One New Nuclear Power Plant – Oh Wow!

Posted on Wed 02/17/2010 by

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Yesterday, President Obama announced funding loans for the construction of a new Nuclear Power Plant in Georgia. This will be the first Nuclear Power Plant built in almost thirty years. One report of this story is at this link.

The new plant will cost in the vicinity of $8 Billion. The major concentration was on the jobs that it will provide, both in the construction phase and also in the 50 to 75 years that the plant will be in operation.

Almost immediately, the anti nukes have started to crawl out from wherever it is that they reside, and have said the same old things that they always have said.

Some of those things are that the money would be much better spent on renewable power plants, that a dollar spent on renewables is ten times better than spending it on Nuclear power.

They also trucked out the old standby referring to the ‘melt down’ at Three Mile Island.

Needless to say, the incident at Three Mile Island was not a melt down, and in fact the only things that did melt were some of the control rods at the top of the reactor. It was in fact an overheat situation that caused the release of steam from the plant. There were no adverse effects to human life, animal life, or even plant life, and after decades of monitoring, no effects have ever been perceived at all. The radioactivity in the steam that was released was in the amount of what would normally be experienced in a simple chest X Ray for those in the actual vicinity. For the people living in the immediate vicinity in Harrisburg PA, that radiation dose was less than 1% of what an average U.S. citizen might receive in background radiation in normal everyday life. That’s not living beside a Nuclear reactor, but for every U.S. citizen, no matter where they live. For confirmation of this, don’t just believe me. This link details the cause and the effects of that incident.

However, what I specifically want to address is a dollar for dollar comparison, considering those renewable power fans always quote this old standby as well, so what I will do here is to actually compare this nuclear plant with renewable plants, all three types most currently in favour.

This $8 Billion might sound like a huge amount of money for just one plant, but when the math is worked out, it becomes plainly obvious that a Nuclear plant is not only value for money, but in fact is so superior to renewable power as to not even bear comparison.

This amount of money will see the construction of one large plant. It will have two reactors. Each reactor will drive a huge multi stage turbine which in turn will drive one large generator. So, two reactors and two large generators.

The Nameplate Capacity will be in the vicinity of 2,200MW of power.

The actual power delivered to the grid for consumption can easily be calculated with a simple formula, and I will use this same formula for all calculations for all the plants discussed here. That formula is as follows:

NP X 24 X 365.25 X 1000 X ER. NP is NamePlate Capacity. 24 hours in a day. 365.25 days in a year. 1000 to convert MW down to KWH. ER is the efficiency rate of power delivered vs nameplate capacity.

For this Nuclear Plant, that efficiency rate is the highest of all, and is currently around 92.5%, and that’s a conservative value, because some plants operate close to and even over 100% when that power is extrapolated out over the whole year, depending mainly on down time for refueling, the replacement of the fuel rods.

So this Nuclear Plant will actually deliver to the grid, 2200 X 24 X 365.25 X 1000 X 0.925.

This comes to 18 Billion KiloWattHours. (KWH) This is actual power delivered to consumers over one whole year.

WIND POWER

Let’s do the math for wind power then, and for this we can use as an example Cape Wind, where there will be 140 huge towers each topped with a 3MW nacelle. This plant will cost $1.1 Billion.

So for $8 Billion, we will get 1,020 Towers each topped with a 3MW nacelle giving us a Nameplate Capacity of 3060MW, which when looking at it in isolation, is half as many MW again as the large Nuclear Plant. However, they deliver power only on a sporadic basis, and from US Government data for the already installed 36,000MW of installed wind capacity, and also for the German 26,000MW of installed capacity, they are only delivering their power at a 20% efficiency rate. See this link and this link. Each of those links has further links as well, each with more information.

So, using the same formula as above for this Wind  plant, the actual power delivered to the grid comes to only 5.3 Billion KWH, not even 30% of the power from the Nuclear Plant on the same 12 month basis.

Here, it also needs to be taken into account the fact that Wind plant towers have a life expectancy of 25 years, while the Nuclear Plant can feasibly have a lifespan of 75 years, so in fact, that delivery of power becomes manifestly less, in fact more like only 10% of the power, hence the one Nuclear plant can deliver ten times the power to consumers.

