From: crb7q@kelvin.seas.Virginia.EDU (Cameron Randale Bass)
Subject: Re: ZERO Nuclear impact (was: Is car pooling for real? etc)
Organization: University of Virginia
Date: Fri, 24 Jul 1992 20:55:05 GMT

In article <1992Jul23.034645.2791@nmt.edu> houle@nmt.edu (Paul Houle) writes:
>In article <1992Jul22.200320.7520@murdoch.acc.Virginia.EDU> crb7q@kelvin.seas.Virginia.EDU (Cameron Randale Bass) writes:
>>
>>     Not anti-technology, just pro-economic.  
>>
>>     Solar power may well be the answer of the future, especially with the 
>>     dye cells of Regan and the boys or the metallurgical grade silicon 
>>     cells of TI and SoCal Edison.  However, it is not the wave of the
>>     present and those smoke-belching plants cannot be replaced by 
>>     distributing solar panels.  And even when costs come down, there
>>     are still nontrivial infrastructure and energy storage questions that 
>>     must be economically solvable.  These things have all been solved
>>     for nuclear and fossil fuels.  
>
>	If it wasn't for government intervention,  we either would not
>have an existing infrastructure for nuclear power,  or if we did,  I think
>it would be considerably different than what it is today.  I think that
>the free market would have started with natural uranium reactors if it
>started at all.  Similarly,  if we developed a national energy/industrial
>policy that encouraged the development of sustainable infrastructure,  we
>might be able to shape it in the right direction.  The problem is to be
>able to give guidance to the flexibility produced by market mechanisms.

     Proposal?  What is the 'right direction'?  If you are wrong using
     command vs. demand, how much is it to cost us.
     
>	Can we do better than we did with our nuclear infrastructure?  I
>think so.  The nuclear technology of today grew out of an intensive effort
>to produce nuclear explosives.  If we make sustainability our actual goal,

     Actually it grew out of intensive effort to produce power reactors
     for Navy ships.

>we should have a better chance of attaining it.  I think that the nuclear
>technology of tomorrow is going to be "desktop nuclear" -- devices such
>as ion ring accelerators and plasma foci.  Machines that can produce
>controlled quantities of radioisotopes and radiation that can be concentrated
>far more than the old fission-based technology.  Such technology could
>widely expand the range of isotopes used in medicine,  allowing us to make
>the isotopes on site,  so that we can use shorter-lived isotopes which
>give us a better trade-off between immediate radiation intensity and the
>safety of patient,  staff and the outside environment.

     For the production of power?  Have you looked into the economics 
     and efficiencies in giving everyone a generator and a source
     of radioisotopes?

>	One idea that I've been kicking around with,  it's a bit embryonic,
>is a kind of basic scenario for decentralized power.  Suppose that we can
>mass produce some kind of sustainable energy device the same way that we
>produce cars,  television sets,  etc.  Just to make it simple,  let's have
>one of these for every man,  women,  and child in the US,  which would be
>250 million and let's make each one have a capacity of 1 kw.  Such a system
>would then produce 250 GWe at peak capacity.  The actual sustainable
>energy units could be different in design...  Some solar,  some wind,  maybe
>turbines dipped into swiftly flowing rivers every couple of hundred feet.
>(Of course,  because of scalability,  some things are more profitable to
>do in larger sizes,  like geothermal and biomass cogeneration,  but this
>is just a simple radical model).

     Just an observation.  'Let's have' is a command economy (communist)
     concept.  We do things a bit more efficiently 'round these parts.
     It makes little sense to do such generation unless it is a priori
     profitable or competetive with the utilities.  There is little
     intrinsic worth in an expensive distribution of power production
     to millions of sites, and there are many many drawbacks.

>	What must these sustainable energy units cost to be competitive
>with nuclear energy?  A nuclear power plant that was intended to produce
>about 1 GW (Reactor 1 at Seabrook) was expected to cost about $750 million.
>Seeing that it actually cost $11 billion,  let's be charitable and assume
>that we could do it right...  And guess that such a thing might actually
>cost $1.5 billion,  or $1500 per KWe.  Now,  a nuclear power plant probably
>has less down time than many sustainable energy sources...  So let's throw
>in a fudge factor and say that this hypothetical 1Kw sustainable energy
>unit needs to cost less than $1000.

     Fuel, fuel, fuel.  Infrastructure, infrastructure, infrastructure.
     Maintenence, maintenence, maintenence.

