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Only Nuclear Energy Can Save the Planet (wsj.com)
Joshua S. Goldstein, a professor emeritus of international relations at American University, and Staffan A. Qvist, an energy engineer and consultant, writing for The Wall Street Journal: Climate scientists tell us that the world must drastically cut its fossil fuel use in the next 30 years to stave off a potentially catastrophic tipping point for the planet. Confronting this challenge is a moral issue, but it's also a math problem -- and a big part of the solution has to be nuclear power. Today, more than 80% of the world's energy comes from fossil fuels, which are used to generate electricity, to heat buildings and to power car and airplane engines. Worse for the planet, the consumption of fossil fuels is growing quickly as poorer countries climb out of poverty and increase their energy use. Improving energy efficiency can reduce some of the burden, but it's not nearly enough to offset growing demand.
Any serious effort to decarbonize the world economy will require, then, a great deal more clean energy, on the order of 100 trillion kilowatt-hours per year, by our calculations -- roughly equivalent to today's entire annual fossil-fuel usage. A key variable is speed. To reach the target within three decades, the world would have to add about 3.3 trillion more kilowatt-hours of clean energy every year. Solar and wind power alone can't scale up fast enough to generate the vast amounts of electricity that will be needed by midcentury, especially as we convert car engines and the like from fossil fuels to carbon-free energy sources. Even Germany's concerted recent effort to add renewables -- the most ambitious national effort so far -- was nowhere near fast enough. A global increase in renewables at a rate matching Germany's peak success would add about 0.7 trillion kilowatt-hours of clean electricity every year. That's just over a fifth of the necessary 3.3 trillion annual target.
Any serious effort to decarbonize the world economy will require, then, a great deal more clean energy, on the order of 100 trillion kilowatt-hours per year, by our calculations -- roughly equivalent to today's entire annual fossil-fuel usage. A key variable is speed. To reach the target within three decades, the world would have to add about 3.3 trillion more kilowatt-hours of clean energy every year. Solar and wind power alone can't scale up fast enough to generate the vast amounts of electricity that will be needed by midcentury, especially as we convert car engines and the like from fossil fuels to carbon-free energy sources. Even Germany's concerted recent effort to add renewables -- the most ambitious national effort so far -- was nowhere near fast enough. A global increase in renewables at a rate matching Germany's peak success would add about 0.7 trillion kilowatt-hours of clean electricity every year. That's just over a fifth of the necessary 3.3 trillion annual target.
What was posted in the abstract is not enough to justify the conclusion. Battery storage, wind and PV are dropping on a curve that now makes energy much cheaper than that provided by fossil fuels and much cheaper than nuclear, who's cost have been going up. I'm actually a fan of nuclear and think while it needs to be carefully regulated we could use more of it. But there's no clear reason other sources can't grow at a fast enough pace. We do need to commit to do required items. For example, we need to build a newer smarter grid than the US, which will require some work that's not just engineering. 10 years ago it would have been sensible to say we could not replace fossil fuels without nuclear. That's no longer a reasonable position to have. Saying that nuclear is a good component to be in a mix is reasonable but is not what the abstract states.
And his argument is "Proof by I Can't Believe The Alternative Because It Involves Large Numbers"
Nuclear power plant construction is exceedingly slow and exceedingly expensive. You can produce power much faster by instead sinking that capital that he wants to sink into nuclear power plants instead into factories to produce solar panels, wind turbines, HVDC lines, and grid-scale storage.
The ability to produce solar panels and wind turbines - per dollar of capital invested - are reflected in their power prices. Which are much cheaper than nuclear. Regardless of whether the numbers sound large to one Joshua S. Goldstein.
Or to put it another way: Coal is already dying. Quickly. And it's not nuclear that's killing it. It's a mix of NG (low carbon), solar (near-zero carbon) and wind (near-zero carbon).
Hey, guys, I'm just pleased as punch to report that it's a fleet of a hundred Vogon Battle Destroyers!
The reverse is true. Now that Solar and Wind are hitting above 10% total grid they've realized their utilization factors are significantly higher than estimated. On top of this storage can now be provided within a deployed cost that's still cheaper than even old coal power. And a huge mitigating factor is that base load is no longer relevant. In addition changes in US federal law allowed for the economical use of load shifting such that demand can now follow supply rather than the prior paradigm of demand being an unchangeable quantity.
The end result being that renewable resources can provide significantly higher contributions to the grid without impacting stability. Add in storage and Renewables can easily provide nearly all our power if not all. And at the cheapest source of power we'd have to be fools not to use it. Fools who bow down to old technology or fossil fuels to enrich the elite that have invested in them.
You don't need to plaster the US with that much wind and solar. It would take about a HALF of a percent to power the nation.
