Joined: Oct 15, 2004 Posts: 2091 Location: Arkansas
Posted: Sat Jun 14, 2008 11:12 am Post subject: Re: Review of the Olduvai Gorge
Plans to build 34 new nuclear plants in the US.
Quote:
Aging nuclear plant fleet may get 34 new recruits
Emission woes fuel atomic push, but waste disposal challenge looms
By Steve Gelsi, MarketWatch
Last update: 5:37 p.m. EDT June 13, 2008Comments: 141NEW YORK (MarketWatch) --
As the U.S. moves into its most critical time of the year for electricity, the nuclear power industry is ramping up efforts to build as many as 34 new plants to bring the U.S.'s total fleet to about 138 reactors in the future.
Don't expect any new plants to take up the summer power slack until about 2013 at the earliest, with optimistic estimates of four to eight new U.S. nuclear plants in operation by around 2016.
Likely hurdles along the way include skyrocketing commodity costs, solutions for radioactive waste disposal, forward prices in electricity markets and environmental compliance costs -- all difficult to predict, along with the overall direction and health of the nation's economy.
Now emerging from near-dormancy for the past 20 years, the nuclear power plant construction industry has shed much of the stigma of Three Mile Island and Chernobyl and gained favor as an alternative to plants that produce much of the carbon dioxide blamed for global warming.
Aggravating those emissions concerns is the rapid rise in electricity demand, with business and public policy leaders eyeing the environmental impact of the traditional coal and natural gas plants that supply the majority of the U.S.'s power needs. Nuclear now supplies about 20%.
"The need for new baseload generating capacity is unmistakable," CEO John Rowe said at a recent industry gathering. "The electric sector's dependence on natural gas exposes our customers to unacceptable price volatility, and our companies to political and regulatory stress."
'I think a lot of people are kind of stuck in the '70s. ... I think people haven't caught up with the fact that climate change has changed the whole climate of the environmental debate on this planet.'
Another factor behind the push is the aging of America's fleet of more than 100 plants and the need for a replacement program.
This time around, the industry vows it's not your dad's nuclear plant, and it's definitely not Homer Simpson's either.
The newer designs boast a wider use of modular parts to cut down on construction costs and standardized designs to improve safety and speed to build.
Passive features in the new models include the storage of large deposits of water directly above the reactor, so water can drop via gravity for cooling in an emergency, instead of pumping it in.
"I think a lot of people are kind of stuck in the '70s. ... I think people haven't caught up with the fact that climate change has changed the whole climate of the environmental debate on this planet," Patrick Moore, co-founder of Greenpeace and a nuclear power supporter, said on the Web site for the Nuclear Energy Institute, an industry group. "The one technology that is contributing most to reducing greenhouse gases in America today is nuclear energy, and we could do a tremendous amount to increase that."
Still, nuclear plants continue to generate opposition from environmental groups and others.
application to extend the operating license for the Indian Point plant in Buchanan, N.Y, said the facility lacks a feasible evacuation plan and was poorly cited decades ago near the water supply for 20 million people in the New York City metropolitan area.
"It's a clear terrorist risk and it's the wrong plant at the wrong time in very much the wrong place," Matthiessen said. "Of all the nation's nuclear power plants, this one clearly is a unique case and deserves to be retired as quickly as possible."
Meanwhile, U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas cited the role of nuclear to reduce energy independence in a speech this past week. "We should be increasing our production of oil, natural gas, clean coal and nuclear power -- and those resources should come from America, instead of foreign dictatorships," Hutchison said.
Yucca Mountain project moves ahead Waste disposal continues to be one environmental consequence that the industry and the government will attempt to address, as plans move forward to build a depleted uranium dump in Yucca Mountain, Nev.
On June 3, the U.S. Department of Energy filed a license application with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for the planned repository and launched yet another lengthy review that could lead to the eventual construction of the facility.
The landmark bureaucratic move came more than 20 years after Congress directed the department to focus solely on Yucca Mountain as the site of a permanent repository for the nation's nuclear waste. In 2002, the Department of Energy made its determination that Yucca Mountain would be a suitable location.
