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It’s Full Speed Ahead for China’s Nuclear Program
Is the disaster creating a buying opportunity? China has far and away the world’s most ambitious nuclear program, with 100 plants on order over the next decade. Any cut back in the nuclear program would have to be met with stepped supplies from other sources, which are unavailable. The place to go when “RISK OFF” is over? (NLR), (CCJ).
To say that the partial meltdown at Tokyo Electric Power’s Fukushima plant has put a chill on the global nuclear industry would be a vast understatement. Lead stock Cameco (CCJ) has cratered by 40%, while the ETF (NLR) has taken a 30% hickey. Is the disaster creating a buying opportunity?
To find out, I stayed up late one night to call a friend at China Guangdong Nuclear Power. While a crash safety review of all designs, both under construction and pending, is underway, there has been no slowdown in the People’s Republic’s plans whatsoever. The Soviet era designs that led to the Chernobyl disaster were discontinued many years ago. The advanced “small nuclear” and thorium designs on drawing boards in the US are far beyond Chinese capabilities.
China has far and away the world’s most ambitious nuclear program, with 100 plants on order over the next decade. The goal is to raise total generation from 10.8 gigawatts to 80 gigawatts by 2020. That will raise nuclear’s share of the country’s total power mix from 2% to 5%.
China has very little choice in the matter. It demand for new sources of electric power are voracious. Any cut back in the nuclear program would have to be met with stepped supplies from other sources. Oil fired plants would increase the need for more expensive oil imports, which have already thrown the country into a trade deficit for the first time in years. More coal plants would lead to increased international complaints about China’s contribution to global warming. Solar is growing rapidly, but is too small to make an impact. Hydroelectric power is already tapped out after the Three Gorges Dam. If the industry is unable to generate sufficient power, economic growth will slow, and political instability will rise.
This all suggests that there is a buying opportunity setting up in the nuclear space. What goes on in the US or Japan is largely irrelevant, as they are such a small factor in today’s market. This is preeminently a Chinese story. But when the sector will bottom out and resume its upward ascent is impossible to predict. This has become a highly emotional trade. My guess is that nuclear will come to the fore once again after a generalized “RISK OFF” asset class sell off takes everything else down several notches.
To see the data, charts, and graphs that support this research piece, as well as more iconoclastic and out-of-consensus analysis, please visit me at www.madhedgefundtrader.com . There, you will find the conventional wisdom mercilessly flailed and tortured daily, and my last two years of research reports available for free. You can also listen to me on Hedge Fund Radio by clicking on “This Week on Hedge Fund Radio” in the upper right corner of my home page.
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Research conducted after the Three Mile Island nuclear accident in 1979 in the US (Infant Mortality Changes Following The Three Mile Island Accident(pdf)) found that
“An examination of the monthly changes in infant mortality in Pennsylvania and the nearby areas of Upstate New York as given in the U.S. Monthly Vital Statistics reports indicate that the mortality rate rose significantly shortly after the Three Mile Island accident in the directions where the plume of radioactive gases was known to have moved. The number of reported infant deaths per month rose from a minimum of 141 in March of 1979 just before the accident to a peak of 271 in July declining again to 119 by August. This is an unprecedented and highly significant rise of 92% in the summer months when infant mortality normally reaches its lowest values.”
This research indicates that a quantity of roughly 14 curies(518 gigabecquerels) of radioactive iodine-131(I-131) was released from the Three Mile Island facility and that I-131 was the cause of the increase in mortality.
By contrast, at Fukushima, Asahi Shimbun reported that by 24 March the accident might have emitted 30,000 to 110,000 terabecquerels of iodine-131. A widely cited Austrian Meteorological Service report estimated the total amount of I-131 radiation released as of 19 March ranged from 10 petabecquerels to 700 petabecquerels . A Japanese government estimate issued April 12 calculated the total I-131 release at 130 to 150 petabecquerels total release by the April date. The amount of I-131 released from the Fukushima site has been enormous relative to the US incident.
The half-life of I-131 is only eight days, but the Japanese authorities have not been able to gain control of the reactors or fuel rods at the site. It is likely I-131 is still being released. A dynamic chart of potential deposition of this isotope can be found here.
It seems clear that among the many losses that northern Japan will realize from this disaster is a heavy toll of infant lives.
Japanese governments FAQs for People Living Outside the Fukushima Evacuation and In-house Evacuation Areas
Click the link below to read an incredible work of misinformation that will surely--at a future point in time--become forensic evidence used in a lawsuit against TEPCO and the Japanese government for criminal negligence.
