My last article generated some good discussion, including some vehement pro-nuclear commentators who reckoned I should climb back into my time capsule and go back to the 1980s. This post aims to point out the merits of such time travel!
Firstly, if nuclear power is so great, why is it not being pursued more actively? In particular, there are alternative technologies to the standard (Koeberg style) PWRs (pressurised water reactors) or similar BWRs (boiling water reactors). These alternatives include use of thorium instead of uranium, breeder reactors, fast and slow types, and the PBMR (pebble-bed modular reactor), a design tried in the US and Germany in the 1960s-80s and now being pursued by the Chinese and here at home in South Africa.
In theory these different designs offer huge advantages over traditional PWRs, yet despite decades of research, none of these are at a commercially viable state. I believe the Chinese PBMR is operational, but in SA we have spent many years and several billion (yes billion) rands on research and still do not have a plant on the ground. The Chinese also seem to be putting far more money into building the traditional reactors and not replicating pebble beds. Why? Perhaps the pebble bed is not as great as the punters would have us believe. OK, hi-tech deserves long and expensive research programmes, but the results so far aren’t great. I’m not saying abandon nuclear, I just want to point out that nuclear is not as hopeful as we’d like.
The last word on building of nuclear power plants is that even the traditional models are not being built at such a lick. Somewhere, somehow, investors aren’t keen, and my suspicion is that expense is at the heart of their concerns, and not waste (environmental) or accident (social) issues.
The second issue I’d like to raise is that of externalities. These are the real costs not included in the financial cost of an item or service. In the case of nuclear energy, the externalities are associated with mining of uranium, decommissioning and high-level radioactive waste disposal. These are the costs not being added into the price of electricity from nuclear power plants. Specifically, mining of uranium has, like any other mining, a basket of costs that are being put off for future generations to deal with, namely groundwater and surface-water pollution, land disturbance and rehabilitation costs, dust etc. If these were costed into the life-cycle analysis for nuclear power, it would be even more expensive than it is now.
True, coal mining has an even greater basket of externalities (acid mine drainage, air pollution, climate change, mine voids etc) than uranium mining, but then there is no radioactive waste or specialised decommissioning. A coal-fired power station could theoretically be used for a rave party (now my time capsule is in the 1990s) after nothing more than a quick hose down. The jury will probably be out until after humanity has gone, on whether nuclear or coal was worse for the environment in the long run.
Externalities are where renewables get very competitive. Use of coal and uranium has huge externalities, whilst renewables only have the indirect effects associated with energy and resources used to construct and transport the energy-harvesting devices. And this is where renewables, as one commentator pointed out, are not 100% sustainable. It does takes a significant amount of energy (and other resources) to construct renewable energy harvesting apparatus, like a wind turbine, especially considering the relatively small amount of electricity that they generate. To match Koeberg Nuclear Power Station’s output (assuming 70% availability of 2 000MW), three to four thousand typical wind turbines would have to be erected!!
So neither nuclear nor renewables are carbon free, and they suffer from many difficulties compared with the ease of fossil fuel use (especially oil). Unfortunately, as Peak Oil bites, we will have no choice but to pursue these lesser quality energy sources, if we do not fundamentally adjust our usage of energy.
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23 Responses to “If nuclear power is so great, why aren’t we doing it?”
The Carbon footprint of a nuclear plant is similar to that of a coal fired plant before you put a single pound of coal in it.
Coal has offered a faster return on investment than nuclear. One of the reasons for this is that anti-nuclear groups slow the process of building nuclear power plants, significantly increasing the cost of the capital needed to be borrowed up front for their construction. Anti-nuclear groups are responsible for a large amount of Mercury in the environment, which is probably as dangerous as radioactive waste, a grand majority of which can be contained, it is an astronomically smaller volume to deal with than the tons of heavy metals emitted directly into the environment by coal fired plants. It’s not just Mercury, it is also Uranium. The US used to mine coal and burn it because the ash was a plentiful source of Uranium for war head production. The US and France do get significant amounts of their electricity from Nuclear and will build more and more efficient plants in the future.
I would love you to read “The Ultimate Resource 2″ by Prof. Julian Simon (Princeton University Press). He will set you straight on a few of your false claims!
