Posted on 03/15/2012 7:41:42 PM PDT by MinorityRepublican
The U.S. nuclear industry seemed to be staging a comeback several years ago, with 15 power companies proposing as many as 29 new reactors. Today, only two projects are moving off the drawing board.
What killed the revival wasn't last year's nuclear accident in Japan, nor was it a soft economy that dented demand for electricity. Rather, a shale-gas boom flooded the U.S. market with cheap natural gas, offering utilities a cheaper, less risky alternative to nuclear technology.
"It's killed off new coal and now it's killing off new nuclear," says David Crane, chief executive of NRG Energy Inc., NRG -1.14% a power-generation company based in Princeton, N.J. "Gas has come along at just the right time to upset everything."
Across the country, utilities are turning to natural gas to generate electricity, with 258 plants expected to be built from 2011 through 2015, federal statistics indicate. Not only are gas-fired plants faster to build than reactors, they are much less expensive. The U.S. Energy Information Administration says it costs about $978 per kilowatt of capacity to build and fuel a big gas-fired power plant, compared with $5,339 per kilowatt for a nuclear plant.
Already, the inexpensive natural gas is putting downward pressure on electricity costs for consumers and businesses.
The EIA has forecast that the nation will add 222 gigawatts of generating capacity between 2010 and 2035—equivalent to one-fifth of the current U.S. capacity. The biggest chunk of that addition—58%—will be fired by natural gas, it said, followed by renewable sources, including hydropower, at 31%, then coal at 8% and nuclear power at 4%.
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
Natural gas may be cheap right now, but pound for pound you can get an order of magnitude more energy from a pound of uranium than a pound of natural gas.
There is a future for both sources of energy.
It’s all about the natgas act and spending our money foolishly.
The U.S. nuclear industry seemed to be staging a comeback several years ago, with 15 power companies proposing as many as 29 new reactors. Today, only two projects are moving off the drawing board.
The problem is that cheap gas will also kill cheap gas.
Gas drilling rigs in operation have declined from something like 1600 several years ago to only 620 today. With record low gas prices, it makes more sense to drill for oil. Fracked wells also have much higher investment costs than regular gas wells and that can’t be justified with $2.3 mmbtu gas
Fracked gas is excellent, but nuclear is another obvious cheap, long-term option.
Facepalm.
Thanks U-238. Nice nick in this context, too. :’)
These low NatGas prices are coming to an end in under 24 months. There is not enough exploration occuring to maintain this level of production:
http://www.foxbusiness.com/news/2012/03/13/anadarko-ceo-sees-natural-gas-price-rebound-after-2014/
“Published March 13, 2012
Dow Jones Newswires
THE WOODLANDS, Texas -(Dow Jones)- Anadarko Petroleum Corp. (APC) expects natural gas prices to rebound significantly from their current depressed status after 2014, Chief Executive Jim Hackett said Tuesday.”
You sir are 100% correct. A better question is why nuclear is so much more expensive than conventional power plants. The answer is simple, it is government micro managing the industry and the environmentalists multiple law suits against that source of energy. Therefore, a very cheap source of energy has become very expensive. Government regulation does not REPEAT DOES NOT insure safety. A case in point is the recent disaster in Japan. This was not an engineering problem but it was an economic expediency that fostered poor engineering of their plants. In effect the nuclear power plants did not have fail safe passive system to keep the reactor cores from reaching a melt down temperature. The tsunami rendered the primary coolant systems inoperable. The tsunami did not cause the "sub standard piss poor design engineering of the plants."
What is the answer to this problem. The answer is the concept of absolute liability. Any provider of nuclear energy must have absolute liability for any accidents via outside insurance. There is no one, not anybody tougher than the bean counters in the back room of an insurance company. If the bean counters say it is okay to insure this plant, it is safe. If they do not insure it, it does not get built.
Relative to the total assets of an insurance being able to insure the total costs of a disaster, if they can not insure and compensate for the worst case disaster it would be required that the risks be shared by multiple insurance groups (That is how Lloyds of London works).
If the proposed plant is unable to buy the insurance necessary, the nuclear plant should not be built. If they can obtain insurance, rest assured that it is safe.
Insurance companies do not like losing money!!!!
Six orders of magnitude would be a better estimate.
This is a cool concept, however, it still suffers from a major problem: terrorists can accumulate a large collection of them, and then build dirty bombs. Dirty bombs really suck, since they don’t rely on a chain reaction, but conventional explosives to turn their radioactive payload into a aerosol.
No way our government would ever allow such technology anywhere, and the environmentalists would have hissy fits!
This is why the NRC,DOD and various governmental bodies regulating radioisotopes will keep close tabs. The patent is already filed and looks like getting ready for production.
Universities and Colleges around this nation have radioisotopes on their campuses.
I personally know of 5 campuses in the LA area that have radioactive material on campus for research purposes.
Yes, but quantity and radioactivity factor in, would be my argument.
The whitepaper indicates they want this in civilian use as well. No one can really stop someone from buying a truckload of nuclear cell phones :)
I would keep this technology in control the military then.
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