Nuclear waste "blue ribbon" panel: I don't like it

(Work in progress)

It's about a year since the Administration's decision to cancel the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste tomb. As energy secretary Steven Chu discussed then, the White House intended to assemble an expert panel to review the options. (One could wonder why they made their decision before hearing what the experts would recommend, but that's not how policymaking works.)

Thursday, May 14, 2009

Steven Chu: Yucca Mountain as a repository is off the table. What we're going to be doing is saying, let's step back. We realize that we know a lot more today than we did 25 or 30 years ago. The NRC [Nuclear Regulatory Commission] is saying that the dry cask storage at current sites would be safe for many decades, so that gives us time to figure out what we should do for a long-term strategy. We will be assembling a blue-ribbon panel to look at the issue.

[MIT Tech Review] Q & A: Steven Chu

Today the executive branch has selected its "blue ribbon" panelists:

[DoE] Secretary Chu Announces Blue Ribbon Commission on America's Nuclear Future

It appears to me this panel isn't suited for its task -- the purely technical issue of spent nuclear fuel. I only count: one engineer, two physicists, and one geologist, out of 15 experts. Most of the rest are politicians and business suits. I fear this is more of a political game than a legitimate conference of nuclear waste experts.

Perhaps the most worrying name on the list none other than Brent Scowcroft. If you recall, he was the national security advisor for George H.W. Bush -- a key figure in the end of the cold war. Him along with Albert Carnesale (nonproliferation diplomat, figure in SALT treaties -- some writings here), and Susan Eisenhower (nonproliferation consultant, board of Nuclear Threat Initiative). I think we should read between the lines: why did Obama put a national security wonk and two nuclear weapons wonks on this panel? What the US does with spent reactor fuel has nothing to do with weapons or war. But the administration thinks, or perhaps wants to signal, otherwise; that US reprocessing and breeder reactors -- key technical solutions for destroying nuclear waste -- would be a security threat. Looking at history, nuclear weapons fearmongering has been a key political attack against nuclear power, especially closed fuel cycles. Ford's reprocessing ban was ostensibly about weapons. John Kerry and Hazel O'Leary's canceling of Argonne's Integral Fast Reactor research was, again, used with proliferation as a pretext.

Professor Per Peterson is the sole nuclear engineer. Among many other things, he is researching a molten salt (!) reactor design called PB-AHTR. Unlike LFTR, it is only half fluid: the coolant is a molten salt, whereas the fuel elements are solid pebbles.

Richard Meserve seems to be lots of things - PhD physicist, former NRC chairman, sits on board of the electric utility PG&E.

Allison MacFarlane is a geologist who researches spent fuel repositories, and has written a book criticizing Yucca Mountain. Some of her writings are here at the Belfer Center (which she is an associate of). Rod Adams interviews her on Atomic Podcast #61 (haven't watched yet; Rod says they "agree to disagree", which is worrying.)

There are several remembers whose only "qualification" appears to be political stature. Lee Hamilton is a former Democratic congressman. Chuck Hagel is a former Republican Senator. Pete Domenici is a former Republican senator, who sat on the energy subcommittee. Phil Sharp is a former Democratic congressman who now heads the political think tank Resources for the Future.

Several sitting energy industry executives, who likewise have no particular reason to be here, and an in my naive opinion have way too much conflict of interest to be allowed in the first place. Vicky Bailey is director of Chiniere Energy, an importer of liquefied natural gas (LNG) (she was also a former commissioner of FERC). John Rowe is CEO of Exelon, an electric utility whose fleet is largely nuclear reactors.

Mark Ayers is a union boss from AFL-CIO.

Jonathan Lash is a lawyer, formerly with the National Resources Defense Council, presently chairman of the World Resources Institute (environmentalist think tank). Some of his writings are here.

Innumeracy in the news

The following falsehoods appear in today's New York Times article on the recent NREL study, which speculates the effects of integrating 20% wind into the US Eastern grid:

While the costs of the three 20-percent scenarios in the NREL report are close, the scenario of "high quality" on-shore wind, mainly in the Midwest, has the lowest cost, $140 billion. But this scenario also has the highest transmission costs, $93 billion, mainly due to 22,697 miles of extra high-voltage lines.

The report finds that capital costs for building offshore wind farms push up the price for those scenarios. A hybrid of offshore and onshore projects costs about $143 billion, and one that relies more on projects in the East as opposed to including a Midwest mix would cost about $155 billion.

