@Tim Macknay The “generation” designations are really not all that meaningful apart from marketing. Both the PFBR in India and the HTR-PM in China are derivatives of designs first built as prototypes in the 1960s. And they are just demonstration plants. There are no commercial “Gen-IV” plants being built.
erm, PeakVT, could you be more confused?
The “generation” designations are really not all that meaningful apart from marketing.
There are no commercial “Gen-IV” plants being built.
Which is it?
And if you think a 500MW plant is pure demonstration, you’re hard to impress. I don’t think there’s a single wind farm (and certainly not a solar plant) beyond demonstration level if that’s your criterion.
@wilful So what if the Prototype Fast Breeder Reactor is rated at 500MWe? The Indians admit that it’s a prototype, right there in the name. And Roscoe Wind Farm is rated at 781MW, followed by Horse Hollow at 735MW, Tehachapi at 690MW, Capricorn Ridge at 662MW, etc., so you got that bit wrong as well. Finally, if you look harder at the second sentence of mine in your comment, you’ll notice the use of quotation marks around the term Gen-IV, which are there to indicate I am using the term as others use it.
Thanks for playing, though. Better luck next time.
Nah mate, you can shove your dismissive clichés where they fit, some place dark.
Those windfarms you cite are the largest in the world. Yet their nameplate capacity will be what, five times their actual? So really they’re in the ~200MW range, half that of the indian reactor.
The power generated by the PFBR will be sold, and will be used. That meets a pretty basic definition of commercial.
Of course, this is all a distraction in a meta sense, the arguments for nuclear power don’t rest on future or prototype tech, we’d do well just with 1980s and 90s designed reactors such as CANDU-6.
wilful, I’m not really sure you can honestly claim that an experimental prototype reactor is ‘commercial’, even if the power is sold. To be genuinely commercial it needs to be profitable, which first-of-a-kind prototypes rarely (never?) are. Also, the capacity factor argument is a bit of a furphy – as an experimental reactor, the PFBR is unlikely to spend most of its time generating and selling power so probably won’t have a very high capacity factor itself. It will need to overcome the significant problems that have plagued similar liquid metal fast reactor designs in the past (which I assume is the point of the sodium-cooled fast reactor concept). I agree that it’s a side issue, though.
One thing I just don’t get about this debate is the way each advocates on side are simultaneously very optimistic about the future prospects for their preferred technology and simultaneously convinced that the technologies they don’t like just “can’t” work. I find arguments based on the insistence that something “can’t” be done to be pretty dubious. It reminds a little of the way so many climate inactivists insist (without evidence) that it will be easy and cheap to adapt to global warming, but expensive and difficult to mitigate it, or that human ingenuity and enterprise can achieve anything – except reducing emissions.
I also find the notion, apparently held by most participants in this debate, that only “one” type of energy technology can be the solution, pretty bizarre.
It seems pretty obvious to me that both renewable and nuclear technologies could potentially provide a large-scale power source for society. However, both require further development. If I was to put money on it, at this juncture I’d be more inclined to go with renewables, because the safety problems of nuclear energy (notwithstanding that they can potentially be overcome) seem likely to stall its development (again), at least for a while, whereas renewable energy capacity continues to increase exponentially, and costs continue to come down. In any case, I seriously doubt either technology is going to disappear any time soon.
I meant “advocates on each side” rather than “each advocates on side”, obviously.
@wilful
Get over it Wilful and Prof anyone who tells other people to shove their arguments somewhere dark (Wilful) needs a weeks ban as well.
Wilful complains about my calling the nuclear sandpit a cesspit (for which I get banned) but it was his foul language (worse than cesspit – he said I was p****** in it). You know what? Wilful is just rude but he thinks he can get away with it.
Come on Prof – fair is fair. Ban Wilful for a week.
Oh and Wilful? Your deity Barry Brook is worse than a denialist – he hosts fishing boat trawler operators for twenty years who somehow now posit themselves as nuclear experts. Let me assure you Barry Brook is a denialist. He denies the quality of his own self promoted “experts” who he digs up from some hippy lifestyle somewhere who now dream they want “mass nuclear” (who paud the poor bastards?). Yes and the “expert: Barry and his industyry mates think they can market as long as he grows an academic goatee and dons a coat jacket for the photos, probably spent twenty years smoking too much dope on the high seas.
You think people are fooled by BNC Wilful? Not at all.
Nah mate, you can shove your dismissive clichés where they fit, some place dark.
An stunning opening that establishes your intelligence and depth of knowledge.
So really they’re in the ~200MW range, half that of the indian reactor.
Impressive goalpost-shifting, but foolish. The capacity factors of other large sodium-cooled fast reactors are/were: 78% for the BN-600, 40% for Phénix, and 8% for Superphénix. (I don’t have the numbers for Fermi 1 or Monju handy, but let’s just say they are less than impressive.) Using an average of 42% suggests the entirely unproven PFBR will have a net capacity of 210MWe. Existing wind farms in the state of Texas have an average capacity factor of over 30%, so Roscoe has a net capacity of at least … 234MW.
That meets a pretty basic definition of commercial.
No, not really. Just because the Indian government will force a state-owned power company to transfer money in exchange for the electricity doesn’t make it commercial. Even if it was an arms-length transaction, that wouldn’t mean the plant is economically viable, either.
blah blah CANDU-6
The last CANDU-6 reactor purchased was in China in 1998. It has since switched to PWR designs. The only two models of that reactor under construction are in Romania, and those were started in 1984 and 1985. They appear to be trying to recover sunk costs, so that’s hardly a ringing endorsement of the design. The bids for two ACR-1000s in Ontario came in at over CAD10,000/MW, and Bruce Power has shelved the project.
Your luck hasn’t improved.
Alice and Wilful, you are both banned for a week. I was sloppy about enforcing it last time, but this time any breach will result in a permanent ban.
@Alice
To set the record straight Barry Brook and Tom Blees are members of a group called the Science Council for Global Initiatives http://www.thesciencecouncil.com/
This team is not short of scientific and nuclear engineering expertise including one Dr James Hansen, Dr Evgeny Velikhov – a leading figure in the Russian scientific establishment and a number of the leading nuclear engineers and scientists from the US Argonne National Labs who were key figures in the Integral Fast Reactor development.
I recognize that the Argonne people have their own stake in seeing their life’s work, which they see as critically important, come to fruition. But that does not stop me from evaluating what they are saying on it’s own merits and it should not deter others from doing so.
@PeakVT
The capacity factors of other large sodium-cooled fast reactors are/were: 78% for the BN-600, 40% for Phénix, and 8% for Superphénix. (I don’t have the numbers for Fermi 1 or Monju handy, but let’s just say they are less than impressive.) Using an average of 42% suggests the entirely unproven PFBR will have a net capacity of 210MWe. Existing wind farms in the state of Texas have an average capacity factor of over 30%, so Roscoe has a net capacity of at least … 234MW.
That meets a pretty basic definition of commercial.
That’s right, they were not really commercial with the possible exception of Superphénix which had it’s share of problems and was finally shut down for non-engineering reasons when the problems were largely resolved. They were experimental and a high capacity factor was not really the primary objective. They were used for lots of experiments such as fuel testing and materials science in the hostile environment of the reactor cores. The operation of these fast reactors and the experiments conducted with them has gone into the accumulated body of engineering knowledge. Lessons are learned in nuclear engineering just as in any other branch of engineering.
Probably the main reason fast reactors haven’t received more attention is that uranium has proved to be more plentiful than was previously thought and it is cheap. This is almost certainly the reason there has never been any attempt to deploy fast reactors at scale.
If you want to play this silly game, we could compare wind turbines, PV panels, gas turbines or any generation technology of 30 or 40 years ago with old fast reactor design. But it would be a waste of everyone’s time. As are these threads because participants seldom have an interest in getting at something resembling the truth and treat them as a game of debating points – no matter how weak those points may be.
quokka, you are addressing a post to Alice 2 days after the date when the owner of this blog-site, Prof Quiggin, banned Alice and wilful for one week. I don’t think this is fair.
I am not engaging in some worthless exchange about “fairness” with you. Others can read the original post and my response and make their own judgement on whether it was justified.
I went to a very interesting BrisScience talk by Aidan Byrne, Dean of Science at ANU on the topic “Chernobyl 25 years on: Is there a future for nuclear power after Fukushima?” http://brisscience.wordpress.com/
Very informative about how the accidents took place, likely consequences and so on. Some key points from the talk and subsequent discussion
* If the reactors had been stabilised within a week, it would have been seen as a big win for nuclear power. As things happened, it wasn’t
* One likely response will be resistance to multiple reactors being built on the same site
* Casts doubt on life extension for 1970-vintage plants
* Thorium plants require a reprocessing step and therefore will never happen
* Claims that “all contingencies have been foreseen” won’t be believed in future
* Nevertheless, rapidly growing poor countries like China and India need energy and won’t forgo nuclear
The bottom line was that the number of nuclear plants in 2050 will probably be about the same as now, but they will mostly be in China and India.
