Nothing we do is without risks. Human error, natural disaster or mechanical failure, things sometimes go wrong. We have learned through research and experience to mitigate the risks. The industrial revolution improved life on most of the planet, and it came with risks.
Good work, Robert. No path to decarbonizing electricity without it without wrecking living standards and keeping 6.5 billion people from reaching ours.
The reason these plants failed was that they were using a solid fuel system that generated hydrogen gas as the water level in the reactor fell. The combination of solid, zirconium clad fuel pellets, water and a poorly maintained unit (they could not open up the pressure relief valves because they were rusted shut) was an accident waiting to happen.
Great essay, very informative. Thank you. I too support nuclear. I believe we need more investment $’s from world governments to make it safer, cheaper and easier to use. I can’t see myself buying an EV car and using carbon sources to charge it, makes no sense. Glad to see Japan increasing its nuclear footprint. France is leading the way with 70% of its electricity coming from Nuclear.
Good article. I was involved in the US and worldwide Nuclear Industry for 45 years. While the industry does not want to have significant events for any reasons, the industry, industry groups like INPO ( Institute for Nuclear Power Operations), and regulators have incorporated the lessons from these events in the design, training, procedures, emergency response, and most importantly, leadership. The industry has developed and implemented design changes , new equipment, and enhanced emergency response training to address beyond design basis external events.
(1) zero risk of a systemic event such as a tsunami clearing an undersized seawall
(2) failures are random
(3) all systems are truly independent (see (1) and (2) above
(4) zero human-triggered failure such as TMI which bankrupted Met Ed
(5) no sensitivity to component aging
(6) no defects in plant design or construction
Only "nuke nuts" who are ignorant of the data and nuclear risk management are still pitching that con,
Pretty hilarious
Radioactive cesium contaminated 11,580 square miles (about 30,000 km2) of the land surface of Japan, according to the Japanese Science Ministry (Asahi Shimbun, 2011).
An area of about 130 square miles (337 km2) is now designated as unsafe for human habitation. This area represents almost one percent of Japan’s scarce arable land (which is about 17,274 square miles (44,739 km2)) and is equivalent to the combined land area of the boroughs of Manhattan, the Bronx and Brooklyn in New York City.
Restrictions likely will remain in effect for generations because the primary contaminant, Cesium-137, has a half-life of 30 years, requiring 10 half-lives to pass for most radionuclides to disappear.
A French study estimates direct damages from a generic major accident similar to a Fukushima-level event occurring at a French nuclear reactor could cost $515 billion, including $15 billion for on-site decommissioning and clean-up (IRSN, 2014).
A special task force sponsored by the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) assessed a rough estimate of direct damages from the Fukushima Daiichi accident was about $500 billion (ASME, 2012).
According to the Japan Center of Economic Research (JCER), total cost for the Fukushima clean-up is ~$700 billion, excluding indirect and consequential damages. The JCER estimate includes reactor decommissioning and water decontamination ($320 billion), clean-up of contaminated land ($300 billion) and damage compensation ($80 billion, which is likely too low) (JCER).
Indirect and consequential damages from major environmental accidents are typically 2-3x direct.
Let's not lull ourselves into the believe that it is possible to find a bureaucratic solution to a bureaucratic problem. Only one thing drive the high cost of nuclear, bureaucracy. The promise of .02 cents per reliable kilowatt hour was met by some pre 1975 plant , reference, Bernard L Cohen. "The Nuclear Energy Option".
Well, the statistics reviewed in the peer-reviewed literature says it's simply a matter of undercapitalized vendors staffed by low quality engineers selling a plant without a detailed design and rushing it to the field with predictably low quality construction results.
Same overruns seen in France and Finland for the same reason.
Thanks for being polite in critiquing what I said. i don't place as much worth in peer review as you do, largely from the history of the theory of plate tectonics. Alfred Wegner? proposed it and was vilified by the geological establishment, dying before the theory was fully accepted in the 1960's.
I attended the international conference directly after Fukushima held in Washington, DC. I was amazed by the desperation exhibited by the attendees. Nobody seemed to have a clear head.
LOL -- most of the multidecadal warming observed through the 20th century into the first decade of the 21st is associated with increased solar activity from the Gleissbe
rg cycle.
NOT GH warming.
That warming ended about a decade ago and we face ~40 yrs of cooling by 1-1.5 C.
Per NOAA UAH dataset, peak climate temperature was in February 2016 at 0.7 C above the 40-yr satellite record.
January 2023 was -0.04 C.
That's 7 years of cooling even as GHG concentration is up ~12% over that period.
Moreover, there is no empirical evidence demonstrating anthropogenic GHG is material or that rationing controls climate tempetature.
Yet, you advocate building nuke power at $175/MWH -- 3x natural gas or coal.
IDGAF about CO2 compared to base load, load following, and safety. Done correctly, Cheaper Than Coal, cleaner than coal, safer than coal, etc. Not insane.
