David Fleming’s New Book Provides Death Knell for Nuclear Power.

[Guest]

David Fleming’s New Book Provides Death Knell for Nuclear Power.
Rob Hopkins

David Fleming, creator of the concept of Tradeable Energy Quotas and author of the forthcoming and rather wonderful “Lean Logic”, has just published The Lean Guide to Nuclear Energy, which is a thorough demolition of the case for nuclear power being a solution to peak oil. and climate change. You can down load the pdf. for free here or you can order printed copies here. Like much of David’s writing, it patiently yet assertively builds its arguments, backed up by exhaustive research, to build a case against nuclear power that looks pretty much bulletproof to me. The report’s key findings are;

1. The world’s endowment of uranium ore is now so depleted that the nuclear industry will never, from its own resources, be able to generate the energy it needs to clear up its own backlog of waste.
2. It is essential that the waste should be made safe and placed in permanent storage. High-level wastes, in their temporary storage facilities, have to be managed and kept cool to prevent fire and leaks which would otherwise contaminate large areas.
3. Shortages of uranium – and the lack of realistic alternatives – leading to interruptions in supply, can be expected to start in the middle years of the decade 2010-2019, and to deepen thereafter.
4. The task of disposing finally of the waste could not, therefore, now be completed using only energy generated by the nuclear industry, even if the whole of the industry’s output were to be devoted to it. In order to deal with its waste, the industry will need to be a major net user of energy, almost all of it from fossil fuels.
5. Every stage in the nuclear process, except fission, produces carbon dioxide. As the richest ores are used up, emissions will rise.
6. Uranium enrichment uses large volumes of uranium hexafluoride, a halogenated compound (HC). Other HCs are also used in the nuclear life-cycle. HCs are greenhouse gases with global warming potentials ranging up to 10,000 times that of carbon dioxide.
7. An independent audit should now review these findings. The quality of available data is poor, and totally inadequate in relation to the importance of the nuclear question. The audit should set out an energy-budget which establishes how much energy will be needed to make all nuclear waste safe, and where it will come from. It should also supply a briefing on the consequences of the worldwide waste backlog being abandoned untreated.
8. There is no single solution to the coming energy gap. What is needed is a speedy programme of Lean Energy, comprising: (1) energy conservation and efficiency; (2) structural change in patterns of energy-use and land-use; and (3) renewable energy; all within (4) a framework for managing the energy descent, such as Tradable Energy Quotas (TEQs).

Get a copy, have a read. If you think Fleming’s analysis is wrong, tell us about it here. I think this book does us all a great service in setting out the nuclear case in the light of peak oil and climate change, and also in the light of ‘peak uranium’.

(7 December 2007)

[jk]

Re: David Fleming’s New Book Provides Death Knell for Nuclear Power.

i suppose the next thing you're going to say is that corn-based ethanol isn't a net generator of energy!;)



[i've noticed that these kinds of rational arguments don't always seem to determine policy decisions.]

[Andreuccio]

Re: David Fleming’s New Book Provides Death Knell for Nuclear Power.

[i've noticed that these kinds of rational arguments don't always seem to determine policy decisions.]

Oh, they do. Just in a contrarian kind of a way.

[BiscayneSunrise]

Re: David Fleming’s New Book Provides Death Knell for Nuclear Power.

Lukester,

So in other words, we now have peak uranium but it doesn't matter since the entire uranium life cycle process is a greater contributor of greenhouse gas than traditional fossil fuel, therefore a false solution. Hmmm, very interesting.

By the way, you might be interested to know that about 6 weeks ago, I sold all my holdings in uranium stocks that were recommended by our friend. They were coming back nicely from their summer lows, then I came to think the rally was just a dead cat bounce, so sold everything.

I think the bull market in U stocks has been effectively killed off by the loss of plentiful credit that allowed highly leveraged speculation.

[Guest]

Re: David Fleming’s New Book Provides Death Knell for Nuclear Power.

Biscayne -

I copy you 4 X 4. I concluded exactly the same. Funny how one's home-spun little radar system goes off every once in a while, isn't it? Still, the guy ain't stupid, not by a long chalk.

[FRED]

Re: David Fleming’s New Book Provides Death Knell for Nuclear Power.

