THE BOOK--Playing The Percentages In Baseball

Thanks for the link Tango. I’m sure there are plenty of people who know better than me, I just get frustrated seeing meteorologists on CNN taking the Mirrian-Webster dictionary definition of meltdown and then totally butcher the following explanation due to complete lack of understanding of the processes involved.

Unfortunately, there just isn’t enough chatter about how miraculous it is that a 40 year-old plant withstood an earthquake 10 times stronger than it was designed to, along with a tsunami to boot. And yet people think the technology is unsafe. The plant was built to last 30 years, it’s been extended to 40 (this was its last year), and it didn’t cause a massive problem. This is not an uncontained reactor like Chernobyl, it’s the brightest engineering minds of the West implementing the best safety 1971 had to offer.

After working on nuclear reactors for 6 years, it is nice to see some common sense being published. 

The one item missed in that the Chernobyl reactor’s design was unsafe compared to the ones created by Japan and the Western World.

This is pretty good stuff, though I think it is premature (and optimistic) that the Fukushima incident would only rate a 3 on the INES. I ‘tangentially’ work in the industry and it should be made known to the public that these are older plants. Newer plants, especially those currently under construction, perform cooling radically different and in such a way that a power failure like this would have no impact on safety.

Halting new construction of nuclear power plants will only make the situation worse. Better to accelerate construction so that these older facilities can be retired.

Do you guys have any resources on the cost of nuclear plants?  I realize you might be biased, but I figured I’d ask anyways That’s one thing I’ve never understood, in terms of how it relates to coal and other forms of power.  I’ve read a lot about the relative safety and cleanliness of the products (and a lot of dramatizations, as this post and the link allude to), but what I don’t know too much about is how they compare in cost and efficient use of dollars.

I think there is a tendency to see “nuclear energy is safe” and “this could be very very bad” as mutually exclusive statements. Nuclear energy may very well be quite safe, and that the facility is still operating may in fact be a testimony to the fantastic design parameters around such a facility....but this may still end up being very very bad.

#4 - No idea/can’t remember.  I only operated them on submarines.  Cost wasn’t really an issue with the Navy and our reactors were built insanely safe, especially to the public standard. 

I haven’t heard if there were any in port in Japan and possibly got damaged.  I had several port calls in Japan, so it was entirely possible.

Incidentally, just in case any of the news stories out of Japan actually list any numbers for radioactivity (rather than qualitative descriptors like “small”, minor”, “moderate”, etc), one can compare them to the naturally occurring radiation we all experience to one degree or another.  Here’s a helpful link for some info on that:

http://www.physics.isu.edu/radinf/natural.htm

No doubt the nuclear-haters out there will be disappointed to find out that wood is radioactive.  And bananas.  And brazil nuts.  And carrots.  And lima beans.  Not that a meltdown is good, I’m just sayin’…

@#4 Mike:

Good question that I can’t answer. I don’t work in the nuclear power industry. Nuclear power generators are my customers.

Anyway, it is one of those questions with so many variables that operates on such a long timeline that I doubt anyone has a confident estimate of the relative costs. If you find someone willing to answer the question definitively, you can bet they are promoting something.

Mike,

Basically, plant operators calculate the cost of building/maintaining the plant over its lifetime per kWh generated by the plant. According to the MIT study (2003, costs have dramatically increased for big projects since then):
Nuclear: 6.7 cents/kWh
Coal: 4.2 cents/kWh
CCGT*: 4.1 cents/kWh

*CCGT is Combined Cycle Gas Turbine—they burn gas in a gas turbine to generate electricity, and the waste heat from the gas turbine is used to create steam that spins a steam turbine. The cost is highly dependent on fuel costs.

Since the deregulation of the power industry, there are lots of Independent Power Providers (IPP) popping up. The IPP make contracts with the utilities to sell electricity, and they are financed by investors who have a good idea of the long term risks/potential for the plants. If nobody was confident about the long term costs, there wouldn’t be any investment in this area.

I think there is a tendency to see “nuclear energy is safe” and “this could be very very bad” as mutually exclusive statements. Nuclear energy may very well be quite safe, and that the facility is still operating may in fact be a testimony to the fantastic design parameters around such a facility....but this may still end up being very very bad.

