Nuke electricity blackout warning for France this evening

probe

Tonight’s (2009.10.31) TF1 20h00 TV news warned of the possibility of power blackouts in France this winter. The story has been on the net and in the papers for a few days. While France is traditionally Europe’s largest exporter of electricity, the increasing use of electricity for heating/air con/heat pump systems and transportation, combined with the fact that at any one time five or more nuclear power stations are offline for repairs etc is coming to a critical point.

The French generally take everything seriously, and I don’t expect blackouts to materialise – *this winter*. It is a wake-up call for people who believe in nuclear energy salvation.

The key point for pro-nuke spammers to take on board is that nuclear is unreliable, you need lots of reactors in a country to provide continuity of supply in the event of failure – which is a certainty if you have only one or two plants. And you need to keep ahead of the curve in terms of planning. Countries neighbouring France – Italy, Spain, Belgium, Germany, import considerable amounts of electricity from France. The Continent is a big interconnected grid, which allows the energy demand to be widely sourced – and it needs to get even more inter-connected in terms of capacity and market openness.

The same can’t be said for IRL or GB. They might as well be on the moon in terms of interconnectivity with the rest of Europe.

www.areva.com – France’s nuclear reactor manufacturer can’t magic-up a few nuclear reactors to fix the problem this winter (5 GW required = IRL's total peak demand for electricity) or probably within the next decade, given their order book backlog. Aside from the issue of uranium supplies over the expected useful life of an n-gen plant, planning regulations, voter hostility, etc. Britain is in an even worse position in terms of generation kit well past its useful life.

France will have to commit serious investment to a transition to solar, wind and other renewable sources of electricity over the next 30 years. The installed base of nuclear reactors is approaching the end of its useful life in France, and elsewhere. While this might be extended by a decade or so with refurbishment work etc, n-energy is not sustainable in the long term - and there is no point in a country starting to commit to nuclear in 2009.

cnocbui

Your post clearly illustrates that previous French governments have been seriously remiss in not building more Nuclear power stations - tsk, tsk.

Had they done so, there clearly would not be any problem now.

Stating that Nuclear energy is unreliable and then pointing out that France props up it's neighbors through energy exports sort of deflates the initial proposition.

Championing long distance energy transmission is foolish. The transmission losses involved are very substantial so it is a very wasteful practice. It isn't going to be solved next week by breakthroughs in high temperature superconductors either.

SeanW

The key point for pro-nuke spammers to take on board

Mon Dieu! I do believe Monsieur LeProbe is referring to moi!

But I wasn't always a "pro nuke spammer," in fact I used to be very much anti-nuclear, on the basis of all the scaremongering, but then again, I never seriously believed that solving our energy problems was a simple matter of building interconnectors or sticking our fingers in our ears and singing "Windmills Uber Alles."

And I believe it even less now, having reviewed the evidence.

is that nuclear is unreliable, you need lots of reactors in a country to provide continuity of supply in the event of failure

Rubbish! First, even on its worst day, a nuclear power grid will be more reliable than a wind-powered grid on its best day.
Second. All power plant types require an excess reserve or margin of redundancy to cover the loss, sudden or otherwise. It's far from being unique to nuclear power, and far better than wind power, for which ALL must be backed by a more reliable power form.
Thirdly - and this is the key point - noone on this forum is advocating that Ireland should build a group of massive 1.6GW EPRs on a single site, as indeed that would cause an obscene requirement for redundant reserve. Whenever I've written my views on what we should do, I am keen to point out my preference for Toshiba 4S Micro Nuke, Pebble Bed Reactors and other "nuclear battery" type designs.

In other words, you're beating a straw man

www.areva.com – France’s nuclear reactor manufacturer can’t magic-up a few nuclear reactors to fix the problem this winter (5 GW required = IRL's total peak demand for electricity) or probably within the next decade, given their order book backlog.

Ok, if nuclear power is such a bad idea, then why are Areva's order books swamped until sometime North of 2020, according to your estimate?

As to the rest of the logical deficiencies in your post, I think cnocbui just destroyed them more succinctly and efficiently than I could.

djpbarry

SeanW wrote: »

...I am keen to point out my preference for Toshiba 4S Micro Nuke, Pebble Bed Reactors and other "nuclear battery" type designs.

You've been pointing out your preference for the Toshiba 4S for what, 3 years now? But has it actually entered service yet? Has it even received approval from the USNRC?

robtri

and back on topic....

Did the black out happens ???????????

SeanW

djpbarry wrote: »

You've been pointing out your preference for the Toshiba 4S for what, 3 years now? But has it actually entered service yet? Has it even received approval from the USNRC?

