LCAs - You can't get a cigarette paper between LWRs and Wind Turbines!

Life Cycle Assessment Harmonization

The U.S. Department of Energy enlisted NREL to review and "harmonize" life cycle assessments of electricity generation technologies. Hundreds of assessments have been published, often with considerable variability in results. These variations in approach, while usually legitimate, hamper comparison across studies and pooling of published results.

By harmonizing this data, NREL seeks to reduce the uncertainty around estimates for environmental impacts of renewables and increase the value of the assessments to the policymaking and research communities:     http://www.nrel.gov/analysis/sustain_lcah.html

Comparison of Harmonization Impacts on Pressurized Water Reactor and Boiling Water Reactor Technologies

Assuming consistent performance characteristics, the median LC GHG emissions estimates were nearly identical for PWR and BWR technologies after harmonization. The median life cycle GHG emission estimates for PWR and BWR technology types are 14 and 21 g CO2eq/kWh, respectively, as published, and 12 and 13 g CO2eq/kWh, respectively after harmonization.

Comparison of Harmonization Impacts on Onshore to Offshore Wind Technologies

The median published life cycle GHG emission estimates for onshore and offshore technology types are both 12 g CO2eq/kWh and 11 g CO2eq/kWh after harmonization. This similarity, combined with the tight distribution for both technology types, suggests that the two technology types may not have significantly different life cycle GHG emissions.

Comparison of Harmonization Impacts on Specific Photovoltaic Technologies

The median as-published life cycle GHG emissions estimate for c-Si PV is 57 g CO2eqkWh; the harmonized median is 45 g CO2eq/kWh. Harmonization reduced the IQR from 44-73 g CO2eq/kWh to 39-49 g CO2eq/kWh, a reduction of 62%. Additional analysis comparing mono-Si and multi-Si technologies, and ground-mounted with roof-mounted systems suggest that these system differences are not key factors in lifecycle GHG emissions from c-Si PV.

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You can run by a LFTR design, or for that matter GE Hitachi's PRISM reactor and know that they only involve a fraction of the material content of an LWR of equivalent power - and, by extension, assume that only a fraction of the energy of construction is used.

Safety of Light Water Reactors (LWRs)

Alvin Weinberg invented and held the patents on Light Water Reactors (LWRs). The UK's new-build nuclear programme is selecting from Areva's EPR or Westinghouse's AP1000, both of which are a version of an LWR known as Pressurised Water Reactors (PWRs); these are also the most prevalent civil nuclear reactor currently in use. The Fukushima plants are Boiling Water Reactors (BWRs), which are another version of LWRs.

The reactor vessels of LWRs contain pressurised water (wanting to turn to steam, if depressurised) or steam, at about 160 times atmospheric pressure. This is a high energy 'driver' capable of expelling radioactive substances into the atmosphere. Accidental and planned depressurisation played parts in both Three Mile Island and Fukushima accidents. The degree of atrophying of the nuclear industry, resulting from TMI, may well be amplified, in coming years, because of Fukushima.

The Enrico Fermi Award, presented to scientists of international standing for their contribution to energy - 1980, Alvin Weinberg.

This is a man who should be listened to; his opinions are important.

Weinberg railed against the use of LWRs for civil use, because of his awareness of their safety-fallibility. As Director of Research at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), conducting experiments and operations of Molten Salt Reactors (MSRs),he argued vehemently for the use of one such MSR, the Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor (LFTR). LFTRs operate at atmospheric pressure and have no pressure 'driver', or any other form of driver (such as highly reactive chemicals), to expel radioactive substances into the environment. Weinberg went head-to-head with the political and military paymasters of the nuclear programme, in the criticism of LWRs and the promotion of the safety superiority of LFTRs, and for this, he was asked to leave the nuclear industry. His loss to ORNL, meant that his work had a short-lived legacy, withering on the vine until funds were withdrawn in the early 70s.

Until his dying day, Weinberg thought that the Earth's inexhaustible thorium resources would be the future of energy supply for all of humankind.

In his autobiogra­phy Weinberg confessed:
“I became obsessed with the idea that humankind’­s whole future depended on the breeder. For Society generally to achieve and maintain a standard of living of today’s developed countries depends on the availabili­ty of relatively cheap, inexhausti­ble sources of energy.”

In saying ‘breeder’, he was talking about the transmutat­ion of thorium232 to fissile Uranium233 in a LFTR.

Sunday 30 March 2011, reported in The Telegraph,  Chris Huhne said: "Globally, this undoubtedly casts a shadow over the renaissance of the nuclear industry. That is blindingly obvious."

I intend to vociferously lobby Chris Huhne and all members the Select Committee on Energy and Climate Change to consider, over and above the views of the Committee's expert witnesses, the views of the inventor of LWRs in respect of their safety and his desire to invest civil society with the ultimate in electricity and heat generation - the LFTR.