By using this document, the Japanese government is trying to talk down the Fukushima problem and assure people that there is absolutely nothing to worry about, which we know is total hogwash because even small dosages of radiation are said not to be safe (and the dosages Japanese are getting are NOT small). Some of the goggle translated 22 FAQs and answers include (read here):
http://fukushimadisaster.blogspot.com/2011/05/japanese-govts-faqs-for-pe...
For god's sake, thorium, thorium, THORIUM! NOW!!!!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AHs2Ugxo7-8
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/comment/ambroseevans_pritchard/839398...
BTW, what happened to AEP?
Nuclear is all we have until fusion.
Not nattie, not oil, not wind/solar 1950's electricity output, or anything else available now can do the job.
TEPCO is a fucking idiot company.
Federal Grants, with credit uttered, not borrowed from the fed, which thus can be cancelled and not paid back....so if you find a problem....there is no $$$$ incentive to keep it going, because gasp...the uneeded loan to begin with, doesn't need to be paid back because there is no ceo doing god's work they have to pay back. Anyone think in this scenario that cost cutting enters the picture at all? If you do, I have beachfront property in colorado for you. If that's not to your liking, how about beachfront property in nepal?
There is only nuclear to fusion.
Still need to use what we got until the nuke plants, and eventually fusion plants get up and running/invented and then up and running.
So, on that note, once again, we in the west play sophistry at our own peril, whereas the chinese, who are a lot closer timewise from living like shit, know reality alot more than us pampered, aristocrat, idiots that look at the world, well, like my fellow dumbass american (or western). Guess what, India and China will be using them. I wonder why? (if that is a question you are asking, god help you for your idiocy)
Nuclear until fusion. Done right. As safe as possible, whereas life is worth the risk. Without federal reserve money interests for cost cutting/payback of loans not entirely necessary.
Not a dream, it's reality, as soon as we kick the fed/monetary system to the curb. It's not just the fed we have to kick out, it's also the fucking retarded austrians/keynesians and all other idiot sophistry monetarists. Monetarism is the problem, thus you won't find the answer in ANY monetary school of thought. Not the one that says cut your way to happiness. Not the one that says print your way to happiness. ANyone with a brain, not possible for monetarists, realizes that the real problem is the circumstance that is causing the cut or print debate. The debt. The fraudulent debt.
In China/India, they don't see things quite as fucked up as we do. Thus, they will use nuclear, because the alternative, is no power, and living like it's 1802. We in America, don't grasp that, which is odd, seeing how we have every reason and info available to us TO be able to grasp it.
New generation reactors aren't early 1970's GM poorly built, with monetary money (i.e. cost cutting), under a system of MUST PAY BACK, because it's a moentary loan, placed on a fault line next to an ocean where tsunami's occur.
People need to wake up. Fukushima, big and bad. Seriously bad. Tepco/japan gov't are fucking fools. But life without nuclear power on this planet? New Dark Age which equals billions killed.
Fukushima won't kill billions...and anyone that thinks these events are routine is smoking some brazillian oxi.
There are many much more safe designs, some even using thorium, that can be built, without cutting corners, without having loans to pay back, not on fault lines or next to oceans, etc, etc.
There is saying one will fall off a cliff when standing in their front yard, and there is saying one will fall off a cliff when standing on a cliff. The key is for the american public, who for the past 10 years have watched one 'emotional' shit show after another finally quit being scared like little vaginas.
If 9/11 style attack happened tomorrow would you be scared? By now the answer should be no. (i'm saying on tv, which for 9/11 was 99+ percent of everybody that got scared, bent over, and became fascists overnight)
Oh no, we can't have nuclear power plants, and china and india are being stupid because.....because......of fukushima? No, japan and tepco were stupid because of fukushima, and the world will be smarter because of it. Except those that still hate on nuclear power when done right. Mankind needs power or he dies. People with power in glass houses shouldn't throw stones at those in mud shacks with none.
Eventually we'll get to fusion and can shit can the nuke plants, but until we actually get fusion, which we'll need power to do, we'll need nuclear plants in order to actually achieve fusion, so deal with it, rock n roll.
Nuclear power boils water to turn a turbine. I don't think there's been much advancement at all in the industry, it's stuck in th 1800's using steam powered rail cars. time to get with the 21st Century. Come up with better technology and don't try and tell the world that boiling water will save the planet.
It's those damn Laws of Physics, stupid
ya, and that nasty Thermo. .... eeeeww...
eagerly awaiting your informed recommendation on economical improvements. - Ned
let the slanty eyed gooks do themselves in.
