Arguments
Is Nuclear Energy the Answer?
Posted on 13 June 2019 by scaddenp
Abbott 2011 and Abbott 2012 doesn’t think so but perhaps there are better analyses? For discussions of economics, levelized cost estimates of various electricity technologies can be found here and here.
Nuclear energy is quite commonly proposed as the solution to reducing GHG emissions. As soon as this gets raised on an article's comment thread, there has been a bad tendency for on-topic discussion to be completely derailed by proponents for and against.
We have repeatedly asked for nuclear proponents to provide an article for this site which puts the case based on published science but so far we haven't had a taker. The proposal would need to be reviewed by Sks volunteers. In lieu of such an article, this topic has been created where such discussions can take place.
However, in the absence of a proper article summarizing the science, stricter than normal moderation will be applied to ensure that all assertions made for or against are backed by references to published studies, preferably in peer-reviewed journals.
Update - October 2020
This post has been up for a little over a year now, and has received over 200 comments. Now seems like a good time to add some clarification.
First of all, the challenge to "nuclear proponents" to provide an article requires that the article "summarize the science". It is not the desire of Skeptical Science to provide a one-sided, pro-nuclear assertion. The expectation is that an article would provide a balanced review of all aspects of nuclear energy as a practical, affordable, realistic source of low-carbon energy.
If you think of yourself as a "nuclear advocate", then writing a balanced article will be difficult for you. This is not a place for "lawyers' science", where the role is to pick a side and pretend there is no other reasonable argument. This is not about winning an argument - it is about coming to a common understanding based on all the available evidence.
If you think that criticism of your position represents an "anti-nuclear bias", then writing a balanced article will be difficult for you.
If you think that you are the only one that truly understands nuclear energy, then you are probably wrong.
Review of any submitted article will not be at the level of a review of a professional journal article, but anyone submitting an article needs to be prepared to have their positions examined in detail for weaknesses, missing information, lack of support in the peer-reviewed literature, etc. If you find it tough to accept criticism in the comments thread, then you will not find review any gentler.
The problem with solar plus storage in the LCOE from Lazard is that the basis is 4 hours storage x 50 MW = 200 MWh for a 100 MW solar plant. It is not steady base load, but an "energy storage system designed to be paired with large solar PV facilities to better align timing of PV generation with system demand, reduce curtailment and provide grid support." Technologies assessed were Lithium Iron Phosphate (LFP) and Lithium Nickel Manganese Cobalt Oxide (NMC) batteries. Maybe the costs would be lower if storage was pumped hydro.
1000 km of grid interconnections is clearly inadequate for solar, where potential power providers are literally half a world away much of the time. Wind, too, is usually in synch over areas above 1000km in diameter. Wind farms across the whole of northern Europe are positively correlated. Going as far away as Spain gives a weakly negative link; southern Russia, Turkia and north Africa are other possibilities, assuming that 1) the donor region will have enough excess capacity to keep both ends of the link powered at night, and 2) you trust the governments of said region not to pull a Putin, and cut supply any time it gives political advantage. Cutting off power would cause instant chaos, worse than a fuel supply, where there's more time to react. Japan, South Korea and Taiwan would never allow dependence on wind and solar power from China.
Proponents of '100% wind, solar, water' (usually effectively 95%+ just wind and solar) claim that comparatively tiny amounts of storage will suffice, if a massively overbuilt wind and solar capacity is coupled with a 'copper-plate' grid, where power produced anywhere is effortlessly transported to wherever it's needed. Both those preconditions are far from being met anywhere. California has enough wind and solar to theoretically cover its peak daily demand, Germany has twice as much (151 GW for a peak demand yesterday of 73GW.) Germany still has to complete the HVDC cables that would let it transport North Sea wind power to industry in Bavaria, let alone from Moroccan solar. The North Sea-Bavaria link might be completed by the mid-30s, and will supply, weather permitting, about half as much power at peak as the three reactors Germany closed a year ago did all the time. California last month got 0.29% of its power from grid scale batteries, despite having the world's largest capacity by far. I was a supporter of the proposed Lake Onslow storage scheme in New Zealand, but most countries do not have the topography for projects large enough to cover their power needs for a significant period.