I think the entire disaster is very very bad. Towns have been swept into the ocean. Tens of thousands are dead. The reactor is not the biggest problem, nor should it be. It did a good job of not being a bigger problem considering all the factors.

Cost wasn’t really an issue with the Navy and our reactors were built insanely safe, especially to the public standard.

Submarines are the Westinghouse PWR design. They are safer in some ways, and less so in others. But much safer on submarines because the steam circulating throughout the ship doesn’t contain any radioactivity. That’s the biggie.

Fukushima is a BWR (Boiling Water Reactor), so it is slightly different. Wikipedia has good pages on both.

@#9:
“If nobody was confident about the long term costs, there wouldn’t be any investment in this area.”

They certainly have good estimates of the long term costs to the enterprise. But they don’t have a good idea of the long term costs to the environment or society...and that goes for nuclear and fossil. I was merely taking a broader view.

@Josh/#10

Full Disclosure: I work in the utility industry so there’ some bias on my part.

The cost for coal that you’re quoting is the current cost but realistically, the EPA and regulations are pushing for items like “scrubbers” which are essentially giant filters on the output of a coal plant.

A scrubber’s cost is often defined in such a way that even regulated providers can pass that cost onto the customer. Beyond the construction cost getting passed on, the scrubber itself consumes a significant amount of energy which reduces the efficiency of the plants (raising production costs.

My point is that if the country wants cheap, reliable and environment friendly base load power, then nuclear is the only real option. Wind energy is a farce and solar technology just isn’t there yet. Nuclear is the only scalable green technology that’s remotely competitive with fossil fuels right now.

I’d like to see a more probabilistic approach to nuclear safety rather than the reporting that makes it out to be a full catastrophe or nothing at all. The range of “failures” is what seems lost in the conversation to me. Also, given the nuclear industry’s track record relative to that of other industries, I think Josh has laid out a compelling case why nuclear power should be considered “safe”.

Wind energy is a farce and solar technology just isn’t there yet.

Solid fact-based explanation…

While I was no means in the industry, I studied solar for a while (the dad of an ex-girlfriend of mine was a CEO of a solar company, and it made me briefly study the subject), and I agree with his assessment.  Really, it’s just a matter of how much you spend to make the solar panel, versus how much electricity you get out of it.  And, the ratio is not great at the moment.  If you follow the industry, “the next big breakthrough” is always right on the doorstep of most of these companies, but for the last decade or so, it hasn’t happened yet (to my knowledge).

Anyways, thanks for the explanations guys, from #6 on through.  My heart wants to support the nuclear thing, and my brain thinks the environmental impact (let alone, the loss of life according to the original link, that is associated with other means of generating power) is worth the extra cost.  For a 50-60% increase in price, that seems reasonable to me.

The problem here was this was a nuclear plant situated in an area prone to frequent earthquakes, and more rarely, extremely large quakes which generate a tsunami.

The design of the plant took into account the probability of a large earthquake, but seems to have ignored the probability and consequences of a tsunami.

After experiencing a large earthquake, a nuclear plant is shut down, and requires electricity to cool the reactor.  Of course, electricity is not guaranteed after a large earthquake, so they have backup generators.  Unfortunately, these generators were located at or below ground level, and susceptible to tsunamis/flooding.  That appears to have happened here.  The last back up was battery power, but these were meant only to provide a short period of power during transition to power from the generators, or to shut down generators for maintenance/repair.

In Taiwan which also has the threat of floods or tsunami, newer reactors have the backup generators high enough to not be affected by floods or tsunamis. 

Why the Japanese regulators did not force these reactors to make it Tsunami proof, especially after the 2004 Tsunami disaster in Indonesia is curious.

For a country like Japan with no natural resources, nuclear power is really the only way to go.  And if you believe that we are destined to run out of oil within the next 50 years, as we have been told since 1900, how can you not want nuclear power.

The main argument against nuclear power given it’s safe track record is nuclear waste.  But this is a man made problem.  We do not allow the nuclear waste to be recycled out of nuclear proliferation concerns. This would reduce the amount of waste 95% or more. 

