McCain's French kiss

Financial Post ^ | May 13, 2008 | Lawrence Solomon

[Delacon]

The Republican nominee backed nuclear this week, but the U.S. shouldn't try to imitate the French disaster

                                    By Lawrence Solomon
"If France can produce 80% of its electricity with nuclear power, why can’t we?,” asks U.S. presidential candidate John McCain. Nuclear power is a cornerstone of Senator McCain’s plan to combat climate change, which he is unveiling this week.
McCain thinks he is asking a simple rhetorical question. As it turns out, he is not. His question is technical, with an answer that will surprise him and most Americans. Nuclear reactors cannot possibly meet 80% of America’s power needs — or those of any country whose power market dominates its region — because of limitations in nuclear technology. McCain needs to find another miracle energy solution, or abandon his vow to drastically cut back carbon dioxide emissions.
Unlike other forms of power generation, nuclear reactors are designed to run flat-out, 24/7 — they can’t crank up their output at times of high demand or ease up when demand slows. This limitation generally consigns nuclear power to meeting a power system’s minimum power needs — the amount of power needed in the dead of night, when most industry and most people are asleep, and the value of power is low. At other times of the day and night, when power demands rise and the price of power is high, society calls on the more flexible forms of generation — coal, gas, oil and hydro-electricity among them — to meet its additional higher-value needs.
If a country produces more nuclear power than it needs in the dead of night, it must export that low-value, off-peak power. This is what France does. It sells its nuclear surplus to its European Union neighbours, a market of 700 million people. That large market — more than 10 times France’s population — is able to soak up most of France’s surplus off-peak power.
The U.S. is not surrounded, as is France, by far more populous neighbours. Just the opposite: The U.S. dominates the North American market. If 80% of U.S. needs were met by nuclear reactors, as Senator McCain desires, America’s off-peak surplus would have no market, even if the power were given away. Countries highly reliant on nuclear power, in effect, are in turn reliant on having large non-nuclear-reliant countries as neighbours. If France’s neighbours had power systems dominated by nuclear power, they too would be trying to export off-peak power and France would have no one to whom it could offload its surplus power. In fact, even with the mammoth EU market to tap into, France must shut down some of its reactors some weekends because no one can use its surplus. In effect, France can’t even give the stuff away.
Not only does France export vast quantities of its low-value power (it is the EU’s biggest exporter by far), France meanwhile must import high-value peak power from its neighbours. This arrangement is so financially ruinous that France in 2006 decided to resurrect its obsolete oil-fired power stations, one of which dates back to 1968.
France’s nuclear program sprung not from business needs but from foreign policy goals. Immediately after the Second World War, France’s President, Charles de Gaulle, decided to develop nuclear weapons, to make France independent of either the U.S. or the USSR. This foreign policy goal spawned a commercial nuclear industry, but a small one — France’s nuclear plants could not compete with other forms of generation, and produced but 8% of France’s power until 1973.
Then came the OPEC oil crisis and panic. Sensing that French sovereignty was at stake, the country decided to replace oil with electricity and to generate that electricity with nuclear. By 1974, three mammoth nuclear plants were begun and by 1977, another five. Without regulatory hurdles to clear and with cut-rate financing and a host of other subsidies from Euratom, the EU’s nuclear subsidy agency, France’s power system was soon transformed. By 1979, France’s frenzied building program had nuclear power meeting 20% of France’s power generation. By 1983 the figure was about 50% and by 1990 about 75% and growing.
Despite the subsidies, the overbuilding effectively bankrupted Electricite de France (EdF), the French power company. To dispose of its overcapacity and stay afloat, EdF feverishly exported its surplus power to its neighbours, even laying a cable under the English Channel to become a major supplier to the UK. At great expense, French homes were converted to inefficient electric home heating. And EdF offered cut-rate power to keep and attract energy-intensive industries — Pechiney, the aluminum supplier, obtained power at half of EdF’s cost of production, and soon EdF was providing similar terms to Exxon Chemicals and Allied Signal.
These measures helped but not enough — in 1989, EdF ran a loss of four billion French francs, a sum its president termed “catastrophic.” The company had a 800-billion-franc debt, old reactors that faced expensive decommissioning, and unresolved waste disposal costs. To keep lower-cost competitors out of the country, France also reneged on an EU-wide agreement to open borders up to electricity competition.
France’s nuclear program, in short, is an economic disaster, and a political one too — 61% of the French public favours a phase-out of nuclear energy.
“Is France a more secure, advanced and innovative country than we are?,” McCain also asked. “I need no answer to that rhetorical question. I know my country well enough to know otherwise.”
But McCain does not know France well enough to know why nuclear power’s negative record over there says nothing positive about what it can do for people over here, on this side of the Atlantic.

