For all you 'Crazy' anti-nukers, this one is for you. We have company.

[kristopher]

12. Yes, a negative learning curve.

That's what Jazcko is describing. You find a problem, fix it and it creates potential for string of unanticipated follow on problems that you didn't think of. The upshot being the technology becomes increasingly expensive instead of steadily less expensive.

I really don't give a fig how nuclear compares to coal, and neither should you. We can acknowledge the CO2 benefit exists, so it is automatically eligible to be considered as an alternative. That is as far as we need pursue the issue of coal.

What we now seek to know is how does nuclear stack up against the other low carbon alternatives. We need to examine issues of resource availability, life cycle costs - both direct and external, safety, and the way these technologies work together in delivering the final product to the user. That last item is far more critical than most realize.

When you evaluate them, here is what you get:


You can download the full study here:
http://www.stanford.edu/group/efmh/jacobson/Articles/I/ReviewSolGW09.pdf

Here is the abstract:

Energy Environ. Sci., 2009, 2, 148 - 173, DOI: 10.1039/b809990c
Review of solutions to global warming, air pollution, and energy security
Mark Z. Jacobson

Abstract
This paper reviews and ranks major proposed energy-related solutions to global warming, air pollution mortality, and energy security while considering other impacts of the proposed solutions, such as on water supply, land use, wildlife, resource availability, thermal pollution, water chemical pollution, nuclear proliferation, and undernutrition.

Nine electric power sources and two liquid fuel options are considered. The electricity sources include solar-photovoltaics (PV), concentrated solar power (CSP), wind, geothermal, hydroelectric, wave, tidal, nuclear, and coal with carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology. The liquid fuel options include corn-ethanol (E85) and cellulosic-E85. To place the electric and liquid fuel sources on an equal footing, we examine their comparative abilities to address the problems mentioned by powering new-technology vehicles, including battery-electric vehicles (BEVs), hydrogen fuel cell vehicles (HFCVs), and flex-fuel vehicles run on E85.

Twelve combinations of energy source-vehicle type are considered. Upon ranking and weighting each combination with respect to each of 11 impact categories, four clear divisions of ranking, or tiers, emerge.

Tier 1 (highest-ranked) includes wind-BEVs and wind-HFCVs.
Tier 2 includes CSP-BEVs, geothermal-BEVs, PV-BEVs, tidal-BEVs, and wave-BEVs.
Tier 3 includes hydro-BEVs, nuclear-BEVs, and CCS-BEVs.
Tier 4 includes corn- and cellulosic-E85.

Wind-BEVs ranked first in seven out of 11 categories, including the two most important, mortality and climate damage reduction. Although HFCVs are much less efficient than BEVs, wind-HFCVs are still very clean and were ranked second among all combinations.

Tier 2 options provide significant benefits and are recommended.

Tier 3 options are less desirable. However, hydroelectricity, which was ranked ahead of coal-CCS and nuclear with respect to climate and health, is an excellent load balancer, thus recommended.

The Tier 4 combinations (cellulosic- and corn-E85) were ranked lowest overall and with respect to climate, air pollution, land use, wildlife damage, and chemical waste. Cellulosic-E85 ranked lower than corn-E85 overall, primarily due to its potentially larger land footprint based on new data and its higher upstream air pollution emissions than corn-E85.

Whereas cellulosic-E85 may cause the greatest average human mortality, nuclear-BEVs cause the greatest upper-limit mortality risk due to the expansion of plutonium separation and uranium enrichment in nuclear energy facilities worldwide. Wind-BEVs and CSP-BEVs cause the least mortality.

The footprint area of wind-BEVs is 2–6 orders of magnitude less than that of any other option. Because of their low footprint and pollution, wind-BEVs cause the least wildlife loss.

The largest consumer of water is corn-E85. The smallest are wind-, tidal-, and wave-BEVs.

The US could theoretically replace all 2007 onroad vehicles with BEVs powered by 73000–144000 5 MW wind turbines, less than the 300000 airplanes the US produced during World War II, reducing US CO2 by 32.5–32.7% and nearly eliminating 15000/yr vehicle-related air pollution deaths in 2020.

In sum, use of wind, CSP, geothermal, tidal, PV, wave, and hydro to provide electricity for BEVs and HFCVs and, by extension, electricity for the residential, industrial, and commercial sectors, will result in the most benefit among the options considered. The combination of these technologies should be advanced as a solution to global warming, air pollution, and energy security. Coal-CCS and nuclear offer less benefit thus represent an opportunity cost loss, and the biofuel options provide no certain benefit and the greatest negative impacts.

What is most important to me, however, is the fact that renewables integrate differently than centralized generation. Economics are the tool that facilitates change - and nuclear doesn't alter the economic landscape that is built around coal. In fact, nuclear re-enforces the market position of coal by crowding out the types of generation that nibble away the market share of all centralized large scale thermal plants - renewables.

This thread shows how the market works to allow zero-energy cost renewables take market share away from all sources of generation with fuel costs.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1127&pid=11729

The plans of the utilities in the US that are intent on building nuclear plants show that they have absolutely no intention of reducing their consumption of coal. See this summary of their plans:
Clinging to Dirty Energy in the South – a by-the-numbers look from the Institute of Southern Studies http://www.southernstudies.org/2011/10/institute-index-clinging-to-dirty-energy-in-the-south.html

The New Nuclear Power is Ruining Climate Protection Efforts and Harming Customers Report shows Southeast utilities plan not to replace coal-fired power, but to add nuclear capacity despite falling demand – while jacking up rates and blocking clean energy advances http://www.ncwarn.org/wp- content/uploads/2011/10/NCW-NuclearClimate_web.pdf

Can you explain the justification for nuclear if it does not have a market mechanism to shut down coal plants? I can't. Especially considering it has the risk of catastrophic failure lingering over every plant every day. We aren't going to be as lucky every time as we were with Fukushima; have you considered what would have happened if the winds had been steady out of the NNE instead of the W and SSE?

edited to fix links and formatting tags