Do you define that phrase to mean successfully completed on-time and on-budget without a vendor or licensee declaring bankruptcy from the overruns, or an exec not convicted of felony Federal wire fraud, or simply without the 2-5x overruns and 2-3x schedule slip?
When has that ever happened?
LOL
From my experience consulting to nuke CNOs and CFOs, and as reported in the peer-reviewed literature, nuclear construction is never "done correctly", has no "learning curve" and is systemically uncompetitive.
I have no idea what "cleaner" or "safer" means to you.
But I know that coal plants comply with the Clean Air Act.
I know that population density in the vicinity of a nuke is up.more than 100% from when the plants were licensed,.
And I know that spent fuel requires perpetual storage on the taxpayer dime who are also on the hook for ~98% of third party losses should a Mark I containment fail and spray nuclides downwind on mid-continent US land, lakes, and rivers.
Unlike Fukushima, most US plants are NOT upwind of the Pacific Ocean.
Nuclear operators don't pay for waste storage under the Nuclear Waster Policy Act or decommissioning under . Those are fees ordained by Federal legislation that are collected from customers and conveyed to a trust fund or DOE.
And those fees are NOT considered in the LCOE calculation.
Throw them in and nuke busbar cost sink even further below LMP.
On reflection, maybe you're not lying. Maybe you're just ignorant.
Yes, this is where the alarmists have brought us. You cannot run modern civilization on renewables, it will break us long before we get there, so the only option is nuclear.
If the climate scientologists refuse to go by the science on CO2, which shows that everything to date, for whatever reason, has been entirely beneficial to the planet and us humans, there are currently no other viable options.
NOAA datasets (e.g., UAHv6 and HadSST) demonstrate peak climate temperature was in February 2016 after the end of the ~80 active solar phase of the Gleissberg cycle.
Average lower tropospheric temperature anomaly that month was 0.71 C above the 40-yr baseline.
Per NOAA, the year-over-year decline fits a linear trend of 0.02C/decade.
February 2023 was done to 0.08 C above the 40-yr baseline.
Sea surface temperature (SST) follows a similar trajectory.
This is all consistent with the weaked phase of the solar Gleissberg Cycle and is expected to cool for another 35-40 years before returning to warming.
Citations to the peer-reviewed literature available.
I think the real answer is “we really don’t know what happens next”, and anyone who says the science is “settled” and calls others “deniers” should be removed from public discourse and thrown into a pit.
As a physicist who has worked with climate data for the last 7 years, I certainly agree "nobody knows what happens next" applies to a lot of things.
I also know compelling evidence has been reported in the physics literature and in public data the Sun is now entering a low activity phase of the Gleissberg Cycle pretty much as forecast. That's evident in the solar wind speed, the exospheric data, and the coronal observations.
And I agree "denier" is a word that has no place in science. But it only has a place in theology and dogma.
From my limited understanding, the sun is affecting the climate not by large changes in the amount of heat hitting the earth but by the solar wind and magnetic affects changing how much radiation reaches earth which then changes the amount of cloud cover which then has magnitudes greater effects than any amount of change of co2, methane, or whatever greenhouse gas we choose to look at.
I'm a physicist. I do commodity and climate risk management.
I'm saying the peer-reviewed literature reports <30% correlation with temperature anomalies. That means >70% of climate temperature variation is NOT due to natural and anthropogenic GHG.
For that 30%, the literature reports Granger causality of excess temperature on CO2.
Translation -- temperature leads CO2. Not the other way around.
That means rationing will not materially impact CO2 concentration, and has no impact on climate temperature
The literature does not report empirical data for anthropogenic emissions. Only speculative estimates and measurements of large point sources (e.g., OCO-2).
Bottom line -- climate solutions cannot control climate
---
$175/MWH:
That's LCOE from Lazard and US EIA based on current nuclear construction data.
Obviously, you're ignorant of nuclear cost data
---
Gas:
Russia never cut off Europe. They had 30-yr contracts.
As for elsewhere, pipeline gas is going into China ("Power of Siberia").
Japan was considering the Sakhalin-Hokkaido pipeline before suicidally cancelling.
India is getting the Trans-Afghanistan pipeline.
You don't have to do LNG unless your government is on a suicide pact.
---
Only Nuclear?
No one will buy a construction bond for 18-20 years.
Tepco screwed up and put the emergency power apparatus down beside the reactors instead of up on the hill and so they flooded, no emergency power meant kaboom.
From that Germany and others made the decision to begin closing their reactors, saying they would switch to renewables but in reality the main switch was to Russian natural gas.
And here we are in 2023.
An example of how bad situations produce bad policy.
Really think risking a reactor accident at a geriatric nuke in high density Germany is a rational idea?
Or recapitalizing those geriatrics makes economic sense?
Really think buying cheap gas from Russia was dumb?
Cheap gas made Germany filthy rich.
Of course, that wealth has been evaporating when our obedient vassal cut off themselves off from the gas and remained quiet while the US and Norway blew up Nordstream.
Now, Germany is toast. They face a 5-8% economic contraction this year and things only get worse from here.
Nukes were never going to provide Germany security just as renewables can't carry the German grid.