Statements such as:
“Thorium plants require a reprocessing step and therefore will never happen”
are rather cavalier for an ANU Dean.
The point about taking public funding is to work on such problems – not bury ones head in the sand.
Interesting point about most new nukes being built in China and India. I wonder if there is such a thing as cultural evolution whereby a society changes some basic attitudes, for example towards animal cruelty. One of those more evolved attitudes could be distaste for nuclear power. Thus we have ‘evolved’ Germany, Scotland and Switzerland all saying they will phase out nukes. If that affects per capita GDP it could be regarded as kind of voluntary simplicity movement, at least for a while. At the moment China and India say they want more growth and more nukes. Perhaps when they get to Western standards of affluence they might say no.
Of course it may not pan out that way. Asia’s population may simply be too large and the West may not enjoy seeing their affluence decline in relative terms. Some strange things could happen; for example roving Chinese construction crews building cut price or prefabricated reactors in quick time for customers in the West.
I think the claim of reprocessing requirement preventing the development of thorium reactors is pretty ridiculous. China has initiated a serious R&D program for molten salt reactors which will almost certainly cover thorium fueled types such as LFTR and that means reprocessing.
If recycling is held to be the issue, then there have been lots of noises from Russia recently about a move to fast spectrum liquid metal cooled reactors as the strategic goal. That means recycling of spent fuel. It seems the US is prepared to cooperate: http://www.interfax.com/newsinf.asp?id=240082
South Korea has very similar strategic goals and is actively pursuing them with program for engineering scale pyroprocessing pilot by 2015.
Claims that recycling is an intrinsic barrier are really a bit odd to say the least.
Before anybody gets too excited about dancing on a purported nuclear grave, some sobering figures – In OECD countries nuclear provides 22% of generated electricity and solar/wind/geothermal/other just 4%. Shutting down nuclear would be a disaster for emissions. (Source IEA Monthly Electricity Statistics Feb 2011).
There is an unfortunate habit of grouping hydro with the wind/solar team with the intent of conveying the impression that renewables alone are going to do the job. But hydro is limited and if renewables are to do the job, it MUST be the solar/wind group that has to scale. That is a huge ask and if these technologies do not perform and are not deployed on large scale in the next decade, there will be not be just a swing back to nuclear, but a rush to nuclear as the climate problem becomes ever more urgent.
I have done some looking at thorium. Here is one example of thorium advocates going full-bore.
“In OECD countries nuclear provides 22% of generated electricity and solar/wind/geothermal/other just 4%. Shutting down nuclear would be a disaster for emissions. (Source IEA Monthly Electricity Statistics Feb 2011).”
Like TerjeP, you publish pre Fukushima nuclear accident (ie pre March 2011) data.
If you have any data from an authoritative source that is more recent then lets see it. You are drawing a long bow if you are claiming it’s going to make any real substantive difference. OECD nuclear capacity is currently about 296 GWe. If say 20GWe total is shutdown in Japan and Germany, that is less than 7% and some of that is likely to be compensated for by France’s reserved capacity.
But lets say, for argument sake that post Fukushima, nuclear drops from 22% to 20% of OECD electricity generation. That is still five times the production from the solar/wind/etc group. Should all nuclear in the OECD be shutdown by 2022 mimicking Germany, solar/wind would have to expand by 500% just to cover the nuclear and that without allowing for any increase in demand. There would be no net CO2 gain.
Recall that the EU target is 20% renewables not 20% solar/wind by 2020.
People should bear in mind that I was giving a dot point summary. To spell out what was said (from memory):
The US is opposed to reprocessing because of the risk of plutonium proliferatio, and has advocated a “once-through” approach where fuel is burnt then disposed of as waste. The US view is likely to be shared by other developed countries, and pressed on developing countries. Hence, thorium processes are unlikely to happen as long as the US has any say in the matter (ie for quite a long time to come).
He didn’t spell out the story wrt China, but my impression is that they are standardising on the AP-1000 and have little interest in more exotic approaches.
1. Thorium-232 – Uranium-233 fuel cycle does not produce plutonium in any quantity. There seems to be a bit of discussion of whether U-233 bred in molten salt reactor could or couldn’t be used for a bomb but the bottom line is that in worst case it would be much more difficult than the well trodden route of making Pu in a “research” reactor or enriching uranium. Proliferation seems seems to be a non-issue at this time for Thorium.
2. In the US, if the MIT Future of the Nuclear Fuel Cycle report is influential (and the MIT bunch seem to be) the preferred option is once-though with retrievable storage – not permanent geologic disposal. This leaves open the option of future recycling. They seem to be unable to decide if spent fuel is a liability or an asset and whether future generations might curse us for throwing a huge source of energy down holes in the ground. Interestingly they pose the question of inter-generational equity in terms of conservation of fissile resources and not so much in terms of waste disposal. Overall, they conclude that any decision about recycling is not urgent – which unfortunately also seems to have been the official attitude to spent fuel management in general for some time.
3. There is no doubt that China has initiated a serious R&D program for molten salt thorium reactors with a long term perspective. They also have experimental fast sodium cooled reactor, pebble bed HTR and apparently are going to build a couple of Russian BN-800 fast reactors. There is also little doubt that PWRs will be their main game for at least 15-20 years. It is hard to accept that anybody (including the Chinese) believes that PWRs are going to wholly replace coal in China and they must surely be looking at all the long term options. Breeder reactors in general must look attractive from a long term point of view of energy security as compared to a huge fleet of PWRs with heavy dependence on imported uranium.
I would post links, but the comment them gets caught in moderation.
1. You acknowledge that the February 2011 data you published is out of date. Good.
Like TerjeP you try to find an excuse by trying to argue about the extent of the error. Not good.
2. You try to suggest that ‘reserve nuclear power’ from France could substitute for the closed down nuclear plants in Germany and Japan. The latter (Japan) suggestion is extremely silly. As for the former, buying nuclear power generated electricity from France for German consumption is a function of profit maximising behaviour of only partially regulated utilities in Germany and not necessarily due to renewable energy supply constraints. Incidentally, the French population has never been asked whether they want nuclear power. There have been (and possibly still are) public demonstrations against nuclear power in France. Switzerland has dropped out of your list.
3. You write: “Recall that the EU target is 20% renewables not 20% solar/wind by 2020”
Do you usually argue with yourself?
4. You write: “Are we serious about climate change or not?” I can’t answer this question on your behalf. But it seems to me the nuclear proponents are serious about climate change if and only if they can sell their old technology.
5. In an earlier post, you provide a link to the Science Council for Global Initiatives. Yes, Barry Brook is a member but this does not make the council a body to talk about ‘global initiatives’. It is a USA organisation and the governance of this ‘council’ is dominated by people who have a background in the nuclear industry.
I find it strange that the USA and other countries are arguing vehemently against nuclear power in Iran while you and your Science Council for Global Initiatives tries to promote nuclear power globally. I suppose this contradiction is not obvious to you.
6. Have you not noticed you switched from OECD countries to the EU without pointing out that the USA has a much bigger weight in the OECD than it has in the EU!!
7. I can understand those who say that the circumstances in some countries are such that nuclear power is – at least in the short term – a lesser evil than material poverty for large numbers of their populations. I can’t understand you (surely, you are not suggesting the USA is so far down the path of extreme unequal income distribution to fall into this category. Whatever your idea on this point may be, the population of other OECD countries seem to have different objectives.)
1. You acknowledge that the February 2011 data you published is out of date. Good.
Like TerjeP you try to find an excuse by trying to argue about the extent of the error. Not good.
All data is always “out of date” because it takes time to gather, process and publish. If using data to support an assertion, it is good practice and good manners because it exhibits a degree of respect to the reader, to source the most recent data from an authoritative source. This is not an error.
You raised the issue of how the Fukushima accident would impact the electricity production from nuclear power in OECD countries and I provided you with an “off the cuff” estimate. Implicit in such estimates is an open invitation to anybody who can provide a more accurate figures or figures more from a more authoritative to do so. Such dialog can be an iterative process that converges to something approach the truth as can best be determined. I have a firm belief that “by the numbers” is critically important to the staggeringly difficult problem of climate/energy.
I will point out that you have produced no figures at all, which hardly puts you in a position to pontificate on errors you accuse others of. Unless you can produce something, what I wrote on the contribution of nuclear power to OECD electricity production stands uncontested. And by logical deduction the consequences for CO2 emissions of closing down OECD nuclear also stand uncontested.