The size of the existing nuclear fleet shows that, at least in the past, it did make economic sense. The number of countries committing to extensive new build - Japan and South Korea, China, India, Egypt, Turkia, most of eastern Europe- suggest that it still does. Ontario has by far the lowest-carbon electricity in North America, apart from in three other Canadian provinces, and parts of Washington State, which are pretty much all hydro. They've recently announced a major refurbishment of four large reactors at Pickering, plans to build four smaller 300MW reactors at the Darlington site, and intentions for many more large reactors, including at Bruce, already the largest operating nuclear plant in the world. Sweden, which correspondingly has the lowest-carbon power in Europe, also announced a goal of two new gigawatt-scale reactors by 2035, and up to ten by 2045. Czechia, with a population of 10 million, has just opened tenders for four gigawatt-scale reactors, to supplement the four GW worth which already provide nearly half its power.
John Oneill at 352:
You are simply making up unsupported BS. You provide no citations to support your wild assertions.
Energy researchers have shown that it is possible to make renewable grids as small as all the individual states in the USA. It is cheaper to make larger grids. The most recent research, like Jacobson et al, make grids that cover most of each continent. Like all North America for example. Your repeatedly mentioning wind in Wyoming is simply BS. No-one says that Wyoming should be able to economically generate all of its electricity 100% of the time using wind alone except nuclear supporters. South Korea, Taiwan and Japan can build out completely renewable systems without relying on China if they choose to. It will be more expensive for them. That is just a political call.
Your claim that Jacobson supports "massively overbuilt wind and solar capacity is coupled with a 'copper-plate' grid" is deliberately false. The overbuild of the grid is less than 10%. The current fossil and nuclear grid has way more excess capacity than the proposed new renewable grids.
I note that nuclear supporters invariably ignore the immense storage needed to have a primarily nuclear grid since nuclear cannot load follow or provide peak power. The needed storage greatly exceeds the storage needed for renewable energy. All the big pumped hydro in the USA was originally built to store excess nuclear power generated at night.
Giving examples like the current California grid do not show that renewable energy cannot power the entire economy. Renewable power has only been the cheapest for about 8 years. There has not been enough time to build out the new renewable grid yet. Battery storage has only been economic for 2 or 3 years. You noting that California only gets 0.29% of power from a brand new technology is simply blowing crap on the discussion. I note that in the past 20 years nuclear power in California has dramatically decreased while battery storage has increased. The future trend is clear.
I note that the current grid took over 100 years to build. Nuclear power is 70 years old and only generates less than 5% of world energy. As an aside there is not enough uranium to generate more than 5% of all world power, the remaining 95% will have to be renewable, mostly wind and solar.
So what if Germany has to increase the size of their grid? They will save money and the environment in the end.
I have followed nuclear power for over 50 years. Nuclear has never been economic. 100% of the existing reactors in the world were built with extensive government subsidies. That is why construction of new reactors in the West has been mostly stopped. Most of the current reactors under construction are being built by the Chinese or the Russian governments.
Please provide one example of a peer reviewed proposed future world power system that uses more nuclear than the currently built reactors.
Whenever I examine nuclear supporters claims closely I find that they are not supported by the data.
Nuclear is not economic, takes too long to build and there is not enough uranium.
Worth noting that the Lake Onslow scheme in NZ was for "dry-year" storage because of NZ high dependence on hydro. Solar and wind are still minor components of its electricity mix and easily backed by ordinary hydro in "normal" years. Ordinary non-pumped hydro also works as storage - hold back water when wind is blowing or the sun shining; release it to create power when its not.
'Please provide one example of a peer reviewed proposed future world power system that uses more nuclear than the currently built reactors.'
'The IPCC found that, on average, the pathways for the 1.5°C scenario require nuclear energy to reach 1 160 gigawatts of electricity by 2050, up from 394 gigawatts in 2020. 1 160 GW by 2050 is an ambitious target for nuclear energy, but it is not beyond reach.' https://www.oecd-nea.org/upload/docs/application/pdf/2021-10/nuclear_energy_and_climate_change_-_cop26_flyer.pdf
Insisting on peer reviewed papers is a good way of ensuring that I can't read them. Here's a calculation on the cost of moving the United States to 100% nuclear electricity. As Joris van Dorp writes, it's a thought experiment on the cost of providing percentages of nuclear from 0 to 100, at various interest rates and build costs. '..It looks like solar and wind are today cheap enough to allow them to work economically as a fuel saving technology with natural gas. And if nuclear costs stay as high as they are today, it even looks as though a combination of storage, wind, solar, demand response and nuclear may be an optimal mix for a zero carbon energy system. However, this does not detract from the fact that nuclear power as a single technological concept is evidently sufficient to allow achieving a low-cost zero-carbon energy system, with no help needed at all from any wind power, solar power or anything else, which is the only thing this article was intended for.'
https://medium.com/generation-atomic/how-much-would-a-100-nuclear-energy-system-cost-3dd7703dd5d3
[PS] Links activated. You have been around long enough to know that you need to create links yourself in the links editor.
