"A massive energy-efficiency campaign"? Well, who can argue with that?
It's so vague that one has no idea what Cavanagh is talking about, so it's impossible to argue whether it would create more jobs or not. I'm pretty sure, however, that whatever jobs it would create would not be as good as jobs at a nuclear plant.
Isn't it hypocritical that California amended its Constitution to prevent the building of any more nuclear power plants, yet they import electricity generated by nuclear power plants?
Hey, just wanted to say I'm pleased that Atomic Insights picked up my story! I'm especially pleased that you feel I presented the issue fairly. Rod, good on you for mentioning the number of people employed at Diablo Canyon in your post. Well done.
One of the problems I had with the article is that the Janis quotes a price of power at 8 to 11 cents a KWhr. But that's WAY about the NEI estimate of average price to produce power at 1.7 cents a KWh. Even when calculating in the cost of construction...and Rod has done these numbers before, the price doesn't come out nearly so high for overall production costs of power. I'd even argue that wind is rated to high in the article.
David
Smile. That's why I said, "Energy cost estimates and the way to calculate them vary widely." I did quote Hutson as saying his group can produce energy at the proposed Fresno nuclear plant for two cents a KWh. When you say wind was rated too high, do you mean the estimated cost per KWh was too high?
David:
In fairness to Janis, she accurately quoted the results of the Keystone Center study titled Nuclear Power Joint Fact Finding. You can find the figure of 8-11 cents per kilowatt-hour delivered to the grid in the executive summary on page 11.
That study was done with inputs from a very diverse group. The list of people who provided "contributions" to the Joint Fact Finding ranged from Michael J. Wallace (Constellation Energy Generation Group) to Arjun Makhijani (Institute for Energy and Environmental Research). Any true nuclear energy geek would instantly recognize both names and realize just how wide a spectrum those two represent.
It would be well beyond normal journalistic practice to expect a reporter to dig deeply into the assumptions behind the study conclusions. It would also take a focused approach to realize that participants in a study do not necessarily all agree with the final conclusions presented in the executive summary.
I have read the report and dug through the assumptions. The assumptions are "reasonable" and may accurately reflect the cost of electricity from future plants. (Economics discussion starts on page 29.)
Then again, a reasonable person could make different assumptions about interest rates, initial capital costs, fuel costs, labor rates, number of required operators, licensing costs, taxes, water usage fees, etc. and come up with numbers that are either above or below the stated range.
Predicting the future is really hard, but it makes for wonderful cocktail conversation because no one can prove the other wrong.
The production costs that you mention are historical accounting numbers that accurately reflect reality today. That is quite different from predicting future costs.
Back to one of my favorite sayings - one way to predict the future is to invent it. I predict that the cost of producing electricity from well built and operated atomic fission power plants will be well below the production cost from any other machine available to perform the same work.
Of course, AAE (Adams Atomic Engines, Inc.) does not intend to establish its sales price much below that of the next available producer.
Yes, Janis is correct as is Rod. It's good to delve into this more. BTW... most wind costs, such as FPL's reporting on this, is about 20% lower than reported in the article. At any rate, the problem is "cost of production" which should be low for all forms of energy except gas and overall costs when you roll everything in, including payoff capital costs.
It's the old tension between capital costs and fuel costs. With solar and wind there are not fuel costs, only operating and maintenance costs (and the jury is still out on those). With Gas, Nuclear an Coal, gas is costliest and nuclear cheapest with coal prices starting to shoot through the roof. Capital costs for nuclear are high, but 'clean coal' plants (no one has ever built one) are expected to approach nuclear.
At the bottom line is the cost to consumers. I pay about 13 cents a KWhr in California (as does Janis)..actually it's 11 cents for the first 200 KWhrs and 14 cents thereafter.
Nuclear in the US comes in under that, well under that, and thus the advantage then is that it's 24/7 reliable, where as wind isn't and solar is 'good' for only about 6 hours a day.
David
Hi, David, my fellow Californian! Can you talk a little more about these clean coal plants? The gentleman from NRDC was enthusiastic about them when I interviewed him.
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