Conservation vs. Nuclear
Paul Dietz
>Maybe, but the first dollars should be spent on conservation, e.g.
>replacing incandescent light bulbs with compact fluorescent. The
>current economics are such that conservation creates available
>kilowatt-hours faster and cheaper than nuclear power plants.
The problem with conservation is that it's hard to do by fiat. You
have to jawbone millions of people into changing their lifestyles or
making investments, or you have to raise prices enough to coerce them
into doing so.
I think we're going to see the impotence of conservation in the next
decade as severe electricity shortages hit parts of the country,
like the northeast. Electricity demand has been growing steadily,
at 2.5 to 3% per year, even through the "energy crisis". Excess
capacity is at 20%; around 18% excess is where the brownouts start.
Followup to sci.energy.
Paul F. Dietz
di...@cs.rochester.edu
Russ Nelson
In article <NELSON.90M...@image.clarkson.edu> nel...@clutx.clarkson.edu writes:
>Maybe, but the first dollars should be spent on conservation, e.g.
>replacing incandescent light bulbs with compact fluorescent. The
>current economics are such that conservation creates available
>kilowatt-hours faster and cheaper than nuclear power plants.
The problem with conservation is that it's hard to do by fiat. You
have to jawbone millions of people into changing their lifestyles or
making investments, or you have to raise prices enough to coerce them
into doing so.
If it makes sense to invest $10 billion to create 2 Gigawatts (to pick
numbers from the air), doesn't it make sense to invest $1 billion to
create 200 Megawatts, or $100 million to create 20 Megawatts, or $10
million to create 2 Megawatts? $10 million buys a heck of a lot of
refrigerators.
In other words, conservation should be treated as a way of creating
energy just as any power generation plants are treated.
I realize that you can't bang people over the head until they conserve,
but you *can* make certain changes that don't require much cooperation.
--
--russ (nelson@clutx [.bitnet | .clarkson.edu]) Russ.Nelson@$315.268.6667
Violence never solves problems, it just changes them into more subtle problems
tg...@cdp.uucp
/* Written 6:18 pm Mar 25, 1990 by harvey in cdp:en.energy */
/* ---------- "Conservation vs. Nuclear" ---------- */
Actually some types of "conservation by fiat" work quite well. Fiat
of Italy, for example, has a prototype 4 passengr car that gets some
95 miles per gallon.
A corporate auto fuel efficiency standard of say 45 mpg by the year 2000
would save more oil than the alaska pipeline could pump.
Standards on refrigerators can cut their electric consumption by half.
Building standards in California cut the energy consumption in
new buildings by 75 percent!
What's more, conservation (or efficiency) costs about one-seventh
as much as nuclear (see Keepin and Kats, Energy Policy), so a marginal
dollar spent on conservation prevents 7 times as much CO2 as that
dollar spent on nuclear.
Hal Harvey
jeffrey.n.jones
>In other words, conservation should be treated as a way of creating
>energy just as any power generation plants are treated.
>
In Washington state the cost of the whoops fiasco was 7 billion dollars
plus. For that money you could insulate a lot of houses, buy a lot of
refrigerators and hot water heater jackets. Help businesses buy more
energy efficient equipment and save more power then you would ever
generate from those 5 nuclear power plants. Why can't we spend our
monies on on a major conservation programs like this instead? Is saving
energy as good as generating it?
--
Jeff Jones | Prediction is very difficult, especially
UUCP uunet!seeker!jeffj | about the future.
Infolinc BBS 415-778-5929 | Niels Bohr
Nick Pine
>
>In Washington state the cost of the whoops fiasco was 7 billion dollars plus.
Some of which was mine (ouch.) Anybody want to buy some wallpaper?
>For that money you could insulate a lot of houses, buy a lot of
>refrigerators and hot water heater jackets.
All we energy-conserving people (are there still a few nuclear diehards
here?) know that this is a good thing, but do real-estate agents, appraisers
and buyers? How does one convince them that, say a solar hot water heater
that saves $300 in this year's dollars should add a present value to the house
(to the appraised price, or the price paid by the next rational purchaser) of
something like $300 (1+x+x^2+x^3+...)
where x = (1+the energy inflation rate)/(1+the interest rate)
An economist told me that he could argue that the energy inflation rate
should be between the ordinary inflation rate and the interest rate, but I
wonder what those numbers actually are, and what good they are...
--Nick Pine
Paul Dietz
>Actually some types of "conservation by fiat" work quite well. Fiat
>of Italy, for example, has a prototype 4 passengr car that gets some
>95 miles per gallon.
Since we were talking about conservation of *electrical* power,
this is irrelevant. Also, prototype != commercially viable.
>A corporate auto fuel efficiency standard of say 45 mpg by the year 2000
>would save more oil than the alaska pipeline could pump.
Again, we were talking about electrical power, not oil.
>Standards on refrigerators can cut their electric consumption by half.
But the cost per kilowatt-hour saved would be large unless the
refrigerators have to be replaced anyway.
>Building standards in California cut the energy consumption in
>new buildings by 75 percent!
The time scale is long. Since we were discussing possible brownouts
in the late nineties, I don't think this is relevant.
>What's more, conservation (or efficiency) costs about one-seventh
>as much as nuclear (see Keepin and Kats, Energy Policy), so a marginal
>dollar spent on conservation prevents 7 times as much CO2 as that
>dollar spent on nuclear.