The nuclear industry was never necessary. Alternatives, including efficiency and renewables, were always cheaper and faster to implement, besides safer.
Amory Lovins, using the industry’s own data, proved in 1976 that just the construction costs made nuclear plants uncompetitive.
Plants were only built because of large government subsidies and laws limiting redress for damages.
Today, plants are mostly being built in countries where strong central governments overrule citizen and investor reluctance.
Construction at all operating U. S. nuclear plants dates from 1974 or earlier, demonstrating the drying up of the nuclear industry, despite massive subsidies.
Governments that push nuclear power may be tempted to downplay or hide problems. Fukushima and the thousands of Three Mile Island damage suits that were never allowed to come to trial seem to support that possibility.
Nuclear advocates are trying to rebrand nuclear as a global warming solution needed for base load generation. Amory Lovins demolishes those and other ideas in a debate on nuclear power at http://www.earthisland.org/journal/index.php/eij/article/fix_or_folly/, and in a paper (http://www.rmi.org/rmi/Library/2009-09_FourNuclearMyths).
A safer, more cost effective energy future, nuclear-free, is both possible and practical, demonstrated by efficiency and renewables growth far outpacing nuclear.
Frankie, please let us know how Lovins came up with a better, economically more effective power source. Otherwise, since you are using your computer, youi have to shut it down and not post here during hours that are around the sun + 4 or so.
According to your theory (gaaaaaag), you should only post around 0200 and then some local time.
Just being considerate.
- Ned
Amory Lovins another idiot who uses bunk metrics.
Oh the cost per dollar per carbon or some shit? Are you serious?
You do realize nuke plants are many fold times more expensive because of a bunk setup?
Amitorization and insurance, both gov't controlled completely change that.
The only real cost in the plants is building them. (gov't insurance is free unless there is an accident...in which case...the gov't would be paying anyways, so why is that cost there exactly if it will never be able to be paid out? needless)
Looking at energy through a 'carbon' metric is complete bullshit. Easy to fudge the numbers there, just ask the wall street people that created the methodology under another bullshit name.
Nuclear power planets can be built in no time. It's the laws that make it slow. Again, in a 'metric' your variables are wrong. 'slow, costly'...all of which can be changed, and is only done so....because others' deem it so.
The real metric that has to do with eneregy, is ENERGY FLUX DENSITY, and raising the productive powers per capita per square kilometer. Any other metric can be fudged, and lead to a person with '40 years of bullshit experience' coming to an incorrect conclusion, and some dumbass saying he is #winning. Sorry, you're not.
That paper had nothing real in it about nuclear power. Just a load of crap through bullshit metrics, skewed through flawed methodology.
Energy efficiency does not mean we don't need to increase power production. Sorry. We as human beings will always need more power as we reach out and try to influence what is around us more and more. Efficiency, while a great plan, only goes so far, because it is not actually generating more or an endeavour that actually does.
The dumbasses in their studies assume they know what energy level we'll need in 2020 or beyond to make their idiot projections. There will be a time when a single person will need to use in a day what the current human being uses in a lifetime.
The only use for wind/solar is redundancy or backup. The painted on kind. Like solar panels on an army defibrilator or calculators and low power shit. Not all of america turned into a solar collector for energy that will power 1 computer in 2100. You get the idea.
Don't forget all the enregy and resources it takes to get these 'green' alternatives into the ground, and forget about the millions/billions of wildlife and trillions of insects killed off. Hey man comes first, but we still have to think about wildlife to some degree. Wind/solar have lots of environmental impacts, that somehow environmentalists (i.e. green nazis) haven't realized yet.
Oh no, once in a blue moon, after an energy shut down, it took two weeks to get the plants up and running again. Yeah and wind/solar don't work all the time either. Every drive by palm springs and see 1/2 or more of the wind turbines not working? Ever see solar work at night?
I see studies about studies? Well we think in this study since others think they may be able to get to this (level of wind/solar) many years from now, indicates a concrete position today? Don't count your chickens.
The author really forgets that 1 human being today uses much more electricity than human being 10 years ago, 20 years ago, etc. Wind/solar have limits, and we've already surpassed them. Let alone go through a monumental 40 million+ windmills to achieve what we need now, not 20 years from now, or 100.
ROFL it talks about nuclear power, shunned since, well my birth, and i'm in my thirties, with not just old reactor designes but multiple generations behind, well guess what...if you don't update and replace the insides, because of a) fed b) loans c) cost cutting then yes the numbers can be messaged easily when using very favorable, variables being dropped off, wind/solar data and comparing it to 40 year old, shunned, extra variables added, nuclear power data.