[New York Times] Big Boost in Wind Power Doable but Complicated in Eastern U.S. -- Study

As the most cursory inspection of the actual report reveals, this is incredibly wrong in at least two different ways. First, these figures are annualized - they are costs per year. Second, they are the costs for the entire scenarios including the 80% of electricity that is NOT wind. Here is everything together in figure 8.2 (p. 211) - where the $140/$143/$155 billion figures came from:

[NREL] Eastern Wind Integration and Transmission Study

What this figure actually says is that the cheapest 20%-wind scenario costs about $15 billion/year more, everything included, than the reference case. Is this really so difficult?

The total costs aren't clearly stated in the study. For the wind turbine costs alone, they assume $1,875/kW and $3,700/kW nameplate, respectively, for onshore and offshore wind (table 8.1 p. 209). And their scenarios are summarized in table 1 on p. 26. So for example scenario 1, 223.6 GW onshore wind, under their assumptions would cost $419 billion. And scenario 3 (also 20% wind), 166.2 GW onshore and 64.1 GW offshore, would cost $549 billion. (NB these scenarios are for just the Eastern grid, not the entire US).

Some other sources, like Reuters, are instead using a "$90 billion" figure. This one apparently comes from tables 4 on page 39: it represents just the cost of the new transmission lines needed.

Wind energy could generate 20 percent of the electricity needed by households and businesses in the eastern half of the United States by 2024, but it would require up to $90 billion in investment, according to a government report released on Wednesday.

[Reuters] U.S. says wind could power 20 percent of eastern grid

Newsbox

Keith Johnson's Wall Street Journal blog Environmental Capital is retiring.

Work for the two new AP-1000s at Turkey Point has been suspended, as private utility Florida Power & Light has been barred from raising prices by state regulators. (This has nothing to do with the nuclear-earmarked rate hike, which is separate and still permitted.) Other projects, including a new natural gas pipeline and upgrades to power transmission (adding up to $10 billion in investments), are likewise frozen. This obstruction of infrastructure expansion incongruously comes in a time of trillion dollar "economic stimulus" spending, and less than a week after Obama announcted $2.3 billion in clean energy tax credits.

In Washington, White House OMB chairman Peter Orszag has killed funding for fast reactor research in the DoE's national lab system (yes, again). Steven Chu protested it, for what it's worth.

In Germany, cautious optimism that Merkel's new coalition with the FDP may scrap the nuclear-power ban altogether. Nevertheless this would be accomplished only with the political "compromise" of stealing all nuclear power revenue, re-appropriating it to wind companies:

Merkel's team says nuclear only has a future if the utilities agree to put the major part of the extra revenues from the longer running times into a fund aimed at boosting renewable energy sources and nuclear safety research.

The absurdities over Vermont Yankee are snowballing. Last week was the scandalous revelation that almost 600 Bq/L tritiated water -- an incredibly benign concentration -- accumulated in a ground well. Now over 100 loopy hippies marched to the state capitol banging drums. Populist state lawmakers are threatening to shut the power plant, which is approaching its license renewal. Yesterday six US congressmen (led by Ed Markey, of course) requested an NRC investigation.

In wind news: Gordon Brown wants Britain to pay $160 billion for 32 GWe of offshore wind capacity ($5/W nameplate, maybe $12/W average output). Intermittent, unreliable, easily triple the cost of equivalent (conventional) nuclear power, and locking the island nation into its natural gas dependance for decades.

parts per liter (ppl)

Another day, another absurdity.

[Slashdot] Another Crumbling Reactor Springs a Tritium Leak

I had tritium leaks last week in Olympic Swimming Pools -- although that article was back from December. I have nothing more to say, except that where the "Rutland Herald" invents the unit "parts per liter", they actually meant pico-Curies per liter. I hope that makes things comprehensible.

Solar lobby's latest propaganda: ending fossil-fuel subsidies would cause "solar boom"

[Treehugger] Solar Industry Says End Fossil Fuel Subsidies And Expect A Solar Boom

A report by the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA) found that power from the sun could generate 15 percent of America's power in the next decade, but only if Washington levels the playing field on subsidies. The fossil fuel industry, led by oil and coal, received $72 billion in total federal subsidies from 2002 to 2008, but earlier this year President Obama called for those subsidies to end. [...] But during that same 7-year period, the solar industry got less than $1 billion, says SEIA. Putting the subsidies even with those for fossil fuels would create jobs and dramatically cut the country's global warming causing emissions.

