Guest Post

This post, and the  one to follow, provides an insight into Martin’s new book: The Power Makers’ Challenge: and the need for Fission Energy

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PART 1

Introduction from the Book Cover

“The Power Makers – the producers of our electricity – must meet the demands of their customers while also addressing the threat of climate change. There are widely differing views about solutions to electricity generation in an emission constrained world. Some see the problem as relatively straight forward, requiring deep cuts in emissions now by improving energy efficiency, energy conservation and using only renewable resources. Many electricity industry engineers and scientists see the problem as being much more involved.

The Power Makers ’ Challenge: and the need for Fission Energy (http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4471-2813-7) looks at why using only conventional renewable energy sources is not quite as simple as it seems. Following a general introduction to electricity and its distribution, the author quantifies the reductions needed in greenhouse gas emissions from the power sector in the face of ever increasing world demands for electricity. It provides some much needed background on the many energy sources available for producing electricity and discusses their advantages and limitations to meet both the emission reduction challenge and electricity demand.

By analysing the three main groups of energy sources: renewable energy, fossil fuels and fission energy (nuclear power), readers can assess the ability of each group to meet the challenge of both reducing emissions and maintaining reliable supply at least cost. It is written for both non-technical and technical readers.”

Synopsis

Greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions are changing the landscape for our Power Makers – those good folks that deliver our ultra-reliable electricity supply.

The Power Makers have been largely reliant on fossil fuels for providing abundant and relatively cheap energy and delivering a high standard of living in developed countries. Even so, more than a third of all humanity still has no access to electricity. For those living in less-developed countries, their long-term aspirations are to achieve the same high standard of living enjoyed in the developed world. That means access to abundant cheap energy – and much more of it!

The mainstream scientific consensus is that GHG emissions are the primary cause of recent global warming. In addition, fossil fuels are a finite resource. Continuing to use fossil fuels as our main energy source for generating electricity could lead to both an energy supply and climate disaster: two good reasons for migrating our electricity generation away from fossil fuels.

Technically, economically, socially and politically – we face many challenges in trying to harness non-fossil-fuel energy on a large scale.

The challenge facing our Power Makers is to maintain a reliable, cost effective electricity supply with substantially less emissions. With over 65% of our electricity currently coming from fossil fuels (coal, gas and oil) that produce 44% of the world’s GHG emissions, this is no small challenge. The Power Makers have no choice but to clean up the fossil fuel power plants (or replace them) while maintaining the supply security paramount for both Power Makers and their customers.

Renewable energy is popular as a low emission replacement for fossil fuels. It took immense geological pressure over millions of years to create those energy-rich stores of fossil fuels like coal, oil and gas from plant matter. Conversely, most renewable energy sources are relatively dilute and variable in supply. Exploiting renewable energy sources in similar ways to fossil fuels is proving to be difficult and expensive.

The Power Makers face many questions. What are the implications of harnessing such diffuse energy sources? How do they ensure electricity supply security with energy flows that are variable and intermittent – sometimes delivering a lot of power, sometimes a little, and at other times none at all? What methods can be used to store large amounts of energy to cover the non-generating periods? Is nuclear energy a clean and sustainable alternative? What are the costs and timescales required for a major energy transition? I consider all these questions in my book.

The Carbon Challenge

At the 2009 Climate Summit in Copenhagen the main point of agreement among the world’s leaders was that the target temperature rise should be no more than 2ºC above pre-industrial levels. To achieve this the IPCC tells us we must reduce GHG emissions by 85% by 2050, world-wide.

On average across the world, about 500 kilograms (kg) of CO₂ equivalent are produced for every MWh of electricity generated. This is known as the ‘emission intensity’. In Australia, the emission intensity is almost twice as high as the world average. To reach the emissions reductions needed by 2050 several studies have shown that the average emission intensity needs to be reduced to as low as 50 kg CO₂-e/MWh. Current estimates for the emission intensity of very low-carbon fossil fuel plants using carbon capture and storage (CCS) vary from 100 kg to 250 kg CO₂-e/MWh depending on the technology.  This may mean that there will be little place for fossil fuels by 2050.

Renewable Energy

There are many renewable energy options including wind, solar, hydro, biomass, geothermal, tidal and wave. Some are better at producing reliable electricity than others. Unfortunately all of these resources have relatively low energy density, so a substantial amount of the resource needs to be captured to generate the quantity of electrical energy needed. A dilute resource also means much greater cost to extract the energy and convert it into usable and reliable electricity.

Some of these renewable options are not only very dilute but variable – not there all the time when you need them. This does not imply there is no place for renewables but it does indicate that renewable sources may not readily replace significant amounts of coal power, which will be required to reduce the emission intensity to the levels needed.

What the Power Makers need are energy sources that can produce a predictable amount of energy as and when it’s needed – not at the whim of nature. Three renewable technologies are considered to be reliable, proven and commercially established but may be constrained by the availability of resources; water (hydroelectricity), geothermal hot water (or steam) and combustible biomass. Concentrated solar power (CSP) with heat storage is proven technology but is currently expensive and still only being constructed on a relatively small scale. Intermittent wind, solar PV and wave technologies could also replace fossil fuels if sufficiently large-scale energy storage was available.

Energy Storage

Pumped hydro storage (PHS) has been used for almost as long as electricity networks have existed. In Australia we have about 20 GWh of PHS. If we wanted to get all of our electricity from renewable energy, we might need at least one full day’s storage to handle variability. Australia consumes on average about 700 GWh per day so relying on PHS alone would mean increasing our PHS capacity 35 fold.

PHS systems need large areas of land for the reservoirs (although the ocean could be the lower reservoir) and the upper reservoir needs to be as high as possible, usually a head of more than 200 m above the lower reservoir. The smaller the head, the larger the reservoirs need to be. These geographical requirements limit the number of suitable locations and environmental issues will need to be considered.

Another storage option is compressed air energy storage (CAES). As with PHS, CAES requires suitable geological sites. CAES sites ideally already contain disused mines, gas/oil fields, aquifers or salt domes that can be used as compressed air storage areas. Existing CAES plants are few and small (under 3 GWh) so we might need over 200 such locations for Australia. Similar situations for both PHS and CAES exist elsewhere in the world.

Other storage options include hydrogen and various types of batteries. These are significantly more expensive per MWh than open cycle gas generators: one of the reasons they are not more widely used today. Hydrogen storage systems are still under development, so difficult to cost with any accuracy.

It is clear from the above that we really only have a few limited, scalable options for electricity storage. This is a field that has attracted a great deal of interest over the past few decades. Improvements in battery technology are progressing and developments are taking place in both CAES and hydrogen storage. But there are some chemical and physical limitations that will restrict future size and cost reductions.

Clean Coal

Coal is the major energy source for the world’s electricity. It is relatively easy to mine, transport, store and convert into electricity. This makes it the cheapest source of electricity today. What may kill coal is its GHG emissions. The world is seeking advanced coal technologies that can clean up the plants to help deal with the emissions problem.

Over time, significant improvements have been made in coal conversion efficiency. This means less coal is used to generate electricity. Modern advanced ultra-supercritical plants are over 50% more efficient than the old solid fuel burners used in the first few decades of the last century. Gasifying coal could almost double the efficiency of those very early plants but even with these efficiencies, coal will still be too emissions intensive.

Carbon capture and storage (CCS) is a set of technologies that could significantly reduce CO₂ emissions from new and existing coal and gas power plants. The CO₂ is captured at the power plant and transported to a suitable long-term storage space, which would generally be underground in depleted oil or gas reservoirs, discarded coal beds or well-capped aquifers.

Capturing the CO₂ is a costly and energy intensive process. For a pulverised coal plant it can use as much as 40% of the total electricity generated. On cost alone, it seems unlikely that CCS will be implemented within the next two decades without financial incentive above and beyond the likely carbon price. In other words, without government subsidies, it will be cheaper for the Power Makers to continue releasing CO₂ than invest in costly CCS technology.

Baseload Alternatives

Today, most baseload demand is met by coal plants. To replace coal plants we need technologies that can service baseload – the minimum amount of power required to meet expected customer demand. Typically, baseload power stations run continuously to meet this demand throughout the day and night.

Fig. 2.1  750 MW generator with two steam turbines. From Campbell (1993)

Baseload plants need to have high reliability with low forced outage rates and high capacity factors. Coal, gas, nuclear, geothermal and biomass meet these criteria. The first three are considered to be non-renewable and the last two renewable sources of energy. In some countries like Norway and Canada with access to plenty of rain and snow melt, hydro plants are also be used as baseload plants.

Biomass and conventional geothermal plants are both resource-constrained. Biomass needs huge areas of land to grow fuel for a large plant to run throughout the year. Conventional geothermal, using surface or near-surface geothermal heat is already significantly exploited in most of the lucky 24 countries blessed with hot near-surface reservoirs, so the scope for further coal replacement with conventional geothermal is limited.

From MIT except Wind from NREL, Hydro and Nuclear (author calculation) , Biomass from Ragland

Solar thermal with thermal storage and/or gas co-firing might be a candidate in some solar belt countries, but at significant additional cost today. Typically, electricity from solar thermal is two to three times the price of coal power and will probably be restricted to servicing afternoon peak rather than baseload. Engineered Geothermal Systems (EGS) that target very deep hot rock strata may also be a candidate – if we can ever get them to work on a commercial scale.

Some countries have already started what is called the “Dash for Gas” to replace dirty coal plants with ‘clean’ gas. Others will follow. They consider that gas will get them on the track to reducing emissions from electricity generation. Eventually, they will inevitably have to look for alternatives if they are to make the 2050 emissions reduction target discussed earlier.

That brings us to nuclear power. Nuclear is a strong baseload candidate to replace coal as it has in France over the last 40 years. It also happens to have an emissions intensity well under the 50 kg CO2-e /MWh – the goal we are aiming for in 2050.

CONTINUED IN PART 2

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For comments on this post, we encourage you to use the BNC Discussion Forum. The link for this post is:

http://bravenewclimate.proboards.com/index.cgi?action=display&board=bncblogposts&thread=100

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South Australia is host to the single largest known deposit of uranium in the world, at Roxby Downs. The recent plans to massively expand production at its Olympic Dam mine will take uranium production from 4,000 tonnes of uranium oxide (tUO₂) in 2010-2011 to 19,000 tUO₂ by the early 2020s. This enlarged open-cut polymetallic mine, run by BHP Billiton, will also produce 730,000 tonnes of copper (the principal product) and 25 tonnes of gold.

Some environmentalists have objected stridently to this plan for an expanded mine, including Greens MLC Mark Parnell who said: “Our state risks being left with a huge carbon black hole as we become the greenhouse dump for one of the world’s richest companies“. Such hyperbolic claims are easily made and can sound persuasive. But are they be supported by evidence? Let’s consider the accuracy and context of such an argument from a climate science perspective.

The greenhouse gas emissions from the mine expansion will come predominantly from heavy use of diesel and other liquid fuels for vehicles and mining equipment, and a 650 MW increase in electricity demand (likely gas powered), including the supply of 200 ML/day of desalinated water to the site. The result is that carbon dioxide equivalent emissions could peak at 4.7 million tonnes per year (tCO₂-e). The Environmental Impact Statement acknowledged this would add almost 10 per cent to South Australia’s forecast emissions in 2020 under a business-as-usual scenario.