5. In an earlier post, you provide a link to the Science Council for Global Initiatives. Yes, Barry Brook is a member but this does not make the council a body to talk about ‘global initiatives’. It is a USA organisation and the governance of this ‘council’ is dominated by people who have a background in the nuclear industry.
Is “background in the nuclear industry” some sort of mark of moral degeneracy that accords respectability to summarily dismissing what that have to say? Strictly speaking it’s not even true if you are inferring that their background is in the commercial nuclear business and have either some financial or ideological stake in it. It isn’t. The SCGI “nuclear people” are mostly very senior researchers in nuclear science and engineering from US government labs and their mission is not to promote the nuclear industry in it’s current form, but to transform it to a condition of long term sustainability including the minimization of environmental impact. This is no fig leaf for ulterior motives – it was both their vision and their life’s work.
If you wish to pursue this “mouth piece for the nuclear industry” stuff, it should also be pointed out that James Hansen, who has just recently in NZ has once again reaffirmed his support for nuclear power is also an SCGI member.
Now, can we get on with matters of substance? If they are wrong, then let’s hear why they are wrong.
I find it strange that the USA and other countries are arguing vehemently against nuclear power in Iran while you and your Science Council for Global Initiatives tries to promote nuclear power globally. I suppose this contradiction is not obvious to you.
There is no contradiction because you have your facts wrong. Even Clinton does not consider the Bushehr nuclear power plant a proliferation risk. Because commercial light water reactors are very poor tools for making bombs – which is why they are not used for that purpose anywhere. Especially when Russia is supplying the fuel and taking back the spent fuel. Any rational analysis of PWRs will show they pose little proliferation risk.
The stated objective of the US is to stop uranium enrichment in Iran. I am not going to go into the rights and wrongs of that here, because it is just a distraction. This is a separate issue from the use of nuclear power for electricity generation no matter what attempts are made to conflate them for political reasons.
The US is party to (in fact the initiator of) the GNEP – Global Nuclear Energy Partnership – which has the explicit aim of promoting the use of nuclear power world wide by the use of light water reactors whose fuel is supplied by “supplier” countries and spent fuel is returned to a supplier country. This is exactly the relationship Iran has with Russia for Bushehr.
What does all this have to do with SCGI? Well, you tell me because you are claiming “contradictions” exit?
While your comment that all data is out of date due to the time lag of data collection is true in general, it is not true that therefore it applies to the consequences of a specific catastrophic even. Specifcally, your argument is relevant for the data published in February 2011, which you referenced, but it is not relevant for the question on how does the catastrophic nuclear accident event of Fukushima in March 2011 affects people’s assessment of the future of nuclear power.
Your statement : “You raised the issue of how the Fukushima accident would impact the electricity production from nuclear power in OECD countries.” is false. (There are too many people who produce answers to questions which are not asked – particularly in various branches of the consulting and promoting industry.)
I don’t have to play your game regarding what type of data should be produced.. I produced information on actual events, namely Germany’s reaction to the Fukushima accident. Other commenters added information regarding other countries. You have produced no data to invalidate the data. No, you choose to talk about the OECD! – A boring game.
I should stay out of this, but I’ll toss in the opinion that the only serious nuclear contender for the next couple of decades is the AP-1000. The Chinese have standardised on it, and if the US nuclear renaissance doesn’t fail completely, this will be the dominant choice there as well.
As for the remaining (actually existing, not drawing board ideas like the IFR) contenders the idea that Russia in its current and likely state of decay can ever live down Chernobyl is laughable, Areva has fallen in a heap in Finland, the Canadians are out of the game as Peak-VT has said, and the odds against home-grown Indian products seem long to me.
To lay down some ground rules, I’d suggest that, any existing design that doesn’t have at least 25 reactors operational or near-completion by 2020 is unlikely to survive. Anybody have any alternative contenders?
Amazsing how much you write in reply to 1 paragraph from me. Two points.
1. Much of your long post consists of a conversation you have with yourself (ie hypothesising about what I think or might think and then arguing against it). This is entirely your problem.
2. You are telling us some interesting things about the policy objectives of the USA. I don’t know whether I should or should not believe you. I have a simple question: Assuming what you say about the USA’s policy of promoting nuclear power generation globally is true, is this because the USA hasn’t got much else to sell globally except nuclear power plants?
Pr Q a lot of people like the Candu 6 design http://www.aecl.ca/Reactors/CANDU6.htm
which at 600 MW has less output than the AP 1000. It’s a bit difficult to say just how much it would really cost built in Australia, $6 a watt maybe or say $4bn per unit. We’d get 9 of them for the cost of the NBN. I believe it requires ‘lightly enriched’ uranium which may spare Australia the indignity of buying back its own uranium after foreign processing.
AP-1000’s have concrete containment shells only 90 cm thick than span some 30 metres.
This containment can be easily breached by a determined terrorist.
In the past America has usually provided suitable weapons to terrorists it was supporting.
The AP-1000’s also run on uranium, with all the future problems this imposes.
Whether there are any other contenders by 2020, depends on the amount of research and development dollars that goes into alternatives.
I don’t have much technical to add, but I thought I’d throw in an opinion anyway. I think people are being far too pessimistic about the long term prospects of breeder reactors. Not every breeder requires off-site, or even out-of-core reprocessing. Proliferation concerns aside, the main reason they haven’t taken off is just that they are a bit more expensive than once-through designs at current uranium prices. Serious work will begin on them as soon as we run out of cheaply extractable ore.
In fact, much of america’s electricity is already provided by breeder reactors, albeit via an extremely inefficient process. I read somewhere that 10% of its power is provided by down-blended plutonium extracted from the primaries of decommissioned soviet missiles as part of the Megatons to Megawatts program. American citizens are consuming energy kindly prepared for them in the nuclear furnaces of the Soviet Union in the 1960’s. These suppliers always intended for the energy they were storing to be released in american cities – it’s just that envisaged a release time of 30 nanoseconds, not 30 years. It’s all very ironic.
“Whether there are any other contenders by 2020, depends on the amount of research and development dollars that goes into alternatives.”
Good point. But who is to pay for this research and development? There is a lot of research on the behaviour of multinational firms which points to a ‘product cycle’ where old technology, developed in ‘the home country’, is sold (licensed) or deployed (direct investment) in foreign countries and the proceeds are used to develop new technologies. Perhaps quokka’s answer to my question will throw some light on the present queston.
@Hermit
As your link shows, no one has liked them enough to order one for at least a decade (though I think the Indians have made their own after Canada cut them off in 1974)
The reality of the Olkiluoto 3 EPR cost and time overruns it that the LCOE is still very likely comparable to that of on-shore wind in Europe. Hard to find decent figures, but I used the NREL simplified on-line LCOE calculator to get an estimate and it sure looked that way.
The Olkiluoto overruns surely haven’t helped Areva, but it unrealistic to claim that those FOAK costs are truly representative of either new nuclear build costs in general or EPR costs in particular. Just as it would be unrealistic to claim that the costs of new nuclear build in Sth Korea which is well under half that at Olkiluoto is universally representative. The Royal Academy of Engineering report “Engineering the Future: Nuclear Lessons Learned” sheds much light on the issues and is a “must read”. It also covers Sizewell B (on time and on budget) AP-1000 in China and EPR in China. Among other things it reports that base concrete pour on the Chinese EPRs was achieved in half the time of Olkiluoto and Flamanville and other significant improvements.
New EPRs will be built in India and a Saudi official has recently been spruiking 16 reactors by 2030 and EPRs will be a prime candidate. UK plans also revolve around EPR and AP-1000. Far to early to pronounce EPR dead.
Another reactor design that will definitely see 2020 is the Russian VVER-1200 (Gen III+) with new builds in Russia, Turkey, Vietnam, India and probably Bangladesh at least.
1. You don’t have to believe or disbelieve me about US policy. You can find out something about GNEP yourself. I’m not agreeing or disagreeing with GNEP – it has both good and not so good aspects. But it is a reality.
2. If you want to make some contorted argument about “US pushing nuclear power because it has nothing much else to export” then go right ahead, but the onus is on you to provide something more than sound bites and not on me to respond to silly assertions.
As for the tired old “old technology” stuff about nuclear, all energy options for the next fifty years have be available in plain sight for decades. It takes a long long time to fully develop the technology and engineering of energy. Even the venerable internal combustion engine is still undergoing significant improvement, the photo electric effect was discovered decades before the neutron, windmills have been around for centuries and the age of steam is still very much alive and kicking.
I wonder if obsessive belief in the efficacy of nuclear power is a generational thing? Many people who were school children in the 1960s (like me) would have seen and heard all the “Friendly Atom” propaganda at that time. Impressed by the awesome, relatively new power of nuclear weapons, people thought that nuclear energy promised an endless supply of energy. The truth has turned out to be rather different.
