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Yes, dear, that’s a Nuclear Power Reactor They’re Building Next Door
Better drag your leisure suits, bell bottoms, and Bee Gee’s records out the attic. The seventies are about to make a comeback.
The nuclear industry, which has been comatose since the accident at Three Mile Island in 1979, is gearing up for one of the greatest comebacks of all time. There is absolutely no way we can deal with our impending energy crunch without a huge expansion of our nuclear capacity, which sits at a lowly 20% of our total power generation. France has already achieved 85%, followed by Sweden at 60% and Belgium at 54%, and the last time I checked, none of these Europeans were glowing in the dark.
Unless you’re an underpaid nuclear engineer toiling sway in total obscurity at some university, you are probably unaware how far the technology has moved ahead in the last 30 years. Generations I and II produced the aging “joint use” behemoths we now see on coasts and rivers, which generated both electricity and atomic weapons, but could potentially melt down if someone forgot to flip a switch. Think Chernobyl. Generation III has spent decades trapped on the drawing board.
There are over 100 Generation IV designs, and many are certain to get built. The most popular is known as a “pebble reactor,” which relies on a new form of fuel embedded in graphite tennis balls cooled with helium that is just hot enough to generate electricity, but too weak to allow a disaster. Also known as a Very High Temperature Reactor (VHTR), these plants operate hot enough to enable a 50% increase in thermal efficiencies. The built in safety of the design let’s you eliminate many redundant backup systems, cutting costs. No surprise that the only operating prototype is in China. Low grade waste can be stored on site, not shipped to Nevada or France. Other feasible designs include using thorium fuels, fast neutron reactors, and liquid lead, sodium, or salt cooling variants. Beam me up, Scotty! Plants are also about to get a lot smaller too.
Speeding the resurrection of this once dead industry is some cheerleading from none other than the same demonizing, apocalyptic environmentalists that shut the industry down in the seventies (remember Jane Fonda in The China Syndrome?) That is helping shorten the permitting process from 15 years to four by confining new construction to existing facilities instead of green fields. Nuclear generates no carbon dioxide, an important consideration if we’re all about to suffocate on the stuff. Each new nuclear plant will take one or two of our 400 coal fired pants offline. Do you think they noticed that there has not been one nuclear death in the US since the sixties, while tens of thousands died globally in coal mining disasters or from the black lung that follows. And I’m not even counting millions of respiratory illnesses brought on by ubiquitous air pollution. That’s why at least 30 new reactors are expected to start construction in the US over the next five years, and over 100 in China.
There is a great equity play here, and I would use any substantial dip in the market to scale in. The Market Vectors Nuclear Energy ETF (NLR), which at one point was up an impressive 78% from its March low to $25, is the easiest way in. You can also buy its largest components, like Cameco (CCJ) (click here for their website at http://www.cameco.com/investors/ ), the world’s largest uranium producer, which has seen its stock clock a nice double this year. And while you’re at it, you might start practicing your “hustle” once again.
For more iconoclastic and out of consensus analysis, please visit www.madhedgefundtrader.com .
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As we build new Gen IV plants we can't take any coal plants off line. We have something like 104 reactors, and all are 30+ years old and approaching retirement. The first 100+ Gen IV plants built will be needed just to keep pace with the retirements in existing facilities. An additional 100 Gen IV plants will be needed to power the re-industrialization of the USA after this engineered collapse plays out, and the globalists go down in flames.
if there was a good President, the executive powers are enough to speed that approval process from 4 years to 30 seconds with the stroke of a pen. Seize the private foundations that fund seditious anti-American activities and most of the Watermellon (green on the outside and red on the inside) enviro groups will wither on the vine.
Nuclear power is a basic building block of an industrial civilization. It is basically a refined 1930's technology, and isn't scary or especially complicated. After David Rockefeller announced the de-industrialization of the United States in 1969, things disintegrated in the country. We need fuel processing facilities like in France and Russia in order to use the very valuable spent fuel rods being maligned as toxic waste. If we build the 200 new Gen IV reactors the energy situation will start to stabilize in the USA. more will be needed after that for actual advanced 21st century heavy industry that is very high tech and very energy intensive, and also has very high paying middle class jobs.