Currently about 57,000 tons of commercially spent uranium are in temporary storage at nuclear power plants across the country. Yucca Mountain's planned capacity is about 77,000 tons of high-level waste, according to the NRC.
Joined: Oct 15, 2004 Posts: 2091 Location: Arkansas
Posted: Sat Jun 14, 2008 3:59 pm Post subject: Re: Review of the Olduvai Gorge
Warnings that Canada build more infrastructure or face outages.
Quote:
EPCOR boss fears blackouts ahead
By SHAWN LOGAN, SUN MEDIA
Facebook Digg Del.icio.us Google Stumble Upon Furl Newsvine Reddit Technorati Blinklist Feed Me Yahoo Socializer Ma.gnolia Raw Sugar Simpy Squidoo Spurl Blink Bits Rojo Blogmarks Shadows Netvouz Scuttle Co.mments Bloglines Tailrank Sitejot + Help
CALGARY -- Dark days are looming for Alberta unless more power transmission capacity comes on stream, EPCOR president and CEO Don Lowry warned Calgary business leaders yesterday.
Provincewide blackouts could become commonplace as soaring demand can no longer be met by power providers due to insufficient infrastructure to deliver electricity, making a "catastrophic failure" likely, Lowry told a luncheon crowd at the Calgary Chamber of Commerce.
"Catastrophic failure means where you are simply without power because the system is so overloaded it collapses and all power shuts down, so homes, schools, hospitals and businesses are shut down because there is no power.
"Those are blackouts; you will expect to see more. We've dodged four or five bullets; we've been lucky on this, but as you continue to plug things in ... you run the risk."
Lowry said power consumption in Alberta has doubled over 20 years, jumping from 33 million megawatt hours in 1987 to 69 million last year, while the power transmission grid has seen only one major power line added between Calgary and Fort McMurray.
He noted last year Albertans set four new records for power consumption and five emergency alerts were issued calling on consumers to reduce power use, while the provincial power reserve has plunged from 22.5% in 2003 to a projected 7% this year, a thin margin keeping the system from failing.
EPCOR is lobbying for a new 500-kilovolt north-south transmission line, which the Alberta Electric System Operator (AESO) is currently looking into and readying a recommendation to go to the Alberta Utilities Commission by the end of the year after public consultation.
Dick Way, senior director of strategic projects for the AESO, said the province is in a risky position due to its power delivery woes and that could mean some difficult years and risks of blackouts and brownouts before new capacity can come on stream, likely by 2011 or 2012.
"It's like working without a net. You don't know you're going to fall, but the consequences of an imbalance are more severe," he said.
"For the next three or four years, we'll be in a higher than normal risk situation."
Lowry also took a veiled swipe at Calgary-based and city-owned power provider ENMAX, noting the competitor's position of pushing alternate forms of power such as wind while embracing regional self-sufficiency will only further threaten the system.
But ENMAX spokesman Peter Hunt said that while the company isn't opposed to increasing transmission infrastructure, the AESO needs to look at other alternatives that would lessen the impact on power delivery lines including allowing more generation facilities to move forward to service southern Alberta.
"We believe the generation we're building in Calgary is going to make a significant contribution to dealing with the problem," he said. "We agree the province needs more infrastructure, but the debate should be what's the most cost-effective way of doing that."
Posted: Sun Jun 15, 2008 12:13 am Post subject: Re: Review of the Olduvai Gorge
seahorse wrote:
Plans to build 34 new nuclear plants in the US.
Quote:
Aging nuclear plant fleet may get 34 new recruits
Emission woes fuel atomic push, but waste disposal challenge looms
By Steve Gelsi, MarketWatch
Last update: 5:37 p.m. EDT June 13, 2008Comments: 141NEW YORK (MarketWatch) --
As the U.S. moves into its most critical time of the year for electricity, the nuclear power industry is ramping up efforts to build as many as 34 new plants to bring the U.S.'s total fleet to about 138 reactors in the future.