Nuclear plants currently supply about 6% of the world’s TOTAL energy needs. (It is misleading to just talk about electricity production.) Hydro still supplies more than that, at about 6.3% of world total energy. So nuclear energy is a midget, not a giant. What’s more, nuclear energy will always remain a midget becuase uranium supplies are limited and quite finite. Thorium reactors are so technically difficult and Gen IV so innately unstable that they will never be successfully built. They are only a drawing board dream and will remain such for ever like harnessing fusion power. Some things are beyond the technical capacity of man because of two issues, excessive system complexity and difficulty and the limits imposed by the laws of physics . Belief that science is quasi-magical and can do anything sooner or later is quite misplaced. What science can achieve is limited to a set of possibilities within the laws of physics and within the system complexity limits that can be achieved by human ingenuity and practical construction.
Nuclear energy is too dangerous, too expensive, too uninsurable and too limited ever to be the answer to our energy needs. Logical research and analysis of scientifically reputable sources on this matter is quite conclusive. People could save themselves from these endless pointless arguements if they would do a bit of personal research instead of just voicing unsupported opinions.
It is enlightening to do a few back of the envelope calculations for solar power. Solar hot water systems (for S.E. Qld) have an energy collection area of about 2 to 2.5 square meters. Water heating accounts for about 25% of household energy use. This tells us that about 10 square meters of solar energy collection area per house will suffice. We will build in some allowance for conversion inefficiency further below.
Albany Creek (a suburb near me) has about 16,000 people in it and about 5,000 occupied dwellings. Therefore, a solar collection area of 50,000 square meters is needed. Let us assume thay all get solar hot water systems plus a 50,000 sq m suburban solar facility sited on vacant land in nearby Brendale, Eatons Hill or Warner. This bulk facility contains theextra 25% as allowance for inefficiencies, maintenance and a bit of growth in power useage.
Let us double the area of the facility from 50,000 sq m to 100,000 sq m to allow for access roads, maintenance paths, facility buildings and a sub-station. This equals 10 hectares or about 25 acres in the old measure. The current large shopping centre at Chermside including carpark covers about 30 acres so this facility even with a buffer zone would be no larger than Chermside shopping centre. This seems feasible, however every suburb would need a facility like this.
One hundred such facilities would supply power for households (not industry) adding up to 1.6 million people. Feasible or not? What do people think?
One issue of energy that receives rather little attention is “energy sprawl”. It is absolutely shocking for growing feed stock for biofuel, but it is a consideration in all energy production. It is a serious consideration in issues of land use and conservation of habitat and it is also serious for public acceptance of various technologies.
Following the Fukushima accident, pundits have been quick to chastise Japan for not availing itself of all the “abundant” geothermal resources. As usual reality bats last. Bloomberg has a piece on potential geothermal resources in Japan. They reckon there is 23GW but the kicker is this – 82% lies within national parks. My view is that industrializing national parks is too high a price. Wild places are precious and disappearing at a frightening rate. It would be ironic if those condemning rain forest destruction for palm oil plantations would back this development.
Why would anyone mention growing feed for biofuel, land use, conservation, national parks, and rain forest destruction, without mentioning the problem of population growth?
Finally we get to a conclusion. Your replies ignore that you had raised the issues but you don’t answer questions arising from these. Instead you want me to explore your suggestions. No thank you, quokka. You, of course are wellcome to go on a goose chase on your own.
Nuclear plants currently supply about 6% of the world’s TOTAL energy needs. (It is misleading to just talk about electricity production.) Hydro still supplies more than that, at about 6.3% of world total energy.
Yup. That’s about the size of it. Which just goes to show how challenging the climate/energy problem is. If nuclear is a “midget”, then what is solar currently – a single celled organism? The icon of current green fashion is Germany where solar PV is a whole 3% of electricity supply. It will take ALL forms of low emission electricity generation to have any chance.
You are just making up nonsense about complexities of physics etc etc and Gen IV nuclear power. Typical of Gen IV designs is near atmospheric pressure operation of the core coolant. This is much safer, easier and cheaper, and far less subject to the possibility of catastrophic failure than then many multiples of atmospheric pressure in water cooled and moderated thermal reactors. Also typical Gen IV such as IFR and LFTR is high negative temperature coefficient of reactivity. ie getting hotter slows down the reaction and makes a “power excursion” like Chernobyl well neigh impossible. This is not due to complex external controls fighting with the physics of the reactor core but because of the physics of the reactor core. The aim is “walk away” safe. It is not a dream, it is reality demonstrated at Argonne where they turned of primary coolant pumps on EBR-II and let ‘er rip. There is a video somewhere on youtube showing the scene in control room for this experiment.
“Generation IV reactors are a set of theoretical nuclear reactor designs currently being researched. These designs are generally not expected to be available for commercial construction before 2030.” – Wkipedia.
The IFR (Integral Fast Reactor) is a breeder reactor (the most dangerous kind as they produce plutonium which could aid weapons proliferation) which is cooled by liquid sodium. If this liquid sodium comes into contact with air or turbine steam the potential for a very serious incident is high.
The liquid fluoride thorium reactor (LFTR), is another experimental design with no proof of viability. Again the words, “these designs are generally not expected to be available for commercial construction before 2030” are applicable.
EBR-II is now defueled. The EBR-II shutdown activity also includes the treatment of its discharged spent fuel using an electrometallurgical fuel treatment process in the Fuel Conditioning Facility located next to the EBR-II.
“The clean-up process for EBR-II includes the removal and processing of the sodium coolant, cleaning of the EBR-II sodium systems, removal and passivating of other chemical hazards and placing the deactivated components and structure in a safe condition.”- Wikpedia.
“The EBR-II has served as prototype of the Integral Fast Reactor (IFR), which was the intended successor to the EBR-II. The IFR program was started in 1983, but funding was withdrawn by U.S. Congress in 1994, three years before the indended completion of the program. “- Wikpedia.
If it was such a raging success, why has the whole prooram been shut down?
@Ikonoclast
These calcs can be checked with some more data or assumptions. How many kwh will each house need apart from water heating? Are they charging an electric car for example? What form of overnight electric energy storage is proposed? Battery banks for example. Will there be a buffer for a week of cloud and rain? What is the difference between median summer and winter insolation for the proposed area? Will the PV panels get capital subsidies, federal RECs or State feed-in tariffs? What capital cost per watt is assumed? What interest rate will be paid? Will this ‘electricity island’ be synchronised with a wider grid?
People who have done this exercise before find that the cost would be tens of thousands per household with a payback period spanning two decades. The cost advantage to centralised generation and distribution is currently overwhelming.
@quokka I don’t doubt that VVER’s will still be around for a while. But my point about the Russian nuclear industry remains – given their history and the current state of Russia, there’s no way they are going to be acceptable globally for decades to come.
On EPR, when would you say the death notice can be pronounced? Say, if the number of plants in operation or construction is still in single digits by 2015?
Agreed, we may not see LFTRs until 2030. Their advocates put forward a quite convincing case that they are easier and cheaper to design and build than solid fueled reactors because of the inherent simplicity. They may well be right but there will still be a lot of engineering development do do. So skeptical (in the proper sense) might be an appropriate attitude until things move a bit further. China obviously thinks they are very promising hence the commencement of a serious R&D program.
IFR is a different matter. The Argonne IFR program was stopped by Clinton admin for political reasons and not for reasons of project failure. The project was highly successful including development of pyroprocessing for recycling and such things as solid metal fuel (rather than oxide). IFR lives on in the GE-Hitachi PRISM reactor and Advanced Recycling Center. If somebody wished to stomp up the cash, then a demo PRISM could built starting right now. It is at a far more advanced stage than LFTRs. There is a “memorandum of understanding” to build a demo PRISM at the US DOE Savannah River site. It remains to be seen if anything comes of this.
Here is a GE presentation on PRISM/ARC. In particular, notice the timeline.
Crystal ball gazing, I suspect that the first PRISM or something derived from PRISM technology will be built in Russia. Russia has been making a lot of noises about fast reactor development lately.
@John Quiggin
I dunno. I think the future of EPR (other than in France) in Europe possibly depends on what the UK does. Best case for EPR is UK to build maybe 8 or more. Who can say at the moment but if the UK does take their 50% emissions cut target by 2027 seriously they MUST do this. The Climate Change Committee “The Renewables Report” makes it abundantly clear that nuclear+wind is the only realistic course they can see for the electricity sector. If they do go down this road, it will be very interesting to compare with Germany.
As for Russia, we also have to wait and see, but it does seems pertinent that Siemens dropped it’s relationship with AREVA with a view to partnering with Rosatom. Post Fukushimam the Russians are still keen, but perhaps Siemens less so.