"The seventies are about to make a comeback."
Yeah, yeah... but enough about the coming stagflation and the return of the Misery Index...
(*GRIN*)
"The nuclear industry, which has been comatose since the accident at Three Mile Island in 1979, is gearing up for one of the greatest comebacks of all time."
One can only hope and pray!
"There is absolutely no way we can deal with our impending energy crunch without a huge expansion of our nuclear capacity..."
Well... it depends what you mean by "we" and "deal."
Unfortunately, the politicians and the whacky Left are more capable of pushing this nation into a situation where energy is expensive, rationed, and planned brown-outs and unplanned black-outs are a normal part of daily life.
Jeez, MHFT, the multiple messes we're in now were all foreseeable and avoidable. Most DIDN'T foresee them though and certainly they weren't AVOIDED - were they?!
JEEZ... look at what's happened in California - America's breadbasket - valuable productive and necessary farm land is being PURPOSEFULLY made fallow via deliberate federal policy!
MHFT. These morons in power - with the forebearance of the American Sheeple - are QUITE capable of not only standing back and not solving problems before they turn into crisises; they're likely to do everything in their power to ACCELERATE our nation's plunge backwards regarding living standards!
(Hmm... perhaps you've heard of Cap and Trade...)
(*CHUCKLE*)
"Unless you’re an underpaid nuclear engineer toiling sway in total obscurity at some university, you are probably unaware how far the technology has moved ahead in the last 30 years."
Oh... I'm aware. But again you're confusing what you, I and the average ZeroHedge reader know (and care about) with what the elite will do and what the Sheeple will stand by and ALLOW the elite to do.
"Speeding the resurrection of this once dead industry is some cheerleading from none other than the same demonizing, apocalyptic environmentalists that shut the industry down in the seventies..."
Yes... I've read op-eds in the WSJ and elsewhere penned by (semi) sane "environmentalists," but aren't these folks still in the distinct minority?
"That is helping shorten the permitting process from 15 years to four by confining new construction to existing facilities instead of green fields."
Encouraging... but not enough. Too little too late I fear.
(*SHRUG*) (I hope I'm wrong!)
"...at least 30 new reactors are expected to start construction in the US over the next five years..."
Hmm. Call me a cynic... but let's revisit this column in five year's time. More important... let's revisit this column in 12 years and see how much domestic nuclear power generating capacity the U.S. has up and running.
(*SHRUG*) (Again... I'm praying my cynicism is misplaced!)
"There is a great equity play here..."
Unfortunately, it's politics - and court decisions - which will determine the future of nuclear power in the United States, not logic, science, or even financial self-interest.
BILL
Thorium seems to have the potential to decrease uranium demand. Unlike the recent Indian reactor design, Thorium would probably be used in conjunction with uranium. That's my view based on fifteen minutes of surfing.
How about using scientists with real ambition
www.ted.com/talks/george_dyson_on_project_orion.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V1vKMTYa40A
Volume spiked on NLR today. 600% of avg. volume.
Guys:
Listen to Sara Palin. It is called nukelar power not nuclear. :-)
Thorium. Thorium, thorium thorium. That will be the nuclear fuel of the future. The only reason we use uranium today is because the US needed the byproduct (plutonium) in the 50's and 60's to keep up with the Russkies in weapons production. The beauty of thorium is that it's the most efficient fuel available, cannot melt down, is not inherently dangerously radioactive (you can carry a hunk of thorium in your pocket), and the radioactive byproduct has a half-life of ("merely") hundreds of years, not tens of thousands.
Google it, then pass it on.
There's a simple solution to our energy crisis, and many other crises, too:
Sell California to the Chinese!
Then cut off their electricity.
This will:
The few new reactor proposals floating around today have several things in common:
1. They are not based on any of these advanced technologies, which are seen as economically risky
2. Private capital is hard to find, so another government stimulus program would be needed
3. If started now, the first would not come online for more than 10 years, including time to rebuild the industries that would build the reactors. Unless we contract it out to foreign firms that still know how.
Ship the waste to Lower Manhattan and to D.C.
The truth is that nuclear power is RIDICULOUSLY expensive.
