Monday
Oct052009
Sen. Alexander: 100 U.S. Power Plants In 20 Years
Monday, October 5, 2009 at 5:14PM
Travis Martinez, University of New Mexico - Talk Radio News Service
U.S. Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) wants to see 100 new nuclear power plants built within the next 20 years. Alexander spoke to 200 conservationists today at a forum hosted by conservative think tank Resources For The Future.
“I believe that what Americans should most fear about nuclear power is [that] the rest of world will use it to create low-cost, carbon-free electricity while [America], who invented the technology, will not,” said Alexander. “Within twenty years a new energy sprawl will consume an area larger than that of Nebraska... The unintended consequences from using renewable energy to mitigate climate change could damage the environment in the name of saving the environment.”
The United States has not built a nuclear power plant since 1990. Alexander said that future climate legislation should include details on optimum nuclear power plant site utilization and resources for low-carbon or carbon-free energy production.
Alexander said he does not have legislation prepared, but is asking for someone to take charge. “Two words: Presidential leadership. The president went to New York, to the UN climate change summit where he lectured other countries for not doing enough, when [other countries] are building nuclear power plants, when the U.S. hasn't built one in thirty years,” he said.
U.S. Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) wants to see 100 new nuclear power plants built within the next 20 years. Alexander spoke to 200 conservationists today at a forum hosted by conservative think tank Resources For The Future.
“I believe that what Americans should most fear about nuclear power is [that] the rest of world will use it to create low-cost, carbon-free electricity while [America], who invented the technology, will not,” said Alexander. “Within twenty years a new energy sprawl will consume an area larger than that of Nebraska... The unintended consequences from using renewable energy to mitigate climate change could damage the environment in the name of saving the environment.”
The United States has not built a nuclear power plant since 1990. Alexander said that future climate legislation should include details on optimum nuclear power plant site utilization and resources for low-carbon or carbon-free energy production.
Alexander said he does not have legislation prepared, but is asking for someone to take charge. “Two words: Presidential leadership. The president went to New York, to the UN climate change summit where he lectured other countries for not doing enough, when [other countries] are building nuclear power plants, when the U.S. hasn't built one in thirty years,” he said.
Reader Comments (10)
Would someone like to comment on Lamar Alexander's statement that, "The unintended consequences from using renewable energy to mitigate climate change could damage the environment in the name of saving the environment.”
Please reply directly to reesepalley@aol.com
It is very simple. The so called "Renewables" have diffuse and intermittant energy sources usually not near population centers.. This means that the average power they produce is only about 20% of the rated power; whereas nukes run at 90%. It takes 4700 wind trubines, wuaing 5-10 x the steel and concrete of a Nuclear Plant to match the average power. The wind trubines weigh 225 Tons eah. The second point is that solar collectors also cover huge area. Thus the environment will be damaged both by the resources needed and the land that is being used. They will also require backup energy plants and expensive transmission grids to get the power to where it is needed.
Energy sources, supply or services are so important and crucial that we can't finalize it with few personal
ideas or comments.
We need high skilled an professional engineering teams
to make studies, planning, proposale and long term master plans as national policies and infrastructures
projects;
Lloyd Y. Parvizi,
Energy Systems Expert--Long Beach,CA, USA
To the attention of US Congress :
Please before any decision about National energy matters : We need high skilled engineering Experts, and resaerch teams to make professional studies and propose advance planning, and long term master plans, for a national infrastructures an patriotic plans as well.
Yadollah Parvizi,
Energy Systems Expert-Long Beach, CA USA
Mr. Palley,
Not all energy is the same. In the 1960s we (the United States) were developing a nuclear airplane engine but before the final design was completely tested, the Kennedy administration wisely killed the project. Although in the era of the Stategic Air Command a plane that could stay aloft for months was appealing, the administration understood that planes sometimes crash (whether they be nuclear powered or conventional) and placing a nuclear reactor on a plane is a bad idea.
Not all energy is the same. Nuclear power is ideal for making electricity, steam, hydrogen, or raw heat at a STATIONARY or marine platform. Although nuclear power can be used to power cars, planes and household hot water heaters, even the most ardent nuclear supporters recognize that these uses are bad ideas.
Not all energy is the same. Natural gas can be squandered making electricity at large stationary power plants, but this is a horrendous waste of this versatile natural resource. It should be illegal to waste natural gas for the production of electricity. Natural gas should be reserved for use as a transportation fuel and for residential heat uses (clothes dryers, stoves, furnaces, hot water heaters).
