True, but really the only reason we are using so much coal is because Nuclear was pushed into the background by environmentalists. Coal power plants require a trainload of coal per day, a typicall fission nuclear plant might require 1 single truck load of uranium per year I hardly see how left to true market competition coal would be cheaper than nuclear.
The fuel cost is actually fairly low as a proportion of the unit cost of the electricity produced, and the vast majority is accounting and financial charges like depreciation and interest. For example, last I heard the uranium itself was only 16% of the cost of producing electricity in a nuclear plant, and that was after the price hikes in recent times. That number is only about 2 years old.
I have no doubts that nuclear would be more common than it is at present, but I still say coal will still be a major player. Indeed, precisely because power would be much cheaper without the wackos et al, I can easily foresee that the cost of running a coal-fired station would be more than offset by using the same supply and storage infrastructure for a coal to liquid or gas facility. In an integrated fashion the synthetics facility could begin to fire up in the afternoons as demand elsewhere goes down, thereby maintaining a steady total demand for the coal plant and allowing great economies through consistent supply. There’s a lot of perfectly good capital invested in the infrastructure for coal, and for so long as the revenues exceed costs you could be surprised just how long an “obsolete” technology can remain viable even in a laissez-faire economy.
Additionally, this comparison is based on conventional fission plants which throw out most of their fuel as ‘waste’ (because, again, environmentalists won’t let it be processed) Breeder reactors, by some estimates, might be able to produce 100 times as much power as a typical fission plant AND consume their own waste (i.e. accelerate the radioactive decay of ‘waste’ elements which while not able to sustain a fission chain reaction never the less produce energy when hit by high energy nuetrons, which nuclear plants happen to produce aplenty)
Unless I am mistaken, breeders work by turning non-fissionable materials into fissionable materials and then fissioning them as normal, rather than accelerating the decay. I think the burn up of waste by increasing the decay rates via jacking up radioactivity is a separate line of development (being done chiefly in France, as I recall).
On a purely geeky technical note, I’m rootin’ for thorium :lol:
But anyway…
It might make the most sense, to start, to mine coal and process the uranium out of it, and ‘burn’ both.
Possibly, I don’t know the details of this offhand, but I do know that you’re correct to state coal stations do release lots more radioactivity than nuclear stations. However, IMSM the main culprits are the likes of polonium and radium.
But considering the amount of energy bound up in fissionable heavy elements (roughly 300 milllion times that of chemical reactions) I am hard pressed to see where any chemical source of energy would truly be economically competitive with a nuclear source.
It’s in the capital costs, not the fuel costs.
My point more so is that with a full blown nuclear infrstructure (especially a breeder reactor one) electricity would be so cheap that the production of synthetic fossil fuels might be economically cheaper than drilled, cracked, refined, etc oil.
Fair enough. Off the top of my head I doubt it for the immediate future, but it would still be an idea in the back of the minds of people interested in the energy sector for when the easiest of the easiest sources starts running out and oil prices climb for legitimate supply reasons. When that would be I can’t say.
On another side note, research in that field may not come from want of new supplies for consumption here on earth, but of the generation of synthetics for use in the space program. For instance, Zubrin’s Mars project includes a vehicle that generates its own fuel to power a return flight to Earth by synthesising it from Martian CO2 and either locally sourced hydrogen or supplies brought with it. Entirely earthly spin-offs from space-related technologies abound today, so this is not to be scoffed at, even if the Mars mission itself turns out to be a bust.
JJM