It must be massively subsidized by taxpayers, and requires huge amounts of money and people and equipment to service and protect.
And there is the problem of WASTE - which there is NO CREDIBLE PLAN to deal with.
*
Add all this up, and its easy to see why nuclear power is the STANDOUT FAVORITE among governments. Wasteful, expensive, dangerous ... requiring lots of people and permits and levels of control and secrecy ...
Lets start by building a nuke plant on Martha's Vineyard.
What is the work life of these plants? 30 - 40 years. Then what do we do with it? Bury it, turn it into a mountain, for archaeologists to dig up in 10,000 years time.
Kicking the can down the road for generations to come.
When will this madness stop?
Madhedgefundtrader.
I don't get it. Do you believe that green house gases are contributing to global warming, or not?
You mockingly use the no carbon footprint as a benefit?
Or, are you the type of person that uses facts when they are convienient?
Disclosure, I don't disagree with anything you say. I just don't like the mocking tone with which you apply your argument. Almost like all the problems of our world would be solved if there weren't ENVIRONMENTALIST in the way.
(duplicate removed)
I was among those who were against the first and second generation plants. Waste was a big factor. The bulls**t probabilities being tossed around by the "scientists" also turned me off. You have to know all the possible outcomes to have a probability. It was pretty obvious to me they hadn't thought of all the outcomes (nor can you, it always something you didn't think of that gets you), thus they were just talking cr*p.
One of the fourth generation designs eat the waste. There is a lot of safety built into the process of most if not all the fourth generation reactors. I am not against neuclear reactors, just poor designs dependent of everything going right not to fail.
Natural gas power generation with turbines is the medium term solution for the US. The fixed costs vastly lower and the lead times for construction a fraction of nukes. The problem is they don't fit very well into the giant centralized power plant topography of the system. Another gigantic advantage of gas turbine generation is rapid start up and shut down thus making them far better able to respond to changing demand.
In any case there is no incentive or power generation business model which encourages smaller more distributed power plants. A topography that is far superior in every possible sense to the centralized system now in place. A more distributed system would require an improved and smarter grid which when in place would allow more alt energy generaton plants to flouish.
Nuke power touts are just that, touts. Playing upon prejudice with silly myths about the demise of the industry here. At a minimum no nuke plant should be built unless they can purchase off site liabilty in the market. Uncle Sam still supplies the off site liabilty insurance to the industry. When the first plants were going to be built the utilites went to the insurors and asked about coverage. The insurance industry refused to cover them. The free market thus failed so Uncle Sam stepped in. All well and good because the actuaries had no data. They now have 50 years of data. Private insurancee or nuke plants can remain the wet dream of touts.
that is right rapier.
if the drivers are cost and efficiency and environmental footprint, nat gas w/ turbines (maybe also syngas from coal) is the way to go. there is just no comparison.
"nukes" make sense to big giant corporations and governments who wish for a command-and-control industry that shuts out the private sector completely. nuclear power is terribly inefficient if you factor in ALL THE COSTS, CRADLE TO GRAVE. the nuke industry knows this, but won't admit it. they can just plan on shoving their bloated, wasteful cost structures down the throats of hapless taxpayers.
what we need is far more local production and distribution of power (using nat gas and wind too) - with far more efficient building and manufacturing processes.
nuke provides exactly the opposite of what we need. nuke power is highly centralized, and DOES NOT ADDRESS loss via transmission. nuclear power can't happen on a localized level because of the INSANE SECURITY RISKS created by the process.
to support nuclear power, you need to be corrupt (to have a primary interest in uranium or a power or operating company or lobbying firm) or just plain dumb - or at least have the ability to isolate just one or two variables and IGNORE or avoid a whole-system analysis.
I have read alot of nonsense over the years that the oil and gas industry is "free market" decentralized and not political while the nuclear industry was all of the above, well I have some urgent news for you - all utilities of State importance are politicized and will always be as long as you have a state - it is the nature of the beast
Indeed libertarian societys merely increase the corporate power structure by creating a power vacuum that are filled by non state agents who use politics to further there aims - this lobbyist mentality greatly weakens the state since it must be seen to be above this messy business but infact it is down in the pigsty trading with these agents while its citizens are oblivious to the shit that is being excreted
Natural gas for electricity production is the greatest criminal waste of a resource in the history of mankind when other alternatives are available
Private operators build gas powered plants because they have the cheapest capital outlay as you say above , they therefore are engaging in a low risk investment where Joe public assumes all the risk.
