Guest essay by Eric Worrall
In the face of the utter failure of large investments in renewables to deliver CO2 reductions, greens are increasingly embracing nuclear power as the solution to climate change.
Nuclear Power Can Save the World
Expanding the technology is the fastest way to slash greenhouse gas emissions and decarbonize the economy.
By Joshua S. Goldstein, Staffan A. Qvist and Steven Pinker
Drs. Goldstein and Qvist are the authors of “A Bright Future: How Some Countries Have Solved Climate Change and the Rest Can Follow.” Dr. Pinker is a psychology professor at Harvard.April 6, 2019
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Where will this gargantuan amount of carbon-free energy come from? The popular answer is renewables alone, but this is a fantasy. Wind and solar power are becoming cheaper, but they are not available around the clock, rain or shine, and batteries that could power entire cities for days or weeks show no sign of materializing any time soon. Today, renewables work only with fossil-fuel backup.
Germany, which went all-in for renewables, has seen little reduction in carbon emissions, and, according to our calculations, at Germany’s rate of adding clean energy relative to gross domestic product, it would take the world more than a century to decarbonize, even if the country wasn’t also retiring nuclear plants early.
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But we actually have proven models for rapid decarbonization with economic and energy growth: France and Sweden. They decarbonized their grids decades ago and now emit less than a tenth of the world average of carbon dioxide per kilowatt-hour. They remain among the world’s most pleasant places to live and enjoy much cheaper electricity than Germany to boot.
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Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/06/opinion/sunday/climate-change-nuclear-power.html
The rise of mainstream green advocacy for nuclear power is long overdue.
I have never understood how anyone who thinks CO2 is a looming threat can argue in good faith against the evidence of two countries which have affordably reduced their CO2 emissions to a tenth of what everyone else emits, by embracing nuclear power.
the Solution to Climate Change?
Perhaps it would be a good idea to first establish that we have an actual problem.
I would be in favor of this if we also reprocessed fuel and used techniques such as transmutation to greatly reduce the danger of the waste products.
See: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/smarter-use-of-nuclear-waste/
“…two countries which have affordably reduced their CO2 emissions to a tenth of what everyone else emits, by embracing nuclear power.”
This is misleading, it refers to electricity generation, not the co2 emssions in total for these countries.
Technology is not a living creature that develops on it’s own, someone has to develop it.
That means that someone must have a reason to fund research on it. In the special case of nuclear we have so much regulation that a pure private initiative is difficult.
The government can play a crucial role in speeding up the realization of the fourth generation nuclear reactors which are safe from meltdown and eats it’s own fuel.
/Jan
Fourth generation nuclear reactors which are safe from meltdown and use it’s own waste as new fuel, is the way to go.
Benefits:
-All Actinides (chemical elements with atomic numbers from Actinium(89) to Plutonium (94) can be used as fuel.
-Fifty times better use of Uranium fuel than traditional nuclear reactors
-The waste products are small and short lived compared to traditional nuclear reactors.
-The radio-toxicity of the fission products reaches the uranium ore mine level at about 300 years
-Enough resources to fuel the world for the next 1000 – 10 000 years
http://www.siler.eu/public/Mansani.pdf
/Jan
/Jan
Fourth generation nuclear reactors which are safe from meltdown and use it’s own waste as new fuel, is the way to go.
Benefits:
-All Actinides (chemical elements with atomic numbers from Actinium(89) to Plutonium (94) can be used as fuel.
-Fifty times better use of Uranium fuel than traditional nuclear reactors
-The waste products are small and short lived compared to traditional nuclear reactors.
-The radio-toxicity of the fission products reaches the uranium ore mine level at about 300 years
-Enough resources to fuel the world for the next 1000 – 10 000 years
http://www.siler.eu/public/Mansani.pdf
/Jan
Every 4th generation reactor will be replaced by a 5th generation reactor.
“Heaven is a release away.” – GC
Green Advocate: Yes Nuclear is the way forward….
Denier: So you finally agree with us?
Green Advocate: Yes!
Denier: So you have been lying this whole time?
Green Advocate: Not lying at all, just telling you our truth.
Denier: Would you be lying about anything else?
Green Advocate: Nope.
Denier:
Nuclear isn’t really a solution:
“global power consumption today is about 15 terawatts. Currently, the global nuclear power supply capacity is only 375 gigawatts”…”we would need about 15,000 nuclear reactors.”
“[There are] 440 commercial nuclear reactors in use worldwide…”
https://phys.org/news/2011-05-nuclear-power-world-energy.html
I would suggest the NYT advocate for nuclear in Germany right after they complete the shutdown of the their nuclear industry.
I frankly snicker at the thought of a nuke plant going up in Manhattan.
I’d like them to do it just to watch the sh** fit.
Jan
3x’s more efficient?…ok if nuclear, but with NG about 1/2 the energy is lost converting NG to electricity, and some more is lost because of the inefficient transfer of the electrons through wires, transformers, the battery and finally to the electric motor. Much more cost effective to simply run our cars and trucks on compressed natural gas ((it’s not the energy it’s the money – electric generation plants are expensive). Granted, we need to upgrade our ICE’s designed to burn gasoline and diesel to run better on CNG but that’s quick and easy technology.
Dennis Sandberg: “Suggesting that molten salt reactors are ready here and now is wrong by decades. Molten salt reactors are a distraction from serious debate about the near term implementation of nuclear energy. The only chance for a nuclear renaissance that we in America have is the NuScale SMR, currently scheduled to be on line in 2026.”
The NuScale SMR offers the only near-term pathway America has for putting the Nuclear Renaissance back on track. If their SMR technology isn’t successful, and if their full scale rollout project at INL in eastern Idaho doesn’t stay on cost and on schedule, decades will pass before another attempt is made at building a new generation of nuclear plants in the United States.
In the mid-2000’s when we were doing project planning for a new generation of nuclear power plants, the most important questions we had to face concerned management’s ability to keep a nuclear project on track towards completion at the estimated cost and on the predicted construction schedule. Thirteen years later, the massive cost overruns and the schedule delays experienced at VC Summer and at Vogtle 3 & 4 validated those concerns in spades.
If it is done with nuclear, it must be done with an exceptional commitment to high quality assurance standards and with tight project discipline at all levels of the project organization. If you don’t have that kind of commitment, you end up buying the plant twice.
The original project teams at VC Summer and at Vogtle 3 & 4 made every mistake it is possible to make in managing a multi-billion dollar nuclear construction effort. They didn’t miss a single one. VC Summer was cancelled and the original project team at Vogtle 3 & 4 was replaced.
The basic problem with the large 1100 Mw unitary reactors, in comparison with the SMR’s, is that the reactor technology itself, and the methods used to construct the plants and their safety systems, present more opportunities for making mistakes in all phases of fabrication and construction.
On paper at least, the project team now designing, fabricating, and constructing the first NuScale SMR plant has all the talent and the experience needed to get the job done on cost and schedule while still complying with the NRC’s strict quality assurance requirements. Will they, or will they not, come through?