Now, let us consider the net effect of this on global greenhouse gas emissions.

The uranium from the expanded mine will fuel nuclear power plants in countries like the U.S., France, U.K., South Korea, China and Japan, to be used for electricity generation. A modern 1,000 MWe thermal nuclear reactor requires about 170 tUO₂concentrate each year, in order to fabricate 16 tonnes of slightly enriched fuel rods. This plant will then produce 8,000 gigawatt hours (GWh) of reliable, on-demand electricity, used to directly displace baseload coal or gas.

This means that the 19,000 tUO₂ from the expanded Olympic Dam mine will provide enough fuel for a year’s operation of 112 GWe of nuclear power, which will generate about 900,000 GWh of electricity that releases no CO₂ or other atmospheric waste like sulphur, soot and heavy metals. To put this in perspective, all of Australia’s power stations sent out 242,000 GWh in 2009.

One of us (Prof. Brook) recently published a meta-review in the peer-reviewed journalEnergy which estimated the full life-cycle greenhouse gas emissions for coal, gas and nuclear power electricity generation. This work puts emissions from a typical pulverized fuel coal plant at 915 tCO₂-e per GWh, compared to 470 tCO₂-e for a combined-cycle natural-gas plant, and 20 tCO₂-e for a nuclear plant. Some of the full life-cycle emissions for the nuclear plant of course come from the fuel mining and milling.

Nicholson, Biegler & Brook (2011) “How carbon pricing changes the relative competitiveness of low-carbon baseload generating technologies” Energy doi: 10.1016/j.energy.2010.10.039

It is now simple to work out the greenhouse gas emissions that would result from generating 900,000 GWh of electricity from coal (824 million tCO₂-e), gas (423 million tCO₂-e) and nuclear (18 million tCO₂-e). That is, the uranium from the expanded Olympic Dam, when fed to nuclear power plants, would generate 3.7 times the total current electricity demand of Australia, and avoid 405 to 806 million tCO₂-e from being emitted to the atmosphere by displacing gas and coal. In this context, the additional 4.7 million tCO₂-e generated by the mine expansion is little more than rounding error!

Indeed, Australia’s total emissions (all sectors) in 2010 were 560 million tCO₂-e, and South Australia’s at up to 31 million tCO₂-e. Therefore, the uranium from the expanded mine would be sufficient to offset all of Australia’s current domestic greenhouse gas emissions, or between 13 to 26 times South Australia’s total emissions. Note that these are not just emissions from stationary energy generation, but also from transport, industry, agriculture and so on.

By any reasonable measure that is not a “huge carbon black hole” – it is a massive win for global greenhouse gas mitigation.

The news gets even better. As we have explained in previous SACOME articles, current nuclear technology extracts less than 1 per cent of the energy from mined uranium. With the future large-scale deployment of next-generation technologies like the Integral Fast Reactor, which is able to repeatedly recycle the used nuclear fuel and use all of the depleted uranium, we will unlock the potential to extract 150 times more heat and electricity from uranium than we currently do.

If you crunch these numbers, you find that the 19,000 tUO₂ per annum production from the Olympic Dam expansion would eventually yield 130 million GWh of zero-carbon electricity, and so avoid up to 120 billion tCO₂-e, which is four times the total current global emissions from fossil fuels. All of this from one (albeit large) expansion of one uranium mine in one country.

It’s easy to tell horror stories about uranium if you rob it of the context of its role in global energy supply. We deserve much better than such rhetorical chicanery. Clearly, it’s time that environmentalists got sensible about uranium mining, nuclear power and carbon emissions.

Barry Brook and Ben Heard

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For comments on this post, we encourage you to use the BNC Discussion Forum. The link for this post is:

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Guest Post

(Ed Note: Chris has written previously on BNC on calculating the cost of ending global warming)

In a hypothetical carbon-neutral future, we can still use liquid hydrocarbon fuels if they are synthesized from non-fossil carbon sources. This analysis looks at how much carbon we use today and which of those uses can be readily substituted by electricity and synthetic fuels.

I’ll use numbers for the United States as economic and energy use data are well published by various government agencies such as the National Laboratories and the Energy Information Administration.

Flows of fossil carbon in the US Economy: (Please forgive the excess precision)

Coal: 9.08e11 kg/year which I estimate to be about 64e12 moles/carbon/year

Petroleum: 19,498,000 bbl/day, (incidentally I was surprised to learn that only 46% of this ends up in motor fuel)

Natural Gas: 7.4e11 m^3/year produced + 1.1e11 m^3 cuft/year imported

Cement: 2.5e9 Mg clinker/year worldwide of which I estimate 24% is used in the United States (by ratio of USA GDP/world GDP)

This amounts to a fossil carbon flux of about 170 x 10^12 moles of fossil carbon being extracted and released to the atmosphere each year in the United States.

To what uses is it put?

• Electricity generation (coal and gas fired thermal plants)
• Automobiles and light trucks (light transportation)
• Highway trucks and rail trains (heavy transportation)
• Ships
• Airplanes
• Heating oil
• Steel production
• Cement production
• Fertilizer production
• Residential and Commercial gas
• Industrial gas
• other materials

By combing a variety of sources and making educated guesses, I break it down like this:

My drawing skills aren’t quite up to the Livermore Labs energy flow pictures, but I hope you get the idea. One thing that jumps out at me is how many small categories there are on the right. There is no one thing that will reduce our fossil carbon flux by as much as 50%. We have lots of smaller (but still huge) problems to solve.

To reduce our fossil carbon flux, we can do two main categories of things:

1. move processes on the right to non-fossil sourced energy like nuclear generated electricity, wind, solar, geothermal, etc.

2. use non-fossil carbon sources to synthesize fuels that displace some of the sources on the left.

Here are some technologies that can reduce fuel consumption on the right:

1. generate base-load electricity with fission rather than coal and gas — good for ~35.5% reduction in fossil carbon flux.

2. use battery powered vehicles and PHEV technology — good for ~14.5% reduction.

3. use overhead wires to deliver electricity to highway trucks and trains — good for ~5.5% reduction.

4. use heat pumps for space heating — 4.5%

5. use arc furnaces, aluminum, and titanium to reduce iron refining — 5.5%

6. reformulate cement plus CO2 capture — 5.5%

7. nuclear powered container shipping — 1%

8. hydrogen production from nuclear heat and electricity — 6%.

Adding it up, doing ALL of these things achieves only a 78% reduction in fossil carbon flux.

It is worth noting that once #1 and #6 have been done, there are no remaining concentrated sources of CO2 available, so carbon capture and sequestration, even if widely applied, don’t really solve the problem. Anyway, suppose we did everything on this list and were left with 22% or 38 teramoles of excess fossil carbon to offset. What solutions are left for things like aviation fuel, lubricating oils, light shipping, running our tractors, and long range driving? We’ll need large scale fuel synthesis from non-fossil sources.

9. converting all municipal solid waste to fuel — 4% — but much of that is being sequestered today, so turning it into fuel and burning it is probably a net loss.

10. biomass capture E.g. [CoolPlanetBiofuels] [GoogleX video]

11. direct air capture E.g. [CO2 Capture by Stolaroff, Keith, and Lowry 2008]

How much atmospheric CO2 collection by biomass capture can we reasonably do?

Reports on biomass yields cover a very wide range with the difference between good-year yields being at least twice as high as average yields over 5 years and peak yields under ideal conditions being on the order of 10 times typical yields.

Data from this (relatively optimistic) presentation suggests yields of

This is a wide range. At the high end, we have Giant Miscanthus yielding over 4 kg/m2/yr at excellent sites while switchgrass averaged over several years and several sites is 1/4 as much.

I read this presentation as less biased. It puts the high end of switchgrass yields at 3.3 kg/m2/yr and the average over sites and years at 1.06 kg/m2/yr.

People talk about collecting agricultural and forest products waste, but much of that is currently tilled into the soil. Taking it away seems like it might have treacherous long term effects on soil quality. In any case, the available quantities of forest waste, corn cobs, and rice straw are really tiny compared to a fossil carbon flux of 170 teramoles per year. Suppose we grew dedicated energy crops (really carbon capture crops) to feed a new generation of fuel refineries powered by nuclear heat and electricity. How much area is needed?

I suspect that the real world yields including things like roads, processing areas, incomplete harvesting, etc., could make something like 0.7 kg/m2/yr close to reality. I’m guessing dry biomass (like cellulose) is about 45% carbon. Using these numbers, an area the size of the state of Kansas, using no fossil carbon to sow, irrigate, and reap would yield about 3 x 10^12 moles of carbon/year. We’d need to plant about 5 Kansas’s to offset just 10% of our fossil carbon flux. Even with a heroic effort, biomass barely moves the needle.

Nevertheless, I’m bullish on biofuels. With the price of oil above $100/bbl it’s already cheaper to make gasoline from coal and natural gas than from petroleum. With reasonable technology development, I can see biofuel derived gasoline coming in at under $5/gallon. Perhaps gasoline prices will stabilize within a decade or so and become carbon neutral to boot. But we’ll still need nuclear-fission-generated electricity for the other 70+%.

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For comments on this post, we encourage you to use the BNC Discussion Forum. The link for this post is:

http://bravenewclimate.proboards.com/index.cgi?action=display&board=bncblogposts&thread=49

Life is a series of natural and spontaneous changes. Don’t resist them; that only creates sorrow. Let reality be reality. Let things flow naturally forward in whatever way they like.  ― Lao Tzu

The Brave New Climate (BNC) blog has seen many changes in its almost 4 years of existence. I’d like to think of this as an evolutionary process — underpinned by a natural selection of ideas and advocacy based on what I think is important and workable, framed in the context of identifying viable options for global climate change mitigation. As the quote above emphasizes, this flows naturally from a progress of thought and effort.

A few years ago I announced a shift in focus on the website, in the post ‘A necessary interlude‘. Now things on BNC are changing again.

In summary, the motivation for the new changes are: (i) time limitations, (ii) audience outreach and (iii) freedom and flexibility. I’ll first explain what is going to happen, and then elaborate a little on the justification.

1. A BNC Discussion Forum has been established. This will, hereafter, be the main place for comments.

2. A new website – KnowMoreFearLess.com [KMFL] — will be launched (currently locked and under development). This will be focused on public education on nuclear power for greenhouse gas mitigation.

3. The Front Page of the bravenewclimate.com website will become a semi-static PORTAL page. This will include fixed links to the BNC Discussion Forum (see 1), the BNC archives (after some further indexing and re-organisation of this page), KMFL, and also provide a summary (with links) to the latest BNC blog post.

4. The flow of BNC blog postings will be less frequent and more opportunistic — rather than regular and scheduled (the historic rate was a post every 3-5 days).

The BNC twitter feed (microblogging) will not change in character or frequency — mostly consisting of up-to-date links to articles on climate change and low-carbon energy.

Okay, now some explanation on these changes.