Don't expect any new plants to take up the summer power slack until about 2013 at the earliest, with optimistic estimates of four to eight new U.S. nuclear plants in operation by around 2016.
Likely hurdles along the way include skyrocketing commodity costs, solutions for radioactive waste disposal, forward prices in electricity markets and environmental compliance costs -- all difficult to predict, along with the overall direction and health of the nation's economy.
Now emerging from near-dormancy for the past 20 years, the nuclear power plant construction industry has shed much of the stigma of Three Mile Island and Chernobyl and gained favor as an alternative to plants that produce much of the carbon dioxide blamed for global warming.
Aggravating those emissions concerns is the rapid rise in electricity demand, with business and public policy leaders eyeing the environmental impact of the traditional coal and natural gas plants that supply the majority of the U.S.'s power needs. Nuclear now supplies about 20%.
"The need for new baseload generating capacity is unmistakable," CEO John Rowe said at a recent industry gathering. "The electric sector's dependence on natural gas exposes our customers to unacceptable price volatility, and our companies to political and regulatory stress."
'I think a lot of people are kind of stuck in the '70s. ... I think people haven't caught up with the fact that climate change has changed the whole climate of the environmental debate on this planet.'
Another factor behind the push is the aging of America's fleet of more than 100 plants and the need for a replacement program.
This time around, the industry vows it's not your dad's nuclear plant, and it's definitely not Homer Simpson's either.
The newer designs boast a wider use of modular parts to cut down on construction costs and standardized designs to improve safety and speed to build.
Passive features in the new models include the storage of large deposits of water directly above the reactor, so water can drop via gravity for cooling in an emergency, instead of pumping it in.
"I think a lot of people are kind of stuck in the '70s. ... I think people haven't caught up with the fact that climate change has changed the whole climate of the environmental debate on this planet," Patrick Moore, co-founder of Greenpeace and a nuclear power supporter, said on the Web site for the Nuclear Energy Institute, an industry group. "The one technology that is contributing most to reducing greenhouse gases in America today is nuclear energy, and we could do a tremendous amount to increase that."
Still, nuclear plants continue to generate opposition from environmental groups and others.
application to extend the operating license for the Indian Point plant in Buchanan, N.Y, said the facility lacks a feasible evacuation plan and was poorly cited decades ago near the water supply for 20 million people in the New York City metropolitan area.
"It's a clear terrorist risk and it's the wrong plant at the wrong time in very much the wrong place," Matthiessen said. "Of all the nation's nuclear power plants, this one clearly is a unique case and deserves to be retired as quickly as possible."
Meanwhile, U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas cited the role of nuclear to reduce energy independence in a speech this past week. "We should be increasing our production of oil, natural gas, clean coal and nuclear power -- and those resources should come from America, instead of foreign dictatorships," Hutchison said.
Yucca Mountain project moves ahead Waste disposal continues to be one environmental consequence that the industry and the government will attempt to address, as plans move forward to build a depleted uranium dump in Yucca Mountain, Nev.
On June 3, the U.S. Department of Energy filed a license application with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for the planned repository and launched yet another lengthy review that could lead to the eventual construction of the facility.
The landmark bureaucratic move came more than 20 years after Congress directed the department to focus solely on Yucca Mountain as the site of a permanent repository for the nation's nuclear waste. In 2002, the Department of Energy made its determination that Yucca Mountain would be a suitable location.
Currently about 57,000 tons of commercially spent uranium are in temporary storage at nuclear power plants across the country. Yucca Mountain's planned capacity is about 77,000 tons of high-level waste, according to the NRC.
Unfortunately these wont realistically come online until 2018, as supply chain bottlenecks and regulatory hassles get in the way. I expect the orders for new plants to multiply however over the next decade to hundreds.
Posted: Mon Jun 16, 2008 1:08 am Post subject: Re: Review of the Olduvai Gorge
seahorse wrote:
Warnings that Canada build more infrastructure or face outages.