We were not talking about CO2 reduction, but rather meeting demand
in the near term, and about the inequivalence of dispersed conservation
investments vs. more centralized supply investments. The former
are demonstrably harder to make -- there exist *today* economically
advantageous conservation options that consumers are ignoring.
For example, compact fluorescent bulbs -- our local supermarket
stopped carrying them because they sold so poorly. All things
being equal, it would make sense to use more efficient appliances,
but (as in the case of CFBs) all things often *aren't* equal, and
the consumer judges on the basis of some other attribute than
energy cost.
In general, I see demand for electricity as hard to control by fiat,
because there are so many things it is used for. The government can't
micromanage the efficiency of all electricity-using technologies.
Paul F. Dietz
di...@cs.rochester.edu
Paul Hager
Without quibbling over numbers, may I submit that the issue should
be Conservation AND Nuclear.
--
paul hager hag...@iuvax.cs.indiana.edu
*** Combat global warming -- build nuclear power plants ***
Russ Nelson
Without quibbling over numbers, may I submit that the issue should
be Conservation AND Nuclear.
No. We should spend marginal dollars in the most effective way we can.
If the numbers point conservation, do it. If the numbers point gas turbines,
do it. If the numbers point nuclear, do it.
Of course, setting aside money for R&D is always a good idea. But R&D is
not the same as production.
--
--russ (nelson@clutx [.bitnet | .clarkson.edu]) Russ.Nelson@$315.268.6667
Violence never solves problems, it just changes them into more subtle problems
Clarkson will be featured on PBS's Computer Chronicles next week. I'm the dude
with the camcorder taking digital portraits.
Paul Hager
It is axiomatic that there must be something to conserve. Something is
generating your base-load electricity. If your conservation strategy
EVER favors replacing a coal-fired plant with another coal-fired plant
instead of a nuclear one, then it is wrong.
John G. De Armond
>In article <40...@iuvax.cs.indiana.edu> hag...@iuvax.cs.indiana.edu (Paul Hager) writes:
> Without quibbling over numbers, may I submit that the issue should
> be Conservation AND Nuclear.
>No. We should spend marginal dollars in the most effective way we can.
>If the numbers point conservation, do it. If the numbers point gas turbines,
>do it. If the numbers point nuclear, do it.
This logic, while appealing on the surface, is fatally flawed. (Shades
of t.p.g?) Paul is correct -as far as he goes. For maximum reliability
at reasonable cost, it is critical to maintain a diversity of energy sources.
Putting one's eggs all in one basket, so to speak, is a sure recipie for
disaster. We all can, of course, cite the arab oil fiascos of the '70s
as examples.
Even though I am an extremely strong advocate of nuclear power, I could
not endorse a wholesale conversion to nuclear, especially under the
"standard plant" concept being promoted currently. The reason why is simple.
Such a system is exposed not only to cartel-style commercial extortion from
suppliers but is also exposed to systemic flaws and failure modes. We
saw an attempt of the former in the late '70s with the prosecution of the
Uranium Cartel by the federal government. An example of the latter was
the water chemistry-induced stress corrosion the nuclear industry faced
a few years ago. Though the stress corrosion problem turned out not
to be crippling, some other systemic flaw could cause a more or less
simultaneous shutdown of all stations using a given technology. As the
financial pressure increases to go with "standard plant" or type-accepted
plant designs, we increase our risk in this area.
While I agree that the risk in this area is low, one must consider such
events when making decisions that affect us 20 to 50 years down the road.
And in case you wonder, this is old news to utility capacity planners.
In short, a diversity of proven generating capacity is the proper approach.
When all is said and done, the utilities do a pretty good job of getting
us power at reasonable rates. The problems they've had, for the most
part (but of course, not always), have resulted from events no one could
have predicted. Who, for example, could have predicted back in the 60's
the rise of the antinuclear nazis and the financial havoc they'd wreck?
While discussions in this forum are constructive, problems arise when
the uninformed become advocates for "simple" solutions. Arbitrary moves to
a single "good" technology is no more rational than banning "bad"
technologies. As I've advised before, we have to rely on the experts in
these areas. And while one can always come up with a horror story in
order to justify meddling, one cannot deny the success of the utility
power system.
John
As
--
John De Armond, WD4OQC | We can no more blame our loss of freedom on congress-
Radiation Systems, Inc. | men than we can prostitution on pimps. Both simply
Atlanta, Ga | provide broker services for their customers.
emory!rsiatl!jgd | - Dr. W Williams | **I am the NRA**
Russ Nelson
nel...@sun.soe.clarkson.edu (Russ Nelson) writes:
>In article <40...@iuvax.cs.indiana.edu> hag...@iuvax.cs.indiana.edu (Paul Hager) writes:
> Without quibbling over numbers, may I submit that the issue should
> be Conservation AND Nuclear.
>No. We should spend marginal dollars in the most effective way we
>can. If the numbers point conservation, do it. If the numbers
>point gas turbines, do it. If the numbers point nuclear, do it.
This logic, while appealing on the surface, is fatally flawed.
(Shades of t.p.g?) Paul is correct--as far as he goes. For maximum
reliability at reasonable cost, it is critical to maintain a
diversity of energy sources.
Quite true. I didn't think of this. I *did* acknowledge that there might
be other issues, specifically R&D, in text that you deleted.