Discussion Forum:

The BNC forum is broken up into categories, boards, sub-boards and topics (posts). If you’ve used other forums, you will be familiar with this layout. (The style and layout will update over time, as I have time to work on it and better understand my design options).

As described here, I’m hoping to eventually transition all commentary from the BNC blog over to the Discussion Forums. Of course there is some risk that this will dilute and fragment the BNC community, but like most things in life, big decisions usually involve some trade-offs.

Advantages

Comment preview (see what your post looks like, before you post it).

A large array of icon- and code-driven formatting tools.

After-posting editing capability (fix those typos yourself!).

(None of that is possible on WordPress.com)

The inbuilt search capability is extremely thorough and fast. Searching user comments (rather than main posts) is difficult and limited on WordPress.com

The BNC community can easily create their own content by starting a new topic in the appropriate board.

Easy to keep individual discussion streams on-topic and in-context (by posting in the correct board, the post is automatically classified).

Disadvantages

Commenting is on a different site to the blog post (so people might not bother to click through)

Other? (not sure)

For the type of forum, I assessed both self-hosted and remotely hosted options. There are definitely pros and cons to both approaches. I ended up going for the remotely hosted forum for a number of reasons, including cost, ease of use, security, bandwidth, reliability, etc. For that I was willing to forego some of the freedoms associated with phpbb3 etc. Ultimately, there is no right approach.

I chose ProBoards.com as the host because it is feature rich, stable and very well established. So it’s not likely to vanish or change its policies suddenly. When I set up BraveNewClimate.com, I chose WordPress.com as the host for similar reasons to the above, rather than going with the self-hosted blog option via WordPress.org. I’ve not regretted that decision, although I’ve sometimes found it limiting. Once again, we return to the matter of trade offs!

As to the speed of the transition, I don’t expect the commenting to switch completely from blog to forum overnight. To facilitate the cross-communication, each new BNC post will include (in a prominent place) a link to a new forum post where the discussion of that post can unfold — or branch out into other boards on the forum, as the discussion evolves.

Note on BNC forum use: To start using the forum, you will need to complete a one-off site registration (about 25 people have already done this). Once registered, you just need to be logged in to create new topics or post replies. (If you are not logged in, you can still reply, but you will need to complete an annoying anti-bot security check each time you post, so I don’t recommend this.) The forum’s comments policy are here — they are similar to the BNC blog rules. You can jump straight to the latest posts by clicking here (newest threads).

KnowMoreFearLess.com:

The focus of this KMFL initiative is to achieve effective and wide public outreach, as per the identified BNC target audience. There is a team of enthusiastic and talented people already working on this website behind the scenes. The aim of KMFL is to avoid technical jargon or detailed prose and instead concentrate on iconography (here is an example of the intended style), easy-to-understand figures and tables, as well as short video, audio and text summaries of key questions on nuclear energy and its role in climate-change mitigation.

Those who know most about climate change are the most worried. Yet with nuclear power, those who know the most are the least frightened. Nuclear Energy – know more, fear less!

I can’t provide many more details at this stage, but if the concept appeals to you and you think you’d like to get more involved, let me know via email and we’ll discuss possible roles.

PORTAL:

The portal (home page) will point visitors directly to the key BNC content (via icons and text) — the community home (Discussion Forum), the huge wealth of accumulated information (a well-indexed BNC archive, covering the last 3+ years of material), the easy-to-understand public outreach and education site (KMFL), and the current blog focus (most recent post). The port link to the most recent BNC post will include its title, an image, and a 1-2 sentence précis of the content.

The existing sidebars will remain, so people can quickly access any of the 15 most-recent posts from that list, as before (this will be promoted to higher on the sidebar than currently, to make it more prominent/accessible).

Blogging frequency:

I have at least a dozen half-finished articles in the publishing pipeline, but it’s hard to give any one of them enough time to really do them justice. So, rather than feeling the pressure to get something (anything), out every 3-5 days, I really liked the blog to update more naturally — when stuff is ready, and not before!

Of  course, when something especially topical comes up in the news (e.g. the recent Economist special issue), or when I’ve published an essay or article in a public document, then I’ll put it up on BNC quickly. But otherwise, my motto will be ‘posts will happen when they can happen‘. So sometimes there might be two blog entries posted in one week, and at other times, I might not be able to post anything for 3 — 4 weeks or more. It will all depend on time available and readiness of material.

However, because of the way the BNC Discussion Forum is envisaged to work, I’d hope that this reduction in blogging frequency won’t kill the activity of the BNC community. This is because, using the forum, it is now much easier for people to create their own content (posts) within the BNC climate-energy context.

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I trust that BNC readers understand an appreciate the changes described above. These will be implemented during the next few weeks. However, it may be a month or two before the launch of the KMFL website — I will do a blog post on it here on the BNC blog, and announce it on the BNC forum, when that site is ready to go!

Feedback on these changes is, as always, welcome — especially over on the BNC Forum! (this is the post linked to this blog entry)

Reproduced with permission of the authors, these sections describe and justify some of the key design choices that went into the making the IFR a different — and highly successful — approach to fast neutron reactor technology and its associated fuel recycling.

These excerpts not only provide a fascinating insight into a truly sustainable form nuclear power; they also provide excellent reference material for refuting many of the spurious claims on the internet about IFR by people who don’t understand (or choose to wilfully misrepresent) this critically important technology.

For reference, here are the previous entries:

Part 1 (metal fuels and plutonium).

Part 2 (coolant choice and reactor configuration).

Part 3 (lessons learned from fast reactor capital costs).

This last extract considers the cost differences and similarities between the next-generation IFR and the current generation of thermal reactors (using a comparison with a generic LWR). Note that this section does not include the costs of fuel (mining, enrichment, fabrication, recycling, and so on). That is, however covered later in the book:, with full fuel-cycle cost estimate being: LWR = 0.55 c/kWh at current uranium cost (Table 13-4) and IFR 0.44 c/kWh — or $35 million/GWyr (Table 13-9).

This section is drawn from pages 277-280 of Plentiful Energy. To buy the book ($18 US) and get the full story, go to Amazon or CreateSpace. (Note that the images below do not come from the book).

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Generic cost comparison between the IFR and LWR (light water reactor) 

Comparison of fast reactor capital cost with the capital cost of commercial LWRs is not straightforward either. First, the part that should be straightforward, that of identifying the capital cost of commercial reactors, isn’t straightforward at all. U.S. LWRs were built twenty or more years ago, under wildly varying construction environments, some prior to the anti-nuclear campaigns of cost increases, some during the height of them, and a few after. Comparisons between PWR, BWR, heavy water reactors, and gas-cooled reactors are not straightforward either, even though, with the water reactor types, we are dealing with actual experience. Comparison with yet-to-be-designed fast reactors involves more uncertainty. However, the details of the makeup of capital costs do provide useful insight.

The Department of Energy’s Energy Economics Data Base (EEDB) defines a code of accounts for estimating and categorizing such cost components. [6] For illustrative purposes, a reference PWR capital cost breakdown developed for the EEDB is presented in Table 13-2. [7] Since the database was generated in the 1980s, the absolute dollar amounts have little relevance to today, so the cost breakdown is expressed in terms of percentage of the total direct costs.

The normalization doesn’t allow direct comparison of the total cost of the two reactor types. It shows how the costs of a nuclear plant apportion between the various elements of the plant. A brief explanation of the nature of these costs is given below.

Direct costs include those construction and installation costs associated with the operating plant structures, systems, and components. Account 21 is the site improvement and all the reactor buildings and the balance-of-plant buildings and structures. The rest of the direct cost accounts are associated with the equipment systems, the equipment itself, and such things as the costs of transportation and insurance, provision for shipping fixtures and skids, startup and acceptance testing equipment, on-site unloading and receiving inspections, and installation.

Indirect costs begin with account 91, for construction services, which includes costs for temporary construction facilities at the reactor site, construction tools and equipment, payroll insurance and taxes, and payments to federal, state, and local governments for taxes, fees, and permits. Account 92, for home office engineering services, includes costs of engineering and home office services that are specific to the site. These costs include engineering and design, procurement and expediting activities, estimating and cost control, engineering planning and scheduling, and the services of home office QA engineers and staff personnel engaged in work on the project. Account 93, for field office engineering and services, includes the construction management activities associated with on-site management of construction, site QA/QC, plant startup and test procedures, and the supporting costs for these functions. Account 94 include the owner’s staff for project management, integration, licensing, QA/QC, etc., the initial staffing and training of operations, maintenance, supervisory, and administrative personnel, the initial stock of spare parts, consumables, and supplies, and the initial inventory of sodium and other capital equipment.

Controlling indirect costs is of the utmost importance, and those have varied widely from project to project. In past U.S. experience, the indirect costs dominated the direct costs in some plants, with the indirect costs running up to ridiculous levels, actually higher than the direct costs. Interest on the borrowed capital kept adding on as plant construction was held up by one legal challenge after another. A key to capital cost competitiveness for the fast reactor, as for any other, is keeping the indirect costs down to a reasonable level; in particular, construction hold-ups cannot be tolerated. In maturity, there is no reason why the indirect costs for fast reactors would be any higher than those of LWRs.

The most effective measure to reduce the indirect costs is to standardize the plant design so that site-specific engineering and design costs are avoided. The seismic isolation system can help to keep the standard design applicable for a variety of potential sites regardless of the site-specific seismic design spectra. The seismic isolation system itself can be fine-tuned to cope with any site-specific seismic design criteria, leaving the plant structural design as a standardized plant. [8-9]

The 4S small modular nuclear reactor - a next-generation sodium-cooled 'nuclear battery'

As for the direct cost components, the reactor equipment cost may be higher for the fast reactor because of higher-temperature structural materials and additional equipment associated with the intermediate heat transport system. On the other hand, the containment building and structures can be reduced in size and in the commodity amounts, because high pressure containment is not required for fast reactors. The balance of the equipment systems, such as the turbine, could be slightly less for fast reactor because of a higher thermal efficiency and hence reduced thermal output for any given electrical output. On balance, the capital cost for fast reactors should be in the same range of variations that exist for LWRs.

In a recently completed commercial feasibility study done by the Japan Atomic Energy Agency, the capital cost for their 1,500 MWe JAEA Sodium Cooled Fast Reactor (JSFR) was estimated to be less than that of an equivalent size PWR. [10-11] A significant reduction in the construction commodities and building sizes was achieved by a number of design changes, such as combining the IHX and pump into one unit, shortening the piping length with advanced alloys, and reducing the number of loops with large components.

Overall, though, because of first-of-a-kind costs, capital cost competitiveness is unlikely in the first few fast reactor plants. Too much focus should not be placed on the capital cost reduction for the early reactors. Risk in terms of large sodium component reliability and system engineering is more important than the economies of scale that push toward larger reactor sizes. Initial fast reactors should be in the range of 600 MWe sizes before scaleups begin. Economies of scale will naturally push to a larger size in a mature economy. Even for the mature LWR industry, the reactor size has been in the 1,000-1,300 MWe range and the scaleup to 1,500-1,800 MWe size is only now being planned for the next evolutionary plants, after thousands of reactor-years experience with the current generation.