David Fleming’s New Book Provides Death Knell for Nuclear Power.
Rob Hopkins

David Fleming, creator of the concept of Tradeable Energy Quotas and author of the forthcoming and rather wonderful “Lean Logic”, has just published The Lean Guide to Nuclear Energy, which is a thorough demolition of the case for nuclear power being a solution to peak oil. and climate change. You can down load the pdf. for free here or you can order printed copies here. Like much of David’s writing, it patiently yet assertively builds its arguments, backed up by exhaustive research, to build a case against nuclear power that looks pretty much bulletproof to me. The report’s key findings are;

1. The world’s endowment of uranium ore is now so depleted that the nuclear industry will never, from its own resources, be able to generate the energy it needs to clear up its own backlog of waste.
2. It is essential that the waste should be made safe and placed in permanent storage. High-level wastes, in their temporary storage facilities, have to be managed and kept cool to prevent fire and leaks which would otherwise contaminate large areas.
3. Shortages of uranium – and the lack of realistic alternatives – leading to interruptions in supply, can be expected to start in the middle years of the decade 2010-2019, and to deepen thereafter.
4. The task of disposing finally of the waste could not, therefore, now be completed using only energy generated by the nuclear industry, even if the whole of the industry’s output were to be devoted to it. In order to deal with its waste, the industry will need to be a major net user of energy, almost all of it from fossil fuels.
5. Every stage in the nuclear process, except fission, produces carbon dioxide. As the richest ores are used up, emissions will rise.
6. Uranium enrichment uses large volumes of uranium hexafluoride, a halogenated compound (HC). Other HCs are also used in the nuclear life-cycle. HCs are greenhouse gases with global warming potentials ranging up to 10,000 times that of carbon dioxide.
7. An independent audit should now review these findings. The quality of available data is poor, and totally inadequate in relation to the importance of the nuclear question. The audit should set out an energy-budget which establishes how much energy will be needed to make all nuclear waste safe, and where it will come from. It should also supply a briefing on the consequences of the worldwide waste backlog being abandoned untreated.
8. There is no single solution to the coming energy gap. What is needed is a speedy programme of Lean Energy, comprising: (1) energy conservation and efficiency; (2) structural change in patterns of energy-use and land-use; and (3) renewable energy; all within (4) a framework for managing the energy descent, such as Tradable Energy Quotas (TEQs).

Get a copy, have a read. If you think Fleming’s analysis is wrong, tell us about it here. I think this book does us all a great service in setting out the nuclear case in the light of peak oil and climate change, and also in the light of ‘peak uranium’.

(7 December 2007)

Guess he's never heard of Breeder Reactors. Odd, because they've been in service for over 30 years.

"A [breeder] reactor can produce about 20% more fuel than it consumes by the breeding reaction. Enough excess fuel is produced over about 20 years to fuel another such reactor. Optimum breeding allows about 75% of the energy of the natural uranium to be used compared to 1% in the standard light water reactor."

This is why the price of uranium is as low as it is.

[Guest]

Re: David Fleming’s New Book Provides Death Knell for Nuclear Power.

Fred -

I'd have to guess David Fleming has indeed heard of breeder reactors. As for myself, I have no idea if his thesis is sound or not, although he's certainly not merely being "anti-nuclear" - I did not really have a fully informed opinion. You seem much more sure of the validity of this alternative than I am of any factors in this topic. Is it something you've read up on a lot? I haven't.

Are you positive this swings all the issues neatly around 180 degrees to provide the "all clear" for the sufficient roll out of nuclear to put a real dent in global oil shortfall in the next thirty years?

I read somewhere if we were to attempt to build enough nuclear power stations to take on even twenty percent of merely today's global power requirements (to replace hydrocarbons twenty or thirty years from now) we'd have to build over 5000 nuclear plants in 25 or thirty years.

I worked it out roughly in some other post - that's something like 16 entire nuclear power plants, built, fueled up, and fully commissioned, per week, for thirty years straight - uninterruptedly, to resolve 20% of merely the present day power consumption - not the power consumption that will exist in 30 years.

Therefore in terms of future power consumption those 16 nuclear power plants fully commissioned per week would presumably account then say 10% or say 15% of global power needs.

Now how in heck are we planning to build (let alone fund, let alone fuel) 16 nuclear power plants per week? Seems a bit too imaginative to even speculate about that volume of nuclear plant getting installed - even if they were all breeder reactors?

[bill]

Re: David Fleming’s New Book Provides Death Knell for Nuclear Power.

Guess he's never heard of Breeder Reactors. Odd, because they've been in service for over 30 years.

"A [breeder] reactor can produce about 20% more fuel than it consumes by the breeding reaction. Enough excess fuel is produced over about 20 years to fuel another such reactor. Optimum breeding allows about 75% of the energy of the natural uranium to be used compared to 1% in the standard light water reactor."

This is why the price of uranium is as low as it is.