John Quiggin 
Agreed
@Tim Macknay The “generation” designations are really not all that meaningful apart from marketing. Both the PFBR in India and the HTR-PM in China are derivatives of designs first built as prototypes in the 1960s. And they are just demonstration plants. There are no commercial “Gen-IV” plants being built.
erm, PeakVT, could you be more confused?
The “generation” designations are really not all that meaningful apart from marketing.
There are no commercial “Gen-IV” plants being built.
Which is it?
And if you think a 500MW plant is pure demonstration, you’re hard to impress. I don’t think there’s a single wind farm (and certainly not a solar plant) beyond demonstration level if that’s your criterion.
@wilful So what if the Prototype Fast Breeder Reactor is rated at 500MWe? The Indians admit that it’s a prototype, right there in the name. And Roscoe Wind Farm is rated at 781MW, followed by Horse Hollow at 735MW, Tehachapi at 690MW, Capricorn Ridge at 662MW, etc., so you got that bit wrong as well. Finally, if you look harder at the second sentence of mine in your comment, you’ll notice the use of quotation marks around the term Gen-IV, which are there to indicate I am using the term as others use it.
Thanks for playing, though. Better luck next time.
Nah mate, you can shove your dismissive clichés where they fit, some place dark.
Those windfarms you cite are the largest in the world. Yet their nameplate capacity will be what, five times their actual? So really they’re in the ~200MW range, half that of the indian reactor.
The power generated by the PFBR will be sold, and will be used. That meets a pretty basic definition of commercial.
Of course, this is all a distraction in a meta sense, the arguments for nuclear power don’t rest on future or prototype tech, we’d do well just with 1980s and 90s designed reactors such as CANDU-6.
wilful, I’m not really sure you can honestly claim that an experimental prototype reactor is ‘commercial’, even if the power is sold. To be genuinely commercial it needs to be profitable, which first-of-a-kind prototypes rarely (never?) are. Also, the capacity factor argument is a bit of a furphy – as an experimental reactor, the PFBR is unlikely to spend most of its time generating and selling power so probably won’t have a very high capacity factor itself. It will need to overcome the significant problems that have plagued similar liquid metal fast reactor designs in the past (which I assume is the point of the sodium-cooled fast reactor concept). I agree that it’s a side issue, though.
One thing I just don’t get about this debate is the way each advocates on side are simultaneously very optimistic about the future prospects for their preferred technology and simultaneously convinced that the technologies they don’t like just “can’t” work. I find arguments based on the insistence that something “can’t” be done to be pretty dubious. It reminds a little of the way so many climate inactivists insist (without evidence) that it will be easy and cheap to adapt to global warming, but expensive and difficult to mitigate it, or that human ingenuity and enterprise can achieve anything – except reducing emissions.
I also find the notion, apparently held by most participants in this debate, that only “one” type of energy technology can be the solution, pretty bizarre.
It seems pretty obvious to me that both renewable and nuclear technologies could potentially provide a large-scale power source for society. However, both require further development. If I was to put money on it, at this juncture I’d be more inclined to go with renewables, because the safety problems of nuclear energy (notwithstanding that they can potentially be overcome) seem likely to stall its development (again), at least for a while, whereas renewable energy capacity continues to increase exponentially, and costs continue to come down. In any case, I seriously doubt either technology is going to disappear any time soon.
I meant “advocates on each side” rather than “each advocates on side”, obviously.
@wilful
Get over it Wilful and Prof anyone who tells other people to shove their arguments somewhere dark (Wilful) needs a weeks ban as well.
Wilful complains about my calling the nuclear sandpit a cesspit (for which I get banned) but it was his foul language (worse than cesspit – he said I was p****** in it). You know what? Wilful is just rude but he thinks he can get away with it.
Come on Prof – fair is fair. Ban Wilful for a week.
Oh and Wilful? Your deity Barry Brook is worse than a denialist – he hosts fishing boat trawler operators for twenty years who somehow now posit themselves as nuclear experts. Let me assure you Barry Brook is a denialist. He denies the quality of his own self promoted “experts” who he digs up from some hippy lifestyle somewhere who now dream they want “mass nuclear” (who paud the poor bastards?). Yes and the “expert: Barry and his industyry mates think they can market as long as he grows an academic goatee and dons a coat jacket for the photos, probably spent twenty years smoking too much dope on the high seas.
You think people are fooled by BNC Wilful? Not at all.
Nah mate, you can shove your dismissive clichés where they fit, some place dark.
An stunning opening that establishes your intelligence and depth of knowledge.
So really they’re in the ~200MW range, half that of the indian reactor.
Impressive goalpost-shifting, but foolish. The capacity factors of other large sodium-cooled fast reactors are/were: 78% for the BN-600, 40% for Phénix, and 8% for Superphénix. (I don’t have the numbers for Fermi 1 or Monju handy, but let’s just say they are less than impressive.) Using an average of 42% suggests the entirely unproven PFBR will have a net capacity of 210MWe. Existing wind farms in the state of Texas have an average capacity factor of over 30%, so Roscoe has a net capacity of at least … 234MW.
That meets a pretty basic definition of commercial.
No, not really. Just because the Indian government will force a state-owned power company to transfer money in exchange for the electricity doesn’t make it commercial. Even if it was an arms-length transaction, that wouldn’t mean the plant is economically viable, either.
blah blah CANDU-6
The last CANDU-6 reactor purchased was in China in 1998. It has since switched to PWR designs. The only two models of that reactor under construction are in Romania, and those were started in 1984 and 1985. They appear to be trying to recover sunk costs, so that’s hardly a ringing endorsement of the design. The bids for two ACR-1000s in Ontario came in at over CAD10,000/MW, and Bruce Power has shelved the project.
Your luck hasn’t improved.
Alice and Wilful, you are both banned for a week. I was sloppy about enforcing it last time, but this time any breach will result in a permanent ban.
@Alice
To set the record straight Barry Brook and Tom Blees are members of a group called the Science Council for Global Initiatives http://www.thesciencecouncil.com/
This team is not short of scientific and nuclear engineering expertise including one Dr James Hansen, Dr Evgeny Velikhov – a leading figure in the Russian scientific establishment and a number of the leading nuclear engineers and scientists from the US Argonne National Labs who were key figures in the Integral Fast Reactor development.
I recognize that the Argonne people have their own stake in seeing their life’s work, which they see as critically important, come to fruition. But that does not stop me from evaluating what they are saying on it’s own merits and it should not deter others from doing so.
@PeakVT
That’s right, they were not really commercial with the possible exception of Superphénix which had it’s share of problems and was finally shut down for non-engineering reasons when the problems were largely resolved. They were experimental and a high capacity factor was not really the primary objective. They were used for lots of experiments such as fuel testing and materials science in the hostile environment of the reactor cores. The operation of these fast reactors and the experiments conducted with them has gone into the accumulated body of engineering knowledge. Lessons are learned in nuclear engineering just as in any other branch of engineering.
Probably the main reason fast reactors haven’t received more attention is that uranium has proved to be more plentiful than was previously thought and it is cheap. This is almost certainly the reason there has never been any attempt to deploy fast reactors at scale.
If you want to play this silly game, we could compare wind turbines, PV panels, gas turbines or any generation technology of 30 or 40 years ago with old fast reactor design. But it would be a waste of everyone’s time. As are these threads because participants seldom have an interest in getting at something resembling the truth and treat them as a game of debating points – no matter how weak those points may be.
quokka, you are addressing a post to Alice 2 days after the date when the owner of this blog-site, Prof Quiggin, banned Alice and wilful for one week. I don’t think this is fair.
@Ernestine Gross
I am not engaging in some worthless exchange about “fairness” with you. Others can read the original post and my response and make their own judgement on whether it was justified.
I went to a very interesting BrisScience talk by Aidan Byrne, Dean of Science at ANU on the topic “Chernobyl 25 years on: Is there a future for nuclear power after Fukushima?”
http://brisscience.wordpress.com/
Very informative about how the accidents took place, likely consequences and so on. Some key points from the talk and subsequent discussion
* If the reactors had been stabilised within a week, it would have been seen as a big win for nuclear power. As things happened, it wasn’t
* One likely response will be resistance to multiple reactors being built on the same site
* Casts doubt on life extension for 1970-vintage plants
* Thorium plants require a reprocessing step and therefore will never happen
* Claims that “all contingencies have been foreseen” won’t be believed in future
* Nevertheless, rapidly growing poor countries like China and India need energy and won’t forgo nuclear
The bottom line was that the number of nuclear plants in 2050 will probably be about the same as now, but they will mostly be in China and India.
Statements such as:
“Thorium plants require a reprocessing step and therefore will never happen”
are rather cavalier for an ANU Dean.