SOLAR PHOTOVOLTAIC – Solar Panels

For the comparison here, we need to go to Florida, where the President opened the new plant there, detailed at this link.

This plant produces 25MW Nameplate Capacity and cost $150 Million.

So, for the $8 Billion, we will get 53 plants the same as this.

This gives us a Nameplate Capacity of 1325MW, not bad, almost 60% the size of the Nuclear Plant.

However, these plants can only deliver power at the rate of 12.5% when compared to that Nameplate Capacity. The plant in Florida is quoted at nearly 19%, but that takes into account the location, being in Florida, and having access to reasonably good sunlight for most of the year, while the US average, also the same as for other areas on the Planet that have these plants is closer to 12.5%.

So, same formula. These solar plants  can deliver to the grid 1.45 Billion KWH, barely 8% of what can be delivered by the one Nuclear Plant. These plants also have a life span of barely 25 years, so the nuclear plant will deliver 38 times as much power over its life than for the same $8 Billion spent on Solar PV.

CONCENTRATING SOLAR – Solar Thermal.

For comparison here, we go to Gila Bend, near Phoenix in Arizona, and the Abengoa Solana Plant. This plant will cost $1.2 Billion and will produce 150MW of power. Having said that, it needs to be realised here that even though the advertising campaign says this plant can produce its power on a 24 hour basis, that statement is indeed true. However, how it actually does that is with the backup of a natural gas fired turbine driving the generator when the solar component is not doing this. In a simplified manner, the mirrors focus the light onto pipes carrying a compound. This compound then becomes molten and this then is used to boil water to steam to drive a conventional steam turbine which drives the generator. The Molten compound can drive this unit for up to 12 hours, before the molten compound loses its ability to boil water to the required amount of steam, and for the remainder of the time, the natural gas fired turbine then takes over and drives the generator.

So, even though the bold headlines state renewable, concentrating solar plants like this will still be emitting CO2, from the burning of natural gas. This effectively means that this one plant in Arizona will still be emitting 1,200 tons of CO2 each and every day of operation. For further details on this, go to this link.

So, in this case for Concentrating Solar power, for the same $8 Billion, we will get 1000MW of Nameplate Capacity, from what amounts to 6.7 of these plants. The efficiency rate of power delivery approaches 80% at best, considering that now it has two driving methods, one of which still emits CO2.

So, same formula, we now see delivered to the grid power amounting to 7 Billion KWH, still only 38% of the power from the one Nuclear Plant. These plants also only have a life expectancy of 25 years, so the Nuclear plant will deliver nearly 8 times the power than for these Concentrating Solar Plants. Again keep in mind that this plant still emits CO2, so while the Nuclear plant emits none, this so called new renewable plant will have emitted 74 Million tons of CO2, or an amount of nearly 3 Million tons of CO2 each year.

Now, just look at the figures in Bold on this page.

By far the greatest point in favour of the Nuclear plant, even if that total power delivered is not enough, is the fact that the Nuclear Plant delivers its power over the full 24 hour cycle. The Wind plants at their 20% efficiency rate are only delivering that power for around 5 hours out of every 24 on average. The Solar PV plant delivers its power for around three to four hours a day. The Concentrating Solar Plant while it may deliver its power for the full 24 hours a day has to be offset against the fact that it is emitting large amounts of CO2 to actually achieve that.

You tell me which form of power generation offers the best value for every dollar spent.

Nuclear power is far and away the best of all of these four methods of power generation. However, one plant is just a beginning. What is really needed is a concerted effort to start construction of these plants on a more widespread basis. If the Government is throwing literally hundreds of Billions of dollars in subsidies at renewable plant, what I have indicated above is a startling example of how those dollars could be spent in a much better way by building new generation Nuclear power plants. Let’s hope that someone actually comes to their senses, and actually bites the bullet to start more of these plants. That can only happen if someone somewhere gets serious, and actually takes notice of the facts, and not the dreams of misinformed environmentalists.

THERE JUST IS NO CONTEST

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