The most cost-effective ways of making more electricity available are by increasing efficiency and by demand management - and these are also the most environment-friendly options.
We face a problem of political will. The established technocrats stand to lose their status as it is based on “build more/bigger”. Therefore they obstruct and sideline the above strategies.
As Ken said these things take time to become viable (both financially and environmentally). What we need is a shift in mentality. Even coal fired plants takes decades to pay off the environmental debt.
Burning coal is not the real problem. The real problem is the CO2 given off by the plant. Taking that CO2 feedstock and sending it to algae, fungi, chemotrophes or other sequestration organism is where you will find the greatest efficiencies. After all that how we got fossil fuels in the first place….
Ken’s unsubstantiated arguments are so way out there one can hardly credit them with a response, other than “What ARE you smoking, Ken?”
I’m trying to figure out where the mercury comes in — a red mercury herring, perhaps?
Anti-nuclear folk haven’t slowed down the “next-generation” EPR from France, currently being — well — sort of built in Finland: the French nunus from AREVA managed to do it all by themselves, which probably explains why they’re busy suing the pants off one another.
And no, the PBMR is not going to work in China either, because the pretigious Bulletin of Atomic Scientists has just written that no-brainer off, too. Sosmething about temperatures being off the map and the final use for electricity having been completely abandoned, after nearly R2-billion worth of South African taxpayers’ cash went up in PR smoke-and-mirrors.
There is no “more efficient” and less polluting and heavy tax gobbling nuclear technology lying around the corner. These fools have had 50 years’ worth of military-inspired spending.
It’s time once again to go back to the 1980s and say what we said before Chernobyl left us in no doubt: “Nukes? No thanks!”
The reality is that both fossil fuels and nuclear have long term seriously damaging effects on the ability of the earth to sustain life as we know it. Thus to me it is quite clear that we should switch from using them as fast as we possibly can. There is no other option if we see the long term continuance of life on earth in as our top priority.
Roger,
Ken mentions some of the reasons for nuclear hesitancy. Pressurised water reactors are popular primarily because they were initially developed as naval power plants for U-boats, aircraft carriers, etc and the development costs were largely written off against the US military budget. Power plants were basically scaled up from those designs. The amount of R&D is unmatched for any other reactor design. That is the reason why the exemplary French reactor programme is based on an American design, which generates about 80% of French electricity requirements. The unit size has been upgraded to about 1.5GW, which is suitable for large electricity grids, but somewhat impractical for small ones. A proper grid consists of a number of large, stable base power units that are operated at peak efficiency and then some plants that can cope with variations in demand. The PBMR is purportedly load-adaptive, but the total output per unit is only about 0.15GW. It was actually conceived with more modest output and adapted to a decentralised power network. China is working on very small units for remote areas. The problem with most alternative electricity generators is that they are highly variable and in need of a storage facility to make them practical. The installed capacity must usually be much in excess of the average demand. These are excessive cost factors in terms of capital and carbon footprint.
Maybe instead of talking about nationalising mines, the quickest way to throw all s.a’s taxpayer money down a sinkhole, Julius should be talking about spending govt money to create green jobs. I’m sure we could employ thousands building windfarms or perhaps a hydroelectric damn, if we could find the water that is. It would be an investment in the future that would make cosatu happy because of employment and business happy because of cheaper energy, why not?
I have a modest theory. Perhaps the real reason that nuclear is not widely adopted - yet - is that it poses a severe competitive threat to the well established coal, gas and oil industry. Since a major portion of the world’s investment capital traces part of its existence to that industry, perhaps the investment community shies away from atomic investments.
That relationship can also explain the lack of political power of atomic energy advocates, especially since much of the nuclear “industry” is tightly tied to the fossil fuel industry.
PWRs are fine, Pebble Beds have different applications, LFTR, IFR, BWR, and a whole host of other fission technologies provide a huge cornucopia of options for future power systems. There will never be a lack of opposition, but the inherent advantages of the technology will eventually win. We must not forget that fission is a technological baby - my father was an adult fighting in a war when the very first self sustaining chain reaction was proven on December 2, 1942.
Fuel that is 2-4 million times as concentrated is an enormous economic advantage and a waste reducing feature that cannot be overcome. For Mark - who cares if oil will never run out? The Stone Age ended while there are still rocks on the earth’s surface.
