adding 100 new reactors in US set to be $1.9 - $4.1 trillion more than efficiency & renewables

[kristopher]

Nuclear power could cost trillions over renewables

By Brendan Borrell Jun 19, 2009 02:00 PM 53

...An analysis by economist Mark Cooper at the Vermont Law School claims that adding 100 new reactors to the U.S. power grid would cost taxpayers and customers between $1.9 and $4.1 trillion over the reactors’ lifetimes compared with renewable power sources and conservation measures.

The analysis factors in studies from Wall Street and independent energy analysts estimating the efficiency of renewable energy at 6 cents per kilowatt hour versus 12 to 20 cents per kilowatt hour for nuclear. Cooper says those costs will fall on either ratepayers through higher electric bills or on taxpayers through large subsidies.

“It is telling that in the few short years since the so-called ‘Nuclear Renaissance’ began there has been a four-fold increase in projected costs,” Cooper said in a statement. “The original low-ball estimates were promotional, not practical; they were based on hope and hype intended to promote the industry.”

Cooper’s study comes on the heels of a recent review of the state of nuclear power by a team from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The researchers concluded that nuclear power was not the most cost-effective way to reduce greenhouse gases and that waste management and safety issues must be addressed for it to remain a viable option. In 2003, the MIT team expressed similar skepticism in a report co-authored by John Holdren, now President Obama’s science advisor....

http://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/post.cfm?id=nuclear-power-could-cost-trillions-2009-06-19

Cooper study online http://www.olino.org/us/articles/2009/11/26/the-economics-of-nuclear-reactors-renaissance-or-relapse

Download pdf: http://www.vermontlaw.edu/it/Documents/Cooper%20Report%20on%20Nuclear%20Economics%20FINAL%5B1%5D.pdf

[truedelphi]

1. Ah yes, let's do it! Who cares that we have nowhere for the waste, and who cares that

The "Public utilities" always have the rate payers pay for the new facilities as rate hikes and then when the plants are built, the Utilities are charging the customer?

Meanwhile city-owned utilities in California are finding it great to make alliances with the sun and the wind. And not much waste there. Plus much better rates for the consumer.

[Nederland]

2. Yawn, another "study"

When will you realize that all studies ever do is reflect the biases of their authors?

[Systematic Chaos]

3. Was Mark Z. Jacobson on vacation today?

:shrug:

[madokie]

4. You should have been

[Systematic Chaos]

18. Sorry but somebody has to act as an equalizer to "teh stoopid."

I guess we're drawn to the same inane fucking bullshit cut-and-paste for rather different reasons.

Enjoy your bliss.

[joshcryer]

5. The markets are not going to solve the problem.

[joshcryer]

6. And certainly the politicians aren't going to spend $100 trillion promoting renewables.

[kristopher]

7. i've explained this to you a couple of time before, what is it you fail to understand?

If we take the amount of energy used globally and assign a current value to it of 10 cents per kwh (overall electricity is the least expensive form of energy), we can get a rough approximation of the total value of energy over the next 50 or 100 years at today's rate of usage.

I worked it out as about $1.3 quadrillion dollars. That is money/resources that WILL BE spent on energy. The 100 trillion you are fixated on is a DIVERSION of a part of that cash flow into a different set of technologies over time. We don't just save up $100 trillion dollars and then go out and buy a new solution; we manipulate policies to change the flow of money so that it stops going to the people who own the technologies we deem harmful and to the people who are willing to put in the technologies we believe will solve our problem.

So I cannot understand WHAT you are carping on unless you are upset that the owners of existing fossil generation are going to be force to view the money they invested in abandoned coal plants as sunk costs.

Initially the typical person will do little than write a check to a different entity. Over time as renewable manufacturing infrastructure matures the dynamics will change and we will no longer pay a price determined by energy output in relation to the current structure where prices are dictated by fossil fuels but by the cost of manufacturing a solar panel - a state which is not as far away as some might imagine.

So don't weep for the value lost by owners of fossil fuel interests and assets; they've profited mightily and it is their turn to take one for the team.

[joshcryer]

8. Well, OK, in 2015 how much total energy do you think renewables will account for?

2020?

I never intended to suggest we "save up $100 trillion" as that is preposterous. Like Apollo, we do it on credit. But of our credit it is a 10% global GDP annual investment. Every year. 190 thousand wind turbines. That's not the tip of it. We also have to build 1335 GW of solar every year. This is a thousand times the USs current solar capacity.

Instead renewables will remain some percentage of a percentage of global energy investment. You have provided absolutely no evidence to compel me to believe otherwise.

[kristopher]

12. What is wrong with you?

NO IT ISN'T CREDIT, IT IS A DIVERSION OF AN EXISTING CASH STREAM FROM THE OWNERS OF FOSSIL FUEL ASSETS TO THE PEOPLE PROVIDING RENEWABLE ENERGY AND ENERGY EFFICIENCY IMPROVEMENTS.