Not last time I checked but the design seems to be approved and there is an application in with the NRC for a 10MW plant in the town of Galena, Alaska.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galena_Nuclear_Power_Plant

A 50MW version is also planned. This would obviously be suitable for Ireland's small market - as opposed to the straw man of large reactors that Probe keeps going on about.

By the time Ireland is mature enough to consider the nuclear option logically - if ever - these and other small nuclear designs will have been built and proven, if not superceeded by better designs.

djpbarry

SeanW wrote: »

A 50MW version is also planned. This would obviously be suitable for Ireland's small market - as opposed to the straw man of large reactors that Probe keeps going on about.

But it’s not a straw man, it’s a valid point. There are no ‘nuclear batteries’ in use anywhere in the world (unless I’m mistaken), yet you have been proposing them for use in Ireland for a few years now, while simultaneously dismissing certain renewable technologies as ‘experimental’ – that’s a classic double-standard:

SeanW wrote: »

In another thread we're (still) discussing the unreliability of weather-based renewables, and the primitive and experimental nature of complimentary storage technologies.

Now I don’t know about you, but for me, the Toshiba 4S also falls into the ‘experimental’ category at this point in time.

SeanW wrote: »

By the time Ireland is mature enough to consider the nuclear option logically - if ever - these and other small nuclear designs will have been built and proven, if not superceeded by better designs.

You know, you may find that people will be far more prepared to engage with you on this subject if you drop the condescending attitude towards anyone who isn’t convinced that nuclear is the only way forward.

SeanW

djpbarry wrote: »

But it’s not a straw man, it’s a valid point. There are no ‘nuclear batteries’ in use anywhere in the world (unless I’m mistaken)

Last time I read the wikipedia page about the Galena project, they were due to put an application before the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in 2009 for the reactor. To apply for a license to build and operate an actual, physical nuclear power plant, you must first get the NRC's approval for the design. Therefore, I think its safe to assume that the Toshiba 4S design has either been approved for use in the U.S. under some very onerous rules, or is very close to it. Unless something has gone seriously wrong, the Toshiba 4S is not experimental anymore.

yet you have been proposing them for use in Ireland for a few years now, while simultaneously dismissing certain renewable technologies as ‘experimental’ – that’s a classic double-standard:

It is safe to assume that by the time Ireland is ready to debate the nuclear option at a higher level than "Sellafield poisons people" or "NO MORE CHERNOBYLS" the Toshiba 4S will probably be obsolete, and we might be having this conversation 10 years from now regarding something else.

You know, you may find that people will be far more prepared to engage with you on this subject if you drop the condescending attitude towards anyone who isn’t convinced that nuclear is the only way forward.

But I'm trying to understand the logic behind anti-nuclear positions: being a former anti-nuke myself, I know there is none but I am giving other anti-nukes plenty of opportunity to explain what they'd like to do instead.

Almost inevitably the answer is renewables. However, one fact about weather based renewables has changed little to naught in the past 40 years, that is, when the wind is blowing and/or the sun is shining, great, but when it isn't ... you've got a problem.

And while there are some interesting ideas like those Zenn supercapacitor yokes (which I agree might be a good idea if they're found to be practical and feasible) most fall into 4 broad categories:

1. "Clean" coal (and I use the term very loosely, since "Clean" only refers to captured Carbon Dioxide, which must then be stored safely forever BTW.)
2. Accept a significantly degraded quality of life in the name of environmental conciousness, anything ranging from from voluntary energy usage reduction, to carbon taxes, to aiming for economic stagnation and population decline.
3. A combination of logically insolvent dependences on existing technology for renewable power backup, e.g Lithium Ion batteries (filthy, expensive and there's only a certain amount of the stuff), Vanadium Redux Batteries (also expensive, solutions exist on nothing resembling the scale required, the main company making these things is also in bankruptcy protection.)
4. Biomass electricity peaking plants and pumped hydro.

The last one really makes my head spin because it's based on an experiment in Kassel, Germany, that showed renewables could supply a grand total of 1/100th of 1% of a nations energy requirement at any given time. What they failed to mention was how much land it would take to replicate 10,000 times that much biogas farm and power plant operations, or how many mountain valleys would need to be submerged under pumped hydro.

This loopy plan has been doing the rounds on this board from time to time for the last year or so.

Let's think about that for a second: assuming that the land and mountain valleys required to do this all over Germany/Ireland/Europe/Wherever for this exist (it may not, which would render the Kassel plan to be logically insolvent) there is also the issue of what uses this land would be diverted from.

