Guest essay by Eric Worrall
Journalistic research fail? Foreign Affairs claims wrongly that “No country has developed this [nuclear] technology to a point where it can and will be widely and successfully deployed.”. But two countries, France and Sweden, did just that in the 1970s.
Nuclear Energy Will Not Be the Solution to Climate Change
There Is Not Enough Time for Nuclear Innovation to Save the Planet
By Allison Macfarlane
July 8, 2021The world is almost out of time with respect to decarbonizing the energy sector. Doing so, experts agree, is essential to forestalling some of the most alarming consequences of climate change, including rising sea levels, droughts, fires, extreme weather events, ocean acidification, and the like. These threats have helped generate fresh interest in the potential for nuclear power—and, more specifically, innovative nuclear reactor designs—to allow people to rely less on carbon-spewing electricity sources such as coal, natural gas, and oil. In recent years, advanced nuclear designs have been the focus of intensive interest and support from both private investors such as Bill Gates—who founded TerraPower, a nuclear reactor design company, in 2006—and national governments, including that of the United States.
Advocates hope that this renewed focus on nuclear energy will yield technological progress and lower costs. But when it comes to averting the imminent effects of climate change, even the cutting edge of nuclear technology will prove to be too little, too late. Put simply, given the economic trends in existing plants and those under construction, nuclear power cannot positively impact climate change in the next ten years or more. Given the long lead times to develop engineered, full-scale prototypes of new advanced designs and the time required to build a manufacturing base and a customer base to make nuclear power more economically competitive, it is unlikely that nuclear power will begin to significantly reduce our carbon energy footprint even in 20 years—in the United States and globally. No country has developed this technology to a point where it can and will be widely and successfully deployed.
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Read more (Paywalled): https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/2021-07-08/nuclear-energy-will-not-be-solution-climate-change
To be fair the deployment logistics of building enough nuclear to hit net zero would be insanely expensive – as Willis calculated in US Green Impossibilities, the US would need to complete a brand new 1.2GW nuclear plant every week, between now and 2040 (975 weeks), to replace an estimated 1175GW of generating capacity with zero carbon nuclear. And we’re already 12 weeks behind schedule. At around $10 billion per plant, total cost would be around $10 trillion dollars.
But attempting to replicate this feat with wind or solar is ever more absurd. Given a renewable capacity factor of around 15%, a 5MW wind turbine produces an average of 0.75MW. So we need 1175GW / 0.75MW = 1.6 million wind turbines or solar plants.
To put it another way, the wind industry estimates wind turbines cost $1.3-2.2 million / MW nameplate capacity. So, lets be generous, 1.6 million wind turbines x 5MW x $1.3 million / MW = $10.4 trillion.
OK, so far the cost of wind power is comparable to the cost of building nuclear plants.
Ah but I forgot battery backup. If you assume a need for at least 5 days worth of backup power, to cover widespread wind droughts which occur every other year, you need 1175GW x 24 hours per day x 5 = 141,000GWh of battery capacity.
The Hornsdale Battery in South Australia holds 194MWh, and cost $161 million Aussie dollars. Lets say 161 * 0.75 = $121 million USD. Scale up to 141,000GWh, to cover a 5 day winter wind drought, and you need 141,000GWh / 194MWh x $121 million USD = $87,943,298,000,000 – eighty eight trillion US dollars.
Renewables look competitive with nuclear, until you factor in the cost of battery backup.
I mean you can play with the numbers, say assume you only need one day of battery backup instead of five, but then you would have to live with a seriously elevated risk that the electricity grid would fail when you really need it, like in the middle of a Texan ice storm. Even 5 days backup is risky, back in 2018 Britain suffered a wind drought which lasted at least 11 days. Or you could assume nuclear plants cost $20 billion per plant rather than $10 billion, but even doubling the cost of nuclear still looks good compared to the cost of renewables + backup. Or you could use absurd industry claimed capacity factors of 40-60% for wind turbines, but this doesn’t solve the problem of energy storage.
It is possible the cost of energy storage will plummet. There are technologies which might achieve this, like Vanadium flow batteries – but none of them are ready to deploy at scale, otherwise we would be already doing it, rather than building expensive Tesla batteries. A single large city scale Vanadium flow backup battery would consume a sizeable fraction of the current global annual supply of Vanadium. It would be crazy to gamble on the imminent development of an affordable, scalable energy storage technology which doesn’t exist yet, the search for which has eluded scientists for well over a century.
How did the French and Swedes manage a rapid switch to nuclear power in the 1970s? Simple answer, their 1970s plants didn’t cost USD 10-20 billion each. The governments of Sweden and France considered nuclear power to be a strategic priority, to protect their national economies against energy price shocks and political instability in producer nations, so they eliminated red tape and much of the planning process, and simply built the plants.
I’m not personally in favour of eliminating the planning process, I completely understand if nobody wants a hastily built nuclear reactor next door. I think there are much better uses for $10 trillion, like retiring some of the USA’s terrifying government debt. But it could be done, if say there was some kind of national or international crisis driving the decision to go nuclear, as the French and Swedes believed in the 1970s.