There may be fissionable material in waste. But the literature demonstrates it's not economic to recover nor does any recovery process reduce total high level waste volumes.
Certainly, DOE has been one trainwreck after another attempting an economic recovery.
As for yiur hilarious "government pays" claim, 60% of that money comes from taxpayers and 40% is additional debt which taxpayers pay interest.
A subsidy to increase nuclear operator profits.
I prefer seeing buclear operators paying all costs for perpetual storage of spent fuel.
Sure, a lot of subsidies flying around anyway.
But a Congressional Budget Office analysis of subsidies performed ~2018 (I have the study in my files) demonstrates nuke supoly chains enjoy ~10x the subsidies per kJ produced compared to oil and gas supply chains
They are working on designs that will use the “spent” fuel which actually has tons of energy capability still in it.
So that waste will be consumed down to a minuscule amount.
And why frown on the fact that governments manage the cost of waste, everyone in the country will benefit from the power produced.
The argument sound too much like those who accuse oil companies of forcing people to use their “disgusting” project when in reality the oil and gas is in heavy demand because it’s useful and people know it.
It was a management, not technological, failure that caused the reactor meltdown: had TEPCO moved the emergency power generation batteries from underneath the plant to higher ground (as suggested by the IAEA among others), this accident would not have occurred. As well, it was a failure of management and the government to support the industry in the court of public opinion, thereby causing Japan to increase reliance on imported Natural Gas to address their energy needs.
True - the failure to maintain safety system redundancy and resilience under a tsunami or seismic threats was reckless.
No less reckless than running nukes in a seismically active area.
But who ever said the corrupt Japanese nuclear industry (along with widespread organized crime infestation) and its thoroughly co-opted nuclear safety regulator were anything but reckless?
Accident risk analysis isn't measured by how many people you might kill.
Before you even get there, you first consider how much damage is inflicted on third parties and the enterprise.
What will this cost to remediate.
Japan was lucky 90% of the payload went downwind over the Pacific.
At the time, we monitored met data and were ecstatic we drew 4 aces on wind speed and direction.
Our people were lucky.
But the 10% or so of the payload that hit Honshu still left contamination levels exceeding 185 kBq/m2 of 137Cs covering approximately 1700 km2 (Steinhauser et al., 2014) and deposits exceeding 10 kBq/m2 extending over 24,000 km2 (Champion et al., 2013).
Bad as that is to clean up, can't say it enough - Japan was lucky.
And you take that as a rationale to double-down?
Sounds like you live a "hold my beer and watch this" kind of life.
LOL
As I said, if you can't afford losses, stay out of a casino.
No nuclear operating company can afford a reactor accident.
Yes, that too, although i don't think it was batteries it was the diesel gensets providing backup emergency power that got swamped. If they had placed those up on the hill, no issues would have happened.
The earthquake triggered the reactor trips and sustaimed loss of offsite power.
Reportedly, cooling water pipes in Unit 1 failed before 3 PM ahead of the tsunami by 45 minutes.
TEPCo data records recirc pumps were triggered by the quake onna loss of coolant signal.
Containment sprays were activated after 3:04 PM.
IAEA came to different conclusion post-accident but the records stand.
And, sure -- a firemain header and diesel pumps might have been effective -- even with sea water.
The NRC Station Blackout rule envisioned that strategy as a part of an accident coping strategy if they had sufficient battery capacity for instumentation and control.
TEPCo went cheap on the seawall, and so emergency AC was trashed by the tsunami.
Actually, a lot of BWR 3/4s failed to trip in years past due to low quality design and construction of the scram discharge headers.
But, sure, Unit 1 tripped.
And, sure, newer plants meet higher standards while BWR 3/4s like Unit 1 remain accidents waiting to happen.
What's your point?
That the accident was avoidable if nukes actually managed risk?
I agree.
Fact is TEPCo operated recklessly like any other nuke operating company hiding behind a grandfathered "licensung basis".
You bring up Chiba and suggest I don't care.
You're right - I don't care about Chiba.
I look at it this way. The third party damages TEPCo and the Japanese government dumped on Japanese citizeblns resulting from TEPCo's reckless behaviot totalled ~$1 trillion plus $50 billion or so over 50 years to clean up.
If Eneos loses Chiba, their insurance carriers or stockholders eat the loss.
That's the difference.
As for renewables, on one hand they are cheaper than nukes and don't need the subsidies they pig out on
Moreover, bad as renewables are, nukes are a fatter corporate welfare queen than renewables.
Likely both, When we do back up power systems, diesels are the long term supply and will be sized for the emergency cooling pumps as well as control systems for them but they take 30-60 seconds to come online, and so UPS battery systems kick in within milliseconds to keep all the plant controls powered until the gensets are spun up.
Those UPS systems needed to be in a raised building as well.
A simple sturdy building on a raised platform containing the ups and genset systems would have eliminated this disaster.
Nothing we do is without risks. Human error, natural disaster or mechanical failure, things sometimes go wrong. We have learned through research and experience to mitigate the risks. The industrial revolution improved life on most of the planet, and it came with risks.