                                                            Financial Post
Lawrence Solomon is executive director of Energy Probe and author of The Deniers: The world-renowned scientists who stood up against global warming hysteria, political persecution, and fraud. E-mail: LawrenceSolomon@nextcity.com. Fourth in a series.

[DannyTN]

"The commercial PWRs use boric acid concentration in the reactor coolant to make power changes."

That would kill any oversized radioactive mutant cockroaches too!!

[cdpap]

You could simply use the excess power at off peak times to pressurize huge turbines with compressed air. Then during peak times you draw off this available stored energy. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to solve this problem. Anyone raising this as an issue is hard core anti-nuke.

[slowhandluke]

nuclear reactors are designed to run flat-out, 24/7 — they can't crank up their output at times of high demand or ease up when demand slows. This limitation...

You point to a interesting item in the original article, where the author is lying by switching conceptual domains. Current nuclear power plants are designed for base load (constant full power), but there is no inherent reason that future nuclear power plants can't be so designed, or that nuclear plants used other than in the power industry aren't so designed now (submarines). It's an economic question, not an limit in physics.

It was a matter of tradeoffs, back when. Base load nukes are extremely capital intensive, and pay off better when run constantly. Coal plants are less capital intensive, and more of the cost is the coal, so that they are relatively cheaper to cycle. Gas turbines are even less capital intensive, but use more expensive fuel, and are used for peaking. (Peaking need is when the load grows too fast for coal plants to ramp up to met it, or when load exceeds the total nuke + coal output).

The engineers did a study, and concluded that the most cost-effective mix was nukes for base load, and coal for cyclic load, and gas for peaking.

The economics have changed, and it might be time to design a cycling nuke plant. And it would be strange indeed if nuke subs didn't already use such a design.

[AndyJackson]

Current nuclear power plants are designed for base load

Even that is well over 50% of our energy demand

[AndyJackson]

You wouldn’t want to use that in any of the current reactors. Too close to prompt critical.

Nope! Not an issue. It behaves in a reactor about the same as uranium. Don't put myths like this around.

The issue is that plutonium in other countries could be diverted from their reactors to building nuclear weapons making undetectable proliferation much easier. That is an issue for treaties, controls and monitoring. Not impossible, just requires a lot of diplomatic jibber jabber.

[wolfpat]

That’s what they told me in license class.

[slowhandluke]

Current nuclear power plants are designed for base load

Even that is well over 50% of our energy demand

Yup, and it's well past time to start building nukes. By the time we fill the base load need, the design for large cycling plants should be ready.

[AndyJackson]

Well, what they told you in license class is wrong. In fact, the French use MOX fuel in light water reactors. It is an admisture of normal uranium fuel and plutonium, using plutonium recovered from spent reactor fuel.

[PSYCHO-FREEP]

Comparing Europe to America is like comparing a duck to a fly.

To begin with, the population densities are completely different. The entire country of France is the size of Texas. Their People mostly live in shoe boxes stacked on top of each other.

Add to that, the fact that it is much easier to use public transit than drive in that country, and the roads are barely two bicycles wide, it’s easy to see why closely contained Nuclear Power works so well there.

Our biggest problem is, that we are too spread out for it to be practical. We would require many more plants because of all the expansive distances we have to move electricity.

It may have an advantage in highly urbanized cities on the East and West Coast, but the bulk of the population lives in fly-over country.

[SuziQ]

Is the French power company government owned? If so, it's a victim of socialist central planning, and we all know how well THAT works. Private or publicly owned power companies would probably do a much better job, since their income will be determined by the decisions they make on the front end.

As far as planning for daytime peak usage and having extra at night is concerned, that would be extremely useful for those who have electric cars or plug-in hybrids who want to take advantage of 'off peak' rates to juice up!

[SuziQ]

You’re just not thinking outside the reactor containment vessel. ;-]

LOL!

