decomissioning etc) of nuclear vs wind or solar thermal power. Nuclear wins by a HUGE margin.

All this ruckus that you guys are raking against high nuclear costs is devil’s advocacy (You are advocating for natural gas plants – which are the only power plants which have lower construction costs than nuclear.. But these low capital costs are offset by astronomical fuel costs)

And of course, there is something called global warming, right ?

Ed Miliband to exempt Sellafield firms from Freedom of Information Act
Move comes on top of decision by government to make taxpayer liable for any accidents at the nuclear power plant
http://www.guardian.co.uk/ politics/ 2008/ nov/ 17/ freedom-of-information-sellafield

Yah, I get that aircraft carriers have some advantage without the planes getting all that carbon fuel exhaust in their systems and nuclear submarines have natural advantages. But the military can spend well past cost points that regular ship builders and utilities can’t.

Texans didn’t riot, but the legislature realized in seconds that they had made a big mistake. They rewrote the law and extended cost recovery over a prolonged period of time, and blended the bills so people would not be able to see how much the nuke was costing them.

And that is the real reason nuke construction stopped. At that time it simply could not compete with coal. It had little to nothing to do with environmentalists. Until those power bills hit the mailbox, Texas was ready to build more nukes.

If you value the electricity produced in US nuclear power plants at the average wholesale price of electricity, it is worth about $64 BILLION each year. (That is a rough number determined by multiplying 800 Terrawatt hours x 8 cents per kilowatt-hour and keeping track of all of the zeros.)

@AlexJ – I would agree that there have been some refinements in methods for collecting energy from the sun, wind and biomass, but I cannot think of any real breakthroughs. Wind production costs dropped pretty impressively for a while as the scale of the enterprise increased and as engineers increased the size of the individual machines. Solar has gotten a little better in some areas – thin films are cheaper to produce but less efficient per unit area so if land is cheap they can produce cheaper electricity. Concentrating systems have increased in size, and appear to be producing slightly cheaper electricity as a result of scaling, but humans have been building parabolic shaped concentrators (mirrors) for sunlight for a very long time. Some companies have produced very efficient cells, but they are pretty expensive per unit area.

Another main reason that nuclear fission has had success is that it, like chemical combustion, is a controllable process that can be adapted to many uses. One proven use is to provide compact propulsion power for ships. Even though the actual machinery is a bit larger than the most compact combustion machines, the fuel is so energy dense that the overall space and weight required to provide long ranges is MUCH smaller.

I used to be an engineer officer on a submarine. The actual mass of fuel on that 9,000 ton ship was a bit more than what I weigh. It lasted for 14 years of operation even though it was using 1970s vintage technology. We have improved that – today’s Virginia class submarines come with a lifetime (33 year) fuel supply.

Large ocean going ships often carry what is essentially a 50-150 MWe baseload power plant. Those ocean going baseload systems are burning about 6% of the world’s oil demand, and they are producing almost half of its SOx because they are out of sight, out of mind, and out of the jurisdiction of most regulators.

Ocean going ships carry about 85-90% of the world’s international commerce. Their oil burning engines could be replaced by turbines driven by the heat from fissioning uranium, thorium or plutonium, but they could not be replaced by wind, solar or biomass.

@Brewster – I disagree with your assertion that wind and solar would be cheaper, but it is a complex computation that depends on numerous assumptions. How about this – you invest your money in wind and solar and allow me invest mine in nuclear. In either case, let’s let the taxpayers off of the hook and ask the government to establish and enforce adequate standards that all power sources have to meet with regard to their impact on all of the rest of the occupants of the planet.

Joe – the reason I believe this discussion is “on topic” is that a natural source of the capital that will be required to make a transition from hydrocarbons to any alternative is currently in the coffers of the oil, coal and gas industry. On that we agree, but investing in a large scale deployment of nuclear power with private money and government oversight has a much better chance of good returns for investors and energy customers than frittering that money away on other alternatives that have not proven themselves capable of replacing hydrocarbons in most applications.

And they will invest.