The free market just doesnt deal very well with huge investments that pay off over a time scale of decades, because all the costs to the company doing the building happen now, and the profits happens when your successor is running the utility, so he (and it usually is a he!) is the one that is going to get the mammoth bonuses, and to make things worse, the only way to get the costs down to “Somewhat-less-insane” is to build not just one or two multi-billion-dollar plants, but to build them by the dozens so that construction crews are experienced, and the supply chain is a thriving competetive industry, instead of a very small number of firms collecting monopoly rents. (Japan steelworks, I am looking at you) This just does not happen unless governments make it happen.

This does not mean that nuclear is not a solution to climate change. Because it is. If the governments of the industrial world follows in the footsteps of France, and send down the word from on high that all electricity is going to be nuclear electricity in 20-25 years, those reactors can, and will, be built, and with a construction series in the thousands, costs will come down, and electricity would be, essentially, carbon free, which means a lot of other emmisions can in turn be eliminated by substituting electricity for combustion whereever possible. Electric trains, electric cars, electric heat(pumps), nuclear shipping, are all workable and reasonably economic technologies.

Both electric and nuclear planes are unfortunately unlikely to be workable, but a future where airtravel is the major remaining source of CO2 is a future where global warming has been solved, once and for all.

And this is the major reason that nuclear is the answer- It might, barely, be possible to construct enough renewable capacity to replace our current electricity consumption, tough I remain highly skeptical. There is no hope on earth of building enough, and sufficiently cheap, renewable capacity to substitute electricity for carbon in the transport, heating, and industrial sectors.

Conservation is no answer to electricity demand, because any future that is low carbon will be extremely, massively greedy for electricity. It is nice if your electronic gadgets turn themselves off when not in use, but any savings made there are going to be completely swamped by the way your meter starts spinning when you plug in your electric car for recharging. So an extreme and massive source of carbon free electricity is a nessesity, not an option. Nuclear is the only thing that fits the bill, so the future will be dirigiste energy policy, or ever higher carbon emmissions. There are no other outcomes. CCS is a bondoggle, and renewables will not meet the demand.

http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=9740

Taylor noted:

“Nuclear energy is to the Right what solar energy is to the Left: Religious devotion in practice, a wonderful technology in theory, but an economic white elephant in fact (some crossovers on both sides notwithstanding).”

Coming from a conservative standpoint, Taylor identified correctly all the reasons why nuclear energy is an uncompetitive, government-born-bred-and-fed technology. It is an excellent piece, well worth reading.

So why do so many on the Right leap to “Heart” nuclear power, against all conservative principles? I fear the “Heart” issue may actually be more a “Hate” issue. We have devolved to the point where we “love to hate each other” so much we can’t agree on solutions to anything. Our politics are now so polarized, if one side likes solar power, the other side feels they must fight solar power and champion something else.

We are talking about building power plants, folks. There is no such thing as a Republican or Democrat nuclear or solar power plant or wind farm or caulk gun.

I addressed this in my article: “Nuclear, Solar Not Red or Blue” here:

http://energyeconomyonline.com/Nuclear_Not_Red_or_Blue.html

If the Right champions nuclear power it will be a very costly campaign indeed, as shown by the Ontario, FPL, and San Antonio cost debacles.

Is “Heart” a good reason to have U.S. taxpayers back upwards of a trillion dollars (for the GOP’s “100 new nuclear plants” plan)?

Where are the real conservatives when we need them?

“The only renewable sources of power that can be considered base load are geothermal and compressed air storage (or other electricity storage devices).”

That’s not exactly true.

First, approximately one third of all wind produced by wind farms over wide enough geographical area is baseload. You can depend on that one third to be just as reliable as a coal plant (which is reliable about 85% of the time).

Produce 3 gig, 1 is baseload and the other two are variable.

Second, there a several ways other than CAES to store electricity including pump-hydro, and flow batteries. In fact, were we to take one of the two variable gigs of power from our 3 gig output farms and use it when farm output was between one and two gigs we could now have two gigs of baseload power.

And it’s even better. That wind/stored wind electricity is dispatchable. We can turn it on and off as needed. And this is a very big plus. We cannot turn either coal or nuclear on and off in short order, it can take days.

Now, you argue that we have to build nuclear because their isn’t enough CAES. You overlook the option of building CAES and pump-up and flow batteries. And building them would be less expensive and faster than building nuclear.

Nuclear is just plain slow to build. The Finland plant was supposed to be a quickie and be running in five years or so. Now they’re saying that they’ll have it going closer to ten. Maybe.

Slower to implement.

More expensive.

And creates its own special glow-in-the-dark dangers….

Therefore, nuclear is incredibly valuable as part of the overall solution because it is base load. The cost isn’t that bad when you look at the alternative of runaway climate catastrophe. We have to retire coal plants as fast as possible, and nuclear is clearly one of the best ways to do it. Of equal importance is developing better electricity storage devices so that wind, solar, hydro, etc… can be used as base load. But that is going to take some time and will be complimentary to nuclear.

Wind causes a lot more CO2 to be released during construction as it uses a lot more concrete and steel. Nuclear catches up over time due to mining and requiring more vehicle use in maintenance and operation.

Here are some numbers I worked up for a different use…

A study done for the UK Parliament found the carbon footprint over the complete lifecycle in gCO2/kWh to be greater than 1,000 for coal, 5 for wind, 5 for nuclear.

Japan’s Central Research Institute of the Electric Power Industry found 975 for coal, 29 for wind, 22 for nuclear.

Vattenfall reported for Sweden 980 for coal, 5.5 for wind, 6 for nuclear.

Vattenfall reported for Finland 894 for coal, 14 for wind, 10-26 for nuclear.

Solar PV comes in higher than nuclear or wind, but 90+% less than coal.

“Nuclear power is THE answer !!! … what was the question?”

As for “conservatives”, what they like about nuclear power is that it ensures that electricity generation remains in the hands of a few giant ultra-rich corporations and keeps electricity generation out of the hands of the people.

Nuclear isn’t close to being “carbon free”. The consensus seems to put it at 100g+ CO2 / KWh.

Wind farms are producing electricity for around a nickel per kWh. Best sites, best technology farms are producing at $0.035 per kWh. Those numbers do not include subsidies.

And, based on Severance’s calculations were we to build CAES storage in order to make wind 100% reliable/baseload the price would rise to about $0.13 per kWh. Without subsidies.