The amount of spent nuclear fuel rods being stored could provide 20 times the energy already produced by nuclear reactors over the last 50 years if reprocessing/recycling were permitted.  You would think the DHS/military could provide the security to ensure that the reprocessed nuclear fuel was not used for other purposes,

http://oilprice.com/Alternative-Energy/Nuclear-Power/Its-Time-for-the-US-to-Recycle-Used-Nuclear-Fuel.html

http://www.eia.gov/oiaf/archive/aeo10/electricity.html

This is from last year’s American Energy Outlook. The new one is not out yet, preview isn’t centered on electricity generation.
Basically, the predict that generating price of new power plants will be around
Nuclear: 11 cents/kWh
Coal: 10,5 cents/kWh
CCGT*: 8 cents/kWh.
Among NPP costs dominate capital costs, meaning construction and cost of acquiring capital for that construction. Coal costs are slightly less dominated by capital costs, and gas costs (CGGT) are dominated by gas price.
I see two big uncertainties about these prices.
First, they included slight cost of CO2 emissions (CO2 cap-and-trade model that should start soon in most Western countries, is some it already has). There is whole range of studies that predict stable market price of CO2 emissions, and the ones used here are among the lowest. EU study predicted some 3-4 times higher price. Highest prices seen in studies are about 30 times higher (pretty unrealistic).
Second, they predict only slight increase in gas prices. Basically, they predict that gas-oil connection would at least half, that when oil prices start soaring up, that gas prices would rise gradually. Also, they didn’t include any additional cost because of CO2 cap-and-trade for gas-fired power plants.

"gas-oil connection would at least half”
should have been
“gas-oil price ratio would be cut at least in half”

One thing about nuclear power plants: everything, from cleanup of ore waste in core mines to spent fuel repositories is calculated into price. All is included and controlled. While, for example, very few people ask questions about arsenic, mercury, uranium, radon and other elements which are in coal ash (and, depending on filters installed, in smoke too). By nuclear industry standards, coal ash form most power plants would be considered long-lived low level radioactive waste.

Sorry for three in a row.

Currently, I’d say it’s at least 4 on INES scale (quite likely that more than 0.1% of core inventory was released into cooling fluid) with potential to reach 5 (damage to significant part of the core). It should end like Three Mile Island, with only partial release on radioactive gases (like they already did a few times) without lasting damage to people or environment.

Full disclosure #2: My current company also sells gas turbines (and that is where I am currently placed).

First of all, thanks for all the great comments. I am really impressed. I should expect people on this blog to be reasonable and knowledgeable, but you guys blew my mind. Awesome.

They certainly have good estimates of the long term costs to the enterprise. But they don’t have a good idea of the long term costs to the environment or society...and that goes for nuclear and fossil. I was merely taking a broader view.

As stated below (#12, #17), the long term costs of other generation aren’t really taken into account fully either. Nuclear is pretty comprehensive in that respect.

The cost for coal that you’re quoting is the current cost but realistically, the EPA and regulations are pushing for items like “scrubbers” which are essentially giant filters on the output of a coal plant.

A scrubber’s cost is often defined in such a way that even regulated providers can pass that cost onto the customer. Beyond the construction cost getting passed on, the scrubber itself consumes a significant amount of energy which reduces the efficiency of the plants (raising production costs.

Your whole post is great—thanks for the insight into coal power. In Japan, there’s virtually no coal power (despite coal being one resource they do have), and I didn’t know the politics of it. That’s pretty interesting.

Wind energy is a farce and solar technology just isn’t there yet.

Solid fact-based explanation…

Basically, there are two problems. The first is as stated, that solar energy is not very efficient when considering the energy required to build generation capacity. The second is that solar energy and wind energy are not consistent or controllable, and can not realistically replace fossil fuel plants.

