Guest contribution by Eric Worrall
Journalistic research fails? Foreign affairs falsely claims that “no country has developed this [nuclear] Technology developed so far that it can and will be used widely and successfully. But that is exactly what two countries, France and Sweden, did in the 1970s.
Nuclear energy will not be a solution to climate change
There is not enough time for nuclear innovation to save the planet
By Allison Macfarlane
July 8, 2021
Time is almost up in decarbonising the energy sector. Doing so, experts agree, is essential to preventing some of the most alarming effects of climate change, including rising sea levels, droughts, fires, extreme weather events, ocean acidification, and the like. These threats have helped spark renewed interest in the potential of nuclear power – and particularly innovative nuclear reactor concepts – to enable people to rely less on carbon-generating sources of electricity such as coal, natural gas and oil. In recent years, advanced nuclear concepts have been the focus of intense interest and support from private investors such as Bill Gates – who founded TerraPower, a nuclear reactor development company – in 2006, and national governments, including the US government.
Proponents hope that this renewed focus on nuclear energy will lead to technological advancement and lower costs. But when it comes to averting the threatening consequences of climate change, the cutting edge of nuclear technology will also prove to be too little, too late. Put simply, given the economic development of existing and under construction plants, nuclear energy cannot have a positive impact on climate change in the next ten years or more. Given the long lead times involved in developing full-scale prototypes of new advanced designs and the time it takes to build a manufacturing base and customer base to increase the economic competitiveness of nuclear energy, nuclear energy is unlikely to significantly reduce our carbon footprint. Footprint even in 20 years – in the US and worldwide. No country has developed this technology to the point where it can and will be widely used and successfully used.
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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 power to hit net zero would be insanely expensive – as Willis calculated in US Green Impossibilities, the US would need a brand new 1.2 every week between now and 2040 (975 weeks). Complete GW nuclear power plant) to replace an estimated generation capacity of 1175 GW with carbon-free nuclear power. And we’re already 12 weeks behind schedule. At around $ 10 billion per plant, the total cost would be about $ 10 trillion.
But trying to replicate this feat with wind or sun is getting more and more absurd. With a renewable capacity factor of around 15%, a 5 MW wind turbine produces an average of 0.75 MW. So we need 1175 GW / 0.75 MW = 1.6 million wind turbines or solar systems.
In other words, the wind industry estimates that wind turbines cost $ 1.3-2.2 million per MW on the nameplate. So let’s be generous, 1.6 million wind turbines x 5 MW x $ 1.3 million / MW = $ 10.4 trillion.
OK, so far the cost of wind power is comparable to the cost of building nuclear power plants.
Ah, but I forgot the battery fuse. Assuming at least 5 days of backup power is needed to cover widespread wind droughts that occur every two years, you need 1175 GW x 24 hours per day x 5 = 141,000 GWh of battery capacity.
The Hornsdale battery in South Australia has a capacity of 194 MWh and costs 161 million Australian dollars. Let’s say 161 * 0.75 = $ 121 million. Scale up to 141,000 GWh to cover a 5 day winter wind drought and you need 141,000 GWh / 194 MWh x $ 121 million = $ 87,943,298,000,000 – eighty-eight trillion dollars.
Renewable energies look competitive with nuclear power until you factor in the cost of the backup battery.
I mean, you can play with the numbers, let’s say you only need a day of battery backup instead of five, but then you’d have to live with a greatly increased risk of the power grid failing when you really need it, like in the middle of it a Texas ice storm. Even 5 days of backup are risky, in 2018 the UK suffered from a wind drought that lasted at least 11 days. Or you could assume nuclear power plants cost $ 20 billion per plant instead of $ 10 billion, but even doubling the cost of nuclear power 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 that doesn’t solve the problem of energy storage.
It is possible that the cost of energy storage will decrease. There are technologies that could achieve this, like vanadium flow batteries – but none of them are ready to be used on a large scale, otherwise we would already be doing it instead of building expensive Tesla batteries. A single large city-scale vanadium flow backup battery would consume a sizeable fraction of the current annual global vanadium requirement. It would be insane to bet on the impending development of affordable, scalable energy storage technology that doesn’t exist yet and that scientists have eluded the search for well over a century.
How did the French and Swedes make the quick switch to nuclear power in the 1970s? Simple answer, their 1970s rigs didn’t cost $ 10-20 billion each. The governments of Sweden and France viewed nuclear power as a strategic priority to protect their economies from energy price shocks and political instability in producing countries, so they eliminated bureaucracy and much of the planning process and just built the facilities.
Personally, I am not in favor of abolishing the planning process, I fully understand if no one wants a hastily built nuclear reactor next door. I think there are much better uses for $ 10 trillion like paying off some of the terrifying US national debt. But it could be done if a national or international crisis drives the decision to phase out, as the French and Swedes believed in the 1970s.
Draw your own conclusions about why no one is adopting such an obvious option today.
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