The point about taking public funding is to work on such problems – not bury ones head in the sand.
Interesting point about most new nukes being built in China and India. I wonder if there is such a thing as cultural evolution whereby a society changes some basic attitudes, for example towards animal cruelty. One of those more evolved attitudes could be distaste for nuclear power. Thus we have ‘evolved’ Germany, Scotland and Switzerland all saying they will phase out nukes. If that affects per capita GDP it could be regarded as kind of voluntary simplicity movement, at least for a while. At the moment China and India say they want more growth and more nukes. Perhaps when they get to Western standards of affluence they might say no.
Of course it may not pan out that way. Asia’s population may simply be too large and the West may not enjoy seeing their affluence decline in relative terms. Some strange things could happen; for example roving Chinese construction crews building cut price or prefabricated reactors in quick time for customers in the West.
@Chris Warren
I think the claim of reprocessing requirement preventing the development of thorium reactors is pretty ridiculous. China has initiated a serious R&D program for molten salt reactors which will almost certainly cover thorium fueled types such as LFTR and that means reprocessing.
If recycling is held to be the issue, then there have been lots of noises from Russia recently about a move to fast spectrum liquid metal cooled reactors as the strategic goal. That means recycling of spent fuel. It seems the US is prepared to cooperate: http://www.interfax.com/newsinf.asp?id=240082
South Korea has very similar strategic goals and is actively pursuing them with program for engineering scale pyroprocessing pilot by 2015.
Claims that recycling is an intrinsic barrier are really a bit odd to say the least.
Before anybody gets too excited about dancing on a purported nuclear grave, some sobering figures – In OECD countries nuclear provides 22% of generated electricity and solar/wind/geothermal/other just 4%. Shutting down nuclear would be a disaster for emissions. (Source IEA Monthly Electricity Statistics Feb 2011).
There is an unfortunate habit of grouping hydro with the wind/solar team with the intent of conveying the impression that renewables alone are going to do the job. But hydro is limited and if renewables are to do the job, it MUST be the solar/wind group that has to scale. That is a huge ask and if these technologies do not perform and are not deployed on large scale in the next decade, there will be not be just a swing back to nuclear, but a rush to nuclear as the climate problem becomes ever more urgent.
I have done some looking at thorium. Here is one example of thorium advocates going full-bore.
http://energyfromthorium.com/category/reprocessing/
Reprocessing does not worry me – if all uranium mines are closed with no loss in jobs.
@quokka
“In OECD countries nuclear provides 22% of generated electricity and solar/wind/geothermal/other just 4%. Shutting down nuclear would be a disaster for emissions. (Source IEA Monthly Electricity Statistics Feb 2011).”
Like TerjeP, you publish pre Fukushima nuclear accident (ie pre March 2011) data.
@Ernestine Gross
If you have any data from an authoritative source that is more recent then lets see it. You are drawing a long bow if you are claiming it’s going to make any real substantive difference. OECD nuclear capacity is currently about 296 GWe. If say 20GWe total is shutdown in Japan and Germany, that is less than 7% and some of that is likely to be compensated for by France’s reserved capacity.
But lets say, for argument sake that post Fukushima, nuclear drops from 22% to 20% of OECD electricity generation. That is still five times the production from the solar/wind/etc group. Should all nuclear in the OECD be shutdown by 2022 mimicking Germany, solar/wind would have to expand by 500% just to cover the nuclear and that without allowing for any increase in demand. There would be no net CO2 gain.
Recall that the EU target is 20% renewables not 20% solar/wind by 2020.
Are we serious about climate change or not?
BNC = Bloody Nuclear Catastrophe
See: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-13678627
or is it, BNC = Bloody No Comment?
People should bear in mind that I was giving a dot point summary. To spell out what was said (from memory):
The US is opposed to reprocessing because of the risk of plutonium proliferatio, and has advocated a “once-through” approach where fuel is burnt then disposed of as waste. The US view is likely to be shared by other developed countries, and pressed on developing countries. Hence, thorium processes are unlikely to happen as long as the US has any say in the matter (ie for quite a long time to come).
He didn’t spell out the story wrt China, but my impression is that they are standardising on the AP-1000 and have little interest in more exotic approaches.
@John Quiggin
Some points:
1. Thorium-232 – Uranium-233 fuel cycle does not produce plutonium in any quantity. There seems to be a bit of discussion of whether U-233 bred in molten salt reactor could or couldn’t be used for a bomb but the bottom line is that in worst case it would be much more difficult than the well trodden route of making Pu in a “research” reactor or enriching uranium. Proliferation seems seems to be a non-issue at this time for Thorium.
2. In the US, if the MIT Future of the Nuclear Fuel Cycle report is influential (and the MIT bunch seem to be) the preferred option is once-though with retrievable storage – not permanent geologic disposal. This leaves open the option of future recycling. They seem to be unable to decide if spent fuel is a liability or an asset and whether future generations might curse us for throwing a huge source of energy down holes in the ground. Interestingly they pose the question of inter-generational equity in terms of conservation of fissile resources and not so much in terms of waste disposal. Overall, they conclude that any decision about recycling is not urgent – which unfortunately also seems to have been the official attitude to spent fuel management in general for some time.
3. There is no doubt that China has initiated a serious R&D program for molten salt thorium reactors with a long term perspective. They also have experimental fast sodium cooled reactor, pebble bed HTR and apparently are going to build a couple of Russian BN-800 fast reactors. There is also little doubt that PWRs will be their main game for at least 15-20 years. It is hard to accept that anybody (including the Chinese) believes that PWRs are going to wholly replace coal in China and they must surely be looking at all the long term options. Breeder reactors in general must look attractive from a long term point of view of energy security as compared to a huge fleet of PWRs with heavy dependence on imported uranium.
I would post links, but the comment them gets caught in moderation.
@quokka
1. You acknowledge that the February 2011 data you published is out of date. Good.
Like TerjeP you try to find an excuse by trying to argue about the extent of the error. Not good.
2. You try to suggest that ‘reserve nuclear power’ from France could substitute for the closed down nuclear plants in Germany and Japan. The latter (Japan) suggestion is extremely silly. As for the former, buying nuclear power generated electricity from France for German consumption is a function of profit maximising behaviour of only partially regulated utilities in Germany and not necessarily due to renewable energy supply constraints. Incidentally, the French population has never been asked whether they want nuclear power. There have been (and possibly still are) public demonstrations against nuclear power in France. Switzerland has dropped out of your list.
3. You write: “Recall that the EU target is 20% renewables not 20% solar/wind by 2020”
Do you usually argue with yourself?
4. You write: “Are we serious about climate change or not?” I can’t answer this question on your behalf. But it seems to me the nuclear proponents are serious about climate change if and only if they can sell their old technology.
5. In an earlier post, you provide a link to the Science Council for Global Initiatives. Yes, Barry Brook is a member but this does not make the council a body to talk about ‘global initiatives’. It is a USA organisation and the governance of this ‘council’ is dominated by people who have a background in the nuclear industry.
I find it strange that the USA and other countries are arguing vehemently against nuclear power in Iran while you and your Science Council for Global Initiatives tries to promote nuclear power globally. I suppose this contradiction is not obvious to you.
6. Have you not noticed you switched from OECD countries to the EU without pointing out that the USA has a much bigger weight in the OECD than it has in the EU!!
7. I can understand those who say that the circumstances in some countries are such that nuclear power is – at least in the short term – a lesser evil than material poverty for large numbers of their populations. I can’t understand you (surely, you are not suggesting the USA is so far down the path of extreme unequal income distribution to fall into this category. Whatever your idea on this point may be, the population of other OECD countries seem to have different objectives.)
@Ernestine Gross
All data is always “out of date” because it takes time to gather, process and publish. If using data to support an assertion, it is good practice and good manners because it exhibits a degree of respect to the reader, to source the most recent data from an authoritative source. This is not an error.
You raised the issue of how the Fukushima accident would impact the electricity production from nuclear power in OECD countries and I provided you with an “off the cuff” estimate. Implicit in such estimates is an open invitation to anybody who can provide a more accurate figures or figures more from a more authoritative to do so. Such dialog can be an iterative process that converges to something approach the truth as can best be determined. I have a firm belief that “by the numbers” is critically important to the staggeringly difficult problem of climate/energy.
I will point out that you have produced no figures at all, which hardly puts you in a position to pontificate on errors you accuse others of. Unless you can produce something, what I wrote on the contribution of nuclear power to OECD electricity production stands uncontested. And by logical deduction the consequences for CO2 emissions of closing down OECD nuclear also stand uncontested.