To reach the target within three decades, the world would have to add about 3.3 trillion more kilowatt-hours of clean energy every year.
It takes about 30 years to build one nuclear power plant.
When arguing that an alternative is too slow to construct, you really shouldn't be pushing something that is even slower to construct.
It will never be viable, that's just economics. The cost of nuclear replacement investment at this point for 20-year-off plants is beyond even what we spend on military personnel. It will never be viable in time to matter.
Renewables are exploding now via market forces without the massive investment. An investment would make that go faster, and it would be a small fraction of the cost. Nuclear is always a long-term solution by design.
We need a short term stopgap, that's the bottom line. Nuclear will not be safe while it is affordable, and it will be neither in time to stop emissions NOW like we need to make a serious effort to dent NOW, to have any chance.
The swath of nuclear enegy's death toll per terawatt tell a different story. It is in a bloody category to its own compared to every other form of energy out there, even solar.
I can't tell if you are saying nuclear is the safest or deadliest. I'm assuming you mean the safest. At least that's what the WHO seemed to think in 2010. The WHO ranked them as follows:
Coal: 170,000 deaths per trillion kilowatt hours. 1,963,500 annual total deaths
Hydro: 1400 per trillion KW. 4851 annual deaths
Solar(rooftop): 440 deaths per trillion KW. less than 102 deaths per year
Wind: 150 deaths per trillion KW. 102 deaths per year
Nuclear; 90 per trillion KW. 353 total deaths per year
Nuclear was rated as 1889 times safer than coal. Wind was rated 1133x safer than coal, solar was rated 386x safer than coal.
Granted, this was published one year prior to the 2011 Fukushima disaster. However as far as I know there has only been one death which was tied directly to radiation exposure as of 2018. There were four workers who received compensation who were diagnosed with leukemia and thyroid cancer as a result of exposure. In comparison, over 18,000 were killed by the earthquake and tsunami. Another 500 some died afterward do to disaster related reasons. This included patients who starved to death in a hospital.
As someone who lives in Massachusetts and has solar, depending on your home, it may be completely practical to eliminate your electric bill with solar roof panels. First you do the stupidly simple stuff like switching all your lights to LEDs to minimize your electric use, but aside from that, if you have a good sunny roof, you can easily eliminate your summer and possibly even winter electric bills. Even with two electric cars, we don't have electric bills in the summer.
It's entirely practical even in regions as far north as Massachusetts to build homes with a net-zero electric usage, especially if the builder takes the roof orientation into account. Older homes can be more tricky depending on the architecture, shading, vents, and such.
All that said, I agree that nuclear is a fine option for the base of the grid.
It is still a lot, but that isn't the bottle-neck. The real problem is sourcing the raw materials and rare-earths for that much production.
There is no significant demand for rare earths in grid scale renewable power. Solar cells use silicon, boron, and phosphorus. Windmills use conventional electromagnetic generators. Grid scale batteries will use sodium ion batteries when they come on-line. There are no critically scarce materials required.
Starships were meant to fly, Hands up and touch the sky - Nicky Minaj
Ask the French
You mean the country that's abandoned plants under construction? That says new nuclear plants aren't economically viable? Do you really want us to ask them?
Also, your education seems to have left out what to do with the waste. And no, you can't reprocess it all. First, it's not all spent fuel. Second, a reprocessing plant is also a nuclear weapons plant, which means it's not a practical global solution.
Meanwhile here in South Australia with our world leading renewables, our grid is holding fine under the extreme load of a record breaking heatwave of 4 days above 41C. We now increase grid stability nation wide. Want to try some other discredited talking points?
The law change allowed companies other than the power company to buy and sell demand. This rather small change has had MASSIVE effects on the power market which is why the power companies appealed this change all the way to the supreme court.
The result of this relatively "small" change in the law is that now there is an entire market of companies paying high energy users to turn off demand to keep peak prices much lower than prior. It's also caused the whole concept of base load to go out the window as this demand shifting is balancing demand against supply rather than the prior reverse.
Prior to this change the power companies had no incentive to incentivize demand shifting. Higher peak prices meant more unregulated profits in their pockets.
1. In the US, at least, we do. It's called Yucca Mountain. it wasn't politically acceptable to the previous Administration for #UNKNOWNREASON, but the current Administration would probably be fine to use this purpose-built facility for what it was built for - long-term storage of nuclear waste.
2. Done. All nuclear plants already pay into a decommissioning fund that is controlled and overseen by the NRC.
3. Every nuclear power plant buy insurance from the Government to cover people and property.
So, we're where you want to be (at least in the US); what's the hold-up to rolling out more nuclear?
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!