True -- nothing is risk-free.
But if you can't afford losses, you don't go into a casino.
If a nuclear operator can't afford the multi-trillions in third party losses from a reactor accident, they have no business running a nuke.
Who ever said anyone other than nukes are exempt from torts from their actions?
Not me.
If a plaintiff has a claim, they can file it. Of course, they need to demonstrate a direct cause of action -- good luck with that.
Under our legal system, damages must be proved.
In contrast, nukes -- like Pfizer et al. with the mRNA jabs -- they are shielded from even bringing claims
What happens if a FPP breaks?!
Like anything else in this lovely Uman Civilization everything is awesome just until it breaks!
Good work, Robert. No path to decarbonizing electricity without it without wrecking living standards and keeping 6.5 billion people from reaching ours.
Stay the course.
The reason these plants failed was that they were using a solid fuel system that generated hydrogen gas as the water level in the reactor fell. The combination of solid, zirconium clad fuel pellets, water and a poorly maintained unit (they could not open up the pressure relief valves because they were rusted shut) was an accident waiting to happen.
Great essay, very informative. Thank you. I too support nuclear. I believe we need more investment $’s from world governments to make it safer, cheaper and easier to use. I can’t see myself buying an EV car and using carbon sources to charge it, makes no sense. Glad to see Japan increasing its nuclear footprint. France is leading the way with 70% of its electricity coming from Nuclear.
Good article. I was involved in the US and worldwide Nuclear Industry for 45 years. While the industry does not want to have significant events for any reasons, the industry, industry groups like INPO ( Institute for Nuclear Power Operations), and regulators have incorporated the lessons from these events in the design, training, procedures, emergency response, and most importantly, leadership. The industry has developed and implemented design changes , new equipment, and enhanced emergency response training to address beyond design basis external events.
How do you know all that reduces the risk of a reactor accident?
How do you know all that isn't just eye-wash?
1 accident every 17 million years?
Sure - if you assume:
(1) zero risk of a systemic event such as a tsunami clearing an undersized seawall
(2) failures are random
(3) all systems are truly independent (see (1) and (2) above
(4) zero human-triggered failure such as TMI which bankrupted Met Ed
(5) no sensitivity to component aging
(6) no defects in plant design or construction
Only "nuke nuts" who are ignorant of the data and nuclear risk management are still pitching that con,
Pretty hilarious
Radioactive cesium contaminated 11,580 square miles (about 30,000 km2) of the land surface of Japan, according to the Japanese Science Ministry (Asahi Shimbun, 2011).
An area of about 130 square miles (337 km2) is now designated as unsafe for human habitation. This area represents almost one percent of Japan’s scarce arable land (which is about 17,274 square miles (44,739 km2)) and is equivalent to the combined land area of the boroughs of Manhattan, the Bronx and Brooklyn in New York City.
Restrictions likely will remain in effect for generations because the primary contaminant, Cesium-137, has a half-life of 30 years, requiring 10 half-lives to pass for most radionuclides to disappear.
A French study estimates direct damages from a generic major accident similar to a Fukushima-level event occurring at a French nuclear reactor could cost $515 billion, including $15 billion for on-site decommissioning and clean-up (IRSN, 2014).
A special task force sponsored by the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) assessed a rough estimate of direct damages from the Fukushima Daiichi accident was about $500 billion (ASME, 2012).
According to the Japan Center of Economic Research (JCER), total cost for the Fukushima clean-up is ~$700 billion, excluding indirect and consequential damages. The JCER estimate includes reactor decommissioning and water decontamination ($320 billion), clean-up of contaminated land ($300 billion) and damage compensation ($80 billion, which is likely too low) (JCER).
Indirect and consequential damages from major environmental accidents are typically 2-3x direct.
We're lucky to have the on-site reportage from someone with so much experience and context. Thanks Robert.
Let's not lull ourselves into the believe that it is possible to find a bureaucratic solution to a bureaucratic problem. Only one thing drive the high cost of nuclear, bureaucracy. The promise of .02 cents per reliable kilowatt hour was met by some pre 1975 plant , reference, Bernard L Cohen. "The Nuclear Energy Option".
Blame the system?
Well, the statistics reviewed in the peer-reviewed literature says it's simply a matter of undercapitalized vendors staffed by low quality engineers selling a plant without a detailed design and rushing it to the field with predictably low quality construction results.
Same overruns seen in France and Finland for the same reason.
And this time will be different?
I don’t object to you believing what you believe.
... and I only have confidence in peer-reviewed literature with transparent data.
So I guess it follows you don't object to data.
An admirable quality.
Too bad a lot of people believe in their hunches -- nonsense like red tape causes nukes to overrun.
Thanks for being polite in critiquing what I said. i don't place as much worth in peer review as you do, largely from the history of the theory of plate tectonics. Alfred Wegner? proposed it and was vilified by the geological establishment, dying before the theory was fully accepted in the 1960's.
In my experience and training, the quality of peer-reviewed literature can vary.