Seahorse, after reading the article you posted (I read it in the paper a few days ago), I asked a fellow I know who works for the City of Edmonton if he was aware of the problems mentioned in the article by EPCOR. He said the warning signs were there 8 years ago, but are only now starting to be addressed.
Joined: Oct 15, 2004 Posts: 2091 Location: Arkansas
Posted: Mon Jun 16, 2008 6:21 am Post subject: Re: Review of the Olduvai Gorge
Thanks WR. Its interesting to me, quite a study in human behaviour, that individually probably everyone agrees there will be a problem if we don't make the necessary investments but collectively we cannot act. I may have it all backwards. Maybe there is enough time and people move faster than I believe them to once a problem is recognized. Its not in my nature, though, to wait until the last minute.
Iranians on Saturday were told to cut their electricity consumption by 10 percent or face daily power cuts because of a severe drought and low production at hydroelectric power plants.
Residents of the capital Tehran could face up to four hours of blackouts each day, officials said according to media reports.
"If consumers do not cut down consumption by 10 percent, we will have blackouts until the end of the summer," Deputy Energy Minister Mohammad Ahmadian told Fars news agency.
Newspapers published a table by the state electricity company dividing the sprawling capital of 12 million into 11 zones, with each area to face from two-hour-long power cuts twice a day from Saturday.
Ahmadian told state television that the table was provisional, and that blackouts were most likely to hit the zones where consumers have failed to save energy.
Energy Minister Parviz Fattah warned in May that Iran will face severe electricity shortages and power cuts this summer due to "the drought and the lack of water" in dams.
Energy officials have predicted that daily consumption would reach 37,000 megawatts in July while production would stand at only 35,000 megawatts.
In the past weeks Tehran and other cities have already been hit by cuts of up to three hours in certain areas as the authorities seek to make-up the shortfall.
_________________ "Against stupidity the gods themselves contend in vain."
-Friedrich von Schiller
"What I try, may not work. It may be ineffective. It might even turn out in the pages of history to be the exact wrong thing to do, but I'm going to try to do what I c
A sample of the current power crisis situation here in little New Zealand. Though as always the politicians say there's no crisis. Yeah right....
Insufficient infrastructure dependent on shrinking resources coupled with constantly increasing demand. The shortsightedness of humanity never ceases to amaze.
Oh I'm sure the powers that be will build more power stations. At an ever spiraling cost as production becomes increasingly expensive to the point where the average person will have to choose between eating, electricity and fueling up the car to get to work.....
Posted: Thu Jun 26, 2008 6:39 am Post subject: Re: Review of the Olduvai Gorge
Lowkey,
What's the current status of your natural gas reserves? About 20 years ago I understood NZ had huge NG reserves but so little market that it wasn't being exploited.
From your post I gather it's a lack of generating stations more than a lack of NG. But they do go hand in hand. The industry won't develop the NG if there is no market and the plants won't be built unless they are certain of a fuel source. This is one of the few areas I would support gov't intervention in the free market.
Posted: Thu Jun 26, 2008 9:12 am Post subject: Re: Review of the Olduvai Gorge
Crow,
Interesting to see the problem put in $ amounts. I haven't worked in Nigeria but close by in Equatorial Guinea. I think it difficult for those in developed nations to appreciate the lack of all infrastructures. Every knows of the great poverty in these nations but don't know the whole story. Beside lack electgen they have virtually no highway system, no regional telephone system, no effective hospital system, etc. Except for a modest military force they have no infrastructures that we would use to define a modern society. They have wasted decades of income that could have helped them form a functional society. But as someone pointed out there isn't really a Nigerian country per se. The former colonial powers drew a line around 100 or so different cultural groups and said "Now you're are Nigerians". Without really having a true national identity it isn't difficult to see how development has been strangled.
Posted: Fri Jun 27, 2008 1:09 pm Post subject: Re: Review of the Olduvai Gorge
WildRose wrote:
seahorse wrote:
Warnings that Canada build more infrastructure or face outages.