Once these plants are constructed the price of gas rises and the electricity providers state that they have to rise their prices to compensate so are guarenteed a profit at least until the consumer cannot pay.
This example is a mirror to the banking crises where banks kept the minimum capital required and therefore made huge returns on their capital until the music stopped.
Substitute the deposits in the bank (capital) with the power stations infrastructure (capital) and you are dealing with the same market failure.
Indeed believing that simple "Free Market" theory works for utilities where the above distortions in the market were allowed to happen is the primary reason we are in this mess
Since 1971 we have simply run down the wealth of countries over time and by simply running down capital and pretending that it was profit
Capital needs to be rebuilt to sustain wealth - your solution is to run it down even further.
actually, having individual, household-level generation off of NG is significantly more efficient than even a gas plant.
Given the internet and wimax, you could run these from a central facility to balance system loads if necessary.
I remember the stillness that gripped our area during TMI. The Containment building did it's job and we are all still here.
I point to the United States Navy and thier total fanatical dedication to Nuke Safety on thier Subs. If we can do that since the 60's why in hell are we still farting about with mountains of coal, balloons of Gas and a dollop of mountain water for Hydro? In fact why are the people who are fed by a fully paid for Hydro dam still paying for it? Just pay for the juice damn it.
America has good Coal. King coal... we are blessed with the stuff. But everything has to come out of poor Wyoming due to the polluting etc crap. If a coal train is late then that plant somewhere is eating into it's reserve.
Northeast Corridor has some nuke power. You can say our trains are driving by nuke power in some area with overhead electric. I remind you about the GG1's that once roamed the rails in the old days that pretty much defeated weather and snow issues that clogged the modern Euro tunnel trains.
I trucked for years. I love diesel. However, it is not too hard to consider electric power for big rigs. Just need to throw the old designs away and invent a new rig to accommodate and use this technology. If the military can use quiet electric motors to creep up onto the enemy in 25 ton armored vehicles certainly we can do the same to move a 40 tonner.
If they ran electric on that UP Main line between Little Rock and St Louis and electrified the lot, the noise of engines in notch 8 wont keep us all up at night and shake the house.
Before you blast me and tell me to move the &^%$ away from trains, I have you know I love trains. Steam is king.
Speaking of steam, why not use a miniature reactor to produce steam? Sure the EPA will have a cow and never make it back down from the moon. They can shove it. The English Steam Tornado engine once carried at least 100 stranded workers to London for Christmas when electrics were failed due to winter weather.
I dont mind Nuclear power. Nuclear one is several counties away. If that thing blows up, melts down or gets hit.... we are literally packed and ready to go with dosimeters and MRE emergency grab bags for all people in our home. It will take only about... 9 minutes or less to get out of the house and head out after checking the prevailing winds for fallout data.
Only we wont be back. We will be making a new home somewhere else.
Are people so rooted and set in stone as not to be flexible and willing to do whatever it takes to free America from the Chains of our Middle eastern enemies who can starve us with a temper tantrum?
Nuclear is good. So is Coal for steam. Solar too. All of it.
The secret is the United States needs to get off it's mountains of neurotic fear of the stuff and put boots on the ground and make it happen today.
+1. Also, dams screw up the rivers and destroy their fishery productivity, and that costs us in food (salmon, for instance) and recreation (we do not live by bread alone). To get foreign oil we have to send armies overseas, so foreign oil is not cost-effective. Domestic oil and natural gas are good. We have coal, but not clean coal yet. Biofuel is not really an energy source, because more natural gas energy is required to fertilize the crops than we get back out of the crops. The way to go is batteries powered electricity produced by nukes. And solar. Clotheslines and bikinis are the ultimate no-brainer.
"The secret is the United States needs to get off it's mountains of neurotic fear of the stuff..."
STATE OF FEAR - Michael Crichton Neurotic fear is the staple of K-street, $1,000/hour Lawyers, and symptom of a dysfunctional society.