But quantitative papers with quality data tend to hold up over time.
Which literature are you interested in?
Nuke overrun factors?
Absence of a learning curve?
Lack of competitiveness?
Statistucs of low quality engineering and construction?
Criminal conviction history?
Something else?
For over 60 years, nukes always had excuses for continuous screwups.
Name the topic and I'll drop a few citations
I attended the international conference directly after Fukushima held in Washington, DC. I was amazed by the desperation exhibited by the attendees. Nobody seemed to have a clear head.
Indeed.
I was pulled into a disaster response team through the accident.
I was stunned by the ignorance level onsite and among experts.
And also surprised by how fast instrumentation went down.
By that point, I was relying on my simulations and regression models to call out thevscenario unfolding.
Was quickly looking ahead at the weather to advise on the likely dispersion a day ahead of the first release.
Like watching "experts" predicting the CoVid pandemic.
Clueless.
And nuke groupies today down-playing Fukushima.
I'm not a legend in anyone's time.
I know you were not dealing with Fukushima as it played out - I was.
And, I was stunned by the ignorance level onsite and among experts.
And I was surprised by how fast safety-grade instrumentation went down.
As a nuclear engineer, I assumed the TMI standards would ensure safety-grade instrumentation would not fail in an accident.
That assumption was wrong - it did fail in the accident
Need nuclear?
Why?
Climate?
LOL -- most of the multidecadal warming observed through the 20th century into the first decade of the 21st is associated with increased solar activity from the Gleissbe
rg cycle.
NOT GH warming.
That warming ended about a decade ago and we face ~40 yrs of cooling by 1-1.5 C.
Per NOAA UAH dataset, peak climate temperature was in February 2016 at 0.7 C above the 40-yr satellite record.
January 2023 was -0.04 C.
That's 7 years of cooling even as GHG concentration is up ~12% over that period.
Moreover, there is no empirical evidence demonstrating anthropogenic GHG is material or that rationing controls climate tempetature.
Yet, you advocate building nuke power at $175/MWH -- 3x natural gas or coal.
LOL
Insane
IDGAF about CO2 compared to base load, load following, and safety. Done correctly, Cheaper Than Coal, cleaner than coal, safer than coal, etc. Not insane.
"Done correctly"?
Do you define that phrase to mean successfully completed on-time and on-budget without a vendor or licensee declaring bankruptcy from the overruns, or an exec not convicted of felony Federal wire fraud, or simply without the 2-5x overruns and 2-3x schedule slip?
When has that ever happened?
LOL
From my experience consulting to nuke CNOs and CFOs, and as reported in the peer-reviewed literature, nuclear construction is never "done correctly", has no "learning curve" and is systemically uncompetitive.
I have no idea what "cleaner" or "safer" means to you.
But I know that coal plants comply with the Clean Air Act.
I know that population density in the vicinity of a nuke is up.more than 100% from when the plants were licensed,.
And I know that spent fuel requires perpetual storage on the taxpayer dime who are also on the hook for ~98% of third party losses should a Mark I containment fail and spray nuclides downwind on mid-continent US land, lakes, and rivers.
Unlike Fukushima, most US plants are NOT upwind of the Pacific Ocean.
LOL
Love your videos -- they're hilarious.
Think spent fuel storage is cheap?
Well if that's true then it should be a no brainer for nuclear licensees to carry the cost.
I was an expert witness for a utility litigating DOE's breach of contract.
It ain't cheap.
LOL upsets you? Do you prefer LMAO?
OK, want LMAO, get LMAO
And you should stop lying.
Nuclear operators don't pay for waste storage under the Nuclear Waster Policy Act or decommissioning under . Those are fees ordained by Federal legislation that are collected from customers and conveyed to a trust fund or DOE.
And those fees are NOT considered in the LCOE calculation.
Throw them in and nuke busbar cost sink even further below LMP.
On reflection, maybe you're not lying. Maybe you're just ignorant.
LMAO
Yes, this is where the alarmists have brought us. You cannot run modern civilization on renewables, it will break us long before we get there, so the only option is nuclear.
If the climate scientologists refuse to go by the science on CO2, which shows that everything to date, for whatever reason, has been entirely beneficial to the planet and us humans, there are currently no other viable options.
More than just that.
NOAA datasets (e.g., UAHv6 and HadSST) demonstrate peak climate temperature was in February 2016 after the end of the ~80 active solar phase of the Gleissberg cycle.
Average lower tropospheric temperature anomaly that month was 0.71 C above the 40-yr baseline.
Per NOAA, the year-over-year decline fits a linear trend of 0.02C/decade.
February 2023 was done to 0.08 C above the 40-yr baseline.
Sea surface temperature (SST) follows a similar trajectory.
This is all consistent with the weaked phase of the solar Gleissberg Cycle and is expected to cool for another 35-40 years before returning to warming.
Citations to the peer-reviewed literature available.
I think the real answer is “we really don’t know what happens next”, and anyone who says the science is “settled” and calls others “deniers” should be removed from public discourse and thrown into a pit.
