Get your last comments in because I’m going to close this article for new comments.

Don’t be surprised if you comment fails to show. They are not going into the spam folder or being deleted. They show on my monitoring screen as approved and posted but when looking at the actual page they do not appear.

Solar panel prices plunged to just about 50c/W as failing manufacturers dumped their panels on the market in a last minute attempt to either survive or at least recover some of their investment. Now they have risen to just about 70c/W.

It is expected that panel prices will soon start their downward movement starting in a few months as the surviving manufacturers install more efficient equipment and compete for market share.

“Breakthrough” is likely the Breakthrough Institute which opposes renewables, fosters fossil fuel and nuclear, and whose roots can be traced back to the tobacco industry’s campaign to fight against regulation.

There was a larger plan called Desertec which created a very large European/North Africa grid stretching from Iceland to well into the Sahara. Some large corporations and financial institutions signed on. It has fallen away largely, I suspect, due to the political turmoil currently in NA. It has been partially replaced with a new program called EHighway50 which ties Europe together but little of NA.

Canada and the US are already connected. The US and Mexico are already connected. It’s just a matter of doing more of the same and doing it better.

If by “Breakthrough” you mean the Breakthrough Institute you should should read this piece by Joe Romm.

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2009/06/17/204250/the-breakthrough-institute-shellenberger-nordhaus-waxman-markey/

I don’t know if you read Gwynn Dyer’s Book “Climate Wars” but he was proposing under water DC cables from the Sahara to Europe to deliver solar energy.

I don’t know how far that technology has advanced but for sure longer haul transmission is going to become more popular.

It all comes at a cost and whether we like it or not, it will be a big influence on the decision.

I think the Federal governments in both the US and Canada will have to get more involved in this because States and Provinces on their own will not always make the best long term decisions on projects crossing beyond their boundaries.

I just got this article from “Breakthrough” indicating that the decline in solar rates may be bottoming out. And they still forecast a better future for nuclear than for solar. (see http://thebreakthrough.org/index.php/programs/energy-and-climate/how-fast-are-the-costs-of-solar-really-coming-down/ )

I have received a note in a different forum group that I should share with you privately.

My email address is doncaster@cogeco.ca. If you could send me a “here I am” note, I will pass the note on to you.

Canada should be installing its solar panels in Virginia/wherever it’s sunnier and Virginia should be generating with hydro in Canada.

We’re hauling hydro from the PNW to So Cal and had been hauling coal-electricity from Utah to So Cal. Now we’re going to bring Wyoming wind to So Cal using those same routes. And, I would expect, send solar to Wyoming, the PNW and Utah later on. Perhaps solar from Baja.

We shouldn’t look at new transmission lines in the sort of 20 year LCOE way we look at new generation. We need to think of them as highway systems that have significant up front costs but will serve us for 100 years or more.

I also note on the last page that the authors are divided on the future of fast breeders.

I think it is really difficult to get into technical debates about one technology over another. I think if the technology is safe, reasonably priced and can be constructed reasonably on schedule than it is OK.

I also agree that if you can do without nuclear and have other competitive options then you should avoid nuclear.

I happen to believe that there are different situations on this planet that require different solutions and we must respect those differences.

I think its important to remember that every State and Province is different.

The solutions on energy mix must reflect the geography, population density, available energy resources and interests of the people.

One size does not fit all and that must be respected.

I have always felt very strongly that we should contract a major engineering study on the best way to create and share green power. I belong to the Liberal Party in Canada and we prepared a 5 page white paper with 15 pages of references on what we should be doing. The first 5 pages had a lot of pictures, so there was not a lot of heavy reading. They did not need to read the last 15 pages. We sent this to the Energy Critic and we did not even get a thank you note of acknowledgement.

I have stated elsewhere in this forum that we already have the solutions for low carbon energy, what we lack is the influence on government to implement them.

We still give subsidies to the oil industry when we have cancer rates going through the roof for our First Nations living down stream. We have 50 sq mi of tailing ponds in Alberta in concrete lined ponds that leak 3 million litres per day into the Athabaska River. We had major flooding in the Bow, Humber and Don Rivers flooding out the business areas of Calgary and Toronto. You had Katrina and Sandy plus you are running out of water in the Ogallala Aquifer because the farmers are not getting enough rain.

We are fighting among ourselves here about punctuation and spelling when our real fight should be with our political leaders who have about 2 years to save this planet from catastrophic and unstoppable global warming.

In some areas of the world, there is more sun, so solar is more competitive and land is available. So solar should be a first choice.