A pipe dream for several reasons along with a glaringly big one: Where are you going to get all of the experinced operators? (Only so many navy nuc's getting out on a yearly basis)
The industry shut down with no new plants ordered after TMI and many planned and ever started projects cancelled becuase they did not make economic sense. Their costs had risen sometimes 500% from initial estimates due to over optimistic salesmen and the inflation of the 70's. Then too long term interest rates were on their rise to15% and more.
The nuclear power industry never had the slightest thing to do with free enterprise. It was concieved and subsidised from day one. The biggest problem with US Nuclear power was the pretense that it was a free enterprise project. Nobody else in the world pretends it's nuke plants are free enterprise. The same mistake will be made again. Gigantic direct and tax subsidies will be taken and capitalized by a few who will leave the scene long before they come online. The plants will have problems because in America everyone is out for the quick buck. When all is said and done the cost per KW will be double the rest of the worlds nukes, just like health care is and a great success will be declared.
Whats wrong with subsidised energy production for the nuclear industry when the biggest amount of tax dollars goes to the oil industry via the Military Industrial complex.
How much do you think you would be paying for oil if the US military was not based in the Persian Gulf and if it was valued in Euros?
Ive been kicking an idea around...could we burn congress critters for fuel? Ive yet to find a BTU rating for a congresswoman from California...
the stench would be disgusting
and I'm sure the waste is radioactive. They have quite a half-life.
Really good write up on Thorium based MSR (Molten Salt Reactors). Fun read if you are geeky, but not so technical that an average Joe couldn't digest most of the content. Has a lot of very interesting facts on nuclear in general, such as the amount of energy invested up front to have usable fuels (not trivial for some fuel types). Purportedly from a NASA presentation.
Enjoy!
http://www.energyfromthorium.com/ppt/GreenEnergyForum_20080725.ppt
thanks. It looks like the MS Reactors remove many of the risks. It also looks like India is at the forefront?
+ infinity
Bio-fuels..how is it that you think we grow so much food so effeciently?..oil...solar/wind? how do we build all that infrastructure? Its all connected to oil..our ability do dig ourselves out of this hole completely depends on the one thing that got us here..cheap oil..and cheap oil has seen its day..how long would it take to build all this if right now..today we had a complete change in energy policy? 20 years? 30,40?Does anybody think oil is going to be $70-80 for too much longer?
regional bio-diesel production, with non food crop plants, that will grow with brackish water, with no fertilizer. the refining process is quite simple, and it burns much cleaner than petro-diesel. I'm thinking, adjacent to food farming, and used locally. some areas, will not be economically feasible to inhabit in the near future. I expect a lot of migration, after this is realized, and accepted.
sorry for the typos..5 month old in my lap likes to type too apparently
I have to say I'm a sceptic on Biofuels - I hate to see a world of emaciated stick insects driving around in their corn fueled SUV
Although I believe a few soccer mums have embraced the future.
Short of a complete evolution(devolution?) in our lifestyles..renewables seem like a moot point.We should have started making real progress probably 60 years Life as we have ago towards these goals..instead weve sprawled out and become completely dependent on cheap oil. There is no way out of this mess.Humans had a good run using cheap oil but that is over...
Here's a real good start:
Nuclear - for macro-infrastructure
Biofuel - vehicles
Solar & wind - supplements nuclear
Real simple, we have the technology, now let's just get it done.
Biofuels for the entire transportation fleet? The math doesn't add up unless you starve off a whole bunch of Americans first. Biofuels are a niche thing and will get replaced. Lots of work is going into fully electric transportation and it's steadily improving. There are some real serious battery improvements being made in the US and in Japan and ultimately we'll go towards electric transportation in the main. Given high fuel costs, I can see airline travel becoming far more expensive and used only by the extremely wealthy but at the same time an explosion in high speed electric rail, which for many applications can be faster than current airliners for travel less than 500 miles and competitive with air travel for distances over that. Additionally, electric rail moves cargo at 28 times the efficiency of diesel based trucking. While fuel costs have been low that hasn't mattered enough but if fuel costs rise sufficiently, there will be economic pressure on providing alternate transportation mechanisms for cargo.