John ONeill:
You link to a Nuclear Energy Agency report, hardly an unbiased source, that contains no data or analysis. They link to an IPCC report where the summary for policy makers alone is 24 pages long. The report is hundreds of pages. You must provide a link to an evidence based report and give me the pages that relate to the topic we are discussing. Most proposed future energy systems have a little nuclear since plants currently under construction will presumably still be running in 26 years.
Your other link, which I have previously debunked upthread, is a web piece by a completely uninformed person who has no education or experience in nuclear energy and learned everyting they know about nuclear from the internet. (If you read the rest of this thread you would stop repeating the mistakes nuclear supporters have made upthread). He models the current electrical supply in the USA. Since all cars and all heating by heat pumps will be electrical it is expected that electrical consumption in the USA will at least double. His system is much too small. He uses fossil gas for storage since the required storage would be too expensive to build. I note that a system using fossil gas for storage does not stop emitting CO2 as required. Duh! The cost is prohibitive, he assesses cost incorrectly. The ignorant errors in this analysis are too numerous to address. The fact that nuclear supporters cite this blog proves that nuclear is not economic.
Do you really want to run Afganistan and Yemen completely on nuclear? A solution that does not work for most of the world is hardly a reasonable proposal. There is only enough uranium in all known deposits to run the entire world for 5 years. (Abbott 2012). Read Abott 2012 (linked in the op).
Here is free link to the Jacobson et al 2022 paper titled "Low-cost solutions to global warming,air pollution, and energy insecurity for145 countries". Note that Jacobson describes a solution suitable for the entire world and not just the USA. Upthread I have provided at least a dozen links to free papers that describe completely renewable systems to generate all energy for the entire world. If you read Jacobson you will have more knowledge of what we are talking about. You currently are not very informed.
Here is a free link to a paper titled "On the History and Future of 100% Renewable Energy Systems Research", one of the 59 papers that have cited the Jacobson paper. If you read it you will be more informed about what energy researchers think about future energy systems and make fewer ignorant statements online.
If you have not put in the work to learn how to find papers that support your position it is not my problem. It is not my job to spoon feed you information that you cannot be bothered to read yourself. You have to do your homework if you want to tell other people what they should do. Uninformed proposals do not help advance the discussion.
The fact that you cannot find anything to support your position demonstrates that the nuclear discussion on line is completely fantasy based and not fact based. If documents supporting the nuclear position existed than nuclear supporters would cite them. Nuclear supporters cite industry propaganda as if it were fact based information.
Whenever I examine nuclear supporters claims closely I find that they are not supported by the data.
Nuclear is not economic, takes too long to build and there is not enough uranium.
'Nuclear is not economic' - the 17 countries building new nuclear missed your memo.
'..takes too long to build..' Mean construction time was 7.5 years, with a long tail. Countries involved in a concerted buildout do rather better - Japan averaged less than 5 years, China and South Korea less than 6. Sheffield Forgemasters, one of the few companies qualified to make reactor pressure vessels, has just demonstrated a new method of ion beam welding, letting them weld around the girth of an RPV ring in one day. This weld, on a 4 metre diameter, 200 mm thick piece, with very tight inspection requirements, would normally take up to a year. RPVs have been one of the bottlenecks for nuclear growth. Other solutions, such as the heavy water reactors used in India, don't have RPVs.
'..there is not enough uranium.' This was the perceived reality when the industry was just starting up - and when Cold War bomb-making led to a frantic search for uranium reserves, since enriching to 90% U235 bomb-grade uses up far more feedstock than does the 3-5% used in light-water reactors, or the natural uranium used in mainly Canadian and Indian heavy water reactors. At the time, it was also assumed that energy demand would keep growing at 1960s rates, and that most of the growth would be from nuclear. L Ron Hubbard's famous graph of human energy use rising sharply from a low base, as fossil fuel reserves are used up, and dropping equally sharply back to pre-industrial levels, was used by Peak Oil doomers to predict a coming crash, to be followed by unending scarcity. In fact, Hubbard original graph showed nuclear growing as fast as fossil fuel energy, completely replacing it, and then maintaining that level indefinitely. Plans were in place to switch to fast reactors, converting the 99.3% U238 of natural uranium to fissile plutonium, and to use thorium, 3x more abundant again, as fissile U233. This effort stalled when demand fell, and uranium proved to be much more abundant than thought. Until recently, global production has been well below demand, due to oversupply causing very low prices. Many high grade mines, like MacArthur River in Saskatchewan, were closed during the drop in demand after Fukushima, with the word's third and fourth largest users, Japan and Germany, temporarily shutting their whole industries. With demand now booming, these mines are reopening, and new prospecting has resumed. (Many nuclear operators are on long-term contracts, and have existing stocks, so are not immediately affected.)