Not all energy is the same. Electric furnaces and hot water heaters are over 99% efficient (less than 1% of the electricity sent to them is rejected to the environment as heat losses) HOWEVER the best natural gas power plants are only 38% efficient. At the power plant, 38% of the energy contained in the methane molecules of natural gas is captured as electricity whereas 62% is rejected to the environment as waste heat. It is not hard to build a residential furnace or hot water heater that operates on natural gas and is 96% efficient. Although the non-engineer might think that the 99% efficiency of the electric furnace is better for the environment than the 96% natural gas furnace, the engineer recognizes that the natural gas furnace causes 60% LESS natural gas to be burned to get the same amount of heat.
Not all energy is the same. Although a typical nuclear plant is only 28% efficient and a natural gas plant can be 38% efficient, what else are you going to do with uranium? Might as well use it to make cheap electricity and conserve the natural gas for residential heating and transportation.
Renewable energy (hydro, wind, solar, biomass) cannot meet our current energy needs. Even with presidential and congressional leadership of a coordinated long range energy plan (which we currently do not have and have never had in the past) we are still decades away from meeting a majority of our energy needs with renewables. If the day ever comes when we can meet most of our energy needs with renewables, all responsible engineers still recognize that we will still need coal, oil, gas or nuclear as some small part of the mix to provide RELIABILITY.
While we are working towards the noble goal of eliminating fossil fuels, we still need more energy than renewables can provide us. If you do not understand nuclear waste and are therefore categorically against expanding nuclear power, then you are solely relying on renewables to lower carbon emissions. Solely relying on renewables to lower carbon emissions (i.e. not expanding nuclear and eliminating natural gas) HAS THE UNITENDED CONSEQUENCES of burning more coal and squandering more natural gas than is necessary during the lengthy process of developing our renewable energy sources.
Sorry this answer is so long, but energy policy is unfortunately more complicated than the sound bites which steer our democracy.
LSCriscione@hotmail.com
Electricity Production by Fuel Source (2008 DOE - Energy Information Administration, Form EIA-906, "Power Plant Report")
Coal 48.6%
Natural Gas 21.2%
Nuclear 19.6%
Hydroelectric Conventional 6.3%
Renewables (Wind, Solar, biamass, etc) 2.7%
Petroleum Liquids 0.7%
Petroleum Coke 0.3%
Other Gases 0.4%
Other 0.3%
Think about this data from the perspective of the utilities - choices have been made for over a hundred years regarding the most economical and realistic ways to generate the large amount of electricity needed.
It boils down to 3 choices - coal, nat gas and nuclear. All of the others are at little more than novelty status.
Based on this data and taking the stance that we need to increase our domestic supply of electricity while dramatically cutting the pollution created by power plants - it is obvious that nuclear power plants are the only feasible solution. Building anything other than coal or nat gas is a good thing, but the dribble of production you can bring in with wind and solar won't get us very far very fast.
For our elected leadership to be ignoring these facts and focusing their attention and capital on novelty solutions is unacceptable.
Green nuclear power is the only practical solution to simultaneously (1) ameliorate global warming, (2) avoid dependence on foreign oil/gas, and (3) overcome oil/gas depletion. Only two prime energy sources, coal and uranium, can affordably deliver terawatts of "mother" electricity for: (a) heavy industry, i.e. manufacture of automobiles, ships, airplanes, bridges, etc; (b) power for vast fleets of future electric plug-in autos; and (c) production of portable synfuels (hydrogen and ammonia) and biofuels to replace oil. However coal worsens global warming and should be preserved as raw material to make plastics and other organics when oil/gas is gone. This leaves uranium as the only "big-mama" green energy source, an "inconvenient truth".
Popular solar and wind energy are very useful for small-quantity power generation in select locations. But at terawatt levels, immense areas of land and/or sea would be needed, requiring enormous maintenance operations, spoiling scenic land- or sea-scapes, and destroying local ecosystems. As scientifically documented in "The Nuclear Imperative - A Critical Look at the Approaching Energy Crisis" (ISBN 1-4020-4930-7), by 2050 when petroleum fuels are basically exhausted, only uranium and thorium can affordably sustain global energy needs for some 3000 years, using proven fuel reprocessing and advanced reactor technology. A serious in-depth analysis of our future energy shortage by engineers (not by anti-nuclear hand-waving philosophers) reveals that nuclear power is essential to rescue our children from a future economic collapse. For the USA, 500 additional nuclear reactors are required, built on 9000 acres (@ $1.5 trillion), compared to 1,500,000 windmills with storage batteries on 6,000,000 windy acres (@ $4.5 trillion). Ten times these numbers are needed for the entire world. (Costs are in 2005 dollars; for later years, these costs must all be multiplied by the dollar inflation factor).