Basically, there are huge waves in power demand. During the winter, less electricity is used. Power usage on a daily basis peaks around 6pm. Since wind and solar can’t be controlled, they can only provide a portion of the base load. Base load is the base amount of electricity required (ignoring peak usage). The best base load producers are nuclear plants (and possibly combined cycle Gas/Steam turbine plants where the gas turbine exhaust is used to make steam to power a steam turbine). Nuclear plants in particular are difficult to adjust the load on, so basically an increase in wind/solar energy is a nice little boost, but doesn’t really affect how the system as a whole works to make sure there is enough power to meet demand.

Where wind/solar excels is in rural/undeveloped areas. The lack of a need for infrastructure (the ability to create truly local generation at relatively low cost) is a boon to developing countries with poorly developed infrastructure.

If you want to know more, I’d be perfectly happy to share with you.

Anyways, thanks for the explanations guys, from #6 on through.  My heart wants to support the nuclear thing, and my brain thinks the environmental impact (let alone, the loss of life according to the original link, that is associated with other means of generating power) is worth the extra cost.  For a 50-60% increase in price, that seems reasonable to me.

Thanks for keeping an open mind and looking at objectively.

In Taiwan which also has the threat of floods or tsunami, newer reactors have the backup generators high enough to not be affected by floods or tsunamis.

Why the Japanese regulators did not force these reactors to make it Tsunami proof, especially after the 2004 Tsunami disaster in Indonesia is curious.

I think this is a good point, somewhat mitigated by the fact that the reactor was supposed to shut down this year (it’s at the end of it’s life). I don’t know the specifics of the plant or the logistics that would be involved, but I’ll look into why that didn’t happen, or at least try to.

This is from last year’s American Energy Outlook. The new one is not out yet, preview isn’t centered on electricity generation.
Basically, the predict that generating price of new power plants will be around
Nuclear: 11 cents/kWh
Coal: 10,5 cents/kWh
CCGT*: 8 cents/kWh.
Among NPP costs dominate capital costs, meaning construction and cost of acquiring capital for that construction. Coal costs are slightly less dominated by capital costs, and gas costs (CGGT) are dominated by gas price.
I see two big uncertainties about these prices.
First, they included slight cost of CO2 emissions (CO2 cap-and-trade model that should start soon in most Western countries, is some it already has). There is whole range of studies that predict stable market price of CO2 emissions, and the ones used here are among the lowest. EU study predicted some 3-4 times higher price. Highest prices seen in studies are about 30 times higher (pretty unrealistic).
Second, they predict only slight increase in gas prices. Basically, they predict that gas-oil connection would at least half, that when oil prices start soaring up, that gas prices would rise gradually. Also, they didn’t include any additional cost because of CO2 cap-and-trade for gas-fired power plants.

Interesting, thanks for the link.

Currently, I’d say it’s at least 4 on INES scale (quite likely that more than 0.1% of core inventory was released into cooling fluid) with potential to reach 5 (damage to significant part of the core). It should end like Three Mile Island, with only partial release on radioactive gases (like they already did a few times) without lasting damage to people or environment.

Yeah, it’s looking like that now. Radiation levels are detected at 0.84 mSv right now (less than an abdominal x-ray or a CT scan, mind), and it seems like there’s going to be more before it’s all over. All things considered, I think the post-incident outrage will be much bigger than the actual long-term effects of the incident. I hope that people keep an open mind rather than eliminating a very viable possibility for future power generation.

This is a great link with answers to some questions from a scientist in Japan:
http://smc-japan.sakura.ne.jp/?p=830

@13

I’ll expand on wind energy a bit. Basically the listed production value of a turbine is laughable. Generally, generators are topping out at 30% of the rated turbine capacity.  What makes wind feasible right now are significant government subsidies that these companies are getting and regulation that forces utilities to sign long term power deals with green energy sources to diversify their portfolios.

You can’t depend on wind for base load—it’s inconsistent. The costs are extremely high and it simply isn’t producing what proponents claim it will once it’s installed.

About the wind power:
Rated power of the wind turbine is power at nominal wind speed. Turbine can keep same or slightly lower power in certain range (for example, if nominal speed is 10 m/s, 90% - 100% power can be maintained up to perhaps 15 m/s). It can’t go above 100% power. At lower wind speeds, power falls with cubed speed ratio (so, at 5 m/s it’s at 12.5% - ideally). You can have some stability building wind power plants on see in places with constant winds, like Germany and Denmark are doing, but even there it’s hard to get capacity factor significantly over 30%.

