mantra wrote on Dec 5^th, 2010 at 8:50am:


Mantra`s response to Gizmo : "You are right Gizmo - the life expectancy is about 40 years, but I can't see how that makes so much difference to the argument. 25 years - 40 years - does it really matter in the scheme of things? They still have to be replaced after a relatively short period."

Mantra, by your pwn admission, your assessment was out by 75%, or 15 years, and you have the nerve to try to fob your error off as insignifficant?  

aussiefree2ride wrote on Dec 5^th, 2010 at 11:49am:



How many 50 year old reactors do we have globally?

How long does it take us to build and replace an existing reactor?

While we can hope that a reactor has a life span of 50 years (rare) - we have to start building another one 15-20 years before it expires.

So do we leave it until it expires (whenever) or do we wait until it's 25 years old and then spend billions building another one to be ready 20 years down the track?

Once we've finished building the replacement - we then have to decommission the original. Can we afford both the cost of continually building and decommissioning.

Where is the waste going to go?

Do we have a finite source of uranium?

Don't you think solar power would be a more economical option?

mantra wrote on Dec 5^th, 2010 at 12:05pm:




Stupid questions mantra, but that's no surprise.
All have already been answered to the ALP, and the ALP don't even bother to try and raise such ignorant questions anymore.

But the first was built in the 50s and that lasted about 50 years.
It is not even debatable that nuclear is cheaper than sola/wind and just as clean.

But you can keep head in the bucket of sand.

It doesn't cost much to build a nuclear reactor either
"According to Michael Kruse, consultant on nuclear systems for Arthur D. Little, the Chinese are ready to spend $511 billion to build up to 245 reactors. "
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-12-02/china-nuclear-boom-sees-reactor-builders-risk-know-how-for-cash.html

So that's about $2-3 billion per reactor.

Pretty cheap.

Miss Anne Dryst wrote on Dec 5^th, 2010 at 2:52pm:


solar and wind are getting cheaper and geothermal threatens to actually match coal's price. one of the oft-ignored problems is transmission infrastructure./ often R/E generation soruces ar not near existing transmission lines or they are inadequate. this need for additional transmission expense adds to the cost of R/E generation beyond the actual generator itself.

"    AECL’s $26 billion bid was based on the construction of two 1,200-megawatt Advanced Candu Reactors, working out to $10,800 per kilowatt of power capacity.

    By comparison, in 2007 the Ontario Power Authority had assumed for planning purposes a price of $2,900 per kilowatt, which works out to about $7 billion for the Darlington expansion. During Ontario Energy Board hearings last summer, the power authority indicated that anything higher than $3,600 per kilowatt would be uneconomical compared to alternatives, primarily natural gas.

    Much of the dramatic price increase relates to the cost of labour and materials, which have skyrocketed over the past few years. Nuclear suppliers and their investors also have less tolerance for risk.

    The bid from France’s Areva NP also blew past expectations, sources said. Areva’s bid came in at $23.6 billion, with two 1,600-megawatt reactors costing $7.8 billion and the rest of the plant costing $15.8 billion. It works out to $7,375 per kilowatt, and was based on a similar cost estimate Areva had submitted for a plant proposed in Maryland….

    Stevens said Areva’s lower price makes sense because the French company wasn’t prepared to take on as much risk as the government had hoped. This made Areva’s bid non-compliant in the end. Crown-owned AECL, however, complied with Ontario’s risk-sharing requirement but was instructed by the federal government to price this risk into its bid. “Which is why it came out so high,” said Stevens."

"This just gets to the heart of the problem with nukes – the safety issues are so high that they have to be built “perfectly”. The problem is that there is nobody you can get to build them perfectly. The government can’t do it, and private industry can’t do it (or, more accurately, won’t even try) without massive profit motive, which we are now seeing priced into the equation.
It’s actually a bit sad that we are now at the point in history where no amount of money can buy something done right, on time, on budget."

http://climateprogress.org/2009/07/15/nuclear-power-plant-cost-bombshell-ontario/

"I refuse to use less power"

That's your right.