A stale anti-nuclear lament is "what do we do with all the long-lived radioactive nuclear waste". The volume of waste amounts to one aspirin tablet per year per person using nuclear electricity, compared to tons of air pollutants and globe-warming gaseous CO2 emitted by coal or fossil-fuel combustion. Nuclear waste can be easily stored and safely transported, as the US nuclear navy has done for half a century. Contrary to allegations that uranium and plutonium in spent fuel elements pose a problem because of million-year half-lives, they are separated from fission products by reprocessing and burnt as fuel in future fast-breeder reactors. They will not be dumped. This reduces 50,000 tons from ten-year accumulation of spent fuel to 500 tons (with shorter decay lives) of fission products, taking centuries instead of decades to fill the Yucca Mountain repository in Nevada. The notion that long radioactive lifetimes are undesirable is also erroneous. The longer the decay lifetime, the less the radiation emitted per gram of radio-isotope. Most elements that make up our bodies (hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, etc) have infinitely long decay lifetimes. All humans are "hot" because everyone has radioactive potassium-40 (K-40; 0.012% abundance) in his body, which continuously emits beta particles with a half-life of one million years! Man successfully evolved in this environment, and there are even indications that low levels of radiation benefit health (called hormesis). The hue and cry about possible terrorism and "dirty bombs" is also highly exaggerated. By the reasoning of anti-nuclear activists, we should stop flying 707 jets because they can be used as weapons to kill thousands of people.
Energy is man's third most important need after water and food. Those who hinder expansion of nuclear power will be viewed as irresponsible neo-luddites by future generations. Any further delay of a committed worldwide nuclear energy program will cause certain impoverishment and death of many people by 2050. Those responsible will and must be held accountable for this. Without greatly expanded nuclear power, desert cities like Las Vegas and Phoenix will become ghost-towns. Originally the US had planned to have 300 reactors by the year 2000, but instead there are only 104 today. After the Three-Mile-Island (TMI) reactor meltdown in 1979 in the US (with 0 casualties) and Russia's Chernobyl accident in 1986 (with 57 fatalities), public hysteria fanned by fear-mongering antinuclear activists caused cancellations and moratoria on construction of new nuclear plants. While the USA was once the leader, most US businesses with reactor manufacturing know-how closed. Instead France, Russia, Japan, South-Korea, India, and China are now in charge. Zealous anti-nuclear lobbyists and a mal-informed government have created the pending energy crisis. We are entering a war-like energy-deprivation period as serious as WW-II or Al-Qaida. Strong Manhattan-project-like leadership is now needed to reverse the short-sightedness and follies of prior administrations.
Jeff W. Eerkens, Ph.D
Adjunct Research Professor,
Nuclear Science and Engineering Institute
University of Missouri, Columbia
Our company has solved the nuclear waste issue. To see how, go to www.permanentradwastesolutions.com. Permanent RadWaste Solutions is a start-up, but has the only patent (issued April 28, 2009) for the ELIMINATION of nuclear waste from our environment. Most major questions about our project are on the first page. But feel free to e-mail and ask if you don't see what you want.
It is well known that coal, oil, and gas-burning plants spew contaminates into the air. Most don't know that they also release nuclear contamination into the air at the following ratios: coal=4.50ppm, "clean" coal=1.80ppm, oil=0.39ppm, and natural gas=0.18ppm. Nuclear power=0.0ppm, because nuclear power is a reaction and not combustion.
I support Dr. Eerkens comments wholeheartedly. Not only is he a nuclear scientist but also a visionary. We need more like him.
As strongly reinforced in this discussion, nuclear power is capable of providing clean affordable energy needed to maintain a decent standard of living for future generations. Nuclear phobia seems to retard research needed to develop generation IV reactors. Government must play the major role in subsidizing reactor research and the training of nuclear scientists. Substantial investments in government labs should be a priority in order to develop new generation nuclear reactors. On the basis of past research, Argonne should be given the funding to complete the development of the Integrated Fast Reactor (IFR), ORNL should be funded to bring the Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor (LFTR) to commercial status, and Sandia should be put to work on the development of smaller size reactors. In addition adequate staffing of NRC should be mandated so as to facilitate timely approval of new reactor designs.
John Tjostem, Ph.D.
Emeritus Professor of Biology
Carbon-free nuclear power is the ONLY way the world can retire emission-belching coal generating plants and possibly check global warming. It's that simple. Wind and solar power are not up to the job because they require backup for the 60-70% of the time they are not generating electricity. That backup usually is in the form of fossil fuels--coal or natural gas.
If we have scientists address the nuclear waste problem, not politicians, we can reprocess the nuclear waste so it actually becomes a resource. Moreover, Yucca Mountain was a political solution to a scientific problem. It does not make sense to ship nuclear waste to Nevada when 96 of the 104 reactors are east of the Rockies. Nor does it make sense to store nuclear waste above the surrounding water table in the most recently formed and changing crust on earth. We should consider expanding the existing WIPP disposal site in New Mexico. It is several thousand feet under the earth in a salt deposit that's had no geological activity for a zillion years (or there abouts).
– Robert Moen, www.energyplanUSA.com