Most importantly, fast reactor design should exploit inherent properties of sodium and inherent safety characteristics so that the system as a whole is highly reliable, easy to operate, and has assured longevity. Favorable economics will follow in a mature fast reactor economy. If the first commercial plant isn’t cost-competitive, initial deployment will have to be driven by considerations of national policy, prudent planning, resource scarcity, perceptions of future costs, and other such factors. Capital costs for the initial few reactors will be dominated by indirect costs, and it is crucially important to establish a project infrastructure that contains them. The EBR-II project model had a small cadre of experts (less than one hundred)  who were fully responsible, from the initial concept through engineering, detailed design, procurement, installation, and final acceptance testing. [12] A modern fast reactor, whatever its size, will require a somewhat larger cadre, but expertise is paramount, and in size it should be on the order of few hundred engineers only. A sound project organization is vital, not only for the success of the initial demonstration project, but also as the model for construction infrastructure in maturity.

References

[6] “Guide for the Economic Evaluation of Nuclear Reactor Plant Designs”, NUS-531, 1969

[7] “Nuclear Energy Cost Data Base – A Reference Data Base for Nuclear and Coal-Fired Power Plant Generation Cost Analysis”, DOE/NE-0095, 1988

[8] “Large LMFBR Pool Plant”, unpublished report, Rockwell International Corporation and Argonne National Laboratory, 1983

[9] “J.S. McDonald et al., “Cost-Competitive, Inherently Safe LMFBR Pool Plant”, Proc American Power Conference, 46:696, 1984

[10] “Phase II Final Report of Feasibility Study on Commercialized Fast Reactor Cycle Systems”, Japan Atomic Energy Agency and Japan Atomic Power Company, March 2006

[11] M. Ichimiya, T. Mizuno and S. Kotake, “A Next-Generation Sodium-Cooled Fast Reactor Concept and its R&D Program”, Nuclear Engineering and Technology, 39:171-186, 2007

[12] L.J. Koch, “Experimental Breeder Reactor-II: An Integrated Experimental Fast Reactor Nuclear Power Station”, Argonne National Laboratory.

Whilst in the heart of the former Soviet Union, I’ll hook up with Tom Blees (President of SCGI) and Evgeny Velikhov (President of the Kurchatov Institute), among others. It’s going to be my first trip to the country, and although I’ll only get to see Moscow this time around, I’m returning to the country in again June (partly for the GEP awards ceremony, after which I go directly to the U.S. for lots of other exciting activities); on the June trip, I’ll go to the wonderful old city of St Petersburg. Lucky me, eh?

Anyway, I hope to be able to post one or two updates on BNC during the trip, provided I can hook up to the internet from time to time.

In the meantime, here is something that will be of interest to many readers, given recent discussions on the blog. Apologies if you’ve seen it before.

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Economic/Business Case for the Pyroprocessing of Spent Nuclear Fuel (SNF)

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NUCLEAR ENERGY: THE ONLY SOLUTION TO THE ENERGY PROBLEM AND GLOBAL WARMING  By Bill Sacks and Greg Meyerson

The following is a brief rationale and outline of a much longer essay that is also available on bravenewclimate.com (CLICK HERE to download the printable PDF, 58 pages).

This essay unifies four critical contentions that the authors cannot find combined in any other of the many sources on nuclear energy.  Our four contentions are 1) fossil fuels (coal, oil, and natural gas) are now the main source of global warming; 2) they must be completely replaced with clean energy sources, chiefly nuclear energy since the inherent physical properties of wind, solar, hydro, and geothermal severely limit their use; 3) radiation at the dose ranges encountered in nature, as well as by the public in nuclear accidents, actually promotes, rather than destroys, health; and 4) the profit system presents an inherent obstacle to achieving the goal of clean, sustainable energy.

The authors hold the opinion that all four of these aspects are inseparable, and that a general understanding of all is necessary if any progress is to be made in solving the problems of inaccessibility of adequate electricity for much of humanity and anthropogenic global warming that is nearing tipping points that threaten to make self-amplifying and irreversible changes.  No one of these four, in our view, can be safely put aside as a distraction from some “main” point.

Recognition that the earth is warming and that human activity, rather than natural cycles, is now responsible is only the beginning of this solution — a necessary but not sufficient condition.  Similarly broad general understanding of the severe inherent limitations of all clean alternatives to nuclear energy is needed to hasten the building of nuclear plants world over, and to end the wasteful efforts to scale up wind and solar particularly, that profit a few but at the expense of rich governmental subsidies and higher energy costs that further restrict access to electricity.

Furthermore if nuclear energy is to gain the respect and advocacy of the public, the exaggerated fears of radiation have to be brought under rational control, which requires first that governmental regulatory agencies around the world be forced to admit that they have been basing their restrictions on an obsolete relic of the Cold War — one that falsely claims that all radiation is harmful to our health regardless of how low the dose, known as the linear-no-threshold (LNT) assumption.  However, the science of biological effects of ionizing radiation overwhelmingly points to an evolved response that protects against any harm from low levels of radiation, known as the hormetic effect, or hormesis, a very general biological response to all sorts of chemical and physical agents.

And finally, none of these can be accomplished without public recognition that arrangements of political and economic power in today’s world, and near-complete control over governmental policies, put the first three realms of decision virtually entirely in the hands of transnational profit-making enterprises whose dominating economic interests are directly and/or indirectly based in the continued near-monopoly of fossil fuels in the generation of electricity and other forms of energy.  We recognize that this point of view will meet with varying degrees of resistance, just as anti-nuclear organizations and individuals resist the recognition of hormesis, or just as fossil fuel advocates resist the recognition of anthropogenic global warming.  However, without this latter recognition the vast majority of humanity will remain powerless, in more ways than one.

The essay consists of explanations and references for all these points, aimed at an audience not necessarily familiar with either physics or biology.  In our effort to make this essay relatively self-contained, it begins with the history and science of energy in general terms, followed by an explanation of the physical processes of nuclear energy and nuclear reactors.  Nuclear reactors provide a little less than 15% of total world electricity, varying from none to 80%, in one country or another.

Energy options - we can't choose nothing...

We go on to compare nuclear with other clean energy sources, with respect to a number of indices.  These include safety, availability and longevity of the various sources and their conversion devices, reliability for round-the-clock and round-the-year energy generation, location requirements, and the required amounts of fuel.  The safety aspect deals with mining, explosions, environmental disasters, and the handling of nuclear waste.  We debunk the claim that nuclear plants are particularly susceptible to terrorism and the claimed relationship between nuclear energy and nuclear weapons.  We demonstrate that nuclear has the safest historical record by far among all these alternative energy sources, and that, like the other clean sources, availability of nuclear fuel is without practical limit for the remaining life of the planet.

We explain the so-called hormetic effect of radiation, i.e., the evolved biological responses that protect us from low doses of radiation.  Humans, along with all extant plants and non-human animals, have evolved in a sea of natural radiation from ground and sky, with vast variations from one location in the world to another — variations that correlate, if at all, inversely with cancer rates and directly with life expectancy.  That is, the higher the natural background radiation levels the lower the cancer rates and the greater the longevity, though many other factors can confound these correlations.  We have also evolved by virtue of, and in the face of, internal metabolic processes that produce DNA-damaging reactive oxygen species (ROS) that do far more damage than radiation, and that have also required evolved protective mechanisms.  We exist today only because of the presence of several levels of such biological mechanisms, from the cell to the tissue to the entire organism, which we name and explain.  Thousands of epidemiological and laboratory studies over many decades have demonstrated that, while high doses of radiation sicken and kill by inhibiting protective mechanisms, low doses enhance those mechanisms and make us healthier.  Hormesis is a general phenomenon of all chemical and physical agents, and radiation is no exception.  Too little or too much of anything is harmful, but a midrange is healthful.  The conclusion is that we may actually be radiation deficient, and that if everyone were exposed to more radiation, assuredly within limits, we would all live longer and suffer lower rates of cancer and other diseases.  While this flies in the face of the conventional wisdom, we explain how this “wisdom” came about and, in particular, the falsehood that gave birth to it in the heat of the Cold War.

The facts - what everyone should understand about radiation doses.

We finish with an exploration of the motivations behind falsehoods, sometimes innocent but often deliberate, spread by anti-nuclear organizations and leaders, followed by a summary of the major points of the essay.  At the end there are numerous references and suggestions for further reading, as well as a description of the backgrounds of the two authors.

Read the full essay HERE

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Endnote: About the authors

To introduce ourselves to our readers, we have, in the last few years, made a study of nuclear energy and other alternatives to fossil fuels, the political and physical relationships between nuclear energy and nuclear weapons, and the biological effects of radiation.  We are true amateurs, which means that we have an intense interest in our subject and derive no monetary reward from our efforts.  But we have also transformed ourselves from being previously ignorant and/or fearful of things nuclear into moderately knowledgeable investigators in the field.  We don’t claim to be anywhere near as expert as nuclear engineers and physicists or oil geologists or pulmonary specialists or molecular biologists, but we have engaged in sufficient study, writing, speaking, and mutual discussion, as well as in sufficient direct communication with nuclear engineers and physicists, as well as with biologists and others who study the effects of radiation on plants and animals, to regard ourselves as fairly informed about these various aspects — at least at such a level as required to write this essay.  In fact, we have directly met with a dozen nuclear engineers and physicists — several of them having been involved decades ago in the pioneering efforts in building nuclear reactors, particularly the EBR-II and its successor, the IFR.  Over the last couple of years we have also frequently communicated with them by phone and email and with a dozen or so other nuclear engineers and physicists, as well as having been in regular email communication, over the same time frame, with several researchers in the biological effects of radiation.

There are many notable authors of books and articles that render scientific findings available in lay language to a wider public.  Most of these are not themselves science specialists but rather have also educated themselves in one or another field of science well enough to explain it to other lay persons.

As to formal credentials, one of us (Sacks) happens to be both a physicist and a radiologist, and the other (Meyerson) is an English professor with specialization in critical theory, but formal credentials in our view, are completely irrelevant with respect to whether someone knows what she/he is talking about or, even more importantly, is telling the truth.  The only relevance perhaps is that prior training in related subjects makes the job of learning a subject somewhat quicker, though the English professor has impressed the physicist/radiologist with his quickness to grasp complex topics and to recognize their significance in the present context.  But honesty and open-mindedness are not a matter of technical training.  They are a matter of attitude, which no amount of technical training can bring about.

As to whether we are among those experts who deserve to be listened to, we leave that to our readers to decide, but there is no contradiction between being amateurs and experts at the same time.  Formal training is often not only insufficient to make a true expert, but in the case of radiologists (doctors who interpret x-rays and other imaging modalities) the formal training is so misguided with regard to the biological effects of radiation as to be a major obstacle to expertise.  However, this obstacle is not insurmountable, with an adequately open mind and a strong desire to learn.

Finally, we consider ourselves fortunate to be in the company of many of the aforementioned nuclear engineers and scientists and biological hormesis researchers who have also been accelerating their attempts to reach the public with the truth about nuclear energy and radiation, in order to educate and mitigate the public’s phobic response, and to combat the anti-nuclear disinformation campaign.  And finally, neither of us has any investments in any form of energy, let alone nuclear.