The Mercury and a whole host of other heavy metals comes from rocks in the earth’s crust. It is leached into water. Coal comes from large peat bogs and forests that cover huge expanses of the planet for millions of years, between 200 and 300 million years ago. It was sublimated and turned into a substance similar to activated charcoal. As water peculated through the coal, the coal adsorbed the dissolved heavy metals, concentrating them. I repeat, unless you are a 6 day creationist, this process persisted for over 200 million years of accumulation. That is where the Mercury comes from, and the Arsenic, Lead, Chromium, Uranium, etc. Unfortunately, to some extent, we are all smoking coal. People who have stolen industrial grade coal in China to use in those traditional cast iron stoves have died from heavy metal poisoning, this is also a fact.
“but then there is no radioactive waste or specialised decommissioning.”
This is false. Fly ash is rich in uranium and thorium, with the difference that it is released into the air, rather than held in a storage containment pond.
Ken dude, any alternatives with a little footprint of externalities, as I asked in a previous post? No? And I find it typical fo the greenies that google info about their gripe but offer no alternatives. It’s easy to rail against the the evils but SLIGHTLY more difficult to offer viable alternatives.
We’re allowed to say “green”, we’re allowed to say “alternative”, we’re allowed to debate whether the supply of oil will ever end (”NEVER” say George Bush and Dick Cheney, and you can trust them!), but we are NOT allowed to mention the one word which is actually the only viable strategy available.
REDUCE.
As long as GROWTH remains the holy grail we are simply meandering down a dead-end street, talking rubbish and arguing meaningless points.
Will we ever be able to genuinely discuss how to stop wasting the earth’s resources?
Sure hope so.
Coen, that is all semantic garbage. Solar and wind power are not alternatives, people just call them that. Forget about externalities, they can’t do the required heavy lifting. These technologies are all rated in KW not KWhr (look this up, no space). They are also rated at peak output. PV, for instance, do not convert photons to electrons via a linear function. This means that as half the lumins don’t give you half the electrons, production drops off dramatically after 3PM, not when the sun goes down. Couds? Look for a 40% drop, on top of that due to the decrease in incident angle imposed by the earth’s rotation. The cost will have to drop below NanoSolar’s offering to make it practical to use panels to take load off the grid, even those guys misrepresent the benefits (again, KW vs KWhr). Wind, it would take between 600 and 1000 large windmills to equil an AP1000. Windmills only last 20 years, vs 60 years for an AP1000. That is up to 3000 windmills. These will also need gas turbine peaking generators to even out the load to make it resemble base load power. These are sacred cows that need to be slaughtered. They are the platform shoes and wide lapels of energy.
@pete ess - Certainly you are allowed to introduce the concept of “REDUCE” into the energy discussion. It is always there and has been ever since Amory Lovins published his 1976 Foreign Affairs article titled “The Soft Energy Path: The Road Not Taken”. I have no issue with people who want to reduce their own consumption and to encourage others to make similar decisions.
What I do care about is the 3 billion or so people who are already on the planet today who have no access to reliable electricity, clean running water or interior climate control. Those people who burn a few twigs to heat water for their morning or evening tea cannot “Reduce” their consumption any more.
I also care deeply about the fact that providing the energy we use today requires about 6 BILLION tons of coal, 4 BILLION tons of oil, 120 TRILLION cubic feet of natural gas, and 60,000 pounds of uranium (plus a few billion tons of assorted bimass). Cut those numbers down as much as you want; we still need reliable energy to exist comfortably. I like the idea of doubling or tripling the uranium consumption while halving or quartering the fossil fuel consumption.
Oops - almost forgot to mention the word that causes Lovins and his fell travelers to blanch - NUCLEAR Energy is the primary path forward.
Thanks, Rod. So can we build nuclear now, or are you saying we have to invest more into getting nuclear working better? And is that in sight?
@Mark: Your man Julian Simon (a psychologist by training) was, quite simply, a blinkers-on utopian! He believed in endless ever-growing benefits from limitless resources and unlimited population growth empowered by technological progress. That we do not need to limit ANYTHING!
Now I don’t know about you, but common sense suggests to me that NEVER is a lo-ong time, and “endless” is a lot. Surely it is much more likely that we DO actually need to be more thoughtful about what we do with our resources?