Dr William Burchill seminar caltech.
talks about uranium recycling reprocessing. (go to 1hr18min)
http://nrg.caltech.edu/

February 8, 2008

The U.S. Nuclear Renaissance and the Challenges It Presents William Burchill (Texas A&M) Abstract Video: [cable] [broadband] [56k] Slides: [pdf]

[moonshot]

Re: David Fleming’s New Book Provides Death Knell for Nuclear Power.

Guess he's never heard of Breeder Reactors. Odd, because they've been in service for over 30 years.

"A [breeder] reactor can produce about 20% more fuel than it consumes by the breeding reaction. Enough excess fuel is produced over about 20 years to fuel another such reactor. Optimum breeding allows about 75% of the energy of the natural uranium to be used compared to 1% in the standard light water reactor."

This is why the price of uranium is as low as it is.

Lukester, thanks for posting the article; very interesting analysis.

Fred, he does cover fast breeders. A couple of problems with fast breeders:
1. they are very expensive to build, and apparently require greater safety precautions than today's thermal reactors. The author mentions that the only breeder currently in commercial service is in Russia, and we've seen how well the Russians did with thermal reactors (RMBK reactors are a Russian design thermal reactor with many design flaws that contributed to the failure at Chernobyl).
2. the reprocessing associated with breeders is a nuclear weapons proliferation concern (not that this isn't a problem with thermal reactors, as India demonstrated), but it is a difference in degree

Even though breeders reduce the supply problem, there is still a waste problem, and one of the major points of the article is we need to understand the net energy yield from nuclear reactors, after taking into account the energy required to mine, mill, and enrich the fuel, and then, on the back end, dispose of the waste and the reactor.

[Guest]

Re: David Fleming’s New Book Provides Death Knell for Nuclear Power.

Lukester, thanks for posting the article; very interesting analysis.

Fred, he does cover fast breeders. A couple of problems with fast breeders:

1. they are very expensive to build, and apparently require greater safety precautions than today's thermal reactors. The author mentions that the only breeder currently in commercial service is in Russia, and we've seen how well the Russians did with thermal reactors (RMBK reactors are a Russian design thermal reactor with many design flaws that contributed to the failure at Chernobyl).

2. the reprocessing associated with breeders is a nuclear weapons proliferation concern (not that this isn't a problem with thermal reactors, as India demonstrated), but it is a difference in degree

Even though breeders reduce the supply problem, there is still a waste problem, and one of the major points of the article is we need to understand the net energy yield from nuclear reactors, after taking into account the energy required to mine, mill, and enrich the fuel, and then, on the back end, dispose of the waste and the reactor.

Moonshot - your duly skeptical points regarding breeder technology's limited ability to overcome the problems of scale, and problems of time available to adequately build out, implicit in nuclear replacing petroleum, contravene the 'techno-religion' bias at the editorial level here (e.g. by "telecommuting", we'll reduce our energy requirements sharply, worldwide). Every community has some bias - to believe some communities are entirely free of it would be too optimistic - as it's a fact everwhere. At iTulip, there is a mild bias towards 'techno-religion'. The thesis here is that "we won't have a train wreck in supply/demand because doomers who view the problem in those terms under-estimate technology's historic ability to surmount all obstacles".

When you start peering closely at the massive obstacles in the way of nuclear fulfilling it's highly challenging dream of effectively replacing petroleum in terms of scale, and in any remotely adequate time window, (e.g. 5000 reactors in 30 years, which will crack hydrogen, purify seawater and power a global fleet of electric vehicles) the above technology inspired vision of humanity 'growing wings' becomes considerably more vulnerable to disappointment. What is highlighted in the process, is how stringent skepticism is applied everywhere else, but when it comes to energy replacement technologies, the prevailing views here then acquire a tendency to abandon the customarily stringently critical (and skeptical) style of examination, and it is replaced with a sort of 'determined expansiveness ethic'.

[jk]

Re: David Fleming’s New Book Provides Death Knell for Nuclear Power.

Lukester, thanks for posting the article; very interesting analysis.

Fred, he does cover fast breeders. A couple of problems with fast breeders:
1. they are very expensive to build, and apparently require greater safety precautions than today's thermal reactors. The author mentions that the only breeder currently in commercial service is in Russia, and we've seen how well the Russians did with thermal reactors (RMBK reactors are a Russian design thermal reactor with many design flaws that contributed to the failure at Chernobyl).
2. the reprocessing associated with breeders is a nuclear weapons proliferation concern (not that this isn't a problem with thermal reactors, as India demonstrated), but it is a difference in degree

Even though breeders reduce the supply problem, there is still a waste problem, and one of the major points of the article is we need to understand the net energy yield from nuclear reactors, after taking into account the energy required to mine, mill, and enrich the fuel, and then, on the back end, dispose of the waste and the reactor.

i predict a big nuclear build out, including breeders. the waste issue will be suppressed/ignored as long as possible.

