Several weeks ago Joshua Pearce at Clarion University in Pennsylvania released a study titled “ Thermodynamic limitations to nuclear energy deployment as a greenhouse gas mitigation technology .” In the study he stated... nuclear energy production would have to increase by 10.5% per year from 2010 to 2050 to both replace fossil-fuel-energy use and meet the future energy demands. This line, of course, made the headlines and has been picked up by several outlets and blogs . When looking into his calculations for this statement, he made one assumption error that overstated the above sentence by nearly a factor of three. Page 121, Section 4.1 of the study states: Richard Smalley pointed out that in 2004, the global economy consumed the equivalent of 220 million barrels of oil per day, which converted into electricity terms is the equivalent of 14.5 TeraWatts (TW), or 14,500,000 MegaWatts (MW) (2005). … With a nuclear plant having about 1000 MW (1 GW) of capacity, we would need 14,500...
Comments
OK...
How close did the Davis-Besse nuclear power station come to blowing its reactor vessel head on the shores of Lake Erie just twenty miles from Toledo, Ohio?
Dum-de-dum-dum, dum-de-dum,
Dum-de-dum-de-dum-deeee-dum-dum.
Times up.
As close as two months of continued ongoing corrosion which had already eaten a cavity 6 3/4 inches deep into the carbon steel base metal exposing the balloning and cracking stainless steel inner liner.
Yes... (Applause)
I'll try Davis-Besse again and jeopardize surpassing Price Anderson...
OK...What reactor containment component was found to be so undersized at Davis-Besse, as at other pressurized water reactors, that the debris field created by this screaming jet stream from ruptured pressure vessel would have clogged it and prevented the recycling of the emergency core cooling system?
Dum-de-dum-dum...
I got... the containment sump screen...
Yes!!!! (Applause)
Paul, NIRS
What fraction of the September 11th attack force does the NRC's security cost curtailing DBT cover under its adversary characteristics?
Answer: TIME Magazine June 20, 2005.
"I'll take Nuclear Power Plants for $1,000 Alex"
Alex:
"This anti-nuclear organization often distorts the truth of nuclear power with poor information and bad scare tactics."
Player 1, 2, and 3 all buzz in with Player 1 just beating the other two.
Player 1:
"What is the Nuclear Information and Resource Service (NIRS)?"
Alex:
"Correct for a thousand."
You are absolutely right about Davis Besse. For the industry it wasn't a great reflection on the benefits of nuclear power.
However, you need to recognize that Davis Besse isn't the only nuclear reactor in the U.S. and the world. There are 103 operating reactors in the U.S. and the only instances of which nuclear power posed a possible threat to the public were TMI and Davis Besse. And there isn't any evidence of the public being harmed in both cases. It should be noted that those reactors make up only 1% of the nuclear industry.
So to say that nuclear power is unsafe, unreliable and a threat to the public, you have to have more than TMI and Davis Besse which there aren't in the U.S.