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.

[wolfpat]

Power consumption is always changing moment by moment. If you ever get the chance, try to get a tour of your local electric utility’s control center. For Progress Energy in North Carolina, it’s the Skaale Center on Hillsborough St. in Raleigh.

[Leo Carpathian]

Big dummy bogus baloney is right.
With all our army of engineers who put man on the moon, we can't figure out what to do with excessive power at night, like charge all the Priuses, pump the water up to reservoir to use during the day, etc.
Just tell people that their electricity costs fraction at night and watch the load getting balanced.
Green idiots feeding us crapola.
Can we get some leader again????

[cicero2k]

Check out EDF.PA on Yahoo Finance.

If this is a financial disaster, then someone is going to have to explain what success means.

Sure, it was subsidized, but so are many US businesses in some way.

Plus, it would be a huge task just to get to 40% electric/nuke. Still would not have to worry about daily cycle excess.

C2K

[CitizenUSA]

There are many, many techniques for storing excess energy during non-peak hours. Nuclear may not be the best solution in all cases, but the fact it has to run “full out” doesn’t necessarily preclude its greater use. That’s why energy decisions should be made by experts in the energy industry as well as the free market and not by political hacks or media pundits.

[DoughtyOne]

IMO nuclear would have been much more reasonable, if the federal government told the protesters to take it elsewhere and stood up to them.

The delays, unnecessary regulations run amok, no wonder it was more expensive.

There are also costs that transcend monetary, and we're paying those costs today.

[HwyChile]

“Power consumption is always changing moment by moment.”

I know that, but that does not change what I said about having the right mix of nuclear power and more flexible power which will not cause any wasted nuclear power.

[marron]

I’m going to agree with the others. The writer is talking beyond his competency.

His main point is that, since nuclear plants don’t lend themselves to being peakers, that they are not the answer. This is his sleight of hand. We’re not looking for “the” answer, we’re looking for answers, of which nuclear power can be a key part of the answer.

This is a sleight of hand that is used to undercut any and every action we try to take; since its not “the” ultimate and definitive answer, we ought not do it. Is ANWR going to solve all of our energy needs? No? Then we’re kidding ourselves to drill there at all. Is drilling off California going to solve all our needs? No? Then best not drill at all. Is a new wind farm going to solve all our needs? No?

You can see how the game is played. The end result is always paralysis.

If nukes don’t make great peakers, that should stop us from building about a hundred of them to take up the base load. That will take a while, and the question of “surplus” nuclear energy isn’t going to be an issue for quite a few years.

And when we get to the day that surplus nuclear power is a “problem”, isn’t that what we want? How else are we supposed to power those electric cars we’re supposed to want? And when would they be charging? At night?

At night. Exactly. Build enough nukes to cover daytime requirements, and at night while we all sleep, we’ll all charge our cars. Nat gas plants will be our peakers, just as they are now. Its not a problem.

My answer to questions like this, nuke versus wind versus bio versus natgas versus coal is let a thousand blossoms bloom. Don’t put all your eggs in one basket. But nuke is another basket we have hardly begun to use.

[HwyChile]

Excellent post. I agree with all of it. I wish I had wrote it myself.

[marron]

If nukes don’t make great peakers, that should stop us from building about a hundred of them

Meant to say "that shouldn't stop us"

[Czar]

"If there is still excess power then it could be consumed by...some other costly, power hungry process.""

Hell EGD, no problem at all. How about the "costly, power hungry" political hacks in Congress? You know it is simply not possible to produce more power than this pack of hyenas can suck up...

[wolfpat]

I’ve mixed many a batch of boric acid in water to fill the boric acid storage tank.

Boron 10 absorbs a neutron to become boron 11, which then alpha decays to lithium 7. The lithium helps scavenge oxygen from the reactor coolant.

[wolfpat]

The power in a nuclear reactor is not wasted by running it at a reduced power level. And as I said in post 28, it’s fairly easy to change power level in a General Electric reactor.

[SierraWasp]

"I’ve noticed something very strange going on. Every single energy proposal that doesn’t address oil as the main source, is resoundly trashed here."

It's probably because most of the ridiculous "alternatives" can't past either the economically feasible test, or violate the second law of thermodynamics, D-1... The oil company's dark conspiracy has NOT reached into the souls of FReepers who demand reality in alternative energy proposals... don't worry!!!

We just like physics, chemistry and other scientifically tested theories, rather than the baseless barrage of dreamy alternatives the simply won't do as flexible and safe and all-around feasable job as hydrocarbons, ok???

Some of us also feel the same way about "Big Pharma" and all the other "BIG's!" They bees big because they help people live better lives, by and large!!! (Oh! And they keep productive people actually employed, too!!!)

[daku]

build enough nuke plants to operate all peak hour needs,

as demand decreases, power water de-salianation plants
AND WATER THE WILD FIRE AREAS

this creats a ton of jobs and a ton of solutions

[Nervous Tick]

Nuke plants are better used as “base load” generators — but then, so are coal plants.

That’s a far cry from the author’s assertion that they are “designed to run flat out, 24/7”.

See also post 28.

[wolfpat]

Boron 10 absorbs a neutron to become boron 11, which then alpha decays to lithium 7. The lithium helps scavenge oxygen from the reactor coolant.

The training never goes away....

[chasio649]

My rx was designed in 1965....i would hope things have improved :D

[SierraWasp]

I didn't intend that previous reply to offend you. You know I can't tolerate Juan McMistake, especially for his trying to elevate GW to any level of legitimacy, but if he thinks nuclear will solve our dependence on oil alone, then I'm forced to agree with him. He's right!!!

I still think his campaign is going down in flames worse than Dole/Kemp's did and I still won't vote for his miserable maverick carcuss, but he's right on nuclear power even if there ain't no man-made GW to resolve!!! This stance will nuke HIM!!! (even though he's half right)

[loungeSerf]

Nuclear power as a piece of our energy puzzle sounds reasonable.

But I wonder what quantity of uranium reserves we have access to for the future? Also, have we actually found a feasible solution to removal of the waste - the old NIMBY argument always comes up.

[Ben Chad]

Exactly the point I was about to make, except you said it a lot better.