Reproduced with permission of the authors, these sections describe and justify some of the key design choices that went into the making the IFR a different — and highly successful — approach to fast neutron reactor technology and its associated fuel recycling.

These excerpts not only provide a fascinating insight into a truly sustainable form nuclear power; they also provide excellent reference material for refuting many of the spurious claims on the internet about IFR by people who don’t understand (or choose to wilfully misrepresent) this critically important technology.

Click here for part 1 (metal fuels and plutonium).

Click here for part 2 (coolant choice and reactor configuration).

The third extract looks at the history of costs for commercial fast reactors to date (e.g., Superphenix in France). What can this tell us about the possible future costs of the IFR? (the final part will do a comparison with light water reactors). This section is drawn from pages 274-277 of Plentiful Energy. To buy the book ($18 US) and get the full story, go to Amazon or CreateSpace. (Note that the images below do not come from the book).

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Fast Reactor Capital Cost: What can be learned from fast reactor construction experience to date?

A model of the Superphenix nuclear power station, a now closed fast breeder reactor. While it was open, it was highly controversial and once on the receiving end of a eco-terrorist rocket attack.

Some notion of likely cost competitiveness can be gained from past fast reactor construction experience, but the information available is limited. It can be said that the capital costs per MWe of the early fast reactors built around the world were much higher than those of LWRs. But the comparisons are not by any means direct and unambiguous. In comparison to the LWR, every difference between the two adds a cost increment to the fast reactor. With one significant exception, they were much smaller in size and electrical capacity than the LWRs built for commercial electricity generation. There were only a few of them. They were built as demonstration plants, by governments underwriting fast reactor development. There was basically one demonstration per country, with no follow-on to take advantage of the experience and lessons learned. Nor were they scaled up and replicated. The LWR had long since passed the stage where first-of-a-kind costs were involved, and had the advantage of economies of scale as well. Further, their purpose was commercial, with the attendant incentive to keep costs down. None of this has applied to fast reactors built to the present time.

Experience with thermal reactor types, as well as other large-scale construction, has shown that capital cost reduction follows naturally through a series of demonstration plants of increasing size once feasibility is proven. This has been true in every country, with exceptions only in the periods when construction undergoes lengthy delays due to organized anti-nuclear legal challenges. But this phased approach of multiple demonstration plants is no longer likely to be affordable, and in any case, with the experience worldwide now, it is probably unnecessary for a fast reactor plant today. Estimating the “settled down” capital cost potential is not an easy task without such experience. Nevertheless, as the economic competitiveness of the fast reactor is taken to be a prerequisite to commercial deployment, we do need to understand the capital cost potential of the fast reactor and what factors influence it.

Dounreay Fast Reactor under construction, late 1950s

The earliest fast reactors designed and built in the 1950s give essentially no usable cost information. They were small, and there were just a few of them: EBR-II at 20 MWe; Fermi-1 at 61 MWe; and DFR in the U.K. (pictured right), at about 15 MWe. The principal experience is with the oxide-fueled demonstration plants that came on in the 1970s. France built the 250 MWe Phenix reactor, operational in 1974 and only taken out of service in 2009. Germany built SNR-300, completed, but never operated due to anti-nuclear sentiment in that country. The U.K. built and operated the 270 MWe Prototype Breeder Reactor, PFR. It was troubled by problems in the non-nuclear portion of the system and has been closed down for many years. Japan built and operated Monju, a 300 MWe reactor, shutdown after a relatively minor sodium leak in 1995, and returned to operation in May of 2011. TheU.S. built and operated a test reactor, FFTF, with a thermal power of 400 MWth, which operated for a decade without any problems. Because it had no electrical generation capability, it was shut down when need for fuel irradiation experience in a fast neutron environment lessened and there were no further U.S. plans for fast reactor introduction of any kind. The U.S. demonstration plant, CRBR, at 375 MWe, was ready for construction, but was cancelled by the Carter administration, and was eventually terminated in 1983.

In the West, Francewas the exception. The French followed their demonstration plant with a plant of commercial size, and of the nations that had active fast reactor development programs they went further toward the goal of commercialization of fast reactors than any of the others. Following a 40 MWth experimental fast reactor Rapsodie in 1967 and the 250 MWe Phenix in 1974, a 1,240 MWe full-scale demonstration reactor, SuperPhenix, began operation in 1985 (pictured at the top of this post). It did not benefit significantly from Phenix experience, as its design had begun almost concurrently with Phenix. It was constructed by Novatome, a largely French European consortium, under a turnkey contract. The fixed price for the nuclear steam supply system was about $1 billion [1].  EdF, the French national utility, was responsible for the balance of the plant, which was about 40% of the total cost. The capital cost of SuperPhenix was reported as 2.1 times that of French PWRs of the time [2].

In parallel to the SuperPhenix construction, Novatome was also developing a design for a 1,500 MWe SuperPhenix-II. They estimated a 20% cost reduction due to elimination of first-of-a-kind factors and a 17% reduction due to scaling to the larger size. These two factors alone would have reduced the capital cost per kWe basis to about 1.4 times the French PWR costs. [1-2] The conceptual design of SuperPhenix-II also identified substantial reductions of construction commodities relative to SuperPhenix on a per kWe basis [3]. They are shown in Table 13-1. (see Table below)

But SuperPhenix did show that a near-commercial-size fast reactor was more expensive than an LWR. Somewhat blurring the issue even for SuperPhenix, however, was the fact that it was not a strict follow-on from the totally French designed Phenix reactor. The latter was a simple design; the SuperPhenix design was considerably more complex. Nevertheless, estimates from SuperPhenix experience form the most direct comparison we have.

The scaleup from 250 MWe to 1,240 MWe was a gigantic step and assuring that the reactor would actually operate satisfactorily was the primary goal. But with the cost reduction the principal goal for the follow-on SuperPhenix-II, significant reductions in construction commodities were possible, as illustrated in Table 13-1. This estimate was made in 1985, when the SuperPhenix-II design was still in early development stage. After an extraordinarily troubled history of protests, court cases, violence, and low-level sabotage including a rocket attack by Greens, as well as some technical problems, SuperPhenix operation was finally terminated once and for all in 1997. A new government had come in with Green participation, and that fact, combined with SuperPhenix’s erratic operating record, was sufficient to end its operating life; decommissioning began the following year. The prospects for SuperPhenix-II died with it. Nevertheless, the work that is summarized in Table 13-1 does illustrate where the potential is for cost reduction in fast reactor designs in a mature economy of fast reactors. It suggests that the potential for economic competitiveness for the first fast reactors built is approachable, and is likely in a larger mature economy of fast reactors.

Model of a BN-600 reactor, displayed in the Beloyarsk Nuclear Power Station, Russia.

Apart from the French fast reactor program, the next largest fast reactor plant ever built is Russian BN-600 (pictured left), which started operation in 1980. (An earlier demonstration plant, BN-350, had a satisfactory history, producing power as well as filling a desalination mission.) The BN-600 capital cost in $/kWe was reported to be 1.5 times that of the Russian LWRs. As follow-on, three BN-800 plants were planned to be constructed but were abandoned in the chaos of the breakup of theSoviet Union. In 2006, construction of one BN-800 was re-initiated at Beloyarsk. The updated cost estimate for BN-800 per kWe basis is 0.9 of BN-600. [4] In parallel, a larger BN-1800 design is being developed, and a preliminary estimate indicates that the capital cost per kWe would be about 0.48 of BN-600. This does indicate the potential for competitiveness with LWRs. [4]

India's 500 MWe fast breeder reactor under construction

India, too, has successfully operated a small Fast Breeder Test Reactor (42.5 MWth/12 MWe); it has been operating since 1985, and has included demonstration of a full carbide-fueled core.India probably will be the first nation to commercialize fast reactors. In 2004,Indiastarted construction of a 500 MWe Prototype Fast Breeder Reactor (PFBR; pictured right). The capital cost for this project is estimated at $622 million. [5] The construction completion is targeted for 2014. Following this project, four more similar 500 MWe units are planned in two twin units at two different sites. The capital cost for these units are estimated at $544 million each. [5] With different materials and labor rates and financing structure, it is difficult to judge how this would translate to a plant built in the U.S. India’s current commercial reactors are small 200 MWe heavy water reactors, and the 500 MWe fast reactors should compete favorably in India in $/kWe. However, the fully-developed LWRs to be introduced later may have significant capital cost advantages there as well.

References

[1] M. Rosenhole, NOVATOM, unpublished presentations, November 1981

[2] M. Rapin, “Fast Breeder Fuel Cycle: World and French Prospects” Proc. BNES Conf. on Fast Reactor Fuel Cycles, 1981

[3] M. Barberger, “The French Nuclear Power Program”, unpublished paper, 1985

[4] A. Zrodnikov, “The Closing of Nuclear Fuel Cycle and Role of Fast Reactor in the Innovative Development of Large-Scale Nuclear Power in Russia”, presentation at International Workshop on Future Nuclear Systems and Fuel Cycles, Karlsruhe, Germany, September 1-2, 2005

[5] S.C. Chetal, “India’s Fast Reactor Programme”, presentation at International Workshop on Future Nuclear Systems and Fuel Cycles, Jeju, Korea, September 7-8, 2006

The Open Thread is a general discussion forum, where you can talk about whatever you like — there is nothing ‘off topic’ here — within reason. So get up on your soap box! The standard commenting rules of courtesy apply, and at the very least your chat should relate to the general content of this blog.

The sort of things that belong on this thread include general enquiries, soapbox philosophy, meandering trains of argument that move dynamically from one point of contention to another, and so on — as long as the comments adhere to the broad BNC themes of sustainable energy, climate change mitigation and policy, energy security, climate impacts, etc.

You can also find this thread by clicking on the Open Thread category on the cascading menu under the “Home” tab.

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There was quite a bit of discussion in the previous OT on radiation levels and the Fukushima evacuation zone. Relevant to this is the recent announcement that Japan will lift the entry ban on some cities within the prefecture. To quote:

In areas where annual radiation measurements are below 20 millisieverts per year, a government safety guideline, residents will have free access to their homes during the day and will be allowed to return permanently at the earliest opportunity post-decontamination. Where readings are between 20 to 50 millisieverts annually, evacuees will also have unrestricted access during the day although their permanent return will come later. In areas where measurements top 50 millisieverts, residents will not have free access and they will not be allowed to return for a minimum of five years.

A past BNC guest poster, engineer Chris Uhlik, analysed the situation a private email distribution list, and I thought his summary with respect to LNT (linear no-threshold hypothesis of radiation damage to living organisms) was very useful. With Chris’ permission, I reproduce it below:

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The official position of every regulatory agency & scientific body, and even the people who will tell you “we don’t know what’s going on under 50 mSv”, the weight of the evidence favors LNT.

Here’s what I think is going on:

Under 50mSv/year we can’t find any epidemiological data to support LNT. There is simply too much noise and other effects to see sub-0.5% changes in cancer rates in populations where the variations from other effects (smoking, stress, chemical exposures, etc) are in the range of 20–45%.