Hubbard's fossil peak has been slower to arrive than expected, and so has the nuclear growth he expected to replace it. Long term though, I expect his insight to be accurate. The drive for increasing energy use is still there - nobody wants to stay poor (religious orders aside). The down-ramp on fossil use will be steeper than the rise, as climate concerns spread. Can weather-based energy fill the gap? Not judging by the view out my window (mid summer, 8/8ths cloud cover, national wind fleet at 1/3 of capacity).
I've read some of Mark Jacobson's papers - all the way back to his cover article on Scientific American, in 2009. Before him, there was Amory Lovins' vision of a 'soft path' energy future, very influential on Jimmy Carter's policy. The two were actually diametrically opposite in their prescriptions. Lovins decried the cost and energy waste of the transmission grid, calling for efficiency ('negawatts'), small-scale, local wind and solar, backed by fluidised bed coal. Jacobson wants a maximal grid, moving greatly overbuilt wind and solar across continents, with probably battery backup, no biofuels or combustion energy, no new hydro. Neither prescription has done well when put into practice in reducing emissions. US CO2 emissions per capita hardly changed from the 70s to the 2000s, only falling with the switch from coal to gas (though increased methane leakage may have negated some of the climate benefit). Widespread, government-sponsored wind and solar growth, most notably in Germany, has bought a rapid rise in installation, but though the individual solar plants and wind turbines became much cheaper, their integration into the grid led to increasing power costs, while fossil fuel use persisted at a higher level than on grids that had already switched to nuclear for largely economic reasons.
Some countries whose governments had declared that nuclear power would cease have reversed course, and plan new build - notably Japan, South Korea, Sweden, and Italy. Others - Germany, Spain, Switzerland, Taiwan, which had 20 to 40% of their power from nuclear - currently persist in de-nuclearising. Russia is building plants in Turkey, Egypt, Iran, India, Bangla Desh, and shortly Hungary. Russia, United Arab Emirates, Iran, and possibly soon Saudi Arabia, are building nuclear plants at home because it displaces gas, which earns much more money as exports. Japan and South Korea are building nuclear for the opposite reason - it makes power much more cheaply than imported liquefied natural gas, at East Asian prices. The important question for the future is whether nuclear can take more than a toehold share in countries like India, Pakistan, South Africa, and Indonesia, where energy use is rising fast, and coal is now the chosen option.
John Oneill at 357:
I note that you have made another post without a single cite to suport your wild claims.
Brandolini's Law certainly pertains to this exchange so I will be as brief as possible.
"Nuclear is not economic": All of the reactors currently being built are financed almost entirely by governments. The market has completely rejected nuclear power because it is not economic.
"Takes too long to build": According to the World Nuclear Industry Status report 2023 "For the 58 reactors being built, an average of 6 years has passed since construction start—slightly lower than the mid-2022 average of 6.8 years—and many remain far from completion." while "The mean time from construction start to grid connection for the seven reactors started up in 2022 was nine years," (my emphasis) This includes only construction time. The additional planning time, time to obtain construction permits etc is many years. Typical timeframes for nuclear are 10-15 years. By contrast, wind and solar projects typically take 2-4 years from proposal to completion.
"There is not enough uranium": According to Abbott (2012) as of 2012 there is only enough uranium in known deposits to power the world for 5 years. Nuclear supporters would not be attempting to obtain uranium from the ocean if there was enough uranium on land. You provide no references to support your wild claim that enough uranium exists. Frankly, this is common knowledge among informed people.
Your comments on renewable power are contradicted by experience. Educated readers here will not be fooled. Obviously in the 70's to the 2000's renewable sources did not contribute much because they were not economic at that time. Now they are the cheapest power in the world and are reducing carbon emissions more every day.
According to the World Nuclear Industry Status report, at least Italy, Japan and Sweden currently have no plans to build new reactors. Bertolini's Law applies, I have not checked the rest of your list. I note that France's much heralded announcement about building 6 new reactors will not replace their current 56 reactors that are at the end of their useful life. I note that over 50% of Frances nuclear fleet was offline in the past few years for unplanned repairs due to age. In addition, no money has been budgeted to build the announced reactors.