This from the solar industry lobby SEIA, shameless shills who among other things are promoting an disgustingly-named "Solar Bill of Rights", demanding such "rights" to the solar industry as free access to public lands (#5), and free electric transmission (#3) (that is, the right of solar owners to force utilities to buy their electricity at retail rates, rather than much lower utility rates paid to ordinary power plants -- forcing them to transmit electricity at loss), and the "right" of the solar industry to "require" utilities to sell solar power (#7), and of course the "right" to massive government subsidies (#4), hypocritically named "right to a fair competitive environment".

It's that last perversion of rights which is what this latest PR release is about. The solar industry PR wizards are trying to sell an absurdity - that fossil fuels only exists because they are heavily subsidized, the playing field is tilted in their favor, and solar power would actually flourish and thrive if only those subsidies were removed. It's about fairness! Naturally this 'worldview', no matter how blatantly it challenges reality, is something many people will simply accept, because it is a convenient and comforting narrative. Fossil companies are evil; solar companies are plucky underdogs. Fossil subsidies are a perfect scapegoat for solar's failure: it's a simple explanation which simultaneously vindicates solar (they'd win, if only the playing field was fair), demonizes oil companies (thieves!), and the policymakers, err, oil-military-industrial complex (polluters!). The cynical solar shills know very well how to manipulate public opinion.

First, they try to paint $72 billion in fossil subsidies 2002-2008 as a large sum, with their intented implication that the fossil industry is dependent on these incentives for survival, or at least significant competitive advantage. Simply removing these subsidies would cause a "solar boom", so they must be very important subsidies. Obviously what they've willfully omitted is the scale of the fossil industry for comparison. At typically 20 million barrels oil/day and maybe $60/barrel averaged over the time period (7 years), US revenue for oil alone would be on the order of $3 trillion. Fossil subsidies, in proportion, were less than 2% of the fossil revenues. It is, I suggest, obvious nonsense that fossil fuels only hang on by a razor-thin 2% competitive margin.

And this isn't even the full picture - to begin to talk about "level playing fields", we must look at special incentives in both directions, subsidies and taxes. Oil may get 2% in special subsidies but they pay 20% in special taxes - 45.6 c/kWh average gas tax in the US. Order of $350 billion over the same time period for gasoline alone. The net incentives are tilted against fossil fuels! And in Europe, the oil taxes are far higher - over 100% even - and despite this oil dominates transport fuel.

But if they only stopped the 2% fossil fuel subsidies, everything would change!

Now for the hypocrisy -- the single grubbiest subsidy-sucker in the world is solar power, by enormous margins. Start with their whiny sob-story...

But during that same 7-year period, the solar industry got less than $1 billion, says SEIA.

Boo-hoo! During that 7-year period the solar industry only generated 4.2 TWhe, worth barely $350 million at the average retail rate of 8.32 c/kWh. Their subsidies were bigger than their honest revenue!

And this is just scratching the surface - the USA measures very low in solar support levels (hence solar adoption rates, naturally). Let's look around:

Spain's direct subsidies to solar power are 575%, legally guaranteed for 25 years. Attempts to reduce the subsidies caused the market to instantly collapse, which shows what the solar market really runs on.

Germany's subsidies are 47 c€/kWh (about 68 c/kWh currently). At current utility prices (what power plants get, not what homeowners pay) of 47 €/MWh (4.7 c€/kWh), this is a 1,000% subsidy. (Retail prices are far higher - almost 20 c€/kWh - but this is not the selling price for power plants; much of it goes towards grid distribution or taxes.)

In case it wasn't obvious, these two countries and their astronomical subsidies represent the vast majority of worldwide solar "demand".

But the crown goes to, of all places, Ontario. Partly because of the even-higher cost of solar power in Canada, and partly because of their exceptionally cheap electricity (52% nuclear, of course, as well as 22% hydropower and 18% coal, also very cheap). With such extraordinarily cheap and clean electricity, and so little sunlight, why, and how far would they support solar panels? Quite far. Their solar subsidies are (Canadian cents) 44.3 c/kWh and 80.2 c/kWh respectively, for commercial and residential installations (about the same in US cents). The market price of electricity there is 4.06 c/kWh - that's what ordinary (non-sanctified) power plants get. So the solar feed-in subsidies, for commercial and rooftop respectively, are a slightly-generous 1,091% and 1,975%.

And the shills dare talk about level playing fields.

By the way, these kinds of numbers never seem to end up in mainstream news. Take the top-ranked NYT article on the subject, which euphemizes the subsidies as "Europe’s Way of Encouraging Solar Power". Absolutely no mention of the actual costs involved, or how they compare. It is a whitewash. Here's how they dishonestly spin the costs:

But requiring utilities to pay extra for green power has a direct impact on ratepayers. Homeowners’ electricity bills will rise 74 cents a month in Gainesville, or about half a percentage point of the average homeowner’s monthly bill.