@pete ess - You are welcome. We can build nuclear now; we know how to build and operate plants safely and cost effectively.
We do, of course, need to invest money in the plant construction process. Nuclear energy facilities are manufacturing plants that can produce a valuable product. They require careful design, high quality materials, and good construction techniques. They also will require well trained and dedicated operators to make the best use of their production capabilities.
No energy production system comes for free; all require a varying amount of upfront and continuing investment.
As we build and operate new plants, I fully expect that we will refine the designs, just as we do for internal combustion engines, microprocessors, sailboats, and other manufactured products.
Nuclear is a nice distraction, but time to return to the peak oil issue, perhaps!
Each month the US Energy Information Administration (EIA) produces authoritative statistics of country and world crude-oil production. Yesterday’s issue of the June 2009 “International Petroleum Monthly” (http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/ipsr/t41d.xls) shows that conventional crude production has declined from an all-time high of just over 74 million barrels/day in July 2008 to around 72 million barrels/day in April 2009 (the last month for which provisional figures are available).
A straightforward analysis of EIA and historical production since the start of commercial oil exploitation in 1850 indicates that there is indeed an “ultimate” recoverable resource of about 2 trillion barrels, of which about half had already been extracted and consumed (burned) by 2004. After late 2004 global production entered a “plateau stage” around 73.5 million barrels/day, and current production is at levels last seen in December 2003. The ascent of Hubbert’s peak is now history. Who wants to take odds that by July 2010 production will be below 70 million barrels/day and still declining?
A similar historical analysis shows that “peak coal” for South Africa arrives by 2020, and that Eskom’s plans for future energy generation from coal in the Waterberg (Lephalele) are an unrealistic folly. There is probably no escape from an interim nuclear expansion, as a bridging strategy while the economy adjusts to a future based increasingly on renewable energy sources.
@Chris - OK. So let’s say I agree that there is a Hubbert’s Peak for world oil production and that we are very close to or even past that peak.
What makes you think that using nuclear fission will be just a temporary bridge? Based on very reasonable assumptions for the world’s supply of accessible uranium and thorium, humans can provide all of the energy they from fission (with supplements from combustion of growing things, wind and solar) for millennia.
Our current generation of reactors - using essentially the same technology as first developed in the 1950s - only convert about 0.5% of the potential heat energy in uranium into electricity. If we improve on that and we begin using thorium - both of which we already KNOW how to do - we can stretch fission fuels for essentially FOREVER. Considering the fact that fission is reliable, safe, clean and affordable, why would we want to try to reduce our energy consumption to the level that “renewable energy sources” can provide without assistance?
Rod Adams
Publisher, Atomic Insights
Host and producer, The Atomic Show Podcast
One nuclear fission of uranium releases 200 000 000 eV of energy. One atom of carbon when it burns in air will release about 11 000 eV of energy. I end my case here.
@Catherine - I beg to differ with your statement that burning one atom of carbon releases 11,000 ev of energy.
The real number is just 4 ev per carbon atom. (Ref: Glasstone and Sesonske, Nuclear Reactor Engineering Van Nostran Reinhold Company, New York, Cincinnati, Toronto, London, Melbourne, 1967 p. 14) You are off by a factor of nearly 3,000.
Sorry for the dead tree reference, but this one has many dog ears and underlines in my personal library and it falls open almost automatically to certain pages - like the discussion of energy density differences between uranium fission and carbon combustion.
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The Carbon footprint of a nuclear plant is similar to that of a coal fired plant before you put a single pound of coal in it.
Coal has offered a faster return on investment than nuclear. One of the reasons for this is that anti-nuclear groups slow the process of building nuclear power plants, significantly increasing the cost of the capital needed to be borrowed up front for their construction. Anti-nuclear groups are responsible for a large amount of Mercury in the environment, which is probably as dangerous as radioactive waste, a grand majority of which can be contained, it is an astronomically smaller volume to deal with than the tons of heavy metals emitted directly into the environment by coal fired plants. It’s not just Mercury, it is also Uranium. The US used to mine coal and burn it because the ash was a plentiful source of Uranium for war head production. The US and France do get significant amounts of their electricity from Nuclear and will build more and more efficient plants in the future.
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