Similarly, some areas of the world have lots of wind in unpopulated areas, so they can use wind very effectively. So wind becomes another great choice.

One of the issues of solar and wind is they may not deliver power when you need it, so that can be solved with a) fill in power e.g. from hydro if you have it or b) pumped water or other storage such as compressed air, molten salt or flywheels.

What bothers me for every area of the world there are technical solutions but we still burn coal and gas to make electricity when it is overheating our planet.

We should not build the Keystone XL or Northern Gateway pipelines, we must leave the oil in the ground.

If the goal is to get fossil fuels off our grids and chose nuclear we would first have to invent a time machine so that we could go back and build more reactors in the 1970s and pay them off.

Otherwise we would have to pay current prices which are at least 10c/kWh and almost certainly higher.

What we are seeing in the US is that even 5.8 cents is not competitive. Our reactors that can’t produce for less than that are going bankrupt.

As for breeders, give this a read….

http://fissilematerials.org/library/rr08.pdf

It takes many years to build a nuclear reactor. Optimistically six years. In practice much longer. Our two now under construction are on route to taking ten years or more.

We don’t have the trained and experience engineers, technicians and construction companies to build more than two or three reactors at a time. It would take many years to train the people we would need for a massive reactor build.

Our existing experienced nuclear engineers and technicians are nearing retirement.

We don’t have the ability to replace the reactors that are now going offline. We’ve lost four this year and more are close to failing. It is unlikely we could increase our net nuclear capacity in less than 20 years.

Wind farms are built in less than two years, largely with standard construction skills. Sections of a wind farm can come on line within months.

Solar arrays are installed in months (large utility arrays), days (commercial rooftops) and hours (residential rooftops). Solar requires only standard construction skills.

http://www.seattle.gov/light/fuelmix/

Solar is being installed for around $1.50/W elsewhere. You get at least 4.2 average solar hours per day over the year.

If you get your solar industry as efficient as that of the UK, Germany and Spain you should be producing electricity from solar for around 8c/kWh.

If you have enough political resistance to putting turbines close to where people live then you need to build a honking big HVDC, or better UHVDC, transmission line to where your best wind resources are and ship in wind. That transmission line will serve you for 100 years or more. Spread the cost.

Now, what would happen were we to build a 100% nuclear grid?

Nuclear at 10c/kWh. (That’s a low number as it does not include all costs and we have no record of recently built nuclear that cheap in the west.)

We’d need storage to carry nighttime nuclear to peak hours. Let’s guess that we could use 2/3rds of reactor output directly and store the other 1/3rd when it is produced.

I’m going to use 8c/kWh for storage as that seems to be a bit higher than pump-up hydro and about the cost of vanadium redox flow batteries.

So ((67% * 10c) + (33% * (10c + 8c))) = 12.6c/kWh

Now let’s do the same math for a 100% wind/solar grid. Wind at 6c and solar at 10c. 50% of our electricity from wind direct, 20% from solar direct and 30% form stored wind.

((50% * 6c) + (20% * 10c) + (30% * (6c + 8c))) 9.8c/kWh

Before we could get a new reactor on line (6 to 12 years) the price of both wind and solar would have fallen.

9.8c < 12.6c

Is that rational enough for you?

China has cheap labor. Most likely low cost government financing. No ability for citizens to protest construction. The ability to use their military to move people off the land they want to use. And I would expect a significantly lower permitting process.

The price of wind, solar and storage is dropping. Nuclear is done in the west.

Furthermore, I expect China will start scaling back on their future nuclear builds. China has a very significant cooling water problem. They have none available inland and have canceled plans to build any more reactors inland.

And as the price of wind, solar and storage drop below that of nuclear, well, the Chinese government knows how to do math.

And we have 20 years left.

There are 8 generators (4 for each reactor) each producing 400,000 kw of power.

There are a few hundred acres of land that had to be developed back in the 1970’s for the reactor buildings, generators, generator buildings, calandria, switch yard, water intakes, water outtakes, firehalls, admin building, control centre, communications, waste disposal etc.

We don’t have to spend that money again.

So we can get 20 more years at under 6 cents.

I can see your point of higher costs of power if you have to acquire land and construct all the infrastructure today. I am going to some checking on our recently completed projects in Romania etc. and see what the resulting prices are per kwh.

I don’t think AECL (SNC did not own CANDU technology at that time) was willing to bid on the British proposal because they are not used to fixed prices. So I don’t think the UK got the best possible prices.

After all these years, nuclear power is not a commodity. To get the best prices you have to give them some flexibility to deal with unforeseen circumstances.