I thought we'd raise the issue, again, of nuclear, gas, coal and carbon with regards to capacity factors. Capacity factors are basically the nameplate maximum power over a period of time that a given form of generation can perform under optimal conditions.

So, from http://www.eia.doe.gov/... the Energy Information Administration of the DOE we get the following for the year ending 2006:

Coal:                           335,830 MWs or 335 GWs.
Natural Gas:                442,945 MWs or 442 GWs
Nuclear:                      105,585 or 105 GWs
Renewables, excluding hydro but including wind, solar, swamp gas, etc: 26,470 MWs or 26 GWs.

From today's New York Times:

Marco Di Lauro for The New York Times

At a time when the world’s top climate experts agree that carbon emissions must be rapidly reduced to hold down global warming, Italy’s major electricity producer, Enel, is converting its massive power plant here from oil to coal, generally the dirtiest fuel on earth.

Italy’s Civitavecchia power plant is converting from oil to coal.
Over the next five years, Italy will increase its reliance on coal to 33 percent from 14 percent. Power generated by Enel from coal will rise to 50 percent.

And Italy is not alone in its return to coal. Driven by rising demand, record high oil and natural gas prices, concerns over energy security and an aversion to nuclear energy, European countries are expected to put into operation about 50 coal-fired plants over the next five years, plants that will be in use for the next five decades.

The Case for Expanding Pumped Hydroelectric Storage.

The title of this diary is the title of an article from a March 21, 2008 essay by Harry Valentine on Energy Central's "Generation Technologies" Industry Article page. I'm not a big fan of Energy Central. I think they engage in far too much speculative energy writing that is often more fantasy than physical. Valentine, in my not-so-humble opinion is probably the worst of these. His articles border on the sci-fi under titles like:

Transmitting Natural Lighting around the world

Downstream Thermal Energy from Natural Gas Pipelines

Tidal Mega-Power and Hydrogen Production in Northeastern Canada

Micro-hydroelectric Power from Fog Fences

More on why we need the Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor:
We discussed yesterday why the LFTR is a totally safe alternative not just for fossil fuels but also in relation to uranium-fueled Light-Water Pressurized Reactors. But let’s review:

1. The LFTR is incredibly stable against nuclear reactivity accidents—the type of accident experienced at Chernobyl.

2. Any increase in temperature results in a decrease in reactivity. Thus, as the liquid fuel temperature increases, reactivity decreases, thus reducing power and restoring the original condition.  This is analogous to a weight on a spring. It is intrinsically safe and stable because of this.

3. The LFTR is also totally safe against a cooling loss accident which is what happened at TMI.

4. It is not possible because the liquid fuel can drain safely into specially designed cisterns. Once removed from the moderator, all fission reactions immediately cease.

The following diary was a paper written by Uri Gat and H.L.Dodds for the Oak Ridge National Laboratory. It was posted last week on Nuclear Green, the well written and very active Nuclear Green blog that has propelled discussion on Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactors around the nuclear blogospheres for the last few months. Nuclear Green is one of several internet portals for information on Molten Salt Reactors s and LFTRs. The blog is run by Charles Barton.

Nuclear Green is one of several portals for information on the revival of discussions of Molten Salt Reactors and, specifically, the Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactors or LFTRs, a subset of the MSR.

From Reuters

Loss of wind causes Texas power grid emergency

HOUSTON (Reuters) - A drop in wind
generation late on Tuesday, coupled with colder weather, triggered an
electric emergency that caused the Texas grid operator to cut service
to some large customers, the grid agency said on Wednesday.

Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) said a decline in wind
energy production in west Texas occurred at the same time evening
electric demand was building as colder temperatures moved into the
state.

The grid operator went directly to the second stage of an emergency
plan at 6:41 PM CST (0041 GMT), ERCOT said in a statement.

System operators curtailed power to interruptible customers to shave
1,100 megawatts of demand within 10 minutes, ERCOT said. Interruptible
customers are generally large industrial customers who are paid to
reduce power use when emergencies occur.  

Various Rants on Energy Happenings.

I usually don't rant, but I feel like ranting, for the good, the bad and the ugly:

#The Chinese broke ground on their first ever Generation III Nuclear Power Plant. They expect the new Westinghouse (A JAPANESE COMPANY FOLKS!) AP1000 to come in around $2500/KW installed. It'll be the 1200 MWs model. Of course they have to build tons more to effectively slow down coal production...but this will be worth about 3 coal plants the WON'T build (the Chinese build smaller 400 MWs coal plants it seems, but scads of them).

The US has about 4 AP1000s in the planning stage. Of course it takes the NRC to go almost 3 ½ years to get through all the stupid paper work even AFTER they approved the design AND the site for the plants.

This diary is going to be an outline of US energy generation.

All energy activists...meaning all you opinionated folks here on the Dailykos who think you know something about energy production and consumption and who want to follow up on this by actual political activity: listen up.

The US Department of Energy has issued their reports on electrical generation for the year 2006 after totaling up all the information from utilities, generators, operators and other sources. The issue this report every October. Additionally, they issue tons of other reports you all ought to read. We'll examine some of them here. One of these reports is once called Cost and Performance Characteristics of the New Central Station Electricity Generating Technologies. That's a mouthful. It ought to be. It's the DOE's projection of "Overnight costs" by on dollars-per-Kilowatt installed. Some FASCINATING numbers. This is a report that projects out into the future and is supposed to be a guide for how much it would cost to build a new nuke, wind, solar thermal, hydro or hamster powered electrical generating station.

