An ENERGY Comparison Between Nuclear Plants Now Under Construction, and World Solar PV Production.

Marc Marc Chagall (1887-1985).

Golgatha (1912)

At the Museum of Modern Art, New York

(Cross Posted at Daily Kos: I apologize for editor "cut and paste" errors made here and there.)

One of the pleasures of the new Department of Energy under Steven Chu and the DOE of past years is clarity.

Until recently, if one wanted to find out from the Department of Energy website what portion of so called "renewable" energy actually came from solar PV, wind, biofuels, blah, blah, blah, one couldn't do it. With the exception of dangerous and deadly hydropower, the figures of so called "renewables" were all lumped together.

Not much it turns out.

Note that the units I will use here are units of energy and not in peak power. Energy is obtained integration power with respect to time, including time that the power output is, um, zero. On the other hand, average continuous power can be obtained by recording the total energy output over a period of time and the number of seconds in that period.

For instance, I once showed using on line data that anyone with a computer can call up and use, that the "51 kw" solar PV system had an actual average continuous power output of a 5 kw dangerous natural gas plant operated at 100% capacity, the difference between a putative gas plant and the solar PV plant being that the gas plant, at least, would be reliable and predictable, and also the difference between sales talk and reality.

Now for the numbers.

In 2007, the last year for which full summed solar PV energy data is available, the entire planet produced 0.050 quads of energy. A "quad" is a quadrillion BTU's, and multiplied by 1.055 to give exajoules. Thus PV solar power produced, in 2007, 0.052 exajoules of the approximately 500 exajoules of energy now used by humanity. The average continuous power of solar PV energy on the entire planet was thus the equivalent of 1658 MWe of a continously operated power plant of any type.

For comparison, the awful AES dangerous natural gas power plant, which routinely dumps all of its wastes in Earth's atmosphere - and past which one can bicycle in 5 minutes (I've done this) - produces 1300 MWe.

However, since the solar plants did not operate continuously, they were inherently dependent on spinning reserve, which on this planet consists almost entirely of dangerous natural gas and dangerous hydroelectric power.

(Although people in general couldn't care less, the greatest energy disaster of all time, which killed hundreds of thousands of people in a matter of days, was a serial hydroelectric dam failure at Banqiao, something that was very nearly repeated in the United States and which I covered in a diary called: A Tale of Two Centimeters: The Near Collapse of the Colorado River Dam System in 1983.
Predictably lots of people wrote in to say that detectable uranium has been in Lake Mead for several decades and thus everyone in Los Angeles will die. There is also detectable uranium in the ocean having resulted from the nuclear disaster that occurred roughly 5.0 billion years ago, causing a star to explode.)

But we were talking about the "solar miracle."

The provisional figures for 2008 show that solar PV energy (again combined with tidal) produced 0.088 exajoules of energy.
This is the equivalent of any kind of plant capacity, running at 100% of about 2800 MWe.

Spain produced, in 2008, 2.37 billion kilowatt-hours of solar PV electricity in 2008, which translates in terms of average continuous power to a reliable plant capable of running at 100% of capacity utilization - and not requiring spinning reserve and the effective costs of redundant infrastructure - of 270 MWe. Spain is phasing out its "screw the poor and subsidize the rich at the expense of the poor" solar subsidy, which has burned more than 5 billion euros (over 6 billion dollars as of today's exchange rate). That is not the cost, just the government subsidy. In addition Spanish banks loaned the solar industry 40 billion Euros, or more than 50 billion dollars. The link shows that as of today the cost of solar electricity in Spain, which may well be subject to desertification owning to climate change, is more than ten times higher than grid electricity - this after years of endless soothsaying about solar PV "grid parity" which has remained for 5 decades complete and total nonsense.

Thus a solar plant, again not even counting the dangerous fossil fuel back up, and the external costs of the dangerous fossil fuel waste dumping, dangerous fossil fuel accidents, dangerous fossil fuel mining and dangerous fossil fuel war, nor the cost of solar PV waste - more or less equivalent to ordinary electronic waste - that was the equivalent of the 1000 MWe Trillo Nuclear Power plant - just one of the eight operating Spanish nuclear plants - which first provided power to the Spanish Grid in 1988, would cost roughly (combining the loan figures and subsidies) 240 billion dollars. The Spanish GDP is about $1.6 trillion dollars, meaning that just one solar plant to match - again not counting the cost of back up - would consume about 15% of the total value of the Spanish economy.

Of course replacing all of Spain's nuclear electricity with waste generating solar PV garbage would require the entire annual output of the Spanish economy, all the money they spend on food, water, clothing, education, medical care and all of the other stuff about which trust fund kids couldn't care less.