These people are destroying science
As a physicist who has worked with climate data for the last 7 years, I certainly agree "nobody knows what happens next" applies to a lot of things.
I also know compelling evidence has been reported in the physics literature and in public data the Sun is now entering a low activity phase of the Gleissberg Cycle pretty much as forecast. That's evident in the solar wind speed, the exospheric data, and the coronal observations.
And I agree "denier" is a word that has no place in science. But it only has a place in theology and dogma.
From my limited understanding, the sun is affecting the climate not by large changes in the amount of heat hitting the earth but by the solar wind and magnetic affects changing how much radiation reaches earth which then changes the amount of cloud cover which then has magnitudes greater effects than any amount of change of co2, methane, or whatever greenhouse gas we choose to look at.
That's correct.
Besides altering cloud dynamics, solar wind speed also attenuates the path length of high frequency solar irradiance.
That effect was particularly evidence in the last 20 years of the active phase of the Gleissberg Cycle..
The "CO2 Clown World":
I'm a physicist. I do commodity and climate risk management.
I'm saying the peer-reviewed literature reports <30% correlation with temperature anomalies. That means >70% of climate temperature variation is NOT due to natural and anthropogenic GHG.
For that 30%, the literature reports Granger causality of excess temperature on CO2.
Translation -- temperature leads CO2. Not the other way around.
That means rationing will not materially impact CO2 concentration, and has no impact on climate temperature
The literature does not report empirical data for anthropogenic emissions. Only speculative estimates and measurements of large point sources (e.g., OCO-2).
Bottom line -- climate solutions cannot control climate
---
$175/MWH:
That's LCOE from Lazard and US EIA based on current nuclear construction data.
Obviously, you're ignorant of nuclear cost data
---
Gas:
Russia never cut off Europe. They had 30-yr contracts.
As for elsewhere, pipeline gas is going into China ("Power of Siberia").
Japan was considering the Sakhalin-Hokkaido pipeline before suicidally cancelling.
India is getting the Trans-Afghanistan pipeline.
You don't have to do LNG unless your government is on a suicide pact.
---
Only Nuclear?
No one will buy a construction bond for 18-20 years.
End of story
I ignored your argument because it's not relevant to the physics or the economics.
Nuclear is as effective as any other "climate solution" in affecting GHG concentration or climate temperature -- zero impact on climate.
The LCOEs are what they are. Vogtle power is coming in at that LCOE as are the Euro trainwrecks in Finland and France.
Don't like EIA or Lazard? I can cite a half dozen peer-reviewed pspers reporting the same range.
Think the numbers are better? Well, then, get the vendors to guarantee their claim with a posted bond.
They can't so they won't.
I'm not the guy advocating blowing $100 trillion on "climate solutions".
Or $10 trillion on nukes.
Gas generation costs $50/MWH delivered in 3 years.
Nukes run >$175/MWH delivered in 18 years assuming nobody goes bankrupt.
Gas generation is bankable.
Nuke bonds are below junk.
That's the real world, Cupcake.
Now go watch some YouTube.
LOL
Its amazing how the circle of life works.
Tepco screwed up and put the emergency power apparatus down beside the reactors instead of up on the hill and so they flooded, no emergency power meant kaboom.
From that Germany and others made the decision to begin closing their reactors, saying they would switch to renewables but in reality the main switch was to Russian natural gas.
And here we are in 2023.
An example of how bad situations produce bad policy.
Really think risking a reactor accident at a geriatric nuke in high density Germany is a rational idea?
Or recapitalizing those geriatrics makes economic sense?
Really think buying cheap gas from Russia was dumb?
Cheap gas made Germany filthy rich.
Of course, that wealth has been evaporating when our obedient vassal cut off themselves off from the gas and remained quiet while the US and Norway blew up Nordstream.
Now, Germany is toast. They face a 5-8% economic contraction this year and things only get worse from here.
Nukes were never going to provide Germany security just as renewables can't carry the German grid.
Not disagreeing with any of your comments.
Just saying that if the climate/insane insist on no gas/coal then fission is the only viable option for electrical generation.
There may be fissionable material in waste. But the literature demonstrates it's not economic to recover nor does any recovery process reduce total high level waste volumes.
Certainly, DOE has been one trainwreck after another attempting an economic recovery.
As for yiur hilarious "government pays" claim, 60% of that money comes from taxpayers and 40% is additional debt which taxpayers pay interest.
A subsidy to increase nuclear operator profits.
I prefer seeing buclear operators paying all costs for perpetual storage of spent fuel.
Sure, a lot of subsidies flying around anyway.
But a Congressional Budget Office analysis of subsidies performed ~2018 (I have the study in my files) demonstrates nuke supoly chains enjoy ~10x the subsidies per kJ produced compared to oil and gas supply chains
Renewables were ~6x that of oil and gas.
If the lunatics running this country insist on no gas or coal, the US power grid goes full-frontal third world.
Nukes take >15 years to build.
And at our peak nuclear construction, we could only put ~10 GWe per year into production.
