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.

[AndyJackson]

I think that the author’s point was the nuclear power isn’t going to be the panacea that McCain or anyone else(including me) thought it was going to be. Seriously, I thought outside of the need for potable fuels, nuclear power could solve all our problems if it wasn’t for those lefty “I watched China Syndrom” idiots who dismiss the benefits of nuclear power out of hand. This article puts forth the idea that nuclear power can be only part of the mix(and to a much lesser degree than I had previously thought).

There is another part of the night time analysis that also bears consideration. Supposing one goes to a transportation system based on battery storage of electricity or synthetic fuels. Then the night-time capacity drop is irrelevant because it can be used to charge cars (at cheaper rates) or provide the heat or electricity for electrolysis of hydrogen for synthetic fuels.

One can also imagine electric powered rail for freight transportation which can, again use electricity at favorable times of the day.

The idiot's thinking is all in the box - replace coal central power by nuclear central power and change nothing else about our energy economy or our behavior. With expensive, and climbing oil, we will have plenty of incentives to adjust our behavior.

[wolfpat]

To "turn down" the reactor from 100%, you just vent off some steam prior to feeding it to the turbine.

No. To "turn down" the reactor from 100%, you increase the concentration of boric acid in the reactor coolant. If you vent off steam, like you suggest, you're going to increase reactor power. That would be bad.

Also, venting off steam means you have to make more demineralized water. Expensive stuff. And a bit of trouble to keep making (Running the system until you have to regenerate the anion and cation beds, and then dealing with the large amounts of acid and caustic produced from the regen procedure is time consuming and tedious.)

[wolfpat]

If he’s who I think he is, he’s in Michigan now. If it’s not, he might be in Wisconsin. Or if he’s the other guy, he’s in Qatar.

[wideminded]

The real wet blanket is the reality that hits when people realize that we can’t build a single oil refinery

Recently C-SPAN covered an interview with T. Boone Pickens, where he spoke extensively about the current energy situation and prospects for the future. One thing he said (that surprised me) was that there is not currently a problem with a shortage of refineries because the existing ones are only running at about 83% of capacity.

[calcowgirl]

Don’t get too excited. He’s opposed nuclear for all sorts of PC leftist reasons in the past. He and Kyl were the deciding vote against Domenici efforts to reduce the regulatory hurdles in 2003 to forge ahead on new reactors. He purportedly opposed him because of loan guarantees, falling into the Dem hyperbole (”If every single project went into default, it might cost billions). Those numbers are dwarfed by the amounts he has suggested spending in the name of junk science or technologies that don’t exist yet. Back in 1991, he was among seven “conservation-minded senators” that wrote a letter to GHWB blasting his energy policy (which placed a heavy emphasis on oil/gas exploration and greater dependence on nuclear power) because it had deleted a section offering tax incentives for renewables (solar, wind, geothermal) and conservation standards. (According to one article, “The letter points out that better conservation would not only reduce U.S. dependence on foreign oil but would improve air quality by releasing fewer pollutants.”) The conservation minded senators? The usual gang, mostly: McCain, Chafee, Jeffords, , Specter, Nancy Kassebaum (KS), David Durenberger (MN)and Bill Cohen.

I think the only reason he is touting it now is that some incentive dollars are included in the global warming bills. So... if you buy into his cap and trade program, that is estimated to cost the U.S. between 1 and 5 TRILLION, he’ll give ya a few billion for a nuke reactor. Ain’t that generous?

[DoughtyOne]

Thanks for the update.

[Starstruck]

Anyway this article kinda rained on my pro nuke parade.

I think your parade is about an elephant and a clown short of a real parade.

[DoughtyOne]

This guy could tell me that Jesus Christ was going to come and save us all tomorrow, and my reaction would be about the same as a cow in the middle of chewing her cudd.

I’d just go about my business realizing he’s been a pretender, he is a pretender and will always be a pretender... unless, once in the Oval Office he stops the pretense and does what he has seemed to be driven to do since holding public office, rule from the Ted Kennedy side of the isle.

[Nuc1]

If the fuel cladding is toughened up BWRs can ramp up and down fairly quickly using recirculation flow down to about 60% power. PWRs can follow steam demand to a point then add / subtract boron from the main coolant but commercial PWRs are not my area of expertise.

Both plants can dump steam using the bypass valves but they probably wouldn't have to. Proper mix of sources on the grid is key. We could go to 60-70% nuke without any grid stability problems IMHO. Don't forget we need to convert coal to oil and get oil from shale and tar sands not to generate power, but for my cars. And we need to drill and refine. Oh yeah we have to make hydrogen too. And all of those electric cars will need charging by night and day. I think there will be plenty of demand.

I am in nuclear energy even so I am convinced we need to use coal also. Not all eggs in one basket. And we have a LOT of coal. One issue people tend to overlook is staffing for nukes. They are pretty complicated beasts and most of us old timers are getting well...old.

One other thing, with fast breeders we can make more fuel than we consume in the reactors. All that stands in our way is the democrat and rino members of congress.

If I was President I would declare a national emergency and get to work. If congress objects I'd treat them like Lincoln treated the copper heads. Flame away FR, this nation is in a battle for its very life, time to take care of business.

[calcowgirl]

I hear ya, D1—loud and clear.
I agree with ya, too!

[DoughtyOne]

Thanks CalCowGirl... yeha! ;-)

[Eric in the Ozarks]

You summed it up nicely.

[wolfpat]

One issue people tend to overlook is staffing for nukes

My banishment is up next year. So that'll be one less I&C tech or Aux Operator position open.

[Lexinom]

Par excellance. Thank you so much!

Nuclear staffing is indeed an issue. As I understand it, standard weapons-grade purity is 93%. I'm not a nuclear expert, but I would assume that the decay process slowly but continually degrades it. We are all assuming that the Uranium-235 and Plutonium-239 (and the Tritium and other compounds to support the primary implosion) are being properly maintained in our nuclear arsenal - but are they? We could find ourselves with a massive arsenal of duds on our hands. Can you imagine diplomacy without the backing of a viable arsenal?

BTW the Chinese nukes are fairly new, since they stole the technology from us just over a decade ago.

[wolfpat]

...with fast breeders we can make more fuel than we consume in the reactors.

I don't think the fast breeder is a proved concept. IIRC, the Phénix and Superphénix never hit that break even plateau.

[wolfpat]

Oh, and one more thing about breeders. The fuel produced is primarily Plutonium. You wouldn’t want to use that in any of the current reactors. Too close to prompt critical.

[Boiler Plate]

Thank you. It is idiots like this author who have gotten us in to the mess weare currently in.

[Boiler Plate]

Thank you. It is idiots like this author who have gotten us in to the mess we are currently in.

[Eric in the Ozarks]

Someone else mentioned there is potential to sell power into Mexico and if we can buy power from the Canuks, we ought to be able to sell back in certain circumstances.
In 20 years, I believe a substantial volume of commuter vehicles will be battery powered. Mass transit may be OK for the Japanese and Europeans but its a tough sell over here. We'll still want our cars and the freedom they provide.

[Neidermeyer]

For coal, it measures tons and fits in train cars.
*****************************************************
And for all the greenies out there they can add to nuclears benefits that COAL releases much more radiation when burned by the railcar than a nuclear plant ever will,, and the waste fuel from a nuclear plant is completely recyclable into new fuel.