A Critical Evaluation of Nuclear Power and

Transcript:A Critical Evaluation of Nuclear Power and:
A Critical Evaluation of Nuclear Power and Renewable Electricity in Asia BENJAMIN K. SOVACOOL Presented by Yanbei He background Energy use around the world is lopsided Transportation is expensive Unable to manufacture cost-effective fuel cells, and unable to solve the problem of extracting, compressing, storing and distributing hydrogen-based fuels. Death, injury and environment destruction force us to make a decision between nuclear power technologies and renewable power systems. Case against nuclear power in Asia Cost capital-intensive, expensive in every stage of the fuel cycle, need a long time for construction and uncertain during the process, while the supply and demand of electricity quickly change in a short period of time. quotes were not trustable, most did not include interest during construction and other expense, and it takes 6 to 10 times more time to complete. the decommissioning process of both nuclear reactors and uranium enrichment facilities are expensive, time-consuming and dangerous to people and nature. Asian governments mostly have little or no experience about nuclear power programs, so the cost of decommissioning are unknown. The US National Research Council estimated that decommission for only three enrichment facilities in the US would cost US$18.7 to 62 billion, 1 needs an additional $2 to $6 billion to cover the handling of a large amount of depleted uranium hexafluoride (depleted UF6), which has to be converted to uranium oxide (U3O8). The US General Accounting Office did an investigation on the process and found that the cost of decommissioning, which funded by taxpayers, would have exceeded the revenues of plants by US$4-6.4 billion. The UK has reported the similar problems with decommissioning, which costs more than £73 billion. Case against nuclear power in Asia fuel availability extreme weather and accident increase the difficulties of uranium transportation. primary supply and secondary supply. We use the high-cost resources to fulfill the demand of lower cost known resources that are exhausted. Due to the decrease of quality, the uranium miners have to go deeper and use more resource to get uranium. Concentrated in a few countries. Even countries have the domestic supply of uranium, like China and India, they still need to depend on other countries in the near future, which force them to shut down uranium plants and find out an advanced technology to solve the problem. Fluctuation of the uranium price affects the costs of a nuclear plant. Land, water and gas Land create nuclear