[FRED]

Re: David Fleming’s New Book Provides Death Knell for Nuclear Power.

Moonshot - your duly skeptical points regarding breeder technology's limited ability to overcome the problems of scale, and problems of time available to adequately build out, implicit in nuclear replacing petroleum, contravene the 'techno-religion' bias at the editorial level here (e.g. by "telecommuting", we'll reduce our energy requirements sharply, worldwide). Every community has some bias - to believe some communities are entirely free of it would be too optimistic - as it's a fact everwhere. At iTulip, there is a mild bias towards 'techno-religion'. The thesis here is that "we won't have a train wreck in supply/demand because doomers who view the problem in those terms under-estimate technology's historic ability to surmount all obstacles".

When you start peering closely at the massive obstacles in the way of nuclear fulfilling it's highly challenging dream of effectively replacing petroleum in terms of scale, and in any remotely adequate time window, (e.g. 5000 reactors in 30 years, which will crack hydrogen, purify seawater and power a global fleet of electric vehicles) the above technology inspired vision of humanity 'growing wings' becomes considerably more vulnerable to disappointment. What is highlighted in the process, is how stringent skepticism is applied everywhere else, but when it comes to energy replacement technologies, the prevailing views here then acquire a tendency to abandon the customarily stringently critical (and skeptical) style of examination, and it is replaced with a sort of 'determined expansiveness ethic'.

Our forecasts of the contribution of technological advances to the solution of energy infrastructure challenges do not indicate a bias but rather an editorial position that we have developed based on 30 years of experience in the technology industry, and more recent experience with energy technology specifically. So far, after reading dozens of business plans for new companies in the industry, we can see how these technologies can contribute. We acknowledge that this is not intuitive to anyone who does not have access to a steady stream of new technologies and understand that it is our challenge to continue to explain the implications to our subscribers.

The idea that the US cannot build a significant nuclear power industry presumes that the US does not already have one. In spite of not building any new nuclear power plants in the US for more than 30 years, primarily for political reasons, the US is still among the top nuclear power producers globally.

Territory size shows the proportion of worldwide nuclear electricity
production that occurs there.

European territories dominate the list of the top ten producers of nuclear electricity. In 2005, Sweden was in top place, and France second position, in terms of power generated per person living there. Of the thirty territories that do generate nuclear electricity, seventeen are located in Europe. Major non-European nuclear electricity producers include the United States, Japan, the Russian Federation, and the Republic of Korea. Only 15% of all territories produce nuclear power. No nuclear power is generated in any territories in Central Africa, Northern Africa and Asia Pacific. The yellow island that is visible in the Pacific is New Caledonia, which is part of France. - WorldMapper.org

We see next generation nuclear power, especially PBNR, as a critical part of the new energy infrastructure solution. We can tell you with conviction that from a political perspective the US will choose the uncertainty of safe nuclear waste disposal over the certainty of economic and environmental crisis caused by dependency on imported fossil fuels.

[metalman]

Re: David Fleming’s New Book Provides Death Knell for Nuclear Power.

Our forecasts of the contribution of technological advances to the solution of energy infrastructure challenges do not indicate a bias but rather an editorial position that we have developed based on 30 years of experience in the technology industry, and more recent experience with energy technology specifically. So far, after reading dozens of business plans for new companies in the industry, we can see how these technologies can contribute. We acknowledge that this is not intuitive to anyone who does not have access to a steady stream of new technologies and understand that it is our challenge to continue to explain the implications to our subscribers.

The idea that the US cannot build a significant nuclear power industry presumes that the US does not already have one. In spite of not building any new nuclear power plants in the US for more than 30 years, primarily for political reasons, the US is still among the top nuclear power producers globally.

Territory size shows the proportion of worldwide nuclear electricity
production that occurs there.

European territories dominate the list of the top ten producers of nuclear electricity. In 2005, Sweden was in top place, and France second position, in terms of power generated per person living there. Of the thirty territories that do generate nuclear electricity, seventeen are located in Europe. Major non-European nuclear electricity producers include the United States, Japan, the Russian Federation, and the Republic of Korea. Only 15% of all territories produce nuclear power. No nuclear power is generated in any territories in Central Africa, Northern Africa and Asia Pacific. The yellow island that is visible in the Pacific is New Caledonia, which is part of France. - WorldMapper.org

We see next generation nuclear power, especially PBNR, as a critical part of the new energy infrastructure solution. We can tell you with conviction that from a political perspective the US will choose the uncertainty of safe nuclear waste disposal over the certainty of economic and environmental crisis caused by dependency on imported fossil fuels.

send the nanotech and pebble bed and biotech business plans from the stanford and mit and harvard dudes to luke. he'll debunk them for ya... in 10000 words or more... for nuthin!