The future is electric, if there is a technological future at all. It will be different but that doesn't mean it will be bad, unless we screw it up (which we are perfectly capable of doing, witness the current economic circle jerk). Now, my personal bet is on corruption, incompetence, and ignorance driving humanity backwards rather than forwards. I'd love to be wrong on that. It's not a technology problem as we have the technology to solve the issues before us. The question is whether we have the moral fiber and political willpower to do what needs to be done. And when I watch the Wall Street circus going on, I get more convinced than ever that corruption, incompetence, and ignorance is going to win.
R O T F L
EROI mean anything to you?
We can't just "replace" oil, ok? We have to grow.
have been looking for PBMR investments for years and am holding TOISF as they are the ultimate owner of Westinghouse which was a stakeholder in PBMR corp which was a South African venture.
Problem with PBMR is that its best coolant is Helium, which is in supply decline, having peaked in 2002. And, last I checked, they are still filling kids' balloons up with this invaluable resource. Helium is irreplaceable for things like high tech imaging and other superconducting applications.
And there is no way to make helium as it is solely a byproduct of alpha decay. Its density is so low that it achieves escape velocity from the earth.
Fission is a stopgap but PBMR is a technology older than lightwater but it got shelved for many years. Lightwater reactors in commercial application in the US were fiscal and maintenance failures. They did not deliver on their promise. Hopefully the newer advanced reactors like ABWR will finally justify the hype.
55% of US oil us is in the transportation sector...so we replace coal with nuclear energy,,great..now what? So we have lights in our houses and on our roadways..ok..how are we gonna utilize the electricity to power our cars? Electric cars right...so we will replace our entire fleet with electric cars and build all the infrastructure to power the cars...uh huh...seems like when it comes to energy and peak oil there is no real solutions only great ideas that arent really feasable in the real world.Nuclear is a good source of energy but will only be a drop in the bucket of our total energy use.Not to mention all the oil it takes to build nuke plants and to mine all the uranium...
All US consumer goods are transported by trucks - sometimes coast to coast - transport these goods by train to regional centers and distribute by light truck , that would save alot of petroleum and have the added advantage of killing Walmart
Also some electricity is produced by natural gas which is a terrible waste - transport vehicles should burn this resource instead
No matter what happens it will be a massive change of habit and lifestyle, whether we choose to adapt ahead of time or not. The infrastructure for distributing electricity is in place, getting the Nuclear plants and chemicals for car batteries is the problem - wait, we would have to upgrade all lines to carry all that electricity that is no longer burned oil. Doh! But all this will of course never happen; our current infrastructure is already crumbling; massive change on the way.
And, yes, please let's kill Walmart before they kill us.
My dad worked on the nuclear rocket propulsion program. I remember the pictures he showed me when I was a little kid of the rockets... and the failures too.
That's great that nuclear power (the safest, cleanest, most environmentally pure way of generating power that man has ever devised) is making a comeback in the US. I hadn't heard that, though, from any other source. The environmental religionists in my area still demonize and attack the nuclear plant near me. They still plot and scheme new ways to shut it down--even in the face of summer electrical outages in California. How ironic that the nation that invented the technology is one of the more backward and primitive nations in implementing it.
The industry is at a low ebb and Indeed has lost many men of expertise but remember that 20 years before NERVA they were just building the first atomic pile
Rebuild it and they will come.........
Well there goes yet another major employer and industry to chasing profit... Coal mining. . Power is power, regardless of the shiny packaging, but clean power ( sick) without jobs ?? Is that really better?.
I agree with much of the article. I do think; however, that near-term electrical demand will be stagnant. That would be a problem for the energy sector. Also, the coal lobby is HUGE, as it provides a lot of jobs. American jobs. Jobs that cannot be off-shored easily. Jobs that will be in high demand during a depression.
"Low grade waste can be stored on site"
For how many thousands of years? Three Mile Island and Chernobyl weren't the only problems. Hanford released radioactivity into the environment for 40 years, until the 1980s. And don't the French ship theirs off to poor African countries? Nice.
There is no viable plan for the waste, and until there is nobody is going to want a plant in their town. 'Honey, our water is glowing'.
...Annnnd that's why we need thorium reactors.