Meanwhile, according to the IEA:
"Over the coming five years, several renewable energy milestones are expected to be achieved:
In 2024, wind and solar PV together generate more electricity than hydropower.
In 2025, renewables surpass coal to become the largest source of electricity generation.
Wind and solar PV each surpass nuclear electricity generation in 2025 and 2026 respectively.
In 2028, renewable energy sources account for over 42% of global electricity generation, with the share of wind and solar PV doubling to 25%."
I note that the IEA has historically severely underestimated the amount of renewable energy that would be constructed in the future.
Whenever I examine nuclear supporters claims closely I find that they are not supported by the data.
Nuclear is not economic, takes too long to build and there is not enough uranium.
[PS] Removed the "chromeextension" frontspeice from the link. Note that you have to be careful copying links to PDF from the URL bar in chrome.
I noticed that the link to the World Nuclear Industry Status report 2023 will not open on my computer. Here it is:
https://www.worldnuclearreport.org/IMG/pdf/wnisr2023-v4-hr.pdf
you might need to download the report from here:
https://www.worldnuclearreport.org/-World-Nuclear-Industry-Status-Report-2023-.html
[PS] Links activated. Please, please do this yourself.
John ONeill is certainly persistent.
Up-page he has noted that Ontario, Canada is one of the places announcing plans for future nuclear power production expansion. Ontario recently announced plans to refurbish an existing reactor at its Pickering location. This is one of Canada's earliest nuclear power locations. It is not a new plant, although Ontario is also planning to expand nuclear generation facilities operated by Bruce Power (elsewhere in the province).
The Pickering refurbishment is expected to take 11 years, and has already been in the planning/consideration stages for several more. Hardly an example of John ONeill's claim that new plants can be brought online in less than 10 years. The Pickering plant already has many of the needed approvals, since it is an existing reactor complex.
The government of Ontario was short on budget details when making the announcement, but a similar refurbishment nearby had a budget of $12.8 billion. That refurbishment started 7+ years ago and is still not completed. Bruce Power is also in the middle of refurbishment projects that are taking many years.
...and there is considerable debate as to what this will do to power costs. This will not be a cheap process. As Michael Sweet points out, it takes government support to make this happen.
Details in this news story.
John, what is needed to build a station is investors. To get investors, you need rock-solid economic proposition. We are still not seeing that from you. The Lazard report on LCOE noted that costs for continuing a nuclear plant that had capital cost already written off was very low. (ie no economic case for shutting them down). I would guess that reburbishment costs are similarly economic in many cases.
What I certainly don't buy in any proposition that governments should build/pay for nuclear stations because of dearth of investors to do it privately. There are good reasons that investors are going elsewhere.
The grids with the lowest emissions worldwide are not those with the deregulated power markets that came in first under Pinochet in Chile, then in the UK under Thatcher, and subsequently mostly from about 1995 -2004 in parts of the US, Europe and in Australia (1998 under Max Bradford in New Zealand.) Those have not demonstrated the capability to grow capacity, and slash emissions, that will be needed if we want a real transition. For most of the last forty years, in first world countries, demand was static, and the market system only acted to replace existing capacity, not cover expanding uses. (Nor did it give the lowered prices promised when the reforms were introduced.) The lowest emissions are mostly in areas with large, government-run entities, using either hydro - Hydro Quebec and BC Hydro in Canada, Electrobras in Brazil, Statkraft in Norway - or hydro and nuclear - Electricite de France, Ontario Power Generation, Vattenfall in Sweden. Governments can supply the 'patient money', from superannuation funds, needed for long-term energy projects. Private companies, with management usually only staying in the job a few years, pay more attention to quarterly earnings than is needed for projects that will span many generations. A reactor takes years, and a lot of work, to bring online, but once done nothing compares for abundant clean power.
An organization called Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA) just released a report on small modular reactors. The title of the report is "Small Modular Reactors: Still too expensive, too slow and too risky". It says that small nuclear reactors will not be able to contribute significantly to the energy transition and the money spent on them is being wasted.
Key Findings;
1) Small modular reactors still look to be too expensive, too slow to build, and too risky to play a significant role in transitioning from fossil fuels in the coming 10-15 years.
2) Investment in SMRs will take resources away from carbon-free and lower-cost renewable technologies that are available today and can push the transition from fossil fuels forward significantly in the coming 10 years.
3) Experience with operating and proposed SMRs shows that the reactors will continue to cost far more and take much longer to build than promised by proponents.
4) Regulators, utilities, investors and government officials should embrace the reality that renewables, not SMRs, are the near-term solution to the energy transition.