China: 700 million kW capacity and rising
17 January 2008

China increased its total installed electricity generating capacity by 14.36% in 2007, with similar growth in generation and consumption. Meanwhile preparations are continuing for construction to start in earnest at a new nuclear site in eastern China.

According to statistics released this week, the country's generating capacity grew by over 100 million kW in 2007 to 713.3 million kW. Although the 3.3 trillion kWh generated for the year was up 14.44% on 2006, consumption also increased by a similar percentage to 3.3 trillion kWh. As generation has been sufficient to meet consumption, the country has been able to close a 'large number' of small thermal power plants, according to a China Daily report. China is the world's second largest emitter of energy-related carbon dioxide.

Germany should introduce nuclear tax to fuel competition: Greens

Cologne (Platts)--9Jan2008

Germany should introduce a tax of 2 euro cent/kWh on fuel rods for
nuclear power generation to re-establish the balance between different
generation sources, according to a Green party proposal published by
Suddeutsche Zeitung.

Citing a paper from the opposition party's energy expert Michael Schafer,
the newspaper said the suggested tax would create annual income of Eur 2
billion, increase costs for nuclear generation and with that possibly enforce competition.

The suggestion is based on the trade with emission rights: emitting units
receive a certain, limited, amount of emission allowances for free, which in
effect caps the time they are allowed to generate electricity at competitive prices. When their free rights run out, the operators have to buy rights on the market.

From the Nuclear Energy Institute blog:  

"One of the topics NEI pays close attention to, of course, is the role EIA sees nuclear power playing over the next several decades. According to the report, by 2030, 20 GW of new nuclear capacity are projected to be built as well as 2.7 GW in uprates and 4.5 GW in retirements. Total nuclear capacity in 2030 is projected to increase to 118.8 GW from today's 100.3 GW. This year's nuclear projection is a step up from last year's report which forecasted nuclear will only increase to 112.6 GW by 2030."

Democrats shoot themselves in the head on Indian Point Nuclear Power Plant!

We at Left-Atomics only hope that this idiocy ends at some point, before it's too late. Well, at any rate, more applications for new nuclear plants are being filed with the NRC, and thats a good thing...even if it's not enough to really effect pollution, particulate, CO2, etc. We need a real plan for hundreds of new NPPs. More, along with my promised diary on nuclear 'waste' later...

Well, something non-nuclear/energy related, at least directly. A break from those polemics is called for.

We were treated yesterday to good ol' cold-war liberalism by Roger Cohen, columnist for the venerable liberal, US paper-of-record, the New York Times.

Due to copyright restrictions I cannot repost the entire column, but I will respond to some of his nonsense.

The democratic vote on the Constitutional Reform is tomorrow, December 2nd. Now, to the meat of the issue at hand:

Round up on Nuclear vs Coal and the state of the industry

Rod Adams over at Atomic Insightsposted a link to a story from two days ago on CNBC, the US's most popular financial cable network. The article gives a brief, surface-like, and very neutral overview of the state of the industry, focusing on gas, nuclear and coal and their near term to long term development.

I want to examine parts of this article and comment on it:

The energy blogs have been seeing a lot of discussion about the leading French anti-nuclear group Sortir du Nucleaire which  thinks that France could easily phase out all nuclear power in 5 to 10 years. OK, not so easily... Still, this is the first honest report of an actual non-nuclear future and some of it’s consequences.

The full report should be read by everyone who is interested the planet’s energy future, and the different visions of it.

The World Nuclear News web site stated this in response:

This is a GUEST editorial from my friend, Rod Adams, from Atomic Insights. I suspect...but don't know for sure but I suspect that Rod is a moderate Democrat in political inclination but probably votes, like most Americans, for any candidate he believes addresses his interests. Rod was an engineering officer on a nuclear submarine and is gifted in his understanding of the science behind atomic power.

But his whole life's focus is atomic energy and the politics, in part, behind the anti-nukers campaign. Here is his post from Atomic Insights that show how carbon interests (Gas/Oil/Coal) attack each other and are together on propping up the anti-nuclear movement. This article focuses on one gas oriented utility in Maryland.

David Walters

Smoking Gun Part 8 - (Gas industry firing at coal with Sierra Club assist)
Every once in a while I come across articles that directly support the notion that much of the energy source debate is really a marketing battle, though the stated topic might be "energy security", "environmental concerns", or "global warming".

This is a short diary on the issue of public power. When I worked on the 2001 San Francisco public power campaign (as part of the Labor Task Force for Public Power) we did a lot of research in state and out of state on how publicly owned utilities (as in "owned by public entities" not companies that issue stock owned by individual members of the public) we discovered something awesome: on average, public power entities provided power cheaper than regulated monopoly private utilities.

[From the point of view of Aussie nuclear vs wind discussion on Nuclear Australia. This applies, everywhere, however. It's why wind cannot be a substitute for base load power--David Walters]

Critics of nuclear energy sometimes point to Germany's planned nuclear
phase-out policy as an example of the industry's limited future. Let
us put aside the very credible discussions regarding the possibility
of that policy being reversed for a moment and turn the tables.

How are German renewables performing?

As reported in the Herald Sun, Terry McCrann digs into the performance
record of one of the largest wind powered systems in Europe.

Germany's E.ON Netz operates the grid which has one of the biggest
'feed-in' wind power sources in Europe. Each year it produces a
WindReport. The latest makes interesting, sober, reading.

Germany has 18,300MW (megawatts) of installed wind capacity --
close to half Australia's total installed electricity generation
capacity, about double Victoria's.

E.ON Netz draws on 7600MW of that.