Does shouting get it through? It isn't complicated. You stop paying Tom to shovel your driveway and start paying Earl. You still get your driveway shoveled and it costs you about the same initially but with a declining price as Earls young kids grow up and provide more value by helping him out.

This is why I can't help but question motives - how the hell can anyone bollocks up what I wrote with such an interpretation except when they want to obscure the description of what actually is happening?

It isn't controversial just because you can't wrap your head around it.

[joshcryer]

13. You dodged the question and you know it.

Typical you.

[kristopher]

15. Your questions are nonsensical and the answers are self evident

Couple that with your unceasing reprehensible behavior and you don't get answered except on rare occasions where I suffer a complete break from reality and actually think for a moment that you are sincere.

To state the obvious for the oblivious: The pace of development is strictly political. Renewables roll out far, far faster than either coalccs or nuclear, basically just fast as we want them to. So if we WANT to transition in as little as 10 years we can do it.

[joshcryer]

16. You refuse to give projections because you have none.

And you attempt to divert attention away by blathering on with your insults.

Fact is renewables are not going to do shit to combat climate change.

[Kolesar]

21. There is no "insult" in post 15 eom

[joshcryer]

14. Are you really suggesting that we don't need to build 190k turbines and 1300+ GW of solar?

Those numbers are directly from Jacobson.

[joshcryer]

17. Anyone else know how we can build 190k turbines and 1200+ GW of solar annually without credit?

Because I think our own kristopher here doesn't actually support Jacobson's renewable plans.

[txlibdem]

20. Tom and Earl

I hate it when Tom shovels my driveway. His equipment spews out this stinky black smoke and when he's done there is a pool of slurry and fly ash that is sitting there polluting my back yard. Last month, the walls of the slurry pond broke, all this toxic sludge spilled out into my neighbor's yard and now his property will be uninhabitable for at least a decade.

When Earl shovels my driveway there is a little pollution caused when Earl's equipment is manufactured but during use there is no pollution at all. His snowplow is solar powered and his shovels get their energy from the wind. And I like the fact that Earl arrives at my driveway in an electric car.

I'm going to fire Tom and hire Earl.

[NNadir]

11. Actually "to work something out" one needs to start with at least a minimal mathematical education.

Just saying...

As for the dangerous fossil fuel industry, it's pretty damn clear who they own:

http://www.rmi.org/rmi/Amory+B.+Lovins">Famous Anti-nuke Amory Lovins describes his revenue sources:

Mr. Lovins’s other clients have included Accenture, Allstate, AMD, Anglo American, Anheuser-Busch, Bank of America, Baxter, Borg-Warner, BP, HP Bulmer, Carrier, Chevron, Ciba-Geigy, CLSA, ConocoPhillips, Corning, Dow, Equitable, GM, HP, Invensys, Lockheed Martin, Mitsubishi, Monsanto, Motorola, Norsk Hydro, Petrobras, Prudential, Rio Tinto, Royal Dutch/Shell, Shearson Lehman Amex, STMicroelectronics, Sun Oil, Suncor, Texas Instruments, UBS, Unilever, Westinghouse, Xerox, major developers, and over 100 energy utilities. His public-sector clients have included the OECD, the UN, and RFF; the Australian, Canadian, Dutch, German, and Italian governments; 13 states; Congress, and the U.S. Energy and Defense Departments.

[Confusious]

19. Bad math

If we take the amount of energy used globally and assign a current value to it of 10 cents per kwh (overall electricity is the least expensive form of energy), we can get a rough approximation of the total value of energy over the next 50 or 100 years at today's rate of usage.

More people, more energy needed. more little gizmos. 50 years, another billion people on the planet.

Back to the drawing board.

[NNadir]

9. Really, a dumb ass lawyer with no science education claims that the 1970's and 1980's didn't

create observable results, and if something happened in those times, these things are are now impossible on the grounds that the country is now mathematically illiterate?

It just goes to show that you can become a Vermont lawyer and still be stoned out of one's gourd.

Couldn't um, the dumb ass historically illiterate lawyer just compare the electricity rates in Denmark and France and draw a realistic conclusion on whether he's just fucking clueless?

No?

He can't? He just waits for equally dumb anti-nukes to cite him as an "authority."

Well, for anyone who can appreciate the reality of numbers, the European Union publishes electricity rates in nuclear France, and the dumb ass oil and gas drilling and wind republic of Denmark: http://www.energy.eu/

How is it that dumb guys can never grasp what the numbers readily available from the EU actually mean, and instead quote dumb guys from Vermont?

[Kolesar]

22. Typical, embarassing NNadir blather...eom

[Confusious]

10. That's nice

The analysis factors in studies from Wall Street and independent energy analysts estimating the efficiency of renewable energy at 6 cents per kilowatt hour versus 12 to 20 cents per kilowatt hour for nuclear.

I think he got his numbers mixed up, because that's the exact opposite of reality. France has the lowest rates, European countries with renewables have the highest.

Guess we can see now why he became a lawyer and not a physicist.