Follow the link above to read the full report. The IEEFA apparently is a left leaning think tank that opposes nuclear power.
Michael Sweet @363 :
Thank you for the IEEFA report. Incidentally I had just read a December 2023 interview of Mycle Schneider by Diaz-Maurin (editor of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists ).
Too long to give a thorough summary ~ but in short, the Small Modular Reactor programs are "going nowhere fast". Costings now worse than the conventional large fission reactors (which are also in deep trouble in cost & time). Schneider touched on SMR security problems as well.
Philippe Chantreau:
In the previous discussion I pointed out that France shuts down nuclear reactors on weekends because their power is not needed. David-acct challenged this fact and demanded proof, although he does not support most of his claims. Wikipedia says:
"France's nuclear reactors comprise 90 per cent of EDFs capacity and so they are used in load-following mode and some reactors close at weekends because there is no market for the electricity" source
I recall you posted to that discussion but since it was not on the nuclear thread it is hard to find.
From my standpoint, it is common knowledge that France nuclear reactors shut down on weekends.. People who don't know that need to read more background information. The Wikipedia article says France over built their reactors and are losing money since they are so expensive to run.
From where I stand it does not matter why France shuts down its reactors. If it is windy the reactors are not economic to run. Why would you think that in a future primarily renewable system that reactors would be economic when in France they are already uneconomic? Wind, solar and batteries are much cheaper than any system containing nuclear.
Now I want David-acct to finish our discussion of France reactors on the weekends
[BL] Given that the comments in this thread jump 7 months in time, and it is not obvious what the "previous discussion" refers to, it is worth noting that there was a back-and-forth going on this thread, where it was becoming somewhat off-topic. The participants moved over here, but a reader finding this later may want to check that other thread for additional context.
Michael,
I understand your stance, your arguments have merit. I acknowledge that renewable are by nature better. However, their implementation and use are not problem free either. There is more to the whole picture than just what you quoted. The entire wiki article paints a much more nuanced picture. Sure, the reactors in France are not operated at constant load and that is less favorable from an economic point of view. However, the mix also makes it a major exporter of electricity and places the country in a better position for promoting the use of electric vehicles than virtually any other in Europe (see the Wiki article you referenced). The situation has evolved since the outages of 2021 and 2022, and France is again in strong position on the European energy markets.
The wiki article also states: " France's carbon emissions per kWh are less than 1/10 that of Germany and the UK, and 1/13 that of Denmark, which has no nuclear plants. Its emissions of nitrogen oxide and sulfur dioxide have been reduced by 70% over 20 years, even though the total power output has tripled in that time." Premature deaths due to air pollution are also examined in the Wiki article. These are not results to be hastily discounted.
My point of view is pragmatic. France has an extensive parc of reactors that can be exploited to produce low carbon electricity in large quantities. Evidently there are some drawbacks and it is not perfect, but everything considered, and from the carbon emissions standpoint, it is not that bad.
Philippe Chantreau,
I see your point that existing nuclear plants reduce carbon pollution. In this discussion David-acct falsely claimed data that showed France nuclear plants don't shut down on the weekends.
David-acct falsely claims without any citations that nuclear plants are "always on" when the data he provided shows that the plants shut down during the highest demand periods during the summer and on weekends. Fossil fuels make up what nuclear fails to generate. Then he says, without any citations, that renewable energy cannot supply demand and nuclear is required.
My contention is that new nuclear is uneconomic, takes too long to build and there is not enough uranium. Renewable energy is the only source that has been demonstrated at the scale and cost required. Fossil fuel companies back nuclear because they know that nuclear can never significantly reduce fossil energy. I note that the website Oil Price says gasoline prices are low because the gasoline demand in China is low since they sell so many electric cars in China.
Michael,
At the scale of the country and in the timeline where it happened, nuclear power in France DID significantly reduce reliance on fossil fuel, that is how they achieved such a low carbon emission per kWh. It was the very reason for the Messmer plan and it did succeed to a large extent. As to whether that can be scaled up far beyond the country, that is another question.
There may be a semantic issue between you and David-acct also: once the reaction is started, a nuclear reactor is not "shut down" except in an emergency or for major maintenance. The reaction is always going, albeit with up and down modulations. The part that is "shut down" is the electricity fed into the grid. It would be perhaps more accurate to say they are taken off line or partially off line, but they certainly do not stop the reaction.
I'll add that, looking at the eCO2mix tool for week 3 and 4 of July 2024, I see peaks in Nuclear share during the summer at the peak temperature times, which does not suggest that the plants were taken offline or ramped down at these times. I am not sure what data David-acct provided.
