From: Walter Hicks (wallyshoes@mindspring.com)
Date: Wed Nov 27 2002 - 22:24:43 EST
I had meant to ask what would the difference be if Fusion
rather than fission were used. I'd be surprised if a fair
analysis showed that fusion might be economically feasible
but fission was not.
Walt
"Dr. Blake Nelson" wrote:
> Not to get into the details of all this, there are
> manifold things not taken into account by Glenn's dour
> attitude toward fission, including:
>
> 1. Improvements in technology for fission reactors
> 2. Economies of scale, a company like Toshiba, if it
> has a fleet of advanced boiling water reactors to
> build for a couple of companies can build them pretty
> cheap and almost cost-effective in today's cheap
> fossil fuel market,
> 3. The decline of fossil fuels will make nukes more
> economically viable as the cost of fossil fuels go up
> to reflect the higher cost of fossil fuels,
> 4. Governments will adopt pro-nuke policies. For
> example, in the US the biggest single inhibiting
> factor to new nukes (after the fact that fossil fuels
> are cheap and building only one nuclear plant is
> expensive) is that an unregulated (e.g., can't be
> guaranteed to get the costs of construction and
> decommissioning included in a regulated base rate)
> utility has to put up ALL the decomissioning costs up
> front. At hundreds of millions of dollars, you can't
> finance that easily, it is a deal breaker.
> 5. The megawatt plant Glenn assumes is one that has
> flopped on the world market as the perfect price point
> for inefficiency. Plants will come in two varieties
> -- 1,200+ megawatt behemoths, and modular plants with
> each modular unit somewhere on the order of 100MW --
> both methods will make the plants more cost efficient
> to build, operate and maintain.
> 6. Building and operating new nuke plants will
> increase GDP and make money for countless private
> businesses and the government. GDP is not a zero sum
> game.
>
> I can go on... if you assume the ludicrous convert
> tomorrow scenario Glenn postulates and have today's
> fixed pie to pay for it, yes, the numbers look bad.
> But what will happen is really more akin to the
> transition from coal to natural gas, and this is what
> would be happening now if it were not for the huge
> capital costs of doing a single plant, the cheapness
> of fossil fuel and the continued (albeit diminishing)
> irrational concern over nuclear plants.
>
> Regards,
>
> Blake
>
> --- Walter Hicks <wallyshoes@mindspring.com> wrote:
> > Glenn,
> >
> > If you do this for fission, how much does this
> > improve?
> >
> > Walt
> >
>
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-- =================================== Walt Hicks <wallyshoes@mindspring.com>In any consistent theory, there must exist true but not provable statements. (Godel's Theorem)
You can only find the truth with logic If you have already found the truth without it. (G.K. Chesterton) ===================================
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