Seahorse, after reading the article you posted (I read it in the paper a few days ago), I asked a fellow I know who works for the City of Edmonton if he was aware of the problems mentioned in the article by EPCOR. He said the warning signs were there 8 years ago, but are only now starting to be addressed.
Nigeria needs $85bn (£42.7bn) of investment in its power infrastructure in order to produce electricity 24 hours a day, experts say. The sum is 17 times the amount the government announced it would spend on the power sector, and four and a half times the country's oil savings. ...the power generation in the country had dropped to 1,800 megawatts (MW), from a capacity of 3,500MW. He also said even if the country's power stations were working at full capacity, the transmission grid was broken down and neglected. ....there were not enough engineers in the country to work in power stations or maintain the electricity grid.
Somehow it doesn't look like it will get fixed.
Wasn't Nigeria's power grid built by the British company Balfour Beatty in 1969, energized with hydroelectric power from the Kainji dam? It might be falling apart from age and neglect.
Joined: Oct 04, 2004 Posts: 2498 Location: Ye Olde Englande
Posted: Sat Jun 28, 2008 11:21 am Post subject: Re: Review of the Olduvai Gorge
Just spent the last few days going through this thread and educating myself on Olduvai Theory.
Firstly I have to say that the title is quite grandiose and could be very misleading. The first time I looked up Olduvai Gorge I laughed because Duncan believes that we are on a road back to the stone age. Let's be honest this is really quite an insult to the ingenuity of humans. Yes we have made a mistake in relying on market forces to solve this problem which shows that humans are not perfect.
I understand the importance of energy production per capita and I realize that there are issues with fossil fuels that provide electricity generation but to say this is going to put human civilisation back to the Stone Age is just absolutely laughable. _________________ "The age of excess is over. The age of entropy has begun"
Posted: Sat Jun 28, 2008 4:37 pm Post subject: Re: Review of the Olduvai Gorge
stu wrote:
I understand the importance of energy production per capita and I realize that there are issues with fossil fuels that provide electricity generation but to say this is going to put human civilisation back to the Stone Age is just absolutely laughable.
I don't think you understand. When you can't refrigerate your food or use electric lights in the dark, you're back to 1850. There's a lot of electricity used in pumping waste out of cities, the lack of sanitation could cause plagues. The lack of refrigerated food could cause malnutrition. Right back to 1500, but with ten times the population and few who know how to work under those conditions.
Joined: Oct 04, 2004 Posts: 2498 Location: Ye Olde Englande
Posted: Sat Jun 28, 2008 4:51 pm Post subject: Re: Review of the Olduvai Gorge
Definition of stone age from Wikipedia.
Quote:
The period encompasses the first widespread use of technology in human evolution and the spread of humanity from the savannas of East Africa to the rest of the world. It ends with the development of agriculture, the domestication of certain animals and the smelting of copper ore to produce metal. It is termed prehistoric, since humanity had not yet started writing -- the traditional start of history (i.e., recorded history).
The human race has gained so much knowledge and so many skills and inventions since then that just because the lights go off doesn't mean society is going to devolve by thousands of years in one nth of the time it took to get there.
Ayoob wrote:
don't think you understand. When you can't refrigerate your food or use electric lights in the dark, you're back to 1850. There's a lot of electricity used in pumping waste out of cities, the lack of sanitation could cause plagues. The lack of refrigerated food could cause malnutrition. Right back to 1500, but with ten times the population and few who know how to work under those conditions.
Could cause malnutrition.
Could cause plagues.
There are so many variables in this theory neither of us could accurately predict the future.
I do believe tough times are ahead but we're not heading back to the Stone Ages.
btw...1500's aren't even the Middle Ages. _________________ "The age of excess is over. The age of entropy has begun"
You cannot post new topics in this forum You cannot reply to topics in this forum You cannot edit your posts in this forum You cannot delete your posts in this forum You cannot vote in polls in this forum
News
Discussions
Resources
Members
Forum FAQ
Search
Usergroups
Profile
Log in to check your private messages
Log in
