High energy prices seem to powerfully concentrate lots of minds. After banning nuclear power for a couple of decades Italy has had a change of heart.
ROME — Italy announced Thursday that within five years it planned to resume building nuclear energy plants, two decades after a public referendum resoundingly banned nuclear power and deactivated all its reactors.
“By the end of this legislature, we will put down the foundation stone for the construction in our country of a group of new-generation nuclear plants,” said Claudio Scajola, minister of economic development. “An action plan to go back to nuclear power cannot be delayed anymore.”
Italy is partly motivated by Kyoto and EU obligations to cut CO2 emissions. But the huge run-ups in fossil fuels energy costs in recent years and the possibility of far higher energy costs are forcing a lot of people to rethink their energy and environmental priorities. Want to be poor? Or want to build some nukes that put a price ceiling on your energy costs?
Itay's use of oil to generate electricity is really anachronistic (and the US has a few such anachronisms still for dumb political regulatory reasons). Oil is a very expensive way to generate electricity.
Enel, Italy’s leading energy provider, announced this year that it would close its oil-fired power plants because the fuel had become unaffordable. Italians pay the highest energy prices in Europe. Enel has been building coal plants to fill the void left by oil. Coal plants are cheaper but create relatively high levels of carbon emissions, even using the type of new “clean coal” technology Enel had planned.
Back in 2006 Italians were paying .17 Euro per kwh versus .16 in Germany and .11 in heavily nuclear France. Italy buys much of its electric power from Switzerland and some from France. That .17 Euro converts into US dollars at over 25 cents per kwh - which is very expensive. Italy could enjoy substantial savings by scaling up for a big nuclear power build. Italy's use of oil to generate electricity is one of the most expensive ways to generate electric power and one that is little used in the US outside of Hawaii.
In America by contrast retail electric power averaged 10.64 cents/kwh nationwide in 2007 with the highest costs in Hawaii at 24.13 cents/kwh. Hawaii uses oil for a lot of its electric generation and it is likely going to get hit by far higher electric power costs in 2008. Wyoming pays a mere 7.73 cents/kwh with cheap Powder River Basin coal and Washington State with lots of hydro power pays only 7.24 cents/kwh.
Also, Wired Magazine endorses nuclear power.
We really need faster ways to construct nuclear power plants.
By Randall Parker at 2008 May 23 01:43 PM Energy Nuclear | TrackBackA small quibble: current currency exchange rates don't really tell us the value of a Euro cent. Based on purchasing power, Euro's are pretty close to Dollars, so .17 is really more accurate for Italian KWH costs.
When Italy shut down their nuclear power plants, they lost 25% of their generating power. Where did they get replacement for the lost power? From the nuclear power plants in France.
The French electicity travels by one line through the Alps to Italy. Thus bad weather can cut Italy's power by 25% which causes widespread blackouts throughout the country. These blackouts are a common occurrence especially in the winter.
More proof that when environmentalists gain power, economic and environmental disasters are sure to follow.
It seems clear to me that the energy direction for this century is big time nuclear and electric cars. Sure other plants will play large parts too, like coal plants in developing nations, natural gas plants in south asia and north africa and piped to areas connected, and wind helping pick up some load from natural gas. Maybe solar helping out in hot areas in a few decades and even there is significant hydroelectric under construction.
According to the world nuclear association, globally there is now 29.9 gigwatts of nuclear under construction, 101 gigawatts planned or on order, and an additional 192 gigawatts proposed. To put that in perspective there is currently 371 gigawatts of nuclear operating around the world.
If Italy joins the party, I think it could need like 20 gigawatts to be built by 2028. Say 12 Areva EPR reactors.
Faster reactor build could be the Hyperion Power generation's uranium hydride reactor.
Venture capital funded.
http://nextbigfuture.com/2008/05/hyperion-uranium-hydride-nuclear.html
Could be starting to work in 2012. Plan to mass produce "hot tubs" full of uranium hydride and then encase them.
$25-30 million for 25 megawatts electricity and 75 megawatts of heat.
4000 mass produced for initial wave. Over perhaps 10 years.
100GW of electrical power.
Many will be used in place of natural gas for oilsands and oilshale oil recovery.
Less than one third the cost for the heat.
Water not used as coolant; cannot go “supercritical” or get too hot.
No mechanical parts in the core to malfunction.
Less nuclear waste. 50% burnup of the fuel instead 1-5%.
Can also use thorium.
"We really need faster ways to construct nuclear power plants."
It is a political problem not an engineering nor scientific problem. I suggest the epicenter is on Capitol Hill in Washington D.C.
Brian, That is brilliant to use those hot tub reactors in the tar sands.
Brian Wang:
The fact that the liquid metal reactors like this can burn most of the non-fissile uranium that becomes nuclear waste, is the MAIN thing. Actually most pressurized nuclear reactors are generally designed to burn only about 1 % of the uranium, and the more advanced pressurized reactors might burn some of the secondary long term nuclear waste, leading to 5 % efficiency instead of 1 % efficiency, but this means that at least 95 % of the long term nuclear waste is leftover in pressurized water reactors. But the complete version of the liquid metal reactors are supposed to burn nearly all the long term nuclear waste, leading to nearly 99 % uranium fuel efficiency instead of 1-5 % efficiency, so that in the long run only the short term (300 years half-life) nuclear waste would be leftover. But apparently, because the complete version of the liquid metal reactors would be too slow to develop, they must have decided to make a compromise and design this simplified design that is burning "only" 50 % of the entire uranium. But this is still a major breakthrough because it is a simple and cheap design that needs 10 times less fuel, and then the remaining nuclear waste can be recycled as new fuel again later in a factory.
