Nuclear no cure for climate change, scientists warn (Oz)

http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/nuclear-no-cure-for-climate-change-scientists-warn/2006/05/01/1146335671432.html

AUSTRALIA could not develop a domestic nuclear power industry in time to stave off the effects of climate change and such a program would be prohibitively expensive, energy experts say.

The cost of building the large number of nuclear power stations needed to even partly replace coal as a source of electricity would be so heavy no private investor would take on the risk without huge government subsidies, they said.

<snip>

Dr Mark Diesendorf, a senior lecturer at the Institute of Environmental Studies at the University of NSW, said a 1000-megawatt nuclear plant would cost at least $3 billion to build - 2½ times that of a coal-fired power plant - and much more to operate than fossil fuel plants. To build a lot of nuclear plants, say, over 20 years, would emit so much greenhouse gas it would take 40 years to break even in terms of CO 2, he said.

"You would have this great big spike in CO 2 emissions … I think the whole thing is insane," he said of suggestions that nuclear power could help fight global warming.

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There's hundreds of thousands of square miles of desert in the interior. Why not convert a portion of that into gigantic solar farms that produce electricity?

created in the manufacture of solar cells?

to these "cubic miles of waste"...

The manufacture of solar cells is an energy-intensive process that consumes vast quantities of water and produces a substantial waste stream, much of which is highly toxic. And you're proposing to carpet Australia with them? TANSTAAFL.

Actually the data is largely irrelevant. The solar industry can't produce waste, because it can't produce very much energy. Right now there is a shortage of materials to produce solar PV cells, and the industry hasn't even approached its first exajoule.

So the argument about whether solar could replace anything on a meaningful scale is entirely theoretical. The entire solar capacity to install cannot even displace a few smallish gas fired plants.

http://www.infoworld.com/article/06/03/23/76740_HNpolysiliconshortage_1.html

Note that the solar industry is raving about it's "megawatt" production peak, but all the new production on earth does not equal the output of an average single coal plant's production.

Because the solar PV industry is tiny, and already can't meet demand, it's external cost is largely invisible.

If it were an on scale industry, it's external cost would be very, very, very, very visible, including its carbon dioxide output.

And the size of the solar PV output is not really a mystery - if the industry were to becme meaningful. The size of that impact is known.

As always the carbon output from manufacture of solar cells can be found in the ExternE reports, in this case in table 6 on page 17 of this report: http://www.externe.info/expolwp6.pdf

Here, for your reading pleasure is a comparison of the output of various pollutants in both the nuclear case and the solar PV case. The units are kg of pollutant/kWhr of energy where Kwhr is a measurement of energy.

For a light water reactor the emissions of Greenhouse gases of the infrastructure is 7.64 X 10^-3 kg/kw-hr, almost 8 grams. (I will convert kg to grams hereafter.)

The centrifuge based enrichment, the emissions of Greenhouse gases adds another 4.83 grams CO₂ in the nuclear case.

Thus the total CO₂ emissions for carbon dioxide for nuclear power in Europe amounts to 13 grams of CO₂ per kilowatt hour.

For solar PV, three cases are given. The range is between 53.8 grams/kw-hr (more than 4 times larger than nuclear) to a low of 34.1 grams/kw-hr, more than double nuclear's impact.) Note that these are grid integrated systems and are in Southern Europe. The performance of solar energy would be even worse if we needed batteries.

For particulates, NOx, heavy metal pollution, sulfur pollution, in every case, the environmental impact of solar PV is several times larger or comparable to nuclear the full nuclear fuel cycle, sometimes much larger, with the exception of radioactive emissions, which is trivial. The difference, of course, comes down to the fact that solar PV is a toy for rich folks, while everyone can afford nuclear power, the cheapest fully loaded (external + internal) form of energy known with the exception of wind power.

The data is right there, again in table 6, page 17 http://www.externe.info/expolwp6.pdf

It doesn't matter in any case. Solar energy is not an alternative to nuclear and never will be, since it is an intermittent peak load form of energy and nuclear power is a continuous base load form of energy. I do note that solar energy, while inferior to nuclear power in terms of environmental impact, still beats out fossil fuels. Thus everyone should welcome whatever solar power can be produced, even if the solar industry breaks down frequently in trying to get to that first exajoule.

