[TreeFarmer]

Suppose there was a recognized energy crisis and we needed to construct a nuclear plant for electricity in a hurry. If we bypassed most of the permitting process (I'm speaking of environmental analysis, allowing any group that wants to be able to sue and slow things down, etc., not the safety part of constructing and operating the plant) how long would it take to construct a 1000MW nuclear plant?

3 years?
4 years?

One thing I believe that will happen is that if there is a real emergency a lot of the delays which we allow on a lot of projects will no longer be tolerated.

Yes I know I'm only talking about one plant here but a country the size of ours could easily have 15 to 20 going at once.

[benzoil]

TreeFarmer-
There was some informed debate on this over at theoildrum.com last year. I don't have the link handy to that thread, but I think you're still looking at 7.5 - 10 years. My memory could be wrong, but I swear that was the number someone tossed out.

[scienceteacher]

Time to by into a Nuclear ETF? - it's 'NLR' if anybody's interested.

Nuclear is going to the moon - the UK is going to start building as will the rest of the world - it's the solution to CO2 emmisions don't you know.

We're so screwed!

Good luck all.

[Tanada]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('TreeFarmer', 'S')uppose there was a recognized energy crisis and we needed to construct a nuclear plant for electricity in a hurry. If we bypassed most of the permitting process (I'm speaking of environmental analysis, allowing any group that wants to be able to sue and slow things down, etc., not the safety part of constructing and operating the plant) how long would it take to construct a 1000MW nuclear plant?

3 years?
4 years?

One thing I believe that will happen is that if there is a real emergency a lot of the delays which we allow on a lot of projects will no longer be tolerated.

Yes I know I'm only talking about one plant here but a country the size of ours could easily have 15 to 20 going at once.

[TreeFarmer]

I still have serious doubts about the continuing fear of nuclear waste. We can reprocess this fuel and use it for electrical generation. It seems like a simple and common sense plan would be for the stable countries USA, Japan, UK, AUS, to reprocess spent fuel and use that reprocessed fuel.

These countries could let less "trustworthy" countries use the original fuel and then reprocess that fuel and use it in their plants. Once it has been reprocessed a number of times all that is left is very low level nuclear waste that can be disposed fo sefely.

As for what we would use it for, it could replace Hydro in baseload situations so that Hydro could then be used for peak load situations and thus remove the need to use Nat Gas during peak load situations.

Another thing it could be used for is to replace Nat Gas and Oil for home heating. If there is a shortage of oil, we will need to use all oil products for transportation, not heating.

If oil gets short, and I believe everyone here believes that it will, then wherever it can be replaced with electricity it most likely will be replaced by electircity IF that electricity is available.

TF

[Dezakin]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Tanada', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('TreeFarmer', 'S')uppose there was a recognized energy crisis and we needed to construct a nuclear plant for electricity in a hurry. If we bypassed most of the permitting process (I'm speaking of environmental analysis, allowing any group that wants to be able to sue and slow things down, etc., not the safety part of constructing and operating the plant) how long would it take to construct a 1000MW nuclear plant?

3 years?
4 years?

One thing I believe that will happen is that if there is a real emergency a lot of the delays which we allow on a lot of projects will no longer be tolerated.

Yes I know I'm only talking about one plant here but a country the size of ours could easily have 15 to 20 going at once.

[steam_cannon]

Large buildup of nuclear plants?
From an economic perspective, energy crisis usually equals economic failure and a lack of free funds for building large infrastructure. When oil prices crashed dealing a final blow to the soviet economy, they weren't able to restructure their whole way of life into a manufacturing export economy, they simply crashed.

Presently our currency and banking system is on pretty shaky ground. And even if reactor fuels were growing cheaper (they're not), even today with a still functioning economy we still couldn't do a massive build up of nuclear if we wanted to. We can't even keep our bridges in repair.

Now regarding is an electric solution a solution for peak oil? It's not that bad of an idea. I've seen some impressive changes over the years and success stories with flow batteries and technologies that could metaphorically build a lot of life boats, keeping the heat on for people in the winter.

Overpopulation and Overshoot
Most important, the only reason there is a need for things like a build up of nuclear is because there are too many people for the energy/land/resources available AKA overpopulation. No technology can support infinite population growth. And it's not likely that any technology can support a world population as large as it is for long aka overshoot.

Though it has been said before that distributing many small fast burning reactors could solve the worlds resource shortages very quickly. (a bit of dark humor)

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('TreeFarmer', 'I')F that electricity is available.

[pedalling_faster]

one of the Japanese tech companies has a
COTS (commercial off the shelf) design.

smaller capacity, e.g. enough for a small
town in Alaska.

BUT you could always buy 10.

of course, then the integrator & all the component
manufacturers need energy to do the manufacturing.

[TreeFarmer]

When the oil shortage hits I forsee that we will try to divert all the oil away from home use so that it will be available for transportation. The two easiest ways to have more oil for transportation would be conservation and switch to electricity.

If heating oil were scare or needed for others uses (transportaion) most people will say to themselves "I'll go buy a couple of electric heaters and use them instead of my oil furnace." The same line of logic would also apply to a person using Nat Gas if there was a shortage of that.

Now, as we all know, this will work great for a small number of people however, large numbers can't switch to electricity suddenly because we don't have the supply capacity.

Therefore, when the switch starts, and I'm assuming that it will, how long will it take us to add meaningful capacity to our electrical generation. I'm assuming that the best large scale way to do this is nuclear. Therefore, I was interested in how long it takes to build a nuke plant.

Now this is not to say that other technologies like wind, solar, etc can't make a difference but with current technology nuke looks like the best option. BTW, as someone mentioned on another thread, electricity storage is the Holy Grail of the energy problem given where we stand with other technologies. Solve that and we can store up excess energy from sunny and/or windy days and use it when we need it.

TF