Agreed
You and i can talk to each other all day and agree because we can do math, and think logically.
Not sure to help so many others.
So much cluelessness out there.
And eventually we will need nuclear if we don't come up with workable fusion, its inevitable.
So i'm not saying lets build a bunch more of the 40 year old tech.
I'm saying time out on the insanity, take a decade to figure out safe fission, whatever that ends up looking like, and proceed.
There are certainly many more useful things we can do with natgas than just burn it in a turbine
Nuclear fuel is at least 27,000 times more energy dense than coal or gas, and that is with old tech.
If what you is true -- that nuclear is inevitable -- this sector will attract the capital.
Capital attracts better quality engineers.
Capital delivers mature designs ahead of construction.
Capital improves process quality.
But all that only happens when the financial risk is reduced.
This country cannot afford the economic risk of a reactor accident.
If you can't afford the losses, stay out of casinos and taking bets where you might incur those losses.
Good young engineers will be attacked when we stop demonizing it
Same as will happen when we stop demonizing fossil fuels, many will return
And spent fuel lasts several hundred years at taxpayer expense.
You are still thinking old tech
They are working on designs that will use the “spent” fuel which actually has tons of energy capability still in it.
So that waste will be consumed down to a minuscule amount.
And why frown on the fact that governments manage the cost of waste, everyone in the country will benefit from the power produced.
The argument sound too much like those who accuse oil companies of forcing people to use their “disgusting” project when in reality the oil and gas is in heavy demand because it’s useful and people know it.
No nuclear accident risk?
LOL
Like the $1 trillion in third party losses to date in Japan? No risk of that ever happening again?
Or the $50 billion to decon the site over the next 5 decades?
No risk of losses from decon ~200 km2 of land and waterways?
LOL
Well, if what you say were true, then no licensee needs Price-Anderson liability caps any more.
They should be happy to see that legislation expire without renewal.
Unfortunately for your silly claim, licensees would immediately shutdown their plants without P-A.
They said so every time P-A comes up for renewal
Simply put, licensees know their risk is not zero.
TEPCo and the people of Japan know that, too.
I agree Europe signed a suicide pact when they breached their Gazprom contracts in obedience to the Biden Regime.
And joining in to destroy Nordstream and lie about it.
Well, their renewables won't save their economy.
And at 190EUR/MWH LCOE, they can't afford to build enough nukes over 30 years to repower their grid.
So I guess you agree accident risk is not zero.
Fair enough.
As for your claims, losses incurred by TEPCo and third parties are well documented in public filings and the peer-reviewed literature.
The $1 billion/yr cost is also a public record.
Easy to find if you did your homework which you obviously are incapable of doing.
The tsunami was much higher than planned for because of the nature of this earthquake caused the land itself to drop after the slip.
Its like looking at sea level rise in New Jersey, the issue is NJ was south of the massive glaciation period ice sheets which levered the area upward.
Since it all melted this area is now sinking while further north rises, like a teeter totter.
Anyway, nuclear is the only option we currently have if CO2 is an issue, which of course it isn't, but that is the politics of the situation.
If you can't afford losses, stay out of the casino.
If you can't survive a seismic event, don't run your nuke in a seismically active area.
And you think building nukes are an option?
18-20 years to build.
50% go bankrupt before they finish or the execs are convicted of Federal wire fraud.
Nobody would buy the construction bond with that risk.
LOL
Think 18-20 years is bogus?
How long has Vogtle been going on?
What happened to Summer? How msny Federal wire fraud convictions came out of that scam?
How many nukes started ever finished?
Do you know how many utilities declared bankruptcy trying to build a nuke?
How many nuke vendors and A&Es are still in business?
Think Korea is a model? How much corruption exists in Korean nuclear sector?
You have no idea of reality.
You have no idea how this industry works.
As I said, I ignore baseless claims and non sequiters.
And I don't try to convince low IQ types like you.
I just highlight your ignorance.
It was a management, not technological, failure that caused the reactor meltdown: had TEPCO moved the emergency power generation batteries from underneath the plant to higher ground (as suggested by the IAEA among others), this accident would not have occurred. As well, it was a failure of management and the government to support the industry in the court of public opinion, thereby causing Japan to increase reliance on imported Natural Gas to address their energy needs.
True - the failure to maintain safety system redundancy and resilience under a tsunami or seismic threats was reckless.
No less reckless than running nukes in a seismically active area.
But who ever said the corrupt Japanese nuclear industry (along with widespread organized crime infestation) and its thoroughly co-opted nuclear safety regulator were anything but reckless?
All governmental organizations become corrupt, its inevitable.
Often corrupt from the outset.
Which makes nuclear safety regulation the joke it is.
If you really want nuclear safety, rescind liability caps like Price Anderson.
Of course, if that ever happened, every US nuke would immediately shut down.
I don't know any CNO who would have a job if he advised his board to lobby to rescind Price-Anderson.
I know every nuke would shutdown if it was rescinded to avoid a major rating downgrade.
YouTube as a source?
LMAO
That's priceless.