As for the ridiculous assertion that nuclear will do nothing with the only form of energy that does compete with it, coal, the difference in greenhouse gas emissions between nuclear and coal is over 100. A coal plant (lignite) releases 1,263 grams of greenhouse gases per kw-hr. Hard coal does a slightly better job, releasing only 783 grams of greenhouse gases/kw-hr, but still catastrophically larger than nuclear's impact. Note that the situation is not particularly better for either oil or natural gas: Both are worse than nuclear by factors of close to 100.

As usual the contention that nuclear power has no impact on global climate change is without merit, just like all of the other stuff nuclear opponents make up in their curious batch of misrepresentation and myth. Nobody serious in the world takes this argument seriously, excepting a group of their fellow religious mystics who like all religious mystics, merely make stuff up to comply with their dogma.

The uncertainties associated with ExternE's GHG emission estimates are large...

http://www.externe.info/

"The results are sometimes criticised by pointing at the uncertainties involved. And indeed uncertainties are large."

In some estimates, these uncertainties are plus or minus 4 times the mean values.

Furthermore, the ExternE report did not consider advances in PV manufacturing technologies (i.e. thin film Si and CIS) on greenhouse gas emissions, nor did it consider increases in greenhouse gas emissions from the nuclear fuel cycle due to the exploitation of lower grade uranium ores.

The only "certainty" that anyone can conclude from the ExternE report is that GHG emissions from the European nuclear fuel cycle and Southern European PV industry are similar and several orders of magnitude lower than for fossil fuels.

In this case, Australian researchers have concluded that GHG emissions from the replacement of Australian coal-fired plants with an Australian nuclear fuel cycle would *increase* not *decrease* GHG gas emissions.

They also concluded that "the whole thing is insane".

nuff sed...

:)

...is therefore also insane?

Your qualifications for making the statement is what exactly?

The fact is that the measured values are clear. Like the Cheney squad, making assertions about error is nothing more than a dodge.

George Bush and Dick Cheney always appeal to "uncertainty" in the measurements associated with global climate change, because basically they are trying to get people to ignore the measurement.

And what is the nuclear vs. PV measurement? PV falls 2-4 times short of nuclear power.

Dance and dance and dance and dance, but the measurement is the measurement and you offer, as usual NO data to support any contention whatsoever about the direction of any putative error. For all we know the new manufacturing methods may even be worse than the old ones.

In fact your newspaper article contains no data either. It's just more dubious crap out of the mouth of a reporter with no references whatsoever. It's very typical of all this kind of whitewashing of the "renewable energy can replace nuclear" fraud.

In any case the relative merits of the solar case are irrelevant to the question of greenhouse gas output. The contention of this thread, which is pure nonsense, is that global climate change cannot be addressed by nuclear power. It is very difficult to support the claim that the ExternE values, which are the results of decades of research by thousands of scientists is off by a factor of 100.

Moreover, you cannot address the fact that irrespective of any nonsense about manufacturing methods of PV, and fudging of the data to suit your dogma, the industry is ill prepared to scale up, even though its energy production is still a fraction of an exajoule.

Nor do you address the fact that the solar PV industry, even if we ignore it's inability to scale up even from it's tiny fraction of the world energy supply, is not a competitor for nuclear on the grounds that it is not continuous energy.

We all hope that the solar industry will overcome it's history of inadequacy and hype. But it isn't doing very much to knock off fossil fuels, never mind forms of energy that are safer than it is, nuclear energy.

And now, once again, the energy chart:

yawn indeed.

Again, the ExternE authors clearly state there are LARGE uncertainties associated with their estimates (not measurments)...

...by a factor of + 2-4...

...which is well within their estimates (not measurements) of GHG emissions from the Southern European PV industry (even though the vast majority of the EU PV industry is located in Germany) and the European nuclear fuel cycle (even though the EU imports most of its uranium from mines located in Canada, Australia and Africa).

Different assumptions can have significant effects on these estimates.

If one assumes that aluminum and silicon smelters use electricity produced from low-grade lignite, then GHG emissions from PV manufacture would be high...(same for PV glass manufacture)...