@Ernestine Gross
Is “background in the nuclear industry” some sort of mark of moral degeneracy that accords respectability to summarily dismissing what that have to say? Strictly speaking it’s not even true if you are inferring that their background is in the commercial nuclear business and have either some financial or ideological stake in it. It isn’t. The SCGI “nuclear people” are mostly very senior researchers in nuclear science and engineering from US government labs and their mission is not to promote the nuclear industry in it’s current form, but to transform it to a condition of long term sustainability including the minimization of environmental impact. This is no fig leaf for ulterior motives – it was both their vision and their life’s work.
If you wish to pursue this “mouth piece for the nuclear industry” stuff, it should also be pointed out that James Hansen, who has just recently in NZ has once again reaffirmed his support for nuclear power is also an SCGI member.
Now, can we get on with matters of substance? If they are wrong, then let’s hear why they are wrong.
There is no contradiction because you have your facts wrong. Even Clinton does not consider the Bushehr nuclear power plant a proliferation risk. Because commercial light water reactors are very poor tools for making bombs – which is why they are not used for that purpose anywhere. Especially when Russia is supplying the fuel and taking back the spent fuel. Any rational analysis of PWRs will show they pose little proliferation risk.
The stated objective of the US is to stop uranium enrichment in Iran. I am not going to go into the rights and wrongs of that here, because it is just a distraction. This is a separate issue from the use of nuclear power for electricity generation no matter what attempts are made to conflate them for political reasons.
The US is party to (in fact the initiator of) the GNEP – Global Nuclear Energy Partnership – which has the explicit aim of promoting the use of nuclear power world wide by the use of light water reactors whose fuel is supplied by “supplier” countries and spent fuel is returned to a supplier country. This is exactly the relationship Iran has with Russia for Bushehr.
What does all this have to do with SCGI? Well, you tell me because you are claiming “contradictions” exit?
@quokka
Regarding your #28, p 2:
While your comment that all data is out of date due to the time lag of data collection is true in general, it is not true that therefore it applies to the consequences of a specific catastrophic even. Specifcally, your argument is relevant for the data published in February 2011, which you referenced, but it is not relevant for the question on how does the catastrophic nuclear accident event of Fukushima in March 2011 affects people’s assessment of the future of nuclear power.
Your statement : “You raised the issue of how the Fukushima accident would impact the electricity production from nuclear power in OECD countries.” is false. (There are too many people who produce answers to questions which are not asked – particularly in various branches of the consulting and promoting industry.)
I don’t have to play your game regarding what type of data should be produced.. I produced information on actual events, namely Germany’s reaction to the Fukushima accident. Other commenters added information regarding other countries. You have produced no data to invalidate the data. No, you choose to talk about the OECD! – A boring game.
I should stay out of this, but I’ll toss in the opinion that the only serious nuclear contender for the next couple of decades is the AP-1000. The Chinese have standardised on it, and if the US nuclear renaissance doesn’t fail completely, this will be the dominant choice there as well.
As for the remaining (actually existing, not drawing board ideas like the IFR) contenders the idea that Russia in its current and likely state of decay can ever live down Chernobyl is laughable, Areva has fallen in a heap in Finland, the Canadians are out of the game as Peak-VT has said, and the odds against home-grown Indian products seem long to me.
To lay down some ground rules, I’d suggest that, any existing design that doesn’t have at least 25 reactors operational or near-completion by 2020 is unlikely to survive. Anybody have any alternative contenders?
@quokka
Re your #28, p2.
Amazsing how much you write in reply to 1 paragraph from me. Two points.
1. Much of your long post consists of a conversation you have with yourself (ie hypothesising about what I think or might think and then arguing against it). This is entirely your problem.
2. You are telling us some interesting things about the policy objectives of the USA. I don’t know whether I should or should not believe you. I have a simple question: Assuming what you say about the USA’s policy of promoting nuclear power generation globally is true, is this because the USA hasn’t got much else to sell globally except nuclear power plants?
Pr Q a lot of people like the Candu 6 design http://www.aecl.ca/Reactors/CANDU6.htm
which at 600 MW has less output than the AP 1000. It’s a bit difficult to say just how much it would really cost built in Australia, $6 a watt maybe or say $4bn per unit. We’d get 9 of them for the cost of the NBN. I believe it requires ‘lightly enriched’ uranium which may spare Australia the indignity of buying back its own uranium after foreign processing.
AP-1000’s have concrete containment shells only 90 cm thick than span some 30 metres.
This containment can be easily breached by a determined terrorist.
In the past America has usually provided suitable weapons to terrorists it was supporting.
The AP-1000’s also run on uranium, with all the future problems this imposes.
Whether there are any other contenders by 2020, depends on the amount of research and development dollars that goes into alternatives.
I don’t have much technical to add, but I thought I’d throw in an opinion anyway. I think people are being far too pessimistic about the long term prospects of breeder reactors. Not every breeder requires off-site, or even out-of-core reprocessing. Proliferation concerns aside, the main reason they haven’t taken off is just that they are a bit more expensive than once-through designs at current uranium prices. Serious work will begin on them as soon as we run out of cheaply extractable ore.
In fact, much of america’s electricity is already provided by breeder reactors, albeit via an extremely inefficient process. I read somewhere that 10% of its power is provided by down-blended plutonium extracted from the primaries of decommissioned soviet missiles as part of the Megatons to Megawatts program. American citizens are consuming energy kindly prepared for them in the nuclear furnaces of the Soviet Union in the 1960’s. These suppliers always intended for the energy they were storing to be released in american cities – it’s just that envisaged a release time of 30 nanoseconds, not 30 years. It’s all very ironic.
“Whether there are any other contenders by 2020, depends on the amount of research and development dollars that goes into alternatives.”
Good point. But who is to pay for this research and development? There is a lot of research on the behaviour of multinational firms which points to a ‘product cycle’ where old technology, developed in ‘the home country’, is sold (licensed) or deployed (direct investment) in foreign countries and the proceeds are used to develop new technologies. Perhaps quokka’s answer to my question will throw some light on the present queston.
@Hermit
As your link shows, no one has liked them enough to order one for at least a decade (though I think the Indians have made their own after Canada cut them off in 1974)
@John Quiggin
The reality of the Olkiluoto 3 EPR cost and time overruns it that the LCOE is still very likely comparable to that of on-shore wind in Europe. Hard to find decent figures, but I used the NREL simplified on-line LCOE calculator to get an estimate and it sure looked that way.
The Olkiluoto overruns surely haven’t helped Areva, but it unrealistic to claim that those FOAK costs are truly representative of either new nuclear build costs in general or EPR costs in particular. Just as it would be unrealistic to claim that the costs of new nuclear build in Sth Korea which is well under half that at Olkiluoto is universally representative. The Royal Academy of Engineering report “Engineering the Future: Nuclear Lessons Learned” sheds much light on the issues and is a “must read”. It also covers Sizewell B (on time and on budget) AP-1000 in China and EPR in China. Among other things it reports that base concrete pour on the Chinese EPRs was achieved in half the time of Olkiluoto and Flamanville and other significant improvements.
New EPRs will be built in India and a Saudi official has recently been spruiking 16 reactors by 2030 and EPRs will be a prime candidate. UK plans also revolve around EPR and AP-1000. Far to early to pronounce EPR dead.
Another reactor design that will definitely see 2020 is the Russian VVER-1200 (Gen III+) with new builds in Russia, Turkey, Vietnam, India and probably Bangladesh at least.
@quokka
Sigh….
It looks like we have to send donations to Greenpeace (or similar) in; Russia, Turkey, Vietnam, India and probably Bangladesh.
That is the problem with globalisation, once one rancid regime achieves a short-term competitive advantage, others soon follow suit.
So all social norms collapse to a common denominator which is well below present standards.
So a rising tide sinks all ships.
@Ernestine Gross
In reply to your question, two points:
1. You don’t have to believe or disbelieve me about US policy. You can find out something about GNEP yourself. I’m not agreeing or disagreeing with GNEP – it has both good and not so good aspects. But it is a reality.
2. If you want to make some contorted argument about “US pushing nuclear power because it has nothing much else to export” then go right ahead, but the onus is on you to provide something more than sound bites and not on me to respond to silly assertions.
As for the tired old “old technology” stuff about nuclear, all energy options for the next fifty years have be available in plain sight for decades. It takes a long long time to fully develop the technology and engineering of energy. Even the venerable internal combustion engine is still undergoing significant improvement, the photo electric effect was discovered decades before the neutron, windmills have been around for centuries and the age of steam is still very much alive and kicking.
I wonder if obsessive belief in the efficacy of nuclear power is a generational thing? Many people who were school children in the 1960s (like me) would have seen and heard all the “Friendly Atom” propaganda at that time. Impressed by the awesome, relatively new power of nuclear weapons, people thought that nuclear energy promised an endless supply of energy. The truth has turned out to be rather different.