The rates of different kinds of cancers are affected differently by radiation. Some kinds appear to increase while others decrease. Some kinds of cancer are more treatable than others and thus result in different mortality rates, even if the occurrence rate increases. Simple statements like “cancer death rates show a LNT response to radiation exposure” are way too simplistic to be true, but such statements are easy to base regulations around. When regulators feel a need to support a regulation with some math, they’d rather choose simple math than more-correct, but difficult to understand and explain math.

We can find biological data from cell culture experiments that DNA disruptions are linearly related to exposure. However, most of these experiments are not with healthy, normal, human cell cultures. Bacteria and yeast might have different DNA repair mechanisms than humans. Some human cell culture experiments show hormesis. (example)

In the absence of unambiguous scientific evidence for a simple dose response model, regulators choose a conservative, simple model. They (and the scientists) agree that the model is simple and conservative, i.e. over-estimates the number of deaths. But what gets me riled up is that we ignore the opportunity cost of being excessively conservative. For example, we’ll spend $billions to avoid tens of theoretical deaths counted by the conservative model while not spending similar amounts on things that would much more reliably save thousands of lives. And, at the same time, we take the opposite point of view with global climate change. There, we have good models that show massive disruption, but we take business-as-usual actions because changing would be inconvenient. We are totally inconsistent about what sort of inconvenience is acceptable.

All risk-avoidance regulation should take a years-of-life-lost approach where the best available model (not simplest model) of years of productive life lost are counted against a standard value for a year of productive life. If we did this consistently, we’d spend lots of money developing cures for disease and less money treating disease because treating saves just one person’s life while a cure saves thousands or millions. Likewise, coal air pollution takes thousands (maybe millions) of years of life from asthmatic children while an accident like Fukushima requires extreme assumptions to reach ~1000 years of life lost and where the evacuation has already claimed >500 lives which is at least 5000 years of life lost.

Local optimization results are often extremely sub-optimal relative to global optimization, especially for complex systems. These piecemeal regulations that ignore the greater context can be extremely harmful. The conservative LNT assumption is one such unfortunate local optimization that protects the regulator while harming the populace.

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Footnote: More here from Depleted Cranium blog: Evacuation Policy Versus Radiation Level Measurements In Japan

Ed: This is a cross-post from Decarbonise SA.

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This has got to stop, and it stops when people start taking a stand… The schism in environmentalism over nuclear power is now well underway. It is sad that the other side seem to have decided in their righteousness that they are allowed to play dirty and go after individuals, using the same cherry-picking abuse of science that is all to familiar in climate change denial.

I was saddened this week to be forwarded a hatchet job on my friend and collaborator, Professor Barry Brook, authored by Jim Green of Friends of the Earth (FoE). Saddened, but not surprised. FoE has form in this department, having deployed these guerrilla tactics before against James Lovelock when he became inconveniently persuasive on the subject of nuclear power. It would seem that it is now Barry’s turn.

Jim Green, Australia's anti-nuclear campaigner for Friends of the Earth

I have come to know Barry very well over the last 12 months. I know him well enough to know that he is both the last person who would ask for defending, and the most deserving of defence. So I offer this response to Green’s work. I really, dearly hope it will be read outside my circle of existing readers and supporters. I have some important things to say.

Green begins by getting some things really, really right. Namely, that Brook is highly qualified, highly regarded, extensively published, completely independent of the nuclear industry, and operating from a genuine concern about climate change. When you add to that the fact that he is highly influential, it becomes easy to understand why FoE have resorted to getting the hatchet out.

We are told Barry glibly believes “it’s nuclear power or it’s climate change”. This is an inaccurate and out-of-context portrayal of his position. It is a deeply considered and thoroughly researched position from a highly qualified scientist, the head of Climate Science at Adelaide University no less. It also happens to be a position that is largely shared by a long and growing list of prominent environmentalists (including the aforementioned Lovelock, James Hansen, George Monbiot and Mark Lynas) who have taken themselves through a similar process of critical examination of this problem as has Barry.

Barry Brook, Sir Hubert Wilkins Chair of Climate Change, Adelaide University. Prominent Australian nuclear advocate and founder of Brave New Climate

More times than I can recall, Barry has made the point that he does not care which technology does the job of rapid decarbonisation to avoid the worst effects of climate change. It is simply his well researched opinion that the central technology will need to be nuclear power or we will not succeed. Others are free to agree or disagree with him. But he states his case so cogently and robustly that every day more and more people are compelled to agree.

To suggest he is in error, Green refers to other, non-nuclear plans that supposedly demonstrate the redundancy of nuclear including a 2011 piece by Dr Mark Diesendorf of the University of NSW. I’m familiar with the Diesendorf study. I read both a critique of it and then a rebuttal from Diesendorf himself at this great site called Brave New Climate, run by a guy called Barry Brook. You see Barry (and therefore BNC) is not remotely concerned by robust debate on energy solutions. He positively encourages it, including running a very interesting and useful piece from none other than Jim Green! BNC is probably the best moderated and therefore most reliable place on the Australian web for robust, genuine debate.

It is precisely because of his commitment to robust discussion and debate that Barry is confident to hold such forthright opinions on nuclear power. Time and time again, efforts to beat the problem without nuclear are shown to lie somewhere between tenuous and impossible. Barry is responsible enough to understand these limits, and honest enough to look the problem of climate change in the eye. That’s why he is influential.

We are told that Brook trivialises the connection between nuclear power production and the spread of nuclear weapons. To show how “non-trivial” the connection is, we are given this information:

• Of the 65-odd countries with a nuclear program of any significance (involving power and/or research reactors), over one-third have used their ‘peaceful’ programs to advance weapons ambitions.
• Of the 10 countries to have built nuclear weapons, six did so with support and political cover from their “peaceful” programs (India, North Korea, South Africa, Pakistan, France and Israel).
• About 45 countries have the capacity to produce significant quantities of fissile material (more or less depending on where you draw the line with small-medium research reactors), and a vast majority of those countries acquired their fissile material production capacity through peaceful nuclear research or power programs.

Using Green’s own data, of 65 nations with some sort of nuclear program, only 10 have developed weapons. Access to nuclear technology is clearly not the major determinant in the development of weapons. Green tells us 45 nations are quite technologically capable of producing fissile weapons material. Surely the interesting point here is that they choose not to. Australia is one of these nations. If mis-used, the Lucas Heights reactor is perfectly capable of producing sufficient fissile material for a weapon in the course of a year. We have the technological capability right now. Declining to use nuclear power generation does not alter that. It just gives us dirtier air and higher greenhouse gas emissions.

The Lucas Heights reactor complex, Sydney

Green leaves out some other important context. Of the 10 nations, that have developed weapons, five of them (US, Russia, China, UK, France) were armed by 1964. This is a legacy issue that we are still dealing with, but quite irrelevant to our decision making on meeting energy needs in 2012 and beyond. The other four (Israel, Pakistan, India and North Korea) have armed since 1964. One (South Africa) has completely disarmed. Nuclear weapons proliferation is indeed very concerning. But it is not a runaway, out of control problem. The most recent weapon states lie in the world’s major trouble spots. The rest of the world uses nuclear energy and medical reactor technology with no attempt to arm. This problem is clearly geopolitical, not technological.

I presume Green would really prefer people not consider that the enriched material from 17,000 warheads has been downgraded and used as fuel in power reactors through the Megatons to Megawatts program. Nuclear power has provided a safe, sensible pathway for removing this material from circulation. Or that General Electric’s proposal to build a Prism Fast Reactor for the UK is clearly the best solution to that nation’s stockpile of plutonium.

GE- Hitachi S-Prism reactor. The best way to get rid of plutonium is to use it all to make energy

Barry trivialises nothing. Green could easily have cited articles of Barry’s that have opened discussion with his large readership to examine these issues in detail like this and this. He is one of the deepest thinkers I know, and a very moral person. On the subject of weapons proliferation, there is no quick answer that can be handed out in debate. Barry has simply looked at this issue dispassionately and come to a very rational conclusion: the current and expanded use of nuclear power has almost nothing to do with the challenge of proliferation, and may in fact hold some very important solutions. The issue is complex, and deserves more consideration than a knee-jerk rejection of a clean energy option.

The piece then moves into the convoluted issues of radiation and the linear non-threshold theory of harm. I am going to largely leave this to Barry to make a technical response, though I have tackled Green on this subject before. But in the general issue of nuclear safety, Green says this:

Still Brook is adamant that “nuclear power is the safest energy option”. Safer than wind and solar? He could only arrive at that conclusion by using the nuclear industry’s methodology: only consider accidents at nuclear power plants rather than accidents across the energy chain; understate the death toll from accidents by several orders of magnitude; only consider accidents rather than routine emissions; and ignore the greatest hazard associated with nuclear power — its repeatedly demonstrated connection to WMD proliferation (most recently with North Korea’s use of an “experimental power reactor” to produce plutonium for weapons).

In this statement, Green is simply completely incorrect. The Energy Related Severe Accident Database maintained by the (independent) Paul Scherrer Institute considers the full energy chain in making the clear finding that nuclear power is the safest major power source in the world. The ERSAD does not consider the “routine emissions” from nuclear. Nor does it for coal and gas, which are responsible for a goodly portion of the 1.3 million deaths attributed by WHO to outdoor air pollution every year. Given the “routine emissions” of nuclear basically consist of water vapour, the deaths should be some small fraction of the number zero. While the ERSAD does not make a comparison with wind and solar, to do so would be pointless. They supply so little of the world’s electricity, the comparison would be quite meaningless. We in fact run a great climate change risk by engaging in planning that these energy sources are quickly capable of displacing fossil fuels en masse. They are not.

Finally, saddling nuclear power with the hazard of nuclear weapons is about as sensible as apportioning some of it to the steel industry for the missile casing, some to the av-gas industry for the missile fuel, and some to the physics departments for working out how to aim the missile. It is a lame duck argument.

Nuclear power is safe. Very, very safe, and only getting safer. There could be no better example than Fukushima, but here Green accuses Barry of spreading misinformation. I would like to test that.

Green disputes Barry’s position that the event will likely result in little if any radiological injury by asserting a likely death toll of in the 100’s or around 1,000. He provides references. Presumably, he hopes no one will read them carefully. I’m a little bit annoying like that.

The reference for 100s of deaths is called Fukushima Accident:  Radioactive Releases and Potential Dose Consequences and subtitled Preliminary Investigations June 28, 2011. Preliminary is right; this reference was published just three months following the event. I have reproduced the third final and final slide from which Green infers fatalities “in the 100s”. Bear with me, things are going to get a bit boring and technical for a moment. I’m afraid the truth is often like that.

Green’s use of this reference is so misrepresentative as to be bordering on dishonest. An increased mortality rate of 0.001% is very much the same thing as 0%. The final slide makes it clear that their message is one that latent deaths “can’t be ruled out” but “conservative risk estimates suggest 100s” of cancers against a background of 10 million cases.

This is all quite ridiculous. Calling a spade a spade, any conceivable impact will be so small as to be completely undetectable, which is the prevailing finding of experts one year down the track. This so called “increased risk” is utterly pitiful against the range of very serious and well established risk factors for cancer. It is a non-issue. My questions for Green on this are therefore:

• Did you look for more recent references and not find them? Or did you not look?
• Is this massive mis-representation of the reference your own work? Or did you not even read the reference properly?