...compared to Al produced using hydroelectricity (or geothermal power)...

...or the use of recycled Al to produce PV modules - which uses a fraction of the energy needed to produce Al from bauxite (same for recycled glass to produce PV).

All these produce uncertainties in estimates of GHG emissions from PV manufacture - as do assumptions of GHG gas emissions associated with the mining of different grades of uranium ore.

What part of this is so hard to understand?????

You are playing the Dick Cheney/George Bush uncertainty game, trying to contravene the data by saying it could be off.

Even if there was a difference of a factor of 2, nuclear energy would still be comparable to solar power.

As it is, the evidence is that solar power is more dangerous than nuclear.

The external cost of nuclear power is extremely low, and there is excellent evidence than it is lower than most renewable fuels.

The main difference between nuclear and renewable strategies is that nuclear power is on scale and renewable strategies are not on scale.

I note that you often make assertions that are not even remotely attached to experimental evidence.

and the authors readily admit there are large uncertainties associated with their estimates.

PV more dangerous, than say, the Chernobyl disaster???

or the Russian Mayak reprocessing complex???

or uranium mining (ask the Navajos and the citizens of Niger and Gabon about that one)????

Don't think so bub...

It has not produced a single exajoule of energy.

I note that a one megawatt nuclear research reactor in a university is not quite on the same scale as Chernobyl.

When solar reaches scale, we will see how dangerous it is.

It probably is fairly dangerous, since it requires the handling of many hazardous substances and the transfer of huge amounts of mass. It isn't very mass efficient.

Most people aren't familiar with the type of contractors who drive solar systems to houses from warehouses and install them. They drive huge trucks. Given that a solar system doesn't produce very much energy for the mass involved, this certainly involves a greenhouse gas coast, as noted in the Externe report that you deny on the grounds that it doesn't conform to your dogma.

We are all waiting for it to reach scale, but so far, in spite of all the talk, it hasn't done so.

"When solar reaches scale, we will see how dangerous it is."

Surely this is a joke.

Last year global PV production was ~1700 "megawatts"

Germany alone installed 837 "megawatts" of PV.

Millions Dead????

Where are the bodies????

Perhaps they will appear in China where one PV manufacturer alone will ramp up their PV cell production to 1000 "megawatts" per year by ~2012.

"HUGE TRUCKS" deliver PV to homes?????

absolute nonsense

Because 1700 MWp is equivalent to a medium gas power station - but with a $9 billion price tag.

Do uranium mines, mills, conversion plants, enrichment plants, spent fuel casks and depositories grow on trees????

Do they cost nothing???

Do they add or subtract from the costs of a nuclear power plant???

:evilgrin:

230,000 tonnes/year for charcoal, for this silicon. What did those trees cost? Is the replanting factored into the cost of PV panels, or is it acceptable to leave these swathes of land barren - the cost you pay for "enviromental" PV?

The cost of nuclear fuel - which is pretty much insignificant in relation to capital and operation costs - is indeed factored in. As you point out, most uranium is imported, which means paying the market rate for it.

And yet, nuclear power still costs 1/8th as much as PV in Wh production terms. Why is that?

nice try

Also - is this "proposed" Si smelter producing Me-Si for the electronics or PV industry (doesn't say)????

As for $9B for a "medium sized natural gas plant" - what is its capital cost and how much natural gas ($$$) does this plant burn over 20-25 years (i.e., the warranty period for most PV modules these days) assuming today's *low* NG prices (lol) and further assuming that they won't "go up" as NG is depleted.

And the production cost of new nuclear electricity is what (compared to existing US plants, many of which were sold at Fire Sale prices in the late '80's and early '90's)????

If it's so damned cheap why do US utilities need $2-3 billion in subsidies to build new nuclear plants (that "only" cost $2 billion to build)????

...and does this include the total costs of constructing and operating Yucca Mountain - $30-60 billion - or disposing of depleted UF6 - $4 billion...(nope).

Who pays for that????.

on edit: the cost of residential PV in Japan is currently 11-15 cents per kWh compared to 21 cents per kWh from the fossil/nuclear Japanese grid...how'd that happen????

is this "proposed" Si smelter producing Me-Si for the electronics or PV industry

I assume that's humour, it's too asinine to be serious.