As for Japan situation, this situation now looks like 5 at least. Containment at reactor 2 might be breached, but it seems that it resulted in no significant increase in radiation levels. But reactor 2 is certainly more worrisome than reactors 1 and 3.
the biggest problem right now might be reactors 4, 5 and 6. All three were shut down for scheduled maintenance. Reactor 4 had its fuel transferred in spent fuel pool, I’m not sure for reactors 5 and 6, but I expect they had it too. Those pools are much easier to control than the reactor - they contain more water, power level is much lower, and they are at atmospheric pressure, which makes it much easier to pump more water. The problem is, they don’t have the containment, so in case of fuel melt, release into environment is probable. Reported release was significant, but not dangerous to people outside the evacuated areas (probably even outside fist few kilometers from the plant).
The big problem with spent fuel could come up if there is significant damage to any of the pools. Also, problem could be that they can’t pump enough water to cover first three reactors and all the pools. If spent fuel pools are intact and they have enough energy and pipes to pump water, keeping spent fuel safe should be much easier than keeping first three reactors safe.
Depending on the radioactive material that was released, this might even be classified as level 6 INES, but except for workers, nobody else is currently at risk (yes, you can have level 6 accident without risk to general population).

Just wanted to say thanks to Joshua, Davor, et al.; I’m grateful for the information and appreciate the updates.  I shouldn’t have to read a baseball blog to get timely and accurate information on this; perhaps I’m not looking in the right places.  Anyways, thanks.

Despite wind being touted as green, it suffers from NIMBY.

There’s a ridge just east of here that rises to over 3000 feet as it goes south to Maryland. Now there is almost a 50 mile stretch of windmills. I have no problem with them, but in one section I drive through to go to work, where they do not yet have any, there are signs all along the road (and a website) about how the windmill company is going to destroy the environment of the mountain. They are extremely worked up about it.

knowledgeable people are cool.  really informative stuff.

Japan has no coal, oil, natural gas, and the entire country is in an earthquake zone. And they went to war in the 1930’s to capture sources of coal and oil, as well as timber, rubber and iron ore. So what’s their best choice to generate electricity?

@#26:
My understanding is that they do have abundant coal, but it is more expensive to mine than import.

I used to drive past those windmills all the time and saw the signs you mention. Is there a means of generating electricity that doesn’t suffer from NIMBY?

As far as I know, in some European countries (France, Switzerland, Slovenia, Finland) local community supports NPPs. In coal-mining communities they love coal-fired power plants. Otherwise, not so much. Gas-fired power plants are largely neutral.
Wind power plants can really only be used either on sea far from tourist centers and towns and on the ridges that don’t have scenic value and are far from towns. They are really loud and don’t look nice. Also, they are danger to the birds.

Japan update:
It has been confirmed that reactors 4, 5 and 6 were shut down, planned maintenance. Fuel from reactor 4 was in spent fuel pool, while reactors 5 and 6 were fully loaded. Those three reactors were shut down between 2 and 6 months, so residual heat at the time of the earthquake was about 10% of residual heat immediately after the shutdown. Much easier to cool than reactors 1-3, but still substantial heat.
Reports are that radioactivity is falling, a lot, which should mean that spent fuel pool is under water again.

Things seem to be deteriorating at the Fukushima location unfortunately. First time I’ve read (educated) reports questioning whether it could reach Chernobyl levels.

One thing that I didn’t really catch onto until tonight was the density of the nuclear power at Japan. Fukushima has 6 reactors at the same plant. That seems like a much larger capacity than anything I’m familiar with in the US.  It looks like the 6 reactors combine for 5 GW (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_I_Nuclear_Power_Plant) of capacity. The Palo Verde plant in Arizona has 4 GW of capacity and I believe that’s the largest US nuclear plant.  (A quick google search would seem to confirm - http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf41ai_US_operating_nuclear_reactors.html)

So the Japanese Fukushima Dai-iichi plant is 25% larger (in capacity) than the largest nuclear plant. There’s a plant in Kashiwazaki-Kariwa (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kashiwazaki-Kariwa_Nuclear_Power_Plant) that’s 8 GW between it’s 7 reactors.