Green’s second reference, citing 1,000 deaths, has a couple of clangers. It’s too good to paraphrase. Here is the direct quote:

A corresponding estimate of the cancer consequences of the Fukushima Daiichi accident has not yet been conducted, but it is possible to make a very preliminary order-of-magnitude guesstimate … one might expect around 1,000 extra cancer deaths related to the Fukushima Daiichi accident

I did not make that up. The author Green himself cites for the upper fatality figure calls his own figure “a very preliminary, order of magnitude guesstimate”. It is, quite simply, appalling that anyone would lean upon a “very preliminary order of magnitude guesstimate” to suggest that a thousand people are going to die. This is deeply, deeply unfair. It is this sort of from-the-hip activism that contributed to fear-driven psychological illness being the major latent impact of Chernobyl. In a stunning irony, Green’s own reference makes this very point in the next paragraph for Fukushima:

Finally, it is important to note that, if not dealt with properly, the psychological consequences associated with accidents such as Chernobyl and Fukushima could damage many more lives than the cancer consequences.

Publicly accusing someone of spreading misinformation is a serious charge. Anyone doing so should make sure their own house is in order first. This time, my questions for Green are as follows:

• How much of your work depends on “very preliminary order of magnitude guesstimates?”
• Are you aware that your own reference warns against the very serious consequences of the misunderstanding of radiation risk? If so, why have you contributed to the problem? If not, why not? Do you not read references completely?

Green’s misuse and abuse of references, whether the result of laziness or something worse, leave him with little credibility. This does not stop him and others continuing to make great hay out of Barry’s erroneous prognostications early in the unfolding Fukushima event. But there are two things they don’t ever, ever do:

• Point out where Barry, on his own site, revisits this mistake, corrects the record and engages in some searching self-criticism
• Follow Barry’s example in the now innumerable examples of incorrect, foolish and downright dangerous misinformation that has been spread about nuclear power, such as those highlighted above

For example, in response to my own recent piece on activists deliberately stoking outrage, Green put the hard word on the Brisbane branch of FoE who were continuing to highlight a (medically impossible) link between Fukushima and a “spike in deaths” in the USA in the immediate aftermath of the accident. Apparently even Green has his limits. But will you find a retraction from FoE? No. A correction? Certainly not. Some self criticism as to how such absolute claptrap could have been posted under their good name? No way. Acknowledgement that is was only through sheer embarrassment caused by an independent blogger that they finally removed it in the first place? You get the picture.

I have not enjoyed writing this, nor indeed needing to write it in the first place. I don’t like seeing a cheap hatchet job on one of our best and brightest scientists, not just because he is a friend of mine, but because he is an outstanding Australian and a caring leader in our global community. I don’t like knowing someone has bastardised references, only to find it is way, way worse than I would even have expected. I don’t like watching environmental organisations, some of which I supported with both my money and my time when I was younger, sink this low and keep sinking, seemingly proud of their efforts. I really don’t like that it seems impossible to give a firm rebuttal without taking an individual to task, and I hate that someone undecided on nuclear power may read this and think that I just hate FoE.

But bullshit like this has got to stop, and it stops when people start taking a stand. The schism in environmentalism over nuclear power is now well underway. It is sad that the other side seem to have decided in their righteousness that they are allowed to play dirty and go after individuals, using the same cherry-picking abuse of science that is all too familiar in climate change denial. Based on the way so many issues play out, I think it would be a real tactical mistake to presume that this sort of cheap, tabloid activism does not work, and to think we can fight this without getting into the mud.

If you indentify as someone who cares about the environment, you DO have a choice to make in the next few years: you are either pro-nuclear or anti-nuclear. There are two camps. Please, look carefully. Think critically. Choose wisely.

He also wrote a brilliant recent piece for The Punch: Fukushima was no disaster, no matter how you spin it

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IPCC calls to reduce meat consumption

Back in 2008, head of the IPCC Rajendra Pachauri told the world to eat less meat because of its large greenhouse footprint.

At about the same time the National Health and Medical Research Council appointed a committee to update Australia’s Dietary Guidelines … last issued in 2003. The preface from the 2003 document is clear:

“The Australian Food and Nutrition Policy is based on the principles of good nutrition, ecological sustainability and equity. This third edition of the Dietary Guidelines for Australian Adults is consistent with these principles. The food system must be economically viable and the quality and integrity of the environment must be maintained. In this context, among the important considerations are conservation of scarce resources such as topsoil, water and fossil fuel energy and problems such as salinity.”

The Terms of Reference give no instructions about what the committee should do other than to update the documents with the best available science. Environmental issues were clearly worthy of lip-service in 2003, if nothing else. Any reasonable update to the 2003 document should see those issues front and center.

Our impacts on the climate will flow on into most other environmental issues, whether we are concerned with other species, or more narrowly focused on the habitability of the planet for our own. If food choices have a significant impact on climate forcings, then documenting and explaining the extent of those impacts to the public should have been front and centre in the workings of this committee. In addition to the head of the IPCC, no lesser scientific authority than NASA climate scientist James Hansen said in 2009:

If you eat further down on the food chain rather than animals, which have produced many greenhouse gases, and used much energy in the process of growing that meat, you can actually make a bigger contribution in that way than just about anything. So that, in terms of individual action, is perhaps the best thing you can do.

He made an equivalent statement to me in 2008 and advised that he was changing his own diet and was “80-90% vegetarian“.

We shall see later that Hansen’s claim is easily supported.

Speaking in Australia, Pachauri reiterated his call on meat and added:

“This is something that the IPCC was afraid to say earlier, but now we have said it.”

The head of an international organisation of scientific experts afraid of speaking the truth? Why? With the recent launch of Australia’s Draft Dietary Guidelines we can see that Australian scientists have avoided this simple truth. Are they similarly afraid, or stunningly ignorant? What ever the reason, the failure to give rational advice about the greenhouse and general environmental footprint of dietary choices requires an investigation at the highest level … a Royal Commission.

Draft guidelines released

The Dietary Guidelines committee finally published its draft document for public comment just before Christmas and the period for comment closed at the end of February.

I wrote a submission for Animal Liberation in South Australia. Many other organisations and people will also have responded.

Section 1.6 … brief and false

The only section of the draft document which even mentions environmental issues is Section 1.6 which is just over a page long and titled: 1.6 Dietary choices and the environment. This section makes the astonishing claim:

“Preliminary work indicates that dietary patterns consistent with the Dietary Guidelines are likely to have a lower environmental impact than other dietary patterns. Available Australian and international evidence is insufficient to be able to provide advice on the environmental impact of specific food items or brands, … “

Both sentences make claims that are easily shown to be false. If the “preliminary work” actually exists, then it must be seriously flawed. If the committee hasn’t actually done any work, then the claim that they have is very disturbing.

Land use, habitat destruction, deforestation

The basic scientific principle of trophic levels makes it clear, as Hansen said, that the lower a person eats on the food chain, the less resources are required. This theory predicts that eating grain directly requires less grain than if you first feed it to animals and then eat the animals. That the theory holds in the real world is easily seen using readily available UN FAO and ABARE data. Australians consume about 1.8 million tonnes of grains annually which provide 718 Calories per person per day. They also consume 1.3 million tonnes of chicken and pig meat which only provide 270 Calories per person per day. Raising those pigs and chickens requires about 4 million tonnes of grain. Environmentally, the principle is sound. Can we construct healthy diets by adding 270 Calories from extra plant sources and leave out the chicken and pig meat? Of course. For example, Italy in the 1960s and 1970s consumed double the cereal intake of Australia currently.

These considerations make it clear that people eating vegan diets have a lower environmental impact than anybody eating a meat based diet, including those consistent with the Dietary Guidelines. The argument is easily extended to show that vegan diets have a still lower environmental impact than even vegetarian diets … because Australian dairy cattle consume about 2.7 million tonnes of grain annually.

So both sentences we have cited from Section 1.6 are false.

But we can go further. It’s pretty straight forward to show that of all the meat and dairy based diets, the most environmentally damaging diets, for a given daily intake of meat, will be those following the advice of the Dietary Guidelines. Why? Because the Dietary Guidelines specify lean meat and “mostly” low fat dairy.

Huh? Why? Because you eat less of the animal when the meat is lean. In the case of milk, full fat milk has about double the energy of skimmed milk so, less fat means more waste. In one US study, it took 70 percent more land to raise the extra animals to produce lean cuts of beef than non-lean cuts. All up, there was a 5-fold difference in the land required for zero-meat diets compared to those with high levels of lean meat, such as the CSIRO Total Wellbeing Diet … a leading contender for the title of “Most environmentally destructive diet on the planet”.

That any professional on an NHMRC committee doesn’t understand such things is astonishing. But it gets worse.

Climate forcings, methane and land use

A “forcing” in the context of climate science is anything which changes the balance between energy arriving and leaving the planet. The global area of ice has a huge forcing because of its reflective properties. Likewise, the type and extent of dust in the atmosphere for the same reason. Livestock change climate forcings directly by effectively taking a carbon atom from carbon dioxide (CO2) and turning it into methane (CH4). A carbon atom as CH4 traps about 25 times more heat than when it is in CO2. In effect, livestock turn single bar radiators into 25 bar radiators. Natural processes will eventually transform the CH4 back into CO2, with about 80% being turned back into CO2 after 20 years. Livestock methane production is measured in tonnes and a tonne of CH4 has far more atoms than a tonne of CO2. All up the warming impact of a tonne of CH4 is about 70 times that of a tonne of CO2 over a 20 year period.

While most Australians turn off their cars and most appliances when not in use, for each person there are 1.2 cattle and 3.2 sheep emitting methane 24×7. Other animals emit methane also, including about half of us, but ruminants have a particular talent!

The bottom line? Our livestock’s methane emissions have a stronger (short-term) warming impact than all of our coal-fired power stations.

Livestock also impact climate forcings by driving deforestation. Trees are standing carbon and burning them is the usual method of land clearing. In Queensland between 1988 and 2008, the cattle industry cleared about 400,000 hectares every single year. Historically, livestock farmers (or rather their customers, people who buy their products) have been responsible for about 70 million of the 100 million hectares we have cleared in Australia. This historical carbon debt is substantial.

Perfect knowledge isn’t required for good decisions

If the research I cited from New York state in the US were repeated here, the answers would be different. They would be different in many parts of Australia. Similarly, estimates of the methane from livestock vary widely and depend on the species, whether the animals are grass or grain fed, whether land clearing is included, whether slaughter house emissions are included or the full refrigeration cold chain from slaughter to plate. Should the greenhouse cost of extra cancer and heart disease beds be factored in? Australian emissions in many of these areas are considerably higher than those overseas. Grass fed cattle produce more methane than grain fed cattle and the deforestation debt of the sheep and cattle industry is huge.

Regardless of the variability between different motor vehicles, we know that walking a kilometer to the shop produces less greenhouse gases than driving. Likewise with meat production, particularly ruminant meat. Despite considerable variation, we can be absolutely confident that it would never, ever take more land to feed a vegan population than a meat eating population. Similarly, a vegan population could never ever generate methane emissions in a quantity anything remotely like those of ruminants consumed by average meat eaters, regardless of food choices.