(Typically anti-nukes express NO interest in phasing out dangerous fossil fuels for electrical generation, as France has done, more or less. That would consist, of course, of biting the hand that feeds you.)
(Spain is damned lucky that there are transmission lines over the Pyrenees.)

No wonder they shit canned the subsidy. They couldn't afford it. No one can, save maybe highly paid asshole dangerous fossil fuel sales people living in Aspen far above the seething impoverished masses on this planet.

(Germany is also phasing out its solar subsidy, which has been even more of a waste than the Spanish solar subsidies, given that Germany is not yet well on its way to desertification.)

It can be shown on the planet as a whole, that the capacity utilization of nuclear power is 77%, which makes it the most reliable form of energy capacity on the entire planet, more reliable than any of the dangerous fossil fuels, all of which are more reliable than any form of so called "renewable" energy. In the United States, which is still, despite the growth of ignorance here, the world's largest producer of nuclear energy, the capacity utilization is more like 89%.

No wonder they shit canned the subsidy. They couldn't afford it. No one can, save maybe highly paid asshole dangerous fossil fuel sales people living in Aspen far above the seething impoverished masses on this planet.

(Germany is also phasing out its solar subsidy, which has been even more of a waste than the Spanish solar subsidies, given that Germany is not yet well on its way to desertification.)

In fact, there are now, on this very planet, 57 nuclear reactors under construction and all the faith based dangerous fossil fuel funded "solar will save us" complacency generating trash talk will do nothing to prevent this happy fact. The power rating of these nuclear reactors now under construction is 53,781 MWe. This is electric power, not thermal power.

Assholes in Aspen have been writing for many years now that nuclear power is dead, but this is pure trash talk. (Ironically trash burning is still the world's largest, save hydroelectricity, form of so called "renewable energy" even though you couldn't possibly build a trash incinerator in Aspen - these things are only built in poor neighborhoods.)
In fact, there are now, on this very planet, 57 nuclear reactors under construction and all the faith based dangerous fossil fuel funded "solar will save us" complacency generating trash talk will not stop them from being built. The power rating of these nuclear reactors Note that the units I will use here are units of energy and not in peak power. Energy is obtained integration power with respect to time, including time that the power output is, um, zero. On the other hand, average continuous power can be obtained by recording the total energy output over a period of time and the number of seconds in that period.

The amount of electrical energy that this capacity will generate at 77% of capacity utilization - and I suspect that the actual capacity utilization for these new plants will be higher than that - is 1.38 exajoules of pure electricity.

This is more electricity than Spain produces from all sources, including the dangerous fossil fuel crap that dominates the Spanish electricity supply, more electricity than all of the power plants in the United Kingdom produce from all sources, including nuclear, dangerous fossil fuels and the so called "renewable" toys.

It can be shown by appeal to a very unpopular subject called "science" that one can in fact, recover some of the waste thermal power of nuclear reactors to produce things like fluid fuels, but it is not my intention to be boring, although probably not using the type of capacity that is now under construction. I have been studying this subject for a number of years and am currently more convinced of it than ever. (I probably shouldn't be wasting valuabe time here and should focus on my work.)

Now I don't know why you are a Democrat, assuming you are one, but I know why I am a Democrat. I am a Democrat because I actually spite, in spite of all the trash talk ignoring this point by assholes who live in Aspen, that the section one of 25th article of the International Declaration of Human Rights should be more honored in practice than in breach.

It reads:

•(1) Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.

This is the work of the person who I personally consider to be one of, if not the, greatest American of the 20th century, Eleanor Roosevelt.

Note that this article does not speak of the right to be an asshole in Aspen, but it does require a minimum standard of wealth for all humanity. Irrespective of distribution issues - about which I am personally not happy - wealth is about productivity, not faith based wishful thinking.

I recognize that the Daily Kos web site is an anti-nuclear site, and that nuclear scientists are not welcome here.

Even so, the contention that the Democratic Party is an anti-nuclear party is purely absurd. With the exception of Teller and Wheeler, almost all of the great nuclear scientists of the 20th century were Democrats and irrespective of this website's official stance, no Democrat need apologize for an interest in and knowledge of nuclear science.

Glenn Seaborg, Hans Bethe, Eugene Wigner, Alvin Weinberg, Robert Oppenheimer, Frank Oppenheimer, to name a few, were all famously politically liberal, and all were invested with a profound consideration for the state of humanity that was largely consistent with Mrs, Roosevelt’s views. (The three Nobel Laureates on this list were ALL active in, promoters of, and defenders of commercial nuclear power througout their careers.)

In fact, the only Democratic President or Democratic Presidential candidate to refuse to meet with Nobel Laureate Glenn Seaborg was, um, Michael Dukakis, and anyone who remembers that guy will recall what happened to him.