Here is a web site that discusses the complete version of the liquid metal reactor that is supposed to burn nearly all of the long term nuclear waste by using the non-fissile uranium or thorium in the process, so that only 1 % of the fuel is needed.
http://nextbigfuture.com/2007/12/fuji-molten-salt-reactor.html
And another interesting thing is that the private capital had a lot of foresight, and it was able to finance these companies by communicating with academic and government laboratories several years ago. Instead of talking about it (like we do), they were taking action.
But my complaint is that by the time these new ideas like solar, nuclear, wind, etc become widespread, most of us will be dead.
More proof that when ideologues gain power, economic and environmental disasters are sure to follow.Fixed that for ya.
I've been an environmentalist since my teens. I've been pro-nuclear for just as long. The difference is that I consider things on their merits instead of through ideological blinkers.
The sabotaging of nuclear energy research during second half of the previous century, was not just because of "ideologues", but also business interest groups. For instance, if the liquid metal reactors are developed and commercialized, then the result will be total disaster for the uranium mining companies as well as the uranium fuel assemblers, because the liquid metal reactors will require only 1 % of the uranium fuel. Additionally, the liquid metal reactors can also use a mixture of thorium, further reducing the possibility of high uranium prices. This is not what the uranium industry wants. Additionally, the oil and coal companies also would feel threatened by cheap nuclear energy, and I am sure that the latter business interest groups have used every dirty trick in the book to lobby against nuclear energy research. However, it is precisely the new rival deep pocketed business interest groups that are threatening to finance the revival of nuclear energy research.
I with you EP. I've always considered myself to be an environmentalist in the sense of clean water, clean air, and clean up. I too have been pro-nuclear and pro-technology since my Boy Scout days ... heck, since my Cub Scouts days!
Nice little pro-nuke echo chamber all you smart guys have going here. "Environmentalists" one and all, you are. Yeah, right! Come up with an answer for the waste yet? Thought not. That's because there isn't one.
Fission products have typical half-lives of 50 years or less. A thousand years is 20 half-lives; they disappear in less time than the noisome nature of Roman waste middens.
Yes, Roman dumps still stink 2000 years later.
Roman waste middens aren't radioactive. Next?
private24, do you have a better alternative that doesn't dump us all back into the 15th century? Solar and wind are already running at all cylinders, but they just won't give us the base electrical power we need any time soon. But if you've got a miracle in your back pocket, we're all ears.
Also, the Roman waste dumps are on the surface (more or less). We can bury our nuclear waste way, way down. 2000 years may seem a long time to you, but geologically speaking it's the blink of an eye. A shaft a few miles deep could hold all the waste we could generate for 10x that long, easy, and it wouldn't be any more radioactive than normal dirt by the time it sees light of day again.
Once again, it is important to distinguish between the long term and short term nuclear waste. The long term nuclear waste like plutonium can be re-used as fuel within the same reactor that generated it in the first place, but the reactor must be designed and manufactured for this purpose, and a lot of work is needed to commercialize this reactor. But this molten salt reactor would leave only short term nuclear waste that has half life at most 300 years, meaning that gradually this kind of short term waste would totally disappear. Additionally, this kind of reactor would need only 1 % of the uranium fuel used by the existing pressurized water reactors.
The ideologically motivated environmentalists, as well as the business interests of oil and coal industries seem to collide with the development of this clean and efficient molten salt reactor technology.
Roman waste middens aren't radioactive. Next?Neither is arsenic. Sr-90 is essentially gone in 1000 years; arsenic is toxic forever.
Solar and wind are running at all cylinders? Bullshit! These technologies are in their infancy. As for arsenic, we don't *manufacture* it. Human beings don't live in geological time, so stow that bullshit where the sun don't shine.
You guys are in part correct when you say nuclear power is a political problem, but it's not a political problem in the way you think it is.
First, there hasn't been the political will to enforce proper waste disposal and sequestration, and to ensure that the best available technologies are being employed for all identifiable nuclear waste before putting any new generation online.
Second, private enterprise has demonstrated that it's not to be trusted to ensure public safety in the nuclear industry. Hell, our *government* has proven it's not to be trusted. I notice France does not have these problems in its nuclear industry, because the federal government enforces safety first and all facilities are constrained by a rigid set of operating rules.
Solve these problems first and then deal.
As for arsenic, we don't *manufacture* it. Human beings don't live in geological time, so stow that bullshit where the sun don't shine.So let me get your position straight:
Wolf dog
the http://nextbigfuture.com website is one that I write and edit.
So thanks for appreciating my article on the Fuji molten salt reactor.
Brian Wang:
In your web site http://nextbigfuture.com you are talking about the possibility of cold fusion being real. It is worth writing an expanded article about the late physics Nobel laureate Julian Schwinger who wrote some papers about the feasibility of cold fusion just before he died from cancer. Schwinger claims that according to his quantum mechanical calculations, cold fusion is possible because when deuterium atoms are trapped in a palladium lattice, their proximity allows for their quantum mechanical interactions to bypass the hot fusion requirement of high energy collisions. Schwinger died from cancer in 1994, and could not finish this research, but he wrote notes on this subject until his last hours. However, his articles on cold fusion, was REJECTED by the American Physical Society (by the referees who have "connections"), and as a result, Schwinger RESIGNED from the American Physical Society to protest the censorship. Schwinger said that the censorship was because of the well established hot fusion groups who are getting government funding, and when their interests are threatened, this new avenue was suppressed. Then, before his death, Schwinger started talking with Japanese physicists in order to encourage them to do un-censored research on cold fusion, and he said that "without help from Asia, cold fusion has no future in America."