In Brazil, and the island of Borneo in Asia, mind boggling amounts of rainforest have been destroyed (quite brutally in the latter case via forest fires) to clear land for the production of sugarcane ethanol and palm oil biodiesel respectively. The same thing the Kassel people propose doing in Europe for electricity!

This is the part I find most disturbing, that if the land exists to do what people like Probe want (see here) they would have no qualms about doing for electricity right here in Europe what environmentalists have rightly condemned being done elsewhere for transportation fuels, partly on the basis that such a solution would be (somehow) superior to nuclear energy.

djpbarry

SeanW wrote: »

…I think its safe to assume that the Toshiba 4S design has either been approved for use in the U.S. under some very onerous rules, or is very close to it. Unless something has gone seriously wrong, the Toshiba 4S is not experimental anymore.

But it is still, essentially, an untested technology, in the sense that it is not in practical use yet.

SeanW wrote: »

But I'm trying to understand the logic behind anti-nuclear positions…

May I suggest “Don’t assume everyone who disagrees with you is ‘anti-nuke’” as a good starting point?

Measure Twice

SeanW wrote: »

By the time Ireland is mature enough to consider the nuclear option logically - if ever - these and other small nuclear designs will have been built and proven, if not superceeded by better designs.

Sean,

There is a reactor of almost exactly the same size as the coal-burning units in Moneypoint that are about to come to the market, and these would be even more suited to Ireland's grid size than the smaller battery types. Estonia has agreed in principle to buy the first 2 of these 335 MW plants in 2018. Lithuania are also considering them, as are Brazil and Mexico.

Due to their much lower cost than previous small reactors, these are a very real option for Ireland, IMHO.

SeanW

djpbarry wrote: »

But it is still, essentially, an untested technology, in the sense that it is not in practical use yet.

Perhaps in the strictest sense, yes. But a reactor design doesn't get through a long NRC certification process very easily and there's no way in hell a nuclear manufacturer would start this process unless they knew with reasonable certainty that the reactor is a practical, workable solution. In short, nothing experimental about it!

May I suggest “Don’t assume everyone who disagrees with you is ‘anti-nuke’” as a good starting point?

Ok ... I'm not sure I understand. Most people who hold a position different to my own, do so based on irrational fear, built in by listening to scare stories.

I'm not being smart here but given the state of the alternatives, i.e. the coal, gas, peat etc. fired plants of today and the totally insane future options I outlined in my last post, how can anyone fail to see the intrinsic value of the nuclear option?
And if someone opposes nuclear electricity, are they not, by definition, an "anti-nuke?"

Grudaire

Anti-Nuke, and cautiously sceptical are very close to each other. Don't make out that you're fighting everyone here!

Anyway, a long time ago we had a brief chat about them (unfortunately my exams meant I didn't get a chance to go through all you said). Luckily you're still talking about it! (Your post) Two of the questions you tried to address were:

"Has anyone done the maths on the environmental impact of the micro reactors?"

This still stands, I read somewhere (scientific American) that a nuclear reactor has around 25 times the footprint of wind power generation. Why would we strive to only get halfway to an ideal?

"Judging by the traditional reactors they aren't really that carbon efficient... "

You answered talking about fossil fuels, and how nuclear isn't one of them etc etc. The maths may work out fine for France (your example), but you haven't dealt with the legacy that is shutting down a reactor. The place has to be left vacant for years (hundreds), unless you decide that lifting all the contaminated materials away somewhere else - to be left alone for hundreds of years.

Wikipedia: "The timeframe in question when dealing with radioactive waste ranges from 10,000 to 1,000,000 years" (see source)

Capt'n Midnight

Measure Twice wrote: »

Sean,

There is a reactor of almost exactly the same size as the coal-burning units in Moneypoint that are about to come to the market, and these would be even more suited to Ireland's grid size than the smaller battery types. Estonia has agreed in principle to buy the first 2 of these 335 MW plants in 2018. Lithuania are also considering them, as are Brazil and Mexico.

Due to their much lower cost than previous small reactors, these are a very real option for Ireland, IMHO.

The sealed pebble bed reactors have one interesting feature compared to other reactors. You don't have to worry about future fuel costs and provided you are willing to sacrifice the area, you could have disposal there too. ( OK there are lots of questions about how stable the casing would be over the half life )

Even so the cost of the electricity is still way above other sources. It's a niche market.


Here we could use renewables + pumped storage, though we'd need to find mountains near lakes or the sea. If we were sure the resevouirs were watertight we could even use sea water, but having a fresh water lagoon at the bottom might be better.


Let's not forget that at one time exporting fresh water to the UK during one of their droughts was seriously considered. And there is nothing stopping us using either the lower or upper levels for aquaculture.