(Source: A Chemist In the White House.. Glenn Seaborg personally met every single elected President of the United States, from Truman to Clinton, and effectively held cabinet level rank in the Kennedy administration.)

The respect for nuclear science in the Democratic Party is still visible at the very highest levels of the Democratic Party.
Neither the President of the United States, who I continue to admire greatly even if I certainly disagree with him on some points about energy nor his Secretary of Energy, a Nobel Laureate in, um, nuclear physics, are anti-nukes.

Quoth the President of the United States speaking to the AFL-CIO executive committee just a few weeks ago:

Because of you, we’ve been able to get a lot done over the last 20 months. Together, we’re jumpstarting a new American clean energy industry -- an industry with the potential to generate perhaps millions of jobs building wind turbines and solar panels, and manufacturing the batteries for the cars of the future, building nuclear plants, developing clean coal technology. There are other countries that are fighting for those jobs, in China and India and in Germany and other parts of Europe. But the United States doesn’t play for second place. As long as I’m President, I’m going to keep fighting night and day to make sure that we win those jobs, that those are jobs that are created right here in the United States of America and that your members are put to work.

I obviously disagree with the concept of "clean coal" and I regard any money spent on solar and wind energy as a complete waste of precious resources, and so the President and I disagree on these points, but the point is also clear that the President is decidedly not an anti-nuke. No Mike Dukakis, he.

In announcing a blue ribbon commission on the back end of the nuclear fuel cycle, the Secretary of Energy said:

"Nuclear energy provides clean, safe, reliable power and has an important role to play as we build a low-carbon future. The Administration is committed to promoting nuclear power in the United States and developing a safe, long-term solution for the management of used nuclear fuel and nuclear waste. The work of the Blue Ribbon Commission will be invaluable to this process. I want to thank Congressman Hamilton and General Scowcroft for leading the Commission and I look forward to receiving their recommendations,"

DOE Announcement, January 29, 2010.

Note that the Secretary specifically used the words "used nuclear fuel," - Rod Adams' coinage - and not the malignant and grotesquely misinformed term "nuclear waste." If you have a faith based belief in the artificial concept of so called "nuclear waste," you are decidedly not as smart as the Secretary of Energy.

I am personally relieved that nuclear science has a place in the White House, just as it did in Glenn Seaborg's time. This gives our country something that I think it lacked: Hope.

Hatred of physical sciences based on a faith based lack of knowledge of these same sciences has always has had economic consequences. In the late 15th century and early sixteenth century, the intellectual and economic center of Europe was in Italy. The chilling effect on the persecution of Galileo - and part of this involved Galileo's habit of ridiculing those who were obviously not his equals - was critically involved in Italy's devolution into a cultural and intellectual backwater and the movement of the same centers to Northern and Western Europe.
The World Nuclear Association which is run by, um, nuclear scientists and engineers, maintains an outlook page which is informed by official government policies and announcements. Energy predictions are notably fuzzy and wrong. The Oracle at Snowmass's prediction in 1976 that the United States would be producing 18 quads of solar energy and be consuming just 54 quads of energy by 2000 was the equivalent of Pat Robertson's predictions of the imminent return of Jesus. He was off by four orders of magnitude on the solar soothsaying, not that this would disturb or embarrass anyone who knows as little science as he does.

Nevertheless, the World Nuclear Association predicts - again based on announced government policies - that the world nuclear fleet will have, as a low estimate, 602 nuclear reactors, and as a high estimate, 1350 reactors by 2030.

The estimate for the turn of the next century, should that actually arise, is between 2000 and 11,000 reactors.
World Nuclear Organization Outlook Pages.

Of course, predictably, someone will pipe in to say that these are the predictions of nuclear people, nuclear scientists and nuclear engineers and are therefore invalid. The same people of course, will predictably claim that the people least qualified to discuss medical prospects are doctors and that the least qualified people to discuss the future of aviation are pilots.
China's government recently announced plans to have 200 reactors by 2030, twice as many as the United States now has. Currently they have 24 reactors under construction, and poured first concrete on a new nuclear park in the last several months.

On August 1 - a few weeks ago - the Qinshan Phase II nuclear power plant was connected to the Chinese grid. Its capacity is 650 MWe, which is ironically roughly the average continuous power out put of all the wind turbines in the "Drill, Baby, Drill!" nation of Denmark, constructed over the last 28 years.

First concrete on the recently connected reactor was about six years ago.
I note, despite much mythology to the contrary, none of which is even remotely connected to something called "reality," that nuclear power remains exactly what it has been for more than five decades, the fastest growing scalable form of climate change gas free energy in the world.

Have a nice day.