I also noted an inconsistency between posts #365 and 367 above:
In # 365, the following quote from Wikipedia is cited: "France's nuclear reactors comprise 90 per cent of EDFs capacity and so they are used in load-following mode and some reactors close at weekends because there is no market for the electricity."
In # 367, this comes back as: "the plants shut down during the highest demand periods during the summer and on weekends. Fossil fuels make up what nuclear fails to generate." That would be the very opposite of what the previous quote says: not following the load.
The reason why some plants are tuned down and/or taken off line is indeed the one in #367, i.e. they are used in load following mode. They are not "shut down" during the highest demand period, they are ramped up, that much is clearly visible in the data. As I have pointed before, the eCO2mix data shows that peak demand is, in the vast majority of cases, associated with peak nuclear production.
Furthermore, fossil fuel use in the generation mix in France is very limited. Oil and coal are almost negligible. Gas is marginal and, to my knowledge, used because of its very fast reaction time. Wind is very well developed: on the morning of January 1st, gas was at 1.8GW, when total wind production was close to 19GW (more than 10 times higher). Compare that to Texas, a leader in the US for wind electricity, where production peaks around 10GW on windy summer days.
Looking at the end of December and the beginning of January so far, I see that the share of gas is lower than wind, and the total amount exported is greater than the share of gas. Looking at longer periods, it is apparent that the overall share of wind power over time is larger than gas. France certainly can't be accused of being a bad actor in limiting the carbon emissions of electricity production in Europe. The European grid is highly interconnected and synchronous (except for the UK), even extending into North Africa; there are a lot of international factors involved in France's total production and level of export. I am skeptical of the claim that the exploitation of their nuclear plants is uneconomical.
In any case, achieving a carbon intensity per kWh that is a factor of 10 lower than neighboring countries, while retaining affordable rates is not a bad result. Despite high amounts of fuels used for road transportation, France has per capita CO2 emissions lower than Denmark, Germany, Finland or Italy. Sweden does better but, like Norway or Quebec, they are in a very privileged position for hydro generation; still, about 30% of their production is from nuclear.
That being said, the long term future needs serious planning. France's existing nuclear power plants can not last for ever. Much has been said of the outages of 2021/22. Some of it was valid, and some of it was spin. One could say that they showed a safety system that works, a grid resilient enough to withstand the outages, and problems that could be detected and solved.
Nevertheless, it must be acknowledged that the 30-50 year horizon demands solutions. I don't know that renewables can be increased to the 50+GW they would have to produce. That is way above my pay grade.
Phileppe Chantreau:
I am sorry I misspelled your name in my last post.
We have already had this discussion in this thread starting at post 322. We disagree on nuclear power. If nuclear power was economic the French government would not have to own 100% of nuclear plants in France.
In the discussion we are following up on, David-acct claimed that no French nuclear plants shut down on weekends. He. demanded I support my claim and linked raw data that he claimed proved the reactors did not shut down on on weekends. When I examined the data I found that it proved that reactors shut down on weekends. I asked David-acct to explain the data but he has refused.
It does not matter why the reactors shut down. It is not economic for nuclear plants to load follow. David-acct claims nuclear plants work 92% of the time. I proved that his claim was false and in France many reactors shut down on the weekend.
Nuclear power is too expensive, takes too long to build and there is not enough uraniun.
No worries.
Like I said my focus was not on future solutions that would be applicable worldwide., and I did not claim that nuclear would be that.
I went to the other thread to find the data you and David argued about. I am not sure which year it was from, as the the August 2024 data on these weeks does not seem to correspond (the nuclear share does not dip much below 40GW).
I still have some remarks. In your post responding to David-acct, you said "The days are not cherry picked, they are the only days I looked at." They may not be cherry-picked as in intentionally chosen to show something, but it must be acknownledged that they can not be asserted to be representative of the bigger picture. Furthermore, as was already discussed, the plants are not shut down. This language is somewhat misleading, as is the argument that these 2 days show they can not satisfy demand when needed.
I do not see in either David-acct or your post a proof for or against the 92% claim. It would demand much more data and analysis. What are we exactly considering? An average across all plants? A percentage of time would be a strange way to look at it anyway. Once a reaction is started, it is on pretty much 100% of the time until major maintenance or emergency. There are better metrics.