When you take into account the energy used in extraction through to final waste storage , stuff like the energy used to make the concrete Nuclear plants are really just giant batteries. OK you do have a nett energy gain , but not by as great a % as most people think.


What we should focus on is energy reduction through insulation (stone age technology) and better ways of storing electricity

Measure Twice

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

When you take into account the energy used in extraction through to final waste storage , stuff like the energy used to make the concrete Nuclear plants are really just giant batteries. OK you do have a nett energy gain , but not by as great a % as most people think.

What is the % nett energy gain from a nuclear plant, Capt'n?

SeanW

Cliste wrote: »

"Has anyone done the maths on the environmental impact of the micro reactors?"

I don't know, as I'm not an expert in the area.

This still stands, I read somewhere (scientific American) that a nuclear reactor has around 25 times the footprint of wind power generation. Why would we strive to only get halfway to an ideal?

"Judging by the traditional reactors they aren't really that carbon efficient... "

Two points to raise here:

1. Your comparison between wind and nuclear is not particularly appropriate, as wind power is totally unreliable, it is literally "as predictable as the wind" and is little more than an independent variable in an energy mix, at best. At worst, it's little more than an ecological three card trick. Wind turbines also cost a comparable, if not greater amount than baseline power plants, and require a certain amount of ongoing maintenance over their finite lifespans.
2. I'm not sure about those figures:
   
   Granted I found this graph on www.world-nuclear.org, but it is from the IAEA and shows some home truths about what our aversion to nuclear costs. The only thing better than nuclear energy in terms of CO2 emissions (and other pollution, likely) is best-case scenario hydroelectricity.

So I dispute those 25X the footprint figures, and on the basis of wind power being impossible to control, I dispute the suggestion that it is any better than nuclear.

Clearly, on the basis of ability to control (which is the only vital point for maintaining a functioning power grid) nuclear power can only be comapred with fossil fuels and other traditional thermal energies. It is a common misconception promoted by Greenpeace etc, that the question is one of nuclear vs. renewables, esp wind power.

The real question is whether we want nuclear, or more of the same (fossil fuels, peat, maybe some waste-to-energy), with renewables playing a limited role in either case. Unless of course, someone comes up with a killer storage solution to store a few TW/h of electricity in Ireland alone, in which case things might get interesting.

Measure Twice

Thanks for the great graph, Sean.

SeanW wrote: »

The real question is whether we want nuclear, or more of the same (fossil fuels, peat, maybe some waste-to-energy), with renewables playing a limited role in either case. Unless of course, someone comes up with a killer storage solution to store a few TW/h of electricity in Ireland alone, in which case things might get interesting.

Even if a large storage solution is found, it would be folly to try to power it with expensive and intermittent wind energy. The best solution would be to power the storage with nuclear power. This is what the French do and they have the lowest emissions per unit of electricity in Europe. And the cheapest electricity in Western Europe.

Not that I am a great fan of the French after tonight's game, but at least they do energy well!

Capt'n Midnight

In the past there ware 40,000 windmills spread across Holland and the north of Germany. The large copper topped tower in St James was once the tallest windmill in the world. Historically people have accepted windmills.

On the other hand environmental leglislation is getting tougher all the time.






http://www.stormsmith.nl/


Scenario 2
World nuclear share remains constant at current
level, 2.5% of world energy supply.
World nuclear capacity increases by 2-3% a year
(7.5-10 GW/a), to keep pace with rising world
energy demand.



In this case 2050 is the date at which known high quality uranium ores will be so depleted that the low quality ores in use will take so much energy to process that the CO2 emissions in refining will be greater than generating the same electricity from gas fired stations.


So if we pump billions in to Uranium Power plants we might be able to provide 2.5% of the worlds energy for the next 40 years, provided the shortage of high grade ore doesn't shove up the price in the meantime. It doesn't give us time to develop renewables because it consumes all the funds.

Or we could invest in renewables/storage technelogies. Windmills have been in use for a thousand years.

Measure Twice

Capt'n,

The Stormsmith analysis must surely be one of the most discredited nuclear analyses ever to be produced.

Take a look at the following paragraphs from this link (http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf11.html) for more info. These show that nuclear and wind are around the same on a complete life-cycle basis, and are only beaten by hydro.

I hope this helps.