Nuclear plants currently supply about 6% of the world’s TOTAL energy needs. (It is misleading to just talk about electricity production.) Hydro still supplies more than that, at about 6.3% of world total energy. So nuclear energy is a midget, not a giant. What’s more, nuclear energy will always remain a midget becuase uranium supplies are limited and quite finite. Thorium reactors are so technically difficult and Gen IV so innately unstable that they will never be successfully built. They are only a drawing board dream and will remain such for ever like harnessing fusion power. Some things are beyond the technical capacity of man because of two issues, excessive system complexity and difficulty and the limits imposed by the laws of physics . Belief that science is quasi-magical and can do anything sooner or later is quite misplaced. What science can achieve is limited to a set of possibilities within the laws of physics and within the system complexity limits that can be achieved by human ingenuity and practical construction.
Nuclear energy is too dangerous, too expensive, too uninsurable and too limited ever to be the answer to our energy needs. Logical research and analysis of scientifically reputable sources on this matter is quite conclusive. People could save themselves from these endless pointless arguements if they would do a bit of personal research instead of just voicing unsupported opinions.
It is enlightening to do a few back of the envelope calculations for solar power. Solar hot water systems (for S.E. Qld) have an energy collection area of about 2 to 2.5 square meters. Water heating accounts for about 25% of household energy use. This tells us that about 10 square meters of solar energy collection area per house will suffice. We will build in some allowance for conversion inefficiency further below.
Albany Creek (a suburb near me) has about 16,000 people in it and about 5,000 occupied dwellings. Therefore, a solar collection area of 50,000 square meters is needed. Let us assume thay all get solar hot water systems plus a 50,000 sq m suburban solar facility sited on vacant land in nearby Brendale, Eatons Hill or Warner. This bulk facility contains theextra 25% as allowance for inefficiencies, maintenance and a bit of growth in power useage.
Let us double the area of the facility from 50,000 sq m to 100,000 sq m to allow for access roads, maintenance paths, facility buildings and a sub-station. This equals 10 hectares or about 25 acres in the old measure. The current large shopping centre at Chermside including carpark covers about 30 acres so this facility even with a buffer zone would be no larger than Chermside shopping centre. This seems feasible, however every suburb would need a facility like this.
One hundred such facilities would supply power for households (not industry) adding up to 1.6 million people. Feasible or not? What do people think?
One issue of energy that receives rather little attention is “energy sprawl”. It is absolutely shocking for growing feed stock for biofuel, but it is a consideration in all energy production. It is a serious consideration in issues of land use and conservation of habitat and it is also serious for public acceptance of various technologies.
Following the Fukushima accident, pundits have been quick to chastise Japan for not availing itself of all the “abundant” geothermal resources. As usual reality bats last. Bloomberg has a piece on potential geothermal resources in Japan. They reckon there is 23GW but the kicker is this – 82% lies within national parks. My view is that industrializing national parks is too high a price. Wild places are precious and disappearing at a frightening rate. It would be ironic if those condemning rain forest destruction for palm oil plantations would back this development.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-06-06/japan-may-tap-geothermal-power-to-offset-atomic-loss-bnef-says.html
Why would anyone mention growing feed for biofuel, land use, conservation, national parks, and rain forest destruction, without mentioning the problem of population growth?
@quokka
Finally we get to a conclusion. Your replies ignore that you had raised the issues but you don’t answer questions arising from these. Instead you want me to explore your suggestions. No thank you, quokka. You, of course are wellcome to go on a goose chase on your own.
@Ikonoclast
Yup. That’s about the size of it. Which just goes to show how challenging the climate/energy problem is. If nuclear is a “midget”, then what is solar currently – a single celled organism? The icon of current green fashion is Germany where solar PV is a whole 3% of electricity supply. It will take ALL forms of low emission electricity generation to have any chance.
You are just making up nonsense about complexities of physics etc etc and Gen IV nuclear power. Typical of Gen IV designs is near atmospheric pressure operation of the core coolant. This is much safer, easier and cheaper, and far less subject to the possibility of catastrophic failure than then many multiples of atmospheric pressure in water cooled and moderated thermal reactors. Also typical Gen IV such as IFR and LFTR is high negative temperature coefficient of reactivity. ie getting hotter slows down the reaction and makes a “power excursion” like Chernobyl well neigh impossible. This is not due to complex external controls fighting with the physics of the reactor core but because of the physics of the reactor core. The aim is “walk away” safe. It is not a dream, it is reality demonstrated at Argonne where they turned of primary coolant pumps on EBR-II and let ‘er rip. There is a video somewhere on youtube showing the scene in control room for this experiment.
@quokka
“Generation IV reactors are a set of theoretical nuclear reactor designs currently being researched. These designs are generally not expected to be available for commercial construction before 2030.” – Wkipedia.
The IFR (Integral Fast Reactor) is a breeder reactor (the most dangerous kind as they produce plutonium which could aid weapons proliferation) which is cooled by liquid sodium. If this liquid sodium comes into contact with air or turbine steam the potential for a very serious incident is high.
The liquid fluoride thorium reactor (LFTR), is another experimental design with no proof of viability. Again the words, “these designs are generally not expected to be available for commercial construction before 2030” are applicable.
EBR-II is now defueled. The EBR-II shutdown activity also includes the treatment of its discharged spent fuel using an electrometallurgical fuel treatment process in the Fuel Conditioning Facility located next to the EBR-II.
“The clean-up process for EBR-II includes the removal and processing of the sodium coolant, cleaning of the EBR-II sodium systems, removal and passivating of other chemical hazards and placing the deactivated components and structure in a safe condition.”- Wikpedia.
“The EBR-II has served as prototype of the Integral Fast Reactor (IFR), which was the intended successor to the EBR-II. The IFR program was started in 1983, but funding was withdrawn by U.S. Congress in 1994, three years before the indended completion of the program. “- Wikpedia.
If it was such a raging success, why has the whole prooram been shut down?
@Ikonoclast
These calcs can be checked with some more data or assumptions. How many kwh will each house need apart from water heating? Are they charging an electric car for example? What form of overnight electric energy storage is proposed? Battery banks for example. Will there be a buffer for a week of cloud and rain? What is the difference between median summer and winter insolation for the proposed area? Will the PV panels get capital subsidies, federal RECs or State feed-in tariffs? What capital cost per watt is assumed? What interest rate will be paid? Will this ‘electricity island’ be synchronised with a wider grid?
People who have done this exercise before find that the cost would be tens of thousands per household with a payback period spanning two decades. The cost advantage to centralised generation and distribution is currently overwhelming.
@quokka I don’t doubt that VVER’s will still be around for a while. But my point about the Russian nuclear industry remains – given their history and the current state of Russia, there’s no way they are going to be acceptable globally for decades to come.
On EPR, when would you say the death notice can be pronounced? Say, if the number of plants in operation or construction is still in single digits by 2015?
@Ikonoclast
Agreed, we may not see LFTRs until 2030. Their advocates put forward a quite convincing case that they are easier and cheaper to design and build than solid fueled reactors because of the inherent simplicity. They may well be right but there will still be a lot of engineering development do do. So skeptical (in the proper sense) might be an appropriate attitude until things move a bit further. China obviously thinks they are very promising hence the commencement of a serious R&D program.
IFR is a different matter. The Argonne IFR program was stopped by Clinton admin for political reasons and not for reasons of project failure. The project was highly successful including development of pyroprocessing for recycling and such things as solid metal fuel (rather than oxide). IFR lives on in the GE-Hitachi PRISM reactor and Advanced Recycling Center. If somebody wished to stomp up the cash, then a demo PRISM could built starting right now. It is at a far more advanced stage than LFTRs. There is a “memorandum of understanding” to build a demo PRISM at the US DOE Savannah River site. It remains to be seen if anything comes of this.
Here is a GE presentation on PRISM/ARC. In particular, notice the timeline.
Click to access 2007RIC.GE.NRC.PRISM.pdf
Crystal ball gazing, I suspect that the first PRISM or something derived from PRISM technology will be built in Russia. Russia has been making a lot of noises about fast reactor development lately.
@John Quiggin
I dunno. I think the future of EPR (other than in France) in Europe possibly depends on what the UK does. Best case for EPR is UK to build maybe 8 or more. Who can say at the moment but if the UK does take their 50% emissions cut target by 2027 seriously they MUST do this. The Climate Change Committee “The Renewables Report” makes it abundantly clear that nuclear+wind is the only realistic course they can see for the electricity sector. If they do go down this road, it will be very interesting to compare with Germany.
As for Russia, we also have to wait and see, but it does seems pertinent that Siemens dropped it’s relationship with AREVA with a view to partnering with Rosatom. Post Fukushimam the Russians are still keen, but perhaps Siemens less so.