First, thanks for the explanations.

Second,

What makes wind feasible right now are significant government subsidies that these companies are getting and regulation that forces utilities to sign long term power deals with green energy sources to diversify their portfolios.

isn’t nuclear subsidized too? doesn’t the industry wants subsidies before it will build a new plant?

http://www.stanford.edu/group/efmh/jacobson/Articles/I/sad1109Jaco5p.indd.pdf

according to this Stanford study, 90% of the electricity generation can be handled by solar and wind with hydro/geothermal/tidal power proving 10% and this all accomplished using existing technologies and finished by 2050. The costs are manageable and more importantly, this doesn’t account for increases in efficiency as a result of new technologies.

The pining for some big breakthrough in solar is the same nonsense that has been going on in journalism around cancer research or space travel. The fact is that incremental technological advances lead to slow and steady progress in these fields, and in the same way that prognosis with cancer and overall life expectancy continues to rise, so do energy efficiency and power generation potential in renewable energies.

Also, it would be great if new nuclear plants in the US took advantage of the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorium_fuel_cycle to make them safer and longer-running. This kind of a reactor (especially light water rather than molten salt) hasn’t been judiciously proven but it seems promising.

Also, regarding subsidies, renewable energy (as a whole- solar, biofuels, etc, not just wind) has received less than $15B in the last 10 years while coal and oil subsidies have accounted for several times that amount.

#30 - @The Wizard

While I’m not sure what every generation company in the US is pursuing, usually the companies are after guaranteed financing as opposed to subsidies. That is they want to build the costs of construction for the nuclear plant into their electric rates on a yearly (or periodic) basis. Most (all?) regulation now requires that a asset be usable before the company starts billing it’s customers.  For a nuclear plant that would mean something like a decade before the company could begin recouping costs.

That type of regulation leads to what utilities call regulatory lag—the delay between their investment in infrastructure and when they can begin to bill their customers for substantive upgrades to the product. Duke Energy in the southeast part of the country has one of the most utility friendly regulatory environments and some of the Midwest states (Missouri/Illinois) have some terrible regulatory environments from a utility perspective.

I digress. Some of the stimulus money that the US was targeting for new nuclear reactors was, I think, in the form of guaranteed, low interest loans. So yes, I think you’re right in that the government is offering a type of subsidy. Wind power gets long term benefits in the form of significant tax write offs and credits.

So let me rephrase the distinction: If a generator could finance the initial investment costs for a new nuclear plant on a pay as you go type system, that could be a self-sustaining, profitable plant. It’s my understanding that most wind farms at current energy prices would not be profitable without the government tax breaks and/or regulation that requires a diversified energy portfolio.

@hazel/31

I’ve read that study previously. Take a look at page 5 of 9. Notice how all the energy sources it’s listed have 1% or less as built? The study has taken criticism for being too optimistic regarding the unknowns related to emerging technologies.  Read closely towards the end of the study where it talks about “energy storage” and “fuel cells” and keep in mind that those are also nascent technologies on the scale they’re talking about.

A quick example: there was a wind farm built in Minnesota and all the turbines unexpectedly . . . froze. (http://venturebeat.com/2010/02/08/minnesotas-frozen-turbines-raise-new-doubts-about-wind-power/)

One of the other problems I have with it is that it compares the WWS against a long term mix of fossil fuels and nuclear energy which overstates how cheap WWS is compared to nuclear. (I’m in agreement on long term fossil fuel prices.) I’m just not sold on that study as being definitive.

Hazel wrote “90% of the electricity generation can be handled by solar and wind with hydro/geothermal/tidal power proving 10% and this all accomplished using existing technologies and finished by 2050”

Solar and Wind require backup power plants (coal gas or nuclear) for when the sun does not shine or the wind blows, or the wind farms freeze.  Both are extremely low power density, and wind especially has huge maintenance and environmental impact costs over large areas. 