Adding further confirmation to figures already published from Scandinavia, Japan's Central Research Institute of the Electric Power Industry has published life cycle carbon dioxide emission figures for various generation technologies. Vattenfall (1999) has published a popular account of life cycle studies based on the previous few years experience and its certified Environmental Product Declarations (EPDs) for Forsmark and Ringhals nuclear power stations in Sweden, and Kivisto in 2000 reports a similar exercise for Finland. They show the following CO2 emissions:
g/kWh CO2 Japan Sweden Finland coal 975 980 894 gas thermal 608 1170 (peak-load, reserve) - gas combined cycle 519 450 472 solar photovoltaic 53 50 95 wind 29 5.5 14 nuclear 22 6 10 - 26 hydro 11 3 - The Japanese gas figures include shipping LNG from overseas, and the nuclear figure is for boiling water reactors, with enrichment 70% in USA, 30% France & Japan, and one third of the fuel to be MOX. The Finnish nuclear figures are for centrifuge and diffusion enrichment respectively, the Swedish one is for 80% centrifuge.
As noted earlier, Vattenfall's most recent EPD shows life cycle carbon dioxide emissions for Forsmark of 3.10 g/kWh. The figure for British Energy's Torness nuclear power plant in 2002 was 5.05 g/kWh.
For a further and unrelated critique see Melbourne University-based discussion and more specifically, the rebuttal of SLS.
Information from this source shows that using data from Storm van Leeuwen & Smith one gets annual energy costs for three major uranium mines of 5 PJ for Ranger, 60 PJ for Olympic Dam (both in Australia) and 69 PJ for Rossing in Namibia. These mines report their energy use as 0.8 PJ, 5 PJ and 1 PJ respectively, with that at Olympic Dam including copper production (only about 20% of value of output is uranium). Rossing mines very low-grade ores, but its energy cost is overestimated sixty-fold or more by Storm van Leeuwen & Smith and the figure they predict is more than that for the whole country (c 50 PJ).
Nuclearinfo.net concludes: "Our work shows that this (Storm van Leeuwen & Smith) work is not reliable and in fact leads to outrageously high predictions for the energy cost of Uranium mining for modern mines and mills."

SeanW

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

In this case 2050 is the date at which known high quality uranium ores will be so depleted that the low quality ores in use will take so much energy to process that the CO2 emissions in refining will be greater than generating the same electricity from gas fired stations.

If and when that happens, the cost of uranium fuel will be comparable to the cost of fossil inputs to fossil fuel fired power plants, i.e. not financially viable. Currently, Uranium fuel accounts for about 5% of a nuclear kw/h. Were that situation to occur, market forces would provide a natural check.

So if we pump billions in to Uranium Power plants we might be able to provide 2.5% of the worlds energy for the next 40 years, provided the shortage of high grade ore doesn't shove up the price in the meantime.

This completely ignores a number of key points.

1. New reactors are more Uranium efficient than old ones. The EPR is 16% more efficient than existing French reactors.
2. Only in recent years has there been any attempt to explore for Uranium as prices have been in a prolonged depression since the 1970s.
3. When energy companies do go exploring, they often run into clowns like Eamon Ryan, who as his first act in office, nixed two Uranium exploration licenses in Donegal, signalling his intention to ban all energy exploration for nuclear fuels. The same Green party likes to go on about a supposed issue with fuel supply. There's an old saying for this kind of thing
   "Starve the horse, then kill it because it can't pull"
4. Most countries today use Uranium wastefully on a "once through" basis despite only 5% of the Uranium being transmutated during its service, and the fuel being reusable at least once. This includes the United States, which is the worlds largest user of nuclear energy.
   In the 2008 U.S. Presidential election, John McCain identified Uranium reprocessing as an issue for national energy security.
5. There exists the potential to use Thorium in one form or another, this has been examined from time to time but it has been nixed by low Uranium prices. Except in India AFAIK where they have a lot of Thorium, and the idea of a Thorium cycle is gaining momentum.

It doesn't give us time to develop renewables because it consumes all the funds.

I had to laugh at this:
the above statement is true only if "all the funds" are in one tiny homogenous blob. It is NOT an either or develop renewables or go nuclear.
Some money is held by the government which is spent in various departments. Government research is normally done in universities > funded by a Department or Ministry of Education. Were a government to build a nuclear reactor that would be funded by a Ministry or Department of Energy.

There's also the private sector, where there are many different companies. Companies that make wind turbines, companies that make nuclear reactors, companies that run traditional thermal plants, private utility companies, companies that specialise in R&D, etc, etc, etc.

Take a look at the plan for new nuclear reactors in Britain. Despite the gov't there requiring applicants to fund the new plants at all stages, there's plenty of interest from the private sector. In any well run nuclear system, the national government typically plans to incur minimum costs as the private sector builds the plant and either puts up a decommissioning bond or pays a levy on power sales.

None of this has any effect on any entity, public or private, that's doing research into renewables or storage or anything else.