There aren't huge swathes of pure atomic silicon lying around, what we have is silica, Si02. SiO2 + 2C → Si + 2CO is the extraction method. Charcoal or coke are used for the carbon, so pick your poison: And don't forget that carbon monoxide, which is a toxic greenhouse gas that oxidises in carbon dioxide, that we've got a shit load of already.

Lets see... Pure Si has a mass of 28.0855 g/mol, and CO is 28.1 g/mol, so you get about twice as much CO by weight as you Si. at 20g per Wp for crystalline silicon PV, that's 40g CO per Wp ~ or 68,000 tons of a highly toxic greenhouse gas for your 1700 MWp.

Great. Let's ramp it up by 25% per year.

So, charcoal or coke?

Charcoal, of course is made by cutting down trees and heating the wood in a furnace. Presumably, not a PV powered furnace since it takes about 11 hours in a gas retort, but maybe it's powered by wishful thinking? Or maybe the people who cut down the trees by hand and carry them to the retort get so hot they can just stand next to it. The charcoal then needs to be powdered, but I expect they have a special "carbon for PV silicon" unit where it's powdered by hand, before it's ready to be added to the silica. Then the pixies plant new tress because they can tell this is silicon especially for PV that they're making.

Or would you like to use coke? Obviously, the PV faeries wouldn't be digging for coal unless they can just use a shovel, so they must have a good supply near the surface. They can then heat it up - again, with wishful thinking - use their special fairy powers to make the cyanides, hydrogen sulfide and the rest of the toxic shit just vanish in to thin air. Then they take it to the same powdering unit as the charcoal, and start burying the slag and rebuilding the mountain because this is silicon especially for PV they're making.

Oh, wait, the silicon for PV panels isn't subject to normal chemistry and is actually just wished into existence by the RMI. Or maybe they use little chisels to knock off the oxygen atoms before putting the silicon in a little box and posting it straight to the PV plant.

:eyes:

Oh look! a subsidy for nuclear power! Arrggh! Evil! You were cheerfully announcing the $2000 per KWp subsidy for PV the other day. And let's face it, at $5,410 per KW, PV needs a damn great subsidy. Even with the government spooning $2000 per KWp from the taxpayers to the rich and stupid, that still leaves people stumping up $3,410/KW for a power source that only works for 6 damn hours a day.

What should we compare it to? Biomass, just over $3,000/KW? Hydro, at around £2,500/KW? Wave power, at $2,600/KW? Nuclear, at $2,000/KW? Offshore wind at $1,800/KW? Onshore wind, at $1,400?

That NG plant I suggested would produce would produce the power with $3 billion to spare - even after I doubled the the gas price and added a 10% carbon tax.

The rebate for solar would produce more power if it was spend on any of these - power that could be shared throughout the the whole community, not just just on those who think pinching $3000 off the state's taxpayers to greenwash their house is a morally acceptable way of behaving.

I'd like to be a fan of PV, actually. But unless the price comes down to the level where the rest of the planet can use it, it's an obnoxious and self centered way of wasting huge amounts of money that does absolutely jack shit to slow climate change.

There is a huge and growing market for Si in the electronics industry. Until recently, annual consumption of Si by the electronics industry was several-fold greater than Si used for PV.

If you insist that "PV grows on trees" you are going to have to demonstrate that this "proposed" plant will be producing Si for PV (and not the Asian electronics market).

Also, I seriously doubt that the "proposed" charcoal kiln will emit CO to the atmosphere - most likely, any gases generated will be used to produce heat and/or electricity for the "proposed" forest killing Si-smelter.

Also a total life-cycle production of 68,000 tonnes of CO/CO2 for 1700 MW of PV ain't bad compared to the annual amount of CO2 produced by a "medium-sized natural gas plant"(~34 million tonnes).

And the last few nuclear plants actually built in the US came in at $5-7000 per kW (comparable to PV today).

Finally: by my calculations, building and operating a combined-cycle 500 MW gas-fired power plant for 25 years at double current gas prices, assuming NO carbon tax and excluding O&M costs, would cost ~$8.4 billion.

