Bob,
Each of us will take on board what makes sense and seems credible. I've generally found the anti-nuclear crowd to be too much influenced by fear and ignorance. They seem to have a purely emotional stance and seem prepared to use any argument however fallacious and incorrect to further their ends.
Nevertheless, they could serve some useful purpose as a sort of watchdog. They have a right to their misinformed point of view.
Yes, Sometimes. But the independent report issued by the Royal Academy of Engineers, that I referred to in my previous post (did you read it?), did take all these costs into consideration.
The anti-nuclear mob will do more than include all the costs. They will exaggerate the costs, use worst-case examples, make comparisons of new green technology with old, obsolete nuclear technology. Furthermore, they will use the reverse tactics when costing 'green' technology, omit essential ingredients of the real cost, use best-case examples (where the wind blows every day) and generally use any argument however implausible when preaching to the converted.
That sound like the sort of statement one would expect from the anti-nuclear lobby.
Here are some facts (true or false) in the form of a few tables, which you might like to peruse at your leisure. To summarise, over 30 reactors world-wide are under construction as at August 2007 and 223 new reactors are in the planning stage. There's even one under construction in Finland and another in the planning stage there. Perhaps someone from Finland could vouch for the veracity of this.
There also seems to be a lot of misinformation about the scarcity of uranium. It would appear there's enough to keep the economy chugging along till nuclear fusion becomes a reality, wouldn't you say?
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There are three groups, IMO. The pro-nuclear, the anti-nuclear, and the nuclear skeptical. I tend to dismiss the second group, the anti-nuclear, who seem to not understand some of the issues.
I find myself in the 'nuclear skeptical' group. I place quite a bit of importance of not leaving a big mess for future generations to clean up.
And I don't trust the figures that come out of the pro-nuclear group. (The anti- group doesn't produce much in terms of numbers.)
I hadn't read the Royal Engineers pdf (you linked a wind summary, not the report unless I missed that). I looked it up and gave it a quick read. I really need to print it out in order to read carefully and my printer is down at the moment.
A couple of things that I didn't see in their cost analysis of nuclear - cost of long term storage and cost of capital.
They do include capital needed for construction but ignore the cost of that capital during the construction process. This is a very significant number. A very large amount of money has to be spent up front, long before energy begins to flow.
Add the cost of capital funds and the numbers change, the spread between wind and nuclear shrinks.
And I'm not sure that they factored in the cost of another Chernobyl. Low probability it might be. But expensive it well may be.
I lived a few miles downwind from Rancho Seco which had to be shut down due to very poor construction/maintenance. Another Three Mile Island/Chernobyl narrowly averted.
And I pass Humboldt Bay nuclear every time I go to town. They delivered the fuel rods before someone discovered that the plant had been built right on top of an active fault. The rods are still there in the pool.
At least some of them are. They can't find one.
Nuclear is nasty stuff. And people are human. We can talk about safe design, but then we get brought up short by stuff like the problems in the 'Big Dig'.
(BTW, wasn't there a leak in the last few days in a plant somewhere?)
My preference is to rely on nuclear as little as possible.
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That "223 in the planning stage" can be misleading. There are an awful lot of 'plans' that don't get past the "I've got an idea" stage. Lots of plans in the US at the moment but very few places that are willing to allow a nuclear plant in their back yard.
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BTW, there's a new problem with nuclear which hasn't been included in the mix.
When the weather gets hot you've got to shut the damned things down.
They need a source of cool/cold water and we've seen plants go off line this year when the local water became too hot. Better factor that in.
Add backup production costs for nuclear?
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As for supply, I can't make heads or tails of it (at this time of night). The numbers seem all over the place. There are some very optimistic numbers which assume that we'll find all sorts of the stuff when we get busy looking. And there are non-optimistic numbers that project supplies not keeping up with demand.
Sure wish I could identify a trustworthy source for summary numbers.