Wow, he talks about gov't myth...um..you do realize he's talking about imperial monetary run gov't for corporations. I mean sure, if you understand monetarism, where stuff costs 'money' instead of 'dollars', then sure, when the gov't has to borrow (why exactly? there IS NO REASON FOR IT) to build these things, etc. So again, the articles premise is that we can only make nuclear power plants under a system of imperial monetarism. That's one hell of a limiter. One hell of a miscalculation.
Uses france (after the end of bretton woods) to economically say the cost rose...well no shit sherlock. Guess what as long as there is inflation, due to monetary policy, absolutely driven from the top and how they decide the strucutre, and that results in over a decades long timeframe....inflation.....guess what 3.5 times capital cost raises over a 30 year period of some serious inflation is actually GOOD, not bad. Anyone remember what a back of baseball cards costs in 1971-1974? 5-10 cents with more cards than you get now for $2-5. You can find a similar example with any good from then compared to now or 2000. 3.5x? That's jack shit in monetary world over the course of 30 years, and it is ALSO a product of the SYSTEM, not an inherent flaw with nuclear power.
Market forces? Illegal subsidies? WTF. There is no thing as illegal subsidy for energy generation, unless you are a fucking dumbass country who like shoving a sharp stick up ones ass. Market forces? You mean manipulated monetary forces? Sorry, I know, unlike that author, that it is bullshit.
You can always remodel a plant. What is important is replacing and updating the INSIDES, not the outsides. Which means when it comes to 'retiring' nuclear power plants, they can retire the old version, and replace it with a new one. Thus retiring plants, is wrong.
Nuclear fuel can be reprocessed and used again. Yep. As for waste, plenty of space on the earth, but if it is fuel for another plant, then it isn't a problem for the most part since it's being useful.
It talks about 7cents kw/h for wind in an ideal scenario....thats alot more expensive than the 1-2 cents for nuclear power.
There is 4000 times sunlight energy hitting the earth in a year than america uses.
1. America uses now....number going up. It's probably 1:1 by end of the century or soon thereafter.
2. that's 100 percent surface area, good luck (you know about solar panels on roofs and fires right? you also know firefighters won't put them out because they don't like sticking their finger in an electric socket)
2b. how much materials and energy be needed and total effects will there be from this?
3. 100 percent efficiency of solar cells, far beyond what we have.
= impossible and stupid
Let's use exclusion zones and cherry pick each reactor to have one, instead of loading up, or changing the megawatt output. Instead each plant, in our bunk metric, at a specified megawatt rate will have an exclusion zone number tallied (wrongly) about it. Don't forget about closed fuel cycle, or alternatives, just talk about uranium. Nuclear power is the cheapest, by far. You just have to change the bullshit rules that make it expensive and then realize that without a federal reserve, what exactly does it cost the gov't to utter credit for nuclear plants? 0.
That whole paper is one giant cherry picking job, where did they come up with this at? The plant that makes the game hi-ho cherry-o?
This is the cherry coke of cherry picking. For people supposedly so smart, here is some forrest, and here are some trees, now try to differentiate them for once.
Instead of building 40 million windmills or equivalent solar panels, that say catch the emissions of a fusion process from ~96 billion miles away...lets use our energy and resources to achieve actual fusion.
Remember energy production is energy production, so that we may live. That's the goal. Not getting carbon out of the air. It's not about carbon, it's about producing energy. For someone being so smart, the focus is so wrong.
and unicorns!!
Agreed. China would be pretty stupid if they stopped they nuclear program completely.
Nuclear power plants are trending to being about as safe as a space shuttle mission. Say about 400 reactors around the world and 5 of them have melted down. Space shuttle flew about 125 missions and two of them blew up.
Given the costs of a failed reactor for cleanup and disposal to say nothing of compensation for victims and lost property ( can't plant rice within 30 kilometers of Fukushima now and the contamination zone keeps growing) the world had best think long and hard about proceeding further down this road. A melted reactor near a population center I think is going to put paid to any further nuclear power plants and could well force the shut down of those already in operation.
You seem to forget that for 4 Decades worth of power and prosperity there will be 4 centuries of clean up. What do you think the chances are of an earthquake occurring over the next 4 centuries right next to one of the hundreds of nuc plants in the world? 4 centuries of clean up per plant, just remember that.
would U buy a ... 'nuclear reactor' that sez, "Made in China"?