[moonshot]

Re: David Fleming’s New Book Provides Death Knell for Nuclear Power.

The idea that the US cannot build a significant nuclear power industry presumes that the US does not already have one. In spite of not building any new nuclear power plants in the US for more than 30 years, primarily for political reasons, the US is still among the top nuclear power producers globally.

We see next generation nuclear power, especially PBNR, as a critical part of the new energy infrastructure solution. We can tell you with conviction that from a political perspective the US will choose the uncertainty of safe nuclear waste disposal over the certainty of economic and environmental crisis caused by dependency on imported fossil fuels.

The US may be one of the top nuclear power producers, but only a small percentage of the world's power is derived from nukes. As Lukester pointed out, an incredible number of nukes would be needed to make a big contribution to the world's energy needs.

Thanks for bringing up PBNRs. These seem promising, but we still have the massive energy requirements to create the fuel and then dispose of the waste, though it seems the pebble design will help lower disposal costs (but we're still talking about deep geological disposal). I wonder if the net energy yield is worth the time and risk. Though the PBNR design is implicitly safer than most other reactor designs, in a world with thousands of nukes, even if they're all PBNRs, failure is just a question of when and severity.

That said, the power generated by fission is very seductive, and I can see a big rollout of nukes worldwide, especially in countries where the governments don't calculate the true costs of the nuclear fuel cycle.

Has anyone here looked into wind power? What are the problems with this? Not enough land for turbine farms? Cost of the equipment? I would guess the net energy yield from wind turbines is greater over its life than a nuclear reactor (fuel is free, turbine has a long life(?), and when it's done, it can be salvaged for scrap). So the question is, is it scalable enough to make a significant contribution to energy supply?

[GRG55]

Re: David Fleming’s New Book Provides Death Knell for Nuclear Power.

i predict a big nuclear build out, including breeders. the waste issue will be suppressed/ignored as long as possible.

This is a quick summation of the USA's experience with fast breeders. I remember studying this in my nuclear engineering courses in university.

This is a long time back, but the very real potential of radiation contamination of the City of Detroit was one of the fears that caused the permanent shut-down of this reactor.

Sodium is a tremendous heat exchange fluid, and indicative of the huge amount of heat energy coming off the reactor, which is exactly what is desired, but also like trying to control a tiger. No doubt technology has advanced tremendously in the last 40-odd years, but these things are not without their challenges.

Fermi I Breeder Reactor

The Fermi I reactor was a breeder located at Lagoona Beach, 30 miles from Detroit. On October 5, 1966, high temperatures were measured (700 compared to normal 580¡F) and radiation alarms sounded involving two fuel rod subassemblies. The reactor scrammed and there was indication of fuel melting. After a month of sweating, they tested out enough subassemblies to limit the damage to 6 subassemblies. By January 67 they had learned that 4 subassemblies were damaged with two stuck together, but it took until May to remove the assemblies.

When they had checked the sodium flow earlier, they had detected a clapping noise. In August 67 they were able to lower a periscope device into the meltdown pan and found that a piece of zirconium cladding had come loose and was blocking the sodium coolant nozzles. The zirconium cladding was part of the lining of the meltdown cone designed to direct the distribution of fuel material should a meltdown of the fuel occur.

Such structures are necessary in a breeder reactor because of the possibliity of molten fuel reassembling itself in a critical configuration. This is not a possibility in an ordinary light water reactor because of the low level of enrichment of the uranium, but a fast breeder reactor is operated with a much higher level of enrichment.

The phrase "China syndrome" was coined in regard to this accident as they were contemplating the possibilities should a meltdown of fuel with critical reassembly take place. The uncontrolled fission reaction could create enough heat to melt its way into the earth, and some engineer remarked "it could go all the way to China".

With ingenious tools designed and built for the purpose, the piece of zirconium was fished out in April of 1968. In May of 1970, the reactor was ready to resume operation, but a sodium explosion delayed it until July of 1970. In October it finally reached a level of 200 Mwatts. The total cost of the repair was about $132 million.

In August of 1972 upon denial of the extension of its operating license, the shutdown process for the plant was initiated.