Meet the Man Who Could End Global Warming

John H. Richardson has a good article about clean and safe nuclear power in the current (December 2009) issue of Esquire.

"Nuclear power — dangerous, right? And there's nowhere to put the nuclear waste, right? Eric Loewen is the evangelist of the sodium fast reactor, which burns nuclear waste, emits no CO2, and might just save the world."

The Waxman-Markey Climate Change Bill and your Electric Bill

The Waxman-Markey Climate Change Bill alias H.R. 2454 alias ACES alias the American Clean Energy and Security Act is now 1400 pages long. The cap-and-trade provision will not raise your electric bill because the money collected from coal fired power plants is given back to retail customers. The provision requiring 14% "renewable" energy will raise the electric company's cost by maybe 5%, not the 20% that the coal industry claims. "Renewable" sources of electricity (wind, solar and geothermal) are the most expensive. Most of our electricity is from coal. Nuclear power is the cheapest, safest and makes less CO2 than solar or wind or geothermal per kilowatt hour. Spent nuclear fuel is recyclable. In operation, only fossil fuels, coal and petroleum, make CO2. Read: "Power to Save the World; The Truth About Nuclear Energy" by Gwyneth Cravens, 2007. This is a truthful book about nuclear power. Other books may be coal company propaganda.

There are other provisions of H.R.2454 that would waste your money, requiring $40 light bulbs and appliances that save energy by not getting the job done. Saving energy is irrelevant to fighting global warming because waste heat is a microscopic fraction of the Earth's heat budget. The only action that counts is reducing greenhouse gasses. Venus's 800 degree temperature is caused by CO2. Without greenhouse gasses, heat dissipates into space. Greenhouse gasses control heat accumulation on Earth.

I favor a 1 page bill scheduling the conversion from coal to nuclear electricity.

This post is a letter I wrote to the editor of the Quad City Times.

Cost of Electricity

The MIT Center For Advanced Nuclear Study released a report on The cost of electricity in May (2009).

The three cost elements used in the study are capital, operation and management, and fuel.

Incorporating all cost elements, the study found that the levelized cost of electricity, denominated in 2007 dollars, are as follows:

nuclear power is 8.4¢/kWh [includes the risk premium (safety tax) which makes capital costs much higher than coal or gas]

coal is 8.3¢/kWh [includes a $25/tCO2 charge (carbon tax)]

Gas-Fired Power 7.4¢/kWh [includes a $25/tCO2 charge (carbon tax)]

There are two very important factors to consider here. The first is that safety regulations are much more severe and costly for nuclear power plants than they are for either coal or gas-fired power plants. This CANES study takes this into account and concludes that if you equalize the safety restrictions, the levelized cost of electricity, denominated in 2007 dollars, from nuclear power is 6.6¢/kWh.

Many people who oppose nuclear power plants consider them more hazardous than coal or gas-fired power plants. Please see my post which clearly explains how safe pebble bed reactors are and see my posts about background radiation and how dangerous coal clearly is.

The full text of the MIT CANES report can be found here.