[alloysteel]

Easy solution for this “excess power” problem - Since the electricity is going to be produced ANYWAY, then divert the available energy to the task that the “green” people think will be the solution to our problems, the economical production of hydrogen. By simple electrolysis of water, oxygen and hydrogen are both liberated from the bonds that form water molecules. The oxygen is simply released to the atmosphere, where the products of photosynthesis are augmented. The hydrogen is captured and cooled and liquified for storage, for use later on as power generation augmentation or as a motor vehicle fuel.

We don’t need hydrogen mines. With adequate electrical energy available, we can manufacture an endless supply. The recombinant water vapor formed by fuel cells is about as chemically pure water as you can get, even better than distillation. And the more of this relatively cheap fuel (hydrogen produced with the aid of nuclear power generation) we produce, the less we shall require importation of ever more precious petroleum.

Then we can run these nuclear power plants flat out, 24/7, pulsing out energy day and night, phasing in the power to produce the hydrogen as the daily peak demand slacks off.

Other than popular superstition causing the peasants to rise up with pitchforks and torches, I do not see a downside.

[AndyJackson]

Our biggest problem is, that we are too spread out for it to be practical. We would require many more plants because of all the expansive distances we have to move electricity.

Two issues. First, the electric grid already transmits energy long distance, like Canadian hydro power, and power from almost anywhere in the US into California and New York metropolitan areas.

Second, most of our population and energy consumption are concentrated in key areas (the bright spots on the satellite maps of the US at nighttime).

The entire country of France is the size of Texas. Their People mostly live in shoe boxes stacked on top of each other.Add to that, the fact that it is much easier to use public transit

Obviously you have not spent time there. It is easier to use public transit because they built public transit that can be used. For NY, DC SF and a lot of other concentrated urban areas, a lot better use of public transportation could be made, and at a small fraction of the cost of operating all those automobiles. The capital and operating costs of a functioning rail system is a tiny fraction of the capital and operating costs of a three mile line of 6 lanes of bumper to bumper Mercedes Lexuses and BMWs averaging 5 mph.

[SierraWasp]

Well, since I love your perfect tagline so much, I won't get excited at all!!! I just started to think he was CYAing with this big seeming switcheroo, but of course I should know better... Phhhhhhhhhhht!!!

You may have noticed I din't change my tagline because of this thread!!!

[DoughtyOne]

I like your tagline, except I can’t get behind Nader.

I won’t be getting behind McCain either though.

[SierraWasp]

Well, I'm NOT behind Nader either!!!

I just noticed how perpetually pist off the Dems have been since Nader robbed Algore in FL in 2000!!!

There was a whole PBS FRONTLINE docudrama about it and the Dems were STILL foaming at the mouth seven years later!!!

So if McMistake is trying to take the Republicans into terminal GANG-GREEN like Schwartzenegger has CA, wiping out my ability to vote for him for POTUS, then I'm voting for the one that makes the Dems most pist and who I knew all along was totally consumed with GANG-GREEN!!!

I am also doing it to fight against America'a real enemy, the Media Mobsters who were just as upset at Nader as their partners in Grand Larceny... The Democrats!!!

I know it's not perfect and that one should not squander their franchise of a secret ballot voting right that so many predecessors have died for, but it's not my fault! The Republican Party has victimised me with this terminally flawed candidate, Senator McMistake!!!

[calcowgirl]

I’m just leaving my decision until November—that way I don’t need to agonize over it and
I can still hope for a miracle between now and then.

By the time our (early) primary came around in February, more than half my decisions were made for me.
I avoided all that agonizing, LOL.

[phil1750]

i just opened my mail, and had a letter from McLame and the RNC explaining why I needed to send in a donation today. I put a note in the invelope that reads: “I will be voting conservative this year, which means switching to a 3rd party. Sorry, no money this year.”

[SierraWasp]

Good sanity saving strategery!(grin)

[calcowgirl]

I think I must have told them off too many times, earlier. They seem to have taken me off their mailing list. I’m disappointed... I miss all those opportunities to send their mail back to them, LOL.

This whole “rebranding” propaganda has to be exposed and denounced, IMO. The very people that have been ruining the party are the ones yelling that the “brand” is tarnished and therefore the GOP must change. It’s so dang obvious—it is the “change” that they themselves have influenced that needs to be rejected. And yet, the MSM is just happy as pie to fuel the new “rebrand” movement to help the GOP implode or move further to the left.

UGH!