Right now, the cost for the average home using solar is 35 cents per kilowatt hour, and 25 cents per kW/h in the desert. Wind is about 10 cents/kWh. These costs could go down of course, but it will cost over 100 trillion to convert to wind/solar and you still need the backup power plants. Electricity can be generated from nuclear plants at 1.3cents/kWh. 

Wind power is most disturbing. To install these windmills you must dig large holes and use large amounts of concrete for the foundations, steel for the frames, and rare earth metals from China for the turbines.  Roads must be built to install and maintain them. Trees and hills are leveled, land is made unable for other uses.  New power lines must be installed over many thousands of miles.  Defintely not environmentally friendly, even without mentioning the noise, and hazards to birds.

One thing I rarely hear talked about is the cost of manufacturing solar panels, which I assume must take a lot of energy in and of itself.

#29, “Chernoby levels” sounds ominous, but take a look at this report from the UNSCEAR:

ttp://www.unscear.org/docs/reports/2008/Advance_copy_Annex_D_Chernobyl_Report.pdf

“Most of the workers and members of the public were exposed to low level radiation comparable to or, at most, a few times higher than the annual natural background levels”

“There was a higher incidence of thyroid cancers due to the contamination of milk with 131I, for which prompt COUNTERMEASURES WERE LACKING, resulted in large doses to the thyroids of members of the general public; this led to a substantial fraction of the more than 6,000 thyroid cancers observed to date among
people who were children or adolescents at the time of the accident (by 2005, 15 cases had proved fatal)”

I131 decays relatively rapidly.  This exposure could have been avoided, or at least managed with iodine tablets, but they were not used during Chernobyl.

Unless you were a plant worker or emergency/recovery worker at Chernobyl, no serious unmanageable radiation exposure was noted.

Not trying to minimize Chernobyl, but even a worst case event was not catastrophic outside of the plant.

Wind power plants are constrained by physical laws. Wind power depends on velocity cubed, and there is theoretical maximum of wind power that can be used (around 57%). Further “big” advances could only increase plant lifetime and range of available wind speeds.
Solar power plants either concentrate solar power to heat water or other fluids, or use solar cells. Those with heated fluids are basically equal to oil/gas/coal/nuclear plants, and have same efficiency constraints. Solar cells currently mostly have efficiency in 15-20% range, with some models reaching close to 25%. There is also small loss in DC/AC conversion, 5-10%. Industry is hoping for big breakthrough, and some lab tests have reached over 35%.
I don’t have info for the newest designs, but most of currently installed solar cells need 5-7 years, some even 10 years, to produce amount of energy used for their production.
The biggest problem of solar energy is its low power density. In the equatorial belt, exactly at noon, on a bright day, earth receives less than 1.5 kW/m2. That’s for ideal conditions - Sun in zenith, falling directly to the surface at the right angle, with clear atmosphere.
4 main factors reduce that power: atmospheric blockages, like clouds or mist, angle between position of the sun at noon and zenith, angle between position of the sun at other times and at noon, and angle between the surface and the sunlight. Only the last one can be partially countermanded with sun-tracking mechanisms. All of this severely limits peak power and time period when any significant power can be produced.
Also, efficiency of solar cells and plants that use mirrors for focusing solar energy ca be greatly reduced by dust, sand and other pollutants. Full information about water and chemicals used to clean solar power plants would be interesting.

35 pft, where do you get the numbers for kWh for each of those technologies?

Hazel (#39):
I don’t know where pft got his numbers, but take any number you get for solar/wind energy carefully. Firstly, you have to know if any subsidy is included (and for solar/wind they are generally big). Secondly, depending on the area, those prices fluctuate wildly.
As for nuclear power, that definitely isn’t full production price. But, power plants are usually built using credits and company’s own equity that should be repaid in full during the first 20 years of operation at latest. Bu nuclear power plants can work at least 40, and mostly 60 years. Since up to 80% of all costs of NPPs are capital costs (cost of building NPP and financing it), in the last 20 - 40 years NPPs are very, very cheap. The same goes for hydro power plants, that don’t have real age limit. Basically, as long as the dam is structurally sound, they can work.
Of course, both NPP and hydro power plant need periodical further investments, but it’s much lower than initial investment.

