why nuclear power doesn't help right now

note
a few days ago, in this space, i started a thread on nuclear power that was picked up by the folks at the nei blog. Eric McErlain posted an entry that linked to me and posted a comment as well. so, a conversation is begining. thus i begin some posts aimed at parsing out some details and evoking some responses from the eric and others. let's see how it goes...

too bored to read it all?

for those quick-surfers out there, here's the gist:

• 70% of the u.s. oil consumption goes to transportation
• 90% of the u.s. coal consumption goes to electricity
• we've got @ 50 years of oil to work with
• we've got @ 200 years of coal to work with
• nuclear is not going to help solve our immediate problem

two broad issues

to my mind, there are two key issues in play when discussing the future of power production and consumption:

• energy
• climate

while tightly linked, these two are (in my experience) too often co-mingled so as to cloud the details. i'd like to avoid that and take each in turn. let's start with energy.

alert
for the environmentalists reading this, you'll notice i will *completely ignore* the climate implications of energy production for now. keep your powder dry, we'll get to that soon enough. fwiw, for the economists here (really? ya think?), i'm not only ignoring the economic details of all this, i suspect i don't understand them at all[grin]. i'm hoping someone will jump in at the appropriate time and enlighten me.

energy issues

first, by now, most all know that the u.s. consumes the lion's share of the world's energy supply (25% in a recent report). no need to get into arguments about whether our consumption is justified by the quality and quantity of our output, etc. related to this, is the fact that a great deal of our consumptions is oil-based - about 21 million bpd (barrels per day) and rising. i'll point out that today, 70% of the oil we consume is for transportation. this was not always the case. during the last oil shortage (1970s), businesses accounted about 50% of the nation's oil consumption (someone help me with a citation here?). after that painful lesson, most companies moved away from oil for power and back to coal. in europe, the march toward nuclear continued. i suspect this is because they had little coal to work with (again, citaions? counter-arguments?).

today, the u.s. consumes a bit under 100 million 'short tons' of coal each year - none of it imported (right?) and 90% of the coal we consume is for creating electricity. this represents about 50% of our total electricity generation - the rest from natural gas, water, nuclear, etc. (any one help me with the figures on these?).

i outline these percentages (90% of coal for electricity and 70% of crude oil for transportation) to show just where things are headed. keep these figures in mind as i move to the next point - finite resources.

non-renewables

thanks to the work of shell oil employee m. king hubbert in the 1950s most folks agree that there is a knowable curve (hubbert's peak) to the discovery, extraction, and depletion of any non-renewable resource. most figures i've seen indicate we have (with a margin of 50% either way) the following remaining years of fossil-based non-renewables:

• 50 years of oil
• 100 years of natural gas
• 200 years of coal

i realize these numbers vary widely depending on the source. i don't think the exact figures are at issue, just the details. i've seen a few try to make a case that these figures are rubbish and that we can expect to find enough crude to last well over one hundred years. usually, the folks carrying this line are policy or paid representatives of industry groups, not well-respected geologists.

so, taking the time estimates and the percentages of use from above tells me we've got about two generations to figure out new transportation methods and about ten generations to figure out new electricity generation methods. i understand that economics and other factors can change this arm-chair prediction, but the general point should sink in. there's a limit and before we reach that limit, we'd better have a solution.

ok - notice that, so far, the word nuclear has not appeared. here we go.

the nuclear option

if nuclear is to be a big contributor, it's not going to be on the transportation end - not any time soon anyway. nuclear *can* help with the electricity side of the problem, though. but that's the problem that is about ten generations out - not the one that is two generations out. if we were all driving electric cars, then it would be a different story. but for now, focusing on nuclear seems to miss the point. we have to solve our oil problem asap.

also, i was not able to put my fingers on data covering the amount of uraninum we currently use for energy production or the amount of uranium deposits in the u.s. and around the world. this is important information. since uranium is a non-renewable resouce, knowing the projected rate of consumption over the available supply is critical to evaulating the proper importance of nuclear energy.

summary

our current (20 year horizon) 'pain-point' is crude oil for transportation. firing up nuclear plants won't help us. our long term (100+ year horizon) problem is coal for electricity. nuclear *can* make a difference here, but i'm missing details on the supply, rate of consumption, and hubbert's peak deatils for uranium.

so now what?

ok, i've tossed this out there. what are the details of nuclear's role in solving our problems? i'm looking for facts and figures, time-projections, expected outcomes, etc. in the meantime, i'm open to hearing from others who can blow holes in my narrative to this point. i'd like to tighten it up, get my facts straight, and clear out wobbly arguments.

the next primary point to review would be environmental details.