Oh yeah, I see the future (gazing into crystal ball) I see multiple meltdowns all over the place ...
Oops! My bad ... (gazing into crystal ball) ... China is really too broke to afford to finish the reactors it has started much less build new ones. China is a dinosaur that has had its head cut off, it's dead but doesn't know it.
Japan bought a nuclear reactor that sez, "Made in USA". (GE)
Toyota bought accelerator pedals that sez, "Made in USA". (CTS Corp.)
BP bought Blow Out Preventers that sez, "Made in USA". (Cameron International)
You get the crap you pay for in China, but....
Is this chinese technology local? Is it to international safety standards?
Is it prone to ecological disasters like hydroelectric or earth quake provoked disasters or tsunamis? Most of these plants are close to major rivers. So flooding/tidal waves could occur, like in Fukushima.
It will require a huge increase in qualified nuclear plant personnel. Do they have them?
This is the potential road to hell...like Fukushima power four!
China will totally poison the world. They have proven for decades that they do not give a shit whatsoever about the environment.
If you think Japan's response was bad, wtf do you think China would do?
Trav:
That's demonstrably easy--put a bullet through the appropriate general manager's head pour encourager les autres, then deal with the situation.
But they've been careful to avoid BWRs, B&W design, anything Russian. Leap-ex to evaluate (re- re- re- evaluate the re-evaluated seismic situation at each operating unit and all under construction.)
"totally poison the world?" lmao.
- Ned
Cover it up as best they can.....just like everyone else has done.
Considering all the mighty economic powers have now had serious nuclear 'accidents' (USSR, USA and Japan) equal opportunity bad karma requires China to follow suit.
In 5.....4......3.....2.....
fp-
"Is this chinese technology local? Is it to international safety standards?"
Existing designs are Framatome, CANDU, and son of Framatome-Areva. Newer designs are transitional with individual projects taking on more and more native scope and expecting U.S. and European organizations to do "technology transfer." Current projects are new Toshiba-(W) AP 1000 and both 2 loop and 3 loop CNPE designs replicating Areva.
Safety standards are country of origin, so either US NRC/10CFR50 or European IEC equivalents. Certification to HAF 604 is rigorous.
Plants are close to cooling water sources, since thermal effeciency is around 1/3. Flooding/tidal waves less of a concern, since mainland isn't likely to translate 3 m horiz. and -1 m vertical as Honshu experienced. I'd bet that Hainan is being looked at closely, but that was the place where the rich Japanese were to be located (I seem to remember a ZH posting on that).
People? Have entire institutes training operators, others training engineers. Experience? Never built in an instant or a short time.
- Ned
This is the potential road to hell...like Fukushima power four!
China is already on the road to hell with its filthy coal plants:
http://www.chinahush.com/2009/10/21/amazing-pictures-pollution-in-china/
Thousands die annually in China just mining coal and many thousands more die annually from respiratory illnesses related to breathing the fumes from coal plants; to say nothing of the acid rain and other environmental consequences of coal. Nuclear power would get them off the road to hell.
Bingo! Carbon based alternatives to Nukes kill thousands slowly and inevitably far away from the headlines in total numbers that far exceed the deaths from nuke accidents. Wind, soilar etc are expensive, suck up land resources like crazy, and have their own enviro issues (bird kill, sound surges, etc). Like it or nt we need nukes unless consumption (and concomittant quality of life reductions) can be dramatically cut back.
Of course, that is the objective of much of the green movement.
It's easy to avoid the Fukushima and Chernobyl problems. Keep the government out of the business and use just a little bit of sanity. Do more engineering and less politicking.
TEPCO is a private company. Some months before the Tsunami, they had ALREADY a major technological problem on the plant. They kept it quiet. (This fact has now become public knowledge even here in the european media). If they had shut down the plant to repair the big tech problem, it would probably not have been further damaged on this scale by the Tsunami. They didn't want to shut down the plant to repair it as it meant Millions of $ of losses. That was criminal neglect. So this whole debate about private/public utility or major strategic corporations is sterile. Its about due diligence and shared risk taking when the shit hits the fans to avoid BIGGER shit hitting the fans. We are there NOW.
Same story about BP in Gulf. The mad rush for short term profits is the drug that kills modern capitalism. Don't turn your face away to that reality by saying government meddling would have made it worse. 'Cos that is a terrible indictment of democracy...which is the worst of all systems, admittedly, barring all others...except if you think differently.
lol, good one.
How many showed up to your luncheon?