I take it you lack the training and are incapable of reading the peer-reviewed literature.
I'll skip the video.
I ran reactor accident simulations and risk models for more than a dozen years.
I know the economic, environmental, and morbidity risks from high energy reactor accidents and early containment failures.
I was drafted onto a disaster management team during the accident because I knew the accident progression.
Went to script right up to the steam explosions and drywell blowout.
You seem to have a odd fixation on acute radiation syndrome.
Accident risk analysis isn't measured by how many people you might kill.
Before you even get there, you first consider how much damage is inflicted on third parties and the enterprise.
What will this cost to remediate.
Japan was lucky 90% of the payload went downwind over the Pacific.
At the time, we monitored met data and were ecstatic we drew 4 aces on wind speed and direction.
Our people were lucky.
But the 10% or so of the payload that hit Honshu still left contamination levels exceeding 185 kBq/m2 of 137Cs covering approximately 1700 km2 (Steinhauser et al., 2014) and deposits exceeding 10 kBq/m2 extending over 24,000 km2 (Champion et al., 2013).
Bad as that is to clean up, can't say it enough - Japan was lucky.
And you take that as a rationale to double-down?
Sounds like you live a "hold my beer and watch this" kind of life.
LOL
As I said, if you can't afford losses, stay out of a casino.
No nuclear operating company can afford a reactor accident.
Especially the stockholders.
BTW, I don't despise anyone.
I do laugh at a lot of people.
Especially lunatics, psychopaths and other Progressives.
But inclusive of the grifter community of nuclear advocates.
Death is most important?
I presume you mean without restriction such as not just "death by acute radiation syndrome".
I would throw in injuries and morbidities.
Therefore, you should agree Price-Anderdon should be rescinded.
And why stop there?
Any and all economic losses from any tort should the responsibility of the nuclear operating company just like any other entity.
100% liability like BP in Deepwater Horizon which waived Jones Act liability caps.
Rescind Jones Act caps and Price-Anderson caps
Sounds like we have a consensus.
Can't recall seeing any papers in the peer-reviewed atmospheric physics literature claiming most warming is anthropogenic.
Even IPCC doesn't claim most warming is anthropogenic.
Can you cite any peer-reviewed atmospheric physics papers reporting most warming observed is anthropogenic?
I doubt you can.
You come across as someone untrained in and ignorant of physics.
Ironically, like a lot of Progressives who baselessly claim most warming is anthropogenic and will exceed 2 C by end of century.
Yes, that too, although i don't think it was batteries it was the diesel gensets providing backup emergency power that got swamped. If they had placed those up on the hill, no issues would have happened.
"No issues" other than the seismic event that trashed their AC power system and the tsunami clearing the undersized wall wiping out their heat sink.
Mark I containments fail real fast in a station blackout accident
The earthquake triggered the reactor trips and sustaimed loss of offsite power.
Reportedly, cooling water pipes in Unit 1 failed before 3 PM ahead of the tsunami by 45 minutes.
TEPCo data records recirc pumps were triggered by the quake onna loss of coolant signal.
Containment sprays were activated after 3:04 PM.
IAEA came to different conclusion post-accident but the records stand.
And, sure -- a firemain header and diesel pumps might have been effective -- even with sea water.
The NRC Station Blackout rule envisioned that strategy as a part of an accident coping strategy if they had sufficient battery capacity for instumentation and control.
TEPCo went cheap on the seawall, and so emergency AC was trashed by the tsunami.
So, Unit 1 tripped as designed.
Is it surprising to you Unit 1 did trip?
Actually, a lot of BWR 3/4s failed to trip in years past due to low quality design and construction of the scram discharge headers.
But, sure, Unit 1 tripped.
And, sure, newer plants meet higher standards while BWR 3/4s like Unit 1 remain accidents waiting to happen.
What's your point?
That the accident was avoidable if nukes actually managed risk?
I agree.
Fact is TEPCo operated recklessly like any other nuke operating company hiding behind a grandfathered "licensung basis".
You bring up Chiba and suggest I don't care.
You're right - I don't care about Chiba.
I look at it this way. The third party damages TEPCo and the Japanese government dumped on Japanese citizeblns resulting from TEPCo's reckless behaviot totalled ~$1 trillion plus $50 billion or so over 50 years to clean up.
If Eneos loses Chiba, their insurance carriers or stockholders eat the loss.
That's the difference.
As for renewables, on one hand they are cheaper than nukes and don't need the subsidies they pig out on
Moreover, bad as renewables are, nukes are a fatter corporate welfare queen than renewables.
And still can't compete.
Thanks for clarifying- on retrospect, I think maybe both batteries and generators were stored in the "basement"
Likely both, When we do back up power systems, diesels are the long term supply and will be sized for the emergency cooling pumps as well as control systems for them but they take 30-60 seconds to come online, and so UPS battery systems kick in within milliseconds to keep all the plant controls powered until the gensets are spun up.
Those UPS systems needed to be in a raised building as well.
A simple sturdy building on a raised platform containing the ups and genset systems would have eliminated this disaster.