The reason that France continues to own these reactors perhaps has something to do with the fact that they represent such large infrastrucure investments, are of public utility, of highest concern to public safety and national security. They are indeed an enormous investment. I am not sure it would make more sense to privatize them. Would we consider privatizing all roads? Freeways in France were built with public money, then their exploitation was handed over to private entities, and it is highly questionable whether that was in fact a good move. Some knowledgeable people argue that it was not. As for EDF, they had a net profit of 10 billion euros in 2023.
Phillippe Chantreau:
The post in the other thread was made in August 2023. The days are from August 2023.
The days were not cherry picked. That affects their statistical value. Random days are more statistcally significant than cherry picked days. I stated how I picked the days.
You have provided no information to support your claim that that reactors are not turned off on weekends. Wikipedia said "some reactors close at weekends" which I read as stopping the chain reaction. Since you do not know what the capacity factor of nuclear reactors is, a basic number that everyone should know, why should I believe your unsupported word the reactors do not stop the chain reaction instead of the references I have read and linked? Please link your references that say the chain reaction is not stopped when the reactors are closed.
The 92% capacity factor for nuclear reactors is a number for the US reactor fleet that is published every year. David-acct has cherry picked the highest year for the reactor fleet with the highest numbers. The USA fleet is usually around 90%. If the reactors run 100% of the time full out they have a capacity factor of 100%. Lower numbers indicate that reactors were off line for some reason. Lower numbers are not economic.
The world fleet has about an 80% capacity factor and France about 70% before 2020. France has been much lower lately due to unplanned maintenance. Since these factors are released every year Daid-acct and I do not need to reference them, they are common knowledge.
EDF, the French nuclear power company, used to be partially privately owned. In 2023 the French government bought out the private investors because the company was bankrupt due to enormous maintenance expenses and the extraordinarily overbudget new build nuclear plants. Despite their 2023 profits they would not survive without very large government support. I am surprised a French citizen is not aware of the buy out. Your comments on government ownership of nuclear plants are simply uninformed.
I always argue that nuclear is too expensive, takes too long to build and there is not enough uranium. These factors are clear in the French fleet.
Regarding turning nuclear power reactors on and off.
The World Nuclear Asociation: Nuclear Essentials / How does a nuclear reactor work? includes the following quote:
In order to ensure the nuclear reaction takes place at the right speed, reactors have systems that accelerate, slow or shut down the nuclear reaction, and the heat it produces. This is normally done with control rods, which typically are made out of neutron-absorbing materials such as silver and boron.
Also note that some heat is still produced after the control rods 'stop the reaction'.
An additional reference for turning off nuclear reactors specific to Canada's CANDU system is Government of Canada: Nuclear Power Plant Safety Systems. It includes the following points:
When the reactor is operating, the chain reaction (or power level) is controlled by moving adjuster rods and varying the water level in vertical cylinders.
Sensitive detectors constantly monitor different aspects, like temperature, pressure and the reactor power level.
When necessary, CANDU reactors can safely and automatically shut down within seconds.
...
Following shutdown, the amount of energy produced by the reactor decreases rapidly.
The nuclear fuel will, however, continue to produce some heat and must be cooled.
That heat, called decay heat, represents a small fraction of the heat produced during normal operation.
Michael,
I know I won't change your mind about nuclear as a large scale solution, but please give me the courtesy of keeping up the quality of argument expected from all participants here. I don't doubt that you have some notion of what kind of analysis is required before one can claim that some days are "representative" and I am sure that, if anyone on this forum was to make such claim on any subject, they would be asked to produce substantation.
There is an abundant literature about load following and and it disagrees with your contention that it is by nature uneconomical. Here is an example, that I have no doubt you could find just as easily as I could. It also contains information as to how the load following is achieved and it is not through shutting down the reaction. Virtually all reactors currently in use in France were designed for load following. Wikipedia has a page on load following, which is also very easy to find.
The reason EDf was partially privatized in 2004 was to satisfy a EU mandate. The following years saw underinvestment in infrastructure and maintenance. There was a number of problems with several reactors in 2021-22 but these have now been resolved and the parc is again exporting electricity all over Europe, so, once again, using the adverb "lately" is a little imprecise whren talking about the capacity decrease of 2021/22.
I won't dispute that nuclear electricity is more expensive than coal gas or oil, that is a fact. The carbon footprint, however, is much better. Perhaps there is a price to that, although that was not the reason why it was initially chosen as a solution.
I know very little about the US nculear reactor fleet and how it ise used, so I won't comment on that.
My contention is that France's programme has been largely successful and has produced yearly terawatts of carbon free electricity for decades. If not produced from that source, what would they have been using instead over the past 60 years? Oil, coal and gas, like England and Germany or even Denmark? Would that truly have been better?