     If it were doable, probably both you and I would be doing it.  However,
     the utility would probably beat us both to it, thereby changing
     baseline 'savings' (probably to 'extra expense').

>	This then takes the problem to a matter of engineering for the
>consumer.  It doesn't seem all that outrageous that we could construct,
>say,  a rooftop PV array based on dye PVs and a synchronous inverter
>of 1 Kwe capacity if we were building hundreds of millions of them for
>under $1000.

     Why would I think that we could do this when I cannot buy a ROOF
     for under $3-4000 and we build millions of them and mine is all
     wood.

>>     If one assumes market efficiency, there is always a sacrifice 
>>     in cutting electricity usage.  
>
>	I don't.  It's pretty hard to believe that the market for
>cigarettes is efficient.  Or the market for baby formula in the third
>world.

     The market for cigarettes is extremely efficient.  Take away the
     taxes and recognize that there is a filter and paper and one
     whole bunch of processing as well as distribution and other
     related costs.  Factor in the artificial inflation of the 
     raw materials due to government interference and I think you will 
     be amazed at the ability of RJR to produce so cheaply.

     As far as third world countries goes, I suppose you realize that 
     many do not have free markets.

>	Then again,  the market does give us an interesting answer for
>handling variations of availible power under changes of availible wind,
>sunlight and other factors.  Although some producers of power (PV arrays,
>wind,  biomass cogeneration) and some consumers (TV sets,  computers)
>cannot turn themselves on and off as the market price for electricity
>changes,  some of them can (dedicated biomass,  hydroelectric (to some
>extent),  refrigerators (to some extent),  electric car chargers,
>irrigation pumps).  I propose that we use electronic controllers that
>automatically trade electricity.  People who own power storage systems
>could have them programmed to buy energy from the grid when it is
>cheap and sell it back when it is more expensive,  making the market
>more efficient.  Seeing that most new appliances contain microprocessors
>anyway,  and that we'll need to build a fiber-optic information
>infrastructure one of these days anyhow,  I think this could be
>done very reasonably.

     No it cannot.  Because reasonably in this context implies 
     economically.

>>     I have absolutely no fear of sustainables, just a fear of being
>>     led down the garden path by the incorrect economic assumptions
>>     of advocates.
>
>	Well,  the economic assumptions that underlie sustainability
>are fundamentally different from those that operate now.  It might be
>very profitable now to overgraze a patch of land,  although if the
>land had been managed with sustainable grazing it could continue to
>produce smaller profits into the indefinite future. Much of it depends
>on your values,  and what kind of weighting one puts on the future.
>
>	I think that we should manage our resources sustainably so that
>we don't steal from the future potentials of our resources for our
>children and potential future civilizations.  I put a high value on
>that,  so I think that paying more to do something sustainably is
>often justified.

    Then why do you seem to be recommending massive economic waste
    to do something as unnecessary as distribute power generation?

    I too believe that the world should not be wrecked for the 
    present.  This is why I support the generation of power via
    nuclear plants.  If unimpeded, they have been shown to be
    safe, efficient, economical producers of the electric power
    we need to run our society.

>>     Show me a renewable system that competes economically with 
>>     the service I get from Virginia Power, and I'll switch tomorrow.
>>     (Oh by the way, I'm not going to rewire all of my capital goods
>>     in anticipation).
>
>	This all depends on how much of a research priority that renewables
>are made.  Industry and the rest of the scientific community have made
>incredible advances in PV technology in the last decade with a relatively
>small level of investment.  The future of cost of PVs and other sustainable
>technology hinges on demand and investment.

     Yet huge sums were spent directly and through tax breaks for
     PV and other solar research in the 1970's at the expense of 
     more promising technologies such as nuclear on the expectation
     that they would render such things as nuclear unnecessary.
     We could have been generating extremely inexpensive power 
     in the intervening years had roadblocks not been placed in the path
     of doing so.

     The point is that solar is still not a large-scale generating 
     technology.  If and when prices for modules and related infrastructure
     come down or can be reliably projected to be economical on large
     scales (or less likely, small scales), then we can talk about it as a 
     power-generating option.

     Until then, it is again wishful thinking.

                                    dale bass
--
C. R. Bass                                           crb7q@virginia.edu
Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering
University of Virginia
Charlottesville, Virginia                            (804) 924-7926
Xref: sparky sci.environment:9693 sci.physics:11278 sci.energy:3482