“Seventy cents — what’s that? A Coke?” said Mr. Regan, of the Gainesville utility.

That is the cost increase to every ratepayer to subsidize the extremely tiny minority with solar panels. See how dishonest it is? Here are the suppressed numbers: the Gainesville subsidy is 32 c/kWh, which is 280% of the average retail rate in Florida.

Argh!

Olympic swimming pools

I'm baffled that writers for major newspapers can't deal with simple numbers.

From today's New York Times article on EPA ozone limits, this absolute howler:

The EPA proposal presents a range for the allowable concentration of ground-level ozone, the main ingredient in smog, from 60 parts per billion to 70 parts per billion. That's equivalent to 60 to 70 tennis balls in an Olympic-sized swimming pool full of a billion tennis balls. EPA will select a specific figure within that range later this year.

[NYT] E.P.A. Announces Strict New Health Standards for Smog

What on earth do they think that analogy adds?

What's worse, it's not even right -- their visualization is off by two orders of magnitude. Consider: a standard tennis ball is 65.41-68.58 millimeters in diameter, so (at the midpoint) ~0.157 liters volume. A random sphere packing is about 36% empty space, so the exclusive volume is ~0.246 liters per ball -- 4 balls per liter. An olympic swimming pool fills 2,500 m^3, so it could fit only 10 million (10^7) tennis balls - not 10^9.

Why do they pretend to quantify things if they don't bother to get the quantities correct? Do these journalism graduates think numbers are just for decoration?

In an a parallel story, the Toronto Star recently mangled the same "analogy", in the opposite direction:

Workers at the Darlington nuclear station filled the wrong tank with a cocktail of water and a radioactive isotope Monday, spilling more than 200,000 litres into Lake Ontario. [...] The spilled water – enough to fill more than two Olympic-sized swimming pools – came from an underground tank that is used for backup cooling in the event of an emergency.

[Toronto Star] Nuclear plant spills tritium into lake

Off by a factor of about 25. Two Olympic pools would be 5 million L.

This article happens to be another one of the absurd anti-nuke scare stories. They are writing about an accidental radioisotope release (tritiated water); the concentration being astronomically dilute, so naturally they highlight the total volume instead (olympic pools of nuclear waste... err, 1/10th of a pool). I want to shine a bit of light on another of the scare statistics:

The spill comes a month after the Sierra Club of Canada released a report warning that "routine and accidental releases of tritium" are rising and that accumulation in the environment is a growing health concern. It criticized Canada for allowing tritium levels in drinking water that are 70 times higher than in the European Union and 473 times higher than in California.

The framing of the issue is obvious, as is the intention behind it: Canada is obscenely backwards in environmental pollution, their nuclear industry having gotten carte blanche to pollute. This factoid is supposed to be outrageous, and indeed the article's commentators are outraged by it.

First: the numbers are blatantly cherry-picked. Look at the statistics on the CNSC factsheet. Switzerland, Finland, Australia all have higher tritium water limits. Australia's are ten times higher than Canada's, almost 4 orders of magnitude higher than California's levels. Canada's limits are lower than the WHO recommended limits. They (and it must be clarified, these limits are never even approached) are designed so that someone drinking nothing but water at maximum tritium level would receive 1 mSv (100 mrem) per year - considerably less than the background radiation dose .

[Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission] Tritium in drinking water

Second: the statistic isn't even true, as the cherry-picked California figure (14.8 Bq/L) is not a real regulatory limit like the other numbers. It is a nonregulatory "public health goal". (The real limit is 740 Bq/L, same as the rest of the US, and 1/10th the Canadian limit). Interestingly, Canada's nuclear-contaminated drinking water always stays below California's (obscenely low) tritium "goal".

And there's one calculation I just have to do, because California's environmental regulations are ludicrous and this is no exception. Their state EPA recommends a "public health goal" of 14.8 Bq/L tritium in water. The committed effective dose equivalent (CEDE) of tritium ingestion is 64 mrem/mCi, or 17 pSv per Bq (this agrees with the calculations on the CNSC page). So at 2 L/day water consumption, 14.8 Bq/L tritium content, this is 184 nSv (18 μrem) per year, for their "public health goal". The CEDE of eating a banana is 10 μrem. If California treated nuclear power and bananas objectively, by the same standards, they would propose a "public health goal" suggesting residents eat no more than 2 bananas per year.