Which compares quite well with rich stupid PV (which actually DOES reduce GHG emissions)...

:)

I have no idea why you got the idea of a charcoal kiln producing CO. It's not in my post.

Silicon is silicon. It appears to be a standard international commodity: If there is a special production plant for PV silicon, perhaps you'd like to tell us where it is? Remember, we're not talking purified silicon, or crystals - they're extra processes - but the raw Si. And of course, we haven't looked at the other raw materials for PV, but that's more involved than I really want to get.

The point of my post - which clearly went straight over your head - is that these arguments about "nuclear produces too much CO2" that you're so fond of work both ways: For some reason (I wonder why? :eyes:) the anti-nuclear crowd never look at the lifecycle cost of their preferred alternative. Extracting uranium produces CO2? well, so does extracting aluminum and silicon and cadmium... you get the idea.

There's a paper here you might like to look at: or maybe you wouldn't - Their conclusion is that PV emits 0.2Kg/KWh of CO2, because the mining & production equipment uses fossils fuels, same as it does for nuclear fuel. Of course, it's less than half that of gas, and I notice it's comparable to http://www.acfonline.org.au/news.asp?news_id=435">0.05-0.23Kg/KWh for nuclear.

Are we learning, yet? :)

I've agreed before, and doubtless will again, that the US is crap at nuclear power: The US uses more resources than a billion chinese and is $8.4 trillion in debt, so may not be the best place to be getting inspiration: Try Finland, who are beating their emissions targets while building a new reactor at ~$1875/KW. Oh, and they're reducing thier national debt, to boot...

:)

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microprocessor chip fabrication and liquid crystal display fabrication and flat panel tv and monitor fabrication --- cause it's the same kind of waste.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=115&topic_id=49772

Hey, problem solved.

(including process water containing solvents).

This stuff can be separated from the water, concentrated, and incinerated - with recovery/sequestration of the halogens (for clean disposal).

The water can be cleaned up to EPA (and California) standards.

The inorganics (silicon compounds as silanes, and dopant precursors, plus the silicates) are concentrated and disposed of.

I do not mean to sound flip - but my Dad's family is from Donora PA - Google Donora for a story about coal smog mixed with copper refining smog.

I spent about 3 years in the environmental engineering/industrial toxicology group at a semiconductor fab. Interesting.:shrug:

But the wastestream of used PV panels has hardly been activated - nor looked at, AFASK...

to managing used electronics, the bad actor is the solder. - Even though the EU and the ISO (International Standards Organization) has "cleaned things up" - especially with respect to lead - there are all kinds of toxic metals in solder. (Zinc, cadmium, mercury, gallium, indium, thallium, germanium, tin, lead, arsenic, antimony, bismuth, selenium, tellurium) -- and they are much easier to safely manage in fabrication then in disposal.

The other bad actors are the ubiquitous little pill size batteries - if two electrodes are going to give you a voltage - they are probably not healthy for children.

With photovoltaic cells you can generally remove the cipper and active layers (usually silicon) with bleach, and do a separation from the bleach.

PV modules generally consist of an aluminum frame, low-Fe glass, PV grade silicon cells, some solder, some wiring and EVA (a sealant).

Except for the solder - none of its potentially toxic.

There is already a market for recycled Al and glass - which could be recycled back into new PV modules, and there is sure to be a market for recycled PV-grade silicon as well.

Current warranties for PV modules are 20-30 years (80% original output) but their useful life span is ~40 years or more.

A 100W PV module today is a 80W PV model on the "used" market 20-25 years from now.

producing the solar panels produce?

Everything we do on any significant scale will consume fossil fuels, so the only thing we can do is to try to use the energy we do have in as efficient a manner as possible. You can spent the energy to build nuclear power plants that produce toxic waste that will remain dangerous for tens of thousands of years, or you can produce solar panels that don't produce such deadly sludge.

Might I also recommend people learn to cut back consumption and re-order the way they live their lives?

doesn't it.

(Although I've heard higher estimates, as well.)

Solar panels also reduce albedo and take up much more area, though.

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...
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Oh, he doesn't. Presumably, live in caves. Well, that was inspiring.