Hazel. Different sources.  I suspect you are mainly questioning the nuclear.

“The improved operation of nuclear power plants has helped drive down the cost of nuclear-generated electricity. Average operations and maintenance costs (including fuel but excluding capital costs) dropped steadily from a high of about 3.5 cents/kilowatt-hour (kwh) in 1987 to below 2 cents/kwh in 2001 (in 2001 dollars).9
By 2005, the average operating cost was 1.7 cents/kwh.”

Not sure why I had 1.3.

http://assets.opencrs.com/rpts/RL33442_20070309.pdf

Of course, the obstacles for new nuclear power plants to go on line are generally man made and designed to discourage nuclear power. 

Wind here (I rounded and converted to kwh)

http://www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/aeo/electricity_generation.html

Home Solar here

http://www.renewablepowernews.com/archives/1982

Yes, as I said, nuclear price is for NPPs that have paid their capital costs. With all the price hikes in this crisis (2008 one, not this one in Japan), operating cost is higher, probably somewhere in 2.5 c/kWh range.

As for Japan, there is accident level 6 right now. It seems that they have lost most or all water from spent fuel pool in reactor 4 and same thing is close to happen in reactor 3. That means that most of gaseous radionuclides in that spent fuel are probably getting into atmosphere.

more on the nuclear power subsidies. it’s not only loan guarantees:

Congress has already approved an $18.5 billion loan guarantee program in hopes of reassuring Wall Street investors about an industry with a history of cost overruns. But the industry said additional financial support was needed. The loan guarantee program prompted 17 applications for projects that were estimated to cost $122 billion to build.

The announcement of the additional loan guarantees “is a very important signal of the seriousness about getting a clean energy industry back up and running,” said Jim Connaughton, a former director of the White House Council on Environmental Quality in the Bush administration.

Connaughton is now an executive at Constellation, an electric utility that operates five nuclear reactors at three sites.*

Connaughton said negotiations with DoE are ongoing over what percentage a company should have to pay to DoE to reduce its risk. The industry wants to keep the “credit cost” at 1 percent or below the anticipated total cost to build a new plant. A company would be required to pay DoE $100 million to reduce the risks for a $10 billion project, but industry critics have sought a much higher percentage.

The guarantees would mean the government would step in to repay 80 percent of a loan should a company default.

In addition to loan guarantees, the industry is also lobbying to remain eligible for support from a clean energy fund Congress is also considering.

The entity would support a variety of clean energy technologies through loans, grants and guarantees to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

http://thehill.com/business-a-lobbying/78943-nuclear-energy-industry-seeks-more-than-loan-guarantees-for-revival

liability caps too:

“Among its various provisions, the Energy Policy Act of 2005 extended the Price-Anderson Nuclear Industries Indemnity Act, which limits the industry’s liability for accidents at nuclear power plants. In practice, Price-Anderson subsidizes utilities by reducing their cost of carrying liability insurance. Instead of purchasing full coverage, operators of nuclear power plants are required to obtain coverage only up to the liability limit, which is currently set at about $10 billion per accident.1 The value of the subsidy is the difference between the premium for full coverage and the premium for $10 billion in coverage.”
http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/91xx/doc9133/Chapter3.6.1.shtml#1092762

result:

“The loan guarantee program could encourage investors to choose relatively risky projects over more certain alternatives because they would be responsible for only about 20 percent of a project’s costs but would receive 100 percent of the returns that exceeded costs.5”
http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/91xx/doc9133/Chapter3.6.1.shtml#1091937

so, another the program seems designed to enrich wall street and screw the rest

I don’t know what advances were made recently in the legislation, but biggest threat for nuclear power plants was the ability to delay or stop construction and operation with law suits, petitions,… even after all the licenses are obtained. Delays kill the project financially.

I’ve been reading that many people are trying to get potassium iodide pills.
Important: potassium iodide pills block radioactive iodine from getting into thyroid. They are very effective if taken at most a few hours before the exposure. If they are taken needlessly, they can be dangerous, like any drug.
Potassium iodide pills should be taken only when authorities say so.