Draw your own conclusions, about why nobody today is rushing to embrace such an obvious option.
Total of $90 trillion? Sounds approximately in line with State of California’s estimates that were discussed on WUWT a little while back. Guessing the price goes up as reality and shortage sets in. Still, enough to build 9,000 $10 billion nukes.- nearly an order of magnitude more than your 975 number.
None of it making a noticeable difference in global temperature. Especially with China, India, Africa and a dysfunctional energy policy in Europe post-Fukushima.
In view of the fact that the earth is now starting to cool down, it will be interesting to see how the reaction changes.
Democracies are too stupid to sustain nuclear power generation technology.
Hard to hear, but true – idiot power Karen mobs will always kill it off in the end.
Only China, Russia, Iran and maybe India will be custodians of nuclear technology into the future. It’s sad because there are a lot of promising nuclear technology developments in the West, but all will be terminated by idiocracy.
Just like this article – they (the Karens including Griff) will endlessly come up with new reasons to stop nuclear: “OK so maybe it is safe … so maybe it is economical … so maybe it is environmentally friendly … but – there’s no time left!“
Renewables look competitive with nuclear, until one of the back up batteries catches fire.
Tesla has provided a couple of examples already!
Or you realize that the backup isn’t free. Then you understand that it’s about 9 times more expensive
On what planet are renewables competitive with nuclear?
Next generation nuclear being developed by Terra Power and several others are smaller, modular nuclear plants that are easier to build and maintain and are safer because if the reactor system loses power, the fuel drop by gravity and the reactor shuts down. They don’t need to be near a water source for coolant. They take up much less land than current nuclear technology and certainly way less land than wind and solar.
That said, we might have much better carbon capture technology that can be added more cheaply to natural gas and coal plants than building thousands of new nuclear plants all over the country.
Of course, the author of the article thinks we need to end fossil fuel use by 2040, which is not only unrealistic, but would be a disaster economically for everyone on the planet.
“Of course, the author of the article thinks we need to end fossil fuel use by 2040, which is not only unrealistic, but would be a disaster economically for everyone on the planet.”
They are dreaming.
I see where Vietnam is having Bectel build them their first, privately-owned, natural gas powerplant. It doesn’t sound like they are going to end fossil fuel use by 2040.
It is possible to see the advantage of nuclear over wind by looking at the chart here:
https://transmission.bpa.gov/Business/Operations/Wind/baltwg.aspx
Nuclear is shown as a purple line. The one facility, this week it is matched by 4 dozen or so thermal sources, provides dependable power as shown all day, everyday, for years. Every so often (2 years, I think), with coordination of the hydro facilities, the Columbia Generating Station is refueled and efficiency upgrades (if possible) are done. This servicing of the facility is a modern wonder of planning and actions. It has been on-line since Dec. 1984.
I need to mention that the bounce-up-and-down (green) line is the contribution of wind. [ 7 days ending with 7/13/2021 on the right side ]
Meanwhile China is building over a dozen 1,000 megawatt nuclear plants at a time, and putting them online in about 5 years for about $5 billion each. The cost and delay in building nuclear plants is purely a function of regulatory impediments.
Or safety requirements.
One senior Chinese nuclear scientist says you’d be mad to accept a Chinese reactor
You do tell some porkies.
You can find one person to say anything. Point to the Chinese nuclear accidents which have killed any significant number of people.
There are a dozen Molten Salt Reactor projects coming along. Hopefully we’ll finally listen to Alvin Weinberg (ORNL) inventor of the LWR and bring MSRs to fruition instead of canning him like the Nixon Admin (author of for-profit Healthcare and Watergate) did. MSRs are walk away safe, working with the Laws of Physics.
You know what’s safe, reliable, proven, available today, and cheap?
Natural gas turbines.
Energy made in America that provides a small dividend to our farmers to keep the crops growing (CO2)
Stop the insanity!
Foreign Affairs has is a journal for the “Far Left”. They have squealed anti-nuke information for over 40 years. Not worth even burning for heat (too much sludge/garbage involved) I met one of the V.P.s from Commonwealth Edison, 40 years ago. (1980) he had submitted an article to F.A. in counter to garbage from Amory Lovins. HE was quickly turned down. He gave me a copy of his article. Made Amory look like the Greta T. of that era. Ergo does the wolf change it’s garb, or are we to interpret them as a SHEEP? Yes, after all they say, “Nuclear Bahhhhhhdddd Nuclear Badddddd”.
Try living in Fairyland, aka New Zealand. Three years ago, our socialistas banned oil and gas exploration. Now our Minister of Energy ( zero scientific training) is bemoaning the lack of gas for electricity generation; and the Huntly power station, which sits adjacent to not one but three very mineable coal fields, is importing over a million tons per year of crappy Indonesian coal, to keep the lights on. Hubris meet Nemesis