It’s actually a simple exercise to show that a vegan could live on food air freighted from anywhere on the planet and have a much lower greenhouse footprint than a red meat eater raising their own cattle and slaughtering them in the garage. As far as its greenhouse footprint is concerned, it matters far more what you eat than where it comes from.

Dietary Guidelines Duties

Is it the job of the Dietary Guidelines to tell people they should be vegan?

The Government has no shortage of websites giving advice to people on how to choose motor cars, air conditioners, fridges, washing machines and the like to reduce their emissions. The Government is absolutely clear that people should reduce their greenhouse footprint. They are not shy about this. Nobody is afraid to tell people that not owning a car, not holidaying in Europe, or not using an air conditioner are all great ways to reduce emissions.

So why be shy in the Dietary Guidelines? People should want to reduce their greenhouse footprint, and if they do, then the Guidelines should advise them how to do so. If foods are ranked in order of their footprint, then clearly vegan diets happen to be optimal, so the dietary guidelines should give people advice on how to construct such a diet … it’s not difficult!

Royal Commission required

The claims I cited above from Section~1.6 of the Draft Dietary Guidelines are not just false, they are as silly as thinking that there could possibly be more carnivores than herbivores on the plains of the Serengeti. And just in case anybody is wondering, it about 10,000 kilograms of prey animals to support a 90 kilo carnivore.

That such claims should appear in an official document prepared by a high level committee requires explanation.

While the preface of the 2003 Guidelines made it clear that environmental issues should have been dealt with in any updating of that document, I believe the clear and immediate risks of climate change require more explicit instructions and that a Royal Commission should investigate the setting up and operation of the committee.

1. Why wasn’t clear instruction given to investigate food impacts on climate forcings?
2. Why wasn’t clear instruction given to investigate food impacts on other environmental outcomes?
3. Why did such a high level committee have such a low level of environmental expertise given the clearly false statements in Section 1.6.

In addition a press release from the National Farmer’s Federation in late 2011 makes the following claim:

“The NFF has worked tirelessly over the last 18 months to ensure the NHMRC understands that there is a huge amount of variability between different industries and different production systems as to what constitutes ‘sustainable’ production, and that the data around this has to date proved inconsistent, inconclusive or irrelevant to Australian agriculture.”

There is a vast amount of data which is relevant to Australian agriculture and the climate forcing of various foods. The NFF has clearly been attempting to mislead the committee and from the ignorance on display in Section 1.6, they may have been successful.

The Royal Commission should therefore investigate the lobbying activity of all food industries on the Dietary Guidelines Committee. This committee should be giving accurate scientific advice and not just be a mouth piece of one or more industry bodies.

100% renewable electricity for Australia – the cost

and the response, from one of the authors of the original simulation study:

100% Renewable Electricity for Australia: Response to Lang

Below is a further commentary, by Ted Trainer of UNSW, which focuses particularly on the issues of supplying winter demand, the feasibility of the biomass option for the gas backup, and the “big gaps” problem (i.e., long-run gambler’s ruin). Ted asked me to post it here on BNC to solicit constructive feedback (and has promised me he will be responding to comments!).

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Comments on

“Simulations of scenarios with 100% renewable electricity in the Australian National Electricity Market”  Solar 12011, 49^th AuSES Annual Conference,  30 Nov – 2 Dec., By Ben Elliston, Mark Diesendorf and Iain Macgill, UNSW.

Ted Trainer; 21.3.2012

The paper outlines a supply pattern whereby it is claimed that 100% of present Australian electricity demand could be provided by renewable energy.

The following notes indicate why I think that although technically this could be done, we could not afford the capital cost.  This is mainly because the analysis seems to significantly underestimate the amount of plant that would be required.

I think this is a valuable contribution to the discussion of the potential and limits of renewable energy.  It takes the kind of approach needed, focusing on the combination of renewable sources that might meet daily demand.  However it is not difficult to set out a scenario whereby this might be done technically; the problems are what quantity of redundant plant would be needed to deal with fluctuations in renewable energy sources, and what might the capital cost of this amount to?

Two of the plots given set out the contributions that might be combined to meet daily demand over about 8 days in 2010, in summer and winter.  It seems to me that when these contributions are added the total capacity needed is much more than the paper states.

Australia's recent history of energy use by source

The task is to supply 31 GW.  The plots given show that at one point in time wind is contributing a maximum of 13.5 GW, but at other times its contribution is close to zero, meaning that other sources are backing up for it.  The corresponding peak inputs from the other sources are, PV 9 GW, solar thermal 27, hydro 5 GW and gas from biomass 24 GW.  Thus the total amount of plant required would be 75.5 GW of peak capacity… to supply an average 31 GW.  (in his response to Peter Lang, Mark Diesendorf says their total requirement is 84.9 GW.) That’s the magnitude of the redundancy problem and this is the major limiting factor for renewables; the need for a lot of back up plant, which will sit idle much of the time.

In Trainer 2012 I derive the capital cost of plant capable of supplying 1 Watt from wind, PV and solar thermal, in winter at distance and net of transmission losses. When these are applied to the above GW supply tasks, the total capital cost is about  $609 billion.  This does not include the cost of the hydro and biomass sectors.  If the biomass 24 GW is costed at the $800/kW Mark claims, this would add another $19 billion.  My PV cost assumes tracking and Central Australian radiation, not fixed flat plate set up on rooftops, mostly located in much poorer sites.

Assuming 25 year plant lifetimes, the ratio of this $628 billion sum to GDP is 2%, which is about 4 times the early 2000s figure for world investment in all form of energy supply. (See appendix below for the basic assumptions and numbers.)

The derivation does not provide for surplus capacity to meet emergencies etc.  The Australian supply system has a capacity of 51 GW, which is about 1.75 times typical daily peak demand.

It is not clear what loss of energy in transmission has been assumed in the paper, if any.  When long distance HVDC plus local distribution are taken into account the loss is likely to be in excess of 15% of the energy generated.  The cost of the lines would add significantly to the overall capital cost. Hearps and McConnell (2011) indicate that Australian capital costs for ST plant are some 35% higher than those overseas.  The AEMO (2011) estimate of a HVDC line from South Australia is three times the international average stated by Harvey (2011.)  The cost reported in the press for the Queensland proposed Copperplate 1000 km HVDC transmission line is 5 times the average figure in the reviews of overseas projects.

The paper’s conclusions on the crucial winter problem are based on an 8 day plot for June 29 to July 6^th  2010.  This is the kind of evidence we want, but it is far from the extent required.  The key questions re the limits of renewables are not to do with averages in demand or supply; they are to do with the coincidence of maximum demand and minimum supply.  What matters is how often there would be a period of several days in which there was little or no sun or wind across the whole collection region.  To cope with one such day the biomass plant required in this analysis would have to be more or less that capable of meeting total demand, i.e., about 25% greater than is assumed in the paper. (Hydro can’t be increased as it is already doing all it can in these plots.)

What we need in all regions are analyses of several years of climate data to establish how often wind and sun availability are how low.  Even if periods of negligible wind and sun are quite infrequent, we would need sufficient plant to maintain supply through them.  In other words is quite misleading to base conclusions about required plant and capital costs on an 8 day climate record for a period that is far from the extremes that occur.    For instance the graphs show that all of the 8 days have very good solar radiation…what happens when there’s little for a week?

This is the “big gaps” problem.  There is extensive documentation of large and protracted gaps in wind availability in Europe. For instance Oswald et al. (2008) document several days in February 2006 when solar and wind sources contributed almost no energy from Ireland to Germany, and one of these days was the coldest for the year in the UK, probably meaning that annual demand peaked.

In an accompanying slide set (http://www.ceem.unsw.edu.au/content/userDocs/presentation.pdf) Ben Elliston provides some significant evidence on this issue, and it is not clear why this does not seem to have been integrated into the paper.  As he says the slides document “Some very long low irradiance events.”  Some of these exceed 5 days of negligible radiation.  A 6 day event is noted for Roma in 2000.  A simulated solar thermal plant output for Cobar indicates no output for almost 4 consecutive days.  It is said that in the south of the continent these events are most frequent in winter, which is the time of highest demand.  Another slide states that it would not be economic to attempt solar thermal storage to cope with these periods.  This information seems to clearly and decisively contradict the paper’s essential claim, that demand can be met at all times.

Map of low direct normal irradiance periods in Australia. Longest events typically last 4 to 8 days across Australia. Click to see full slide presentation from Elliston et al.

It is not stated what generating efficiency is being assumed for the biomass-gas-electricity system.  According to Harvey, 2010, and the IPCC, 2010, it is likely to be .28 at best.  In his response to Peter Lang mark says efficiency is high, but this would seem to be a comment on gas generation, not on the whole forest to electricity system.  (Similarly his $800/kW claim used above would not seem to be for the whole system.)  The Grattan Report (Wood et al., 2012) on renewable notes the difficulties in biomass-electricity, for instance the need for large generating plants for efficiency, but these involve very long distance trucking of biomass.  This would involve energy and dollar costs not included in the $5000+/kW biomass-electricity capital cost which Peter Lang seems to be assuming (i.e., again it would mean that the overall biomass-gas system efficiency would be lower than the above efficiency-at-the-generator figure.).

The analysis assumes a very substantial use of biomass, and the implications of this need to be spelled out.  The plot suggests that daily biomass-electricity input would be about 25 GW by 15 hours, or approximately 40% of electricity supply.  This would take about as much biomass p.a. as would produce 300 PJ of ethanol, i.e., c. 50 million tonnes, so it would cut into the biomass available to provide the other c. 75-80% of total energy needed, including at present about 1300 PJ of liquid fuel for transport.

Biomass to electricity - the concept. But how much is really 'waste', and how much can a country like Australia produce?

If ABARE’s projections of population (a 48% population increase by 2030) and their anticipated energy growth rate are taken the total 2050 energy demand would be around twice the present amount.  At the same time the cost of materials and energy to build renewable plant is going to rise sharply from here on.  (See Clugston, 2012.) These considerations will tend to make my above cost conclusions much too low.

Note again that the paper is only concerned with the provision of the present amount of electricity used, and that makes up only 20%+ of total Australian energy use, and this sets the question, from what renewable sources the remaining 80% are to come from.  The analysis in this paper assumes use of considerable biomass, which would be most needed to meet the demand for transport fuel.  If it is assumed that this can be reduced by shifting most transport to electricity, then the plant required and the capital cost would increase accordingly.

Trainer 2012a sets out an easily followed derivation of a world renewable energy budget, assuming a target of twice present supply and future output and cost estimates common in the literature (e.g., Hearps and McConnell, 2010.)  It is concluded that the ratio of investment to GDP would have to be much more than 16 times the present figure.   In other words it would be quite unaffordable.  Note that that target, 1000 EJ/y primary energy, would only give the expected 2050 world population one-third of the present Australian per capita use. (Three strategies were explored; dealing with the gaps via hydrogen storage, electrifying as much as possible and relying mostly on wind, electrifying as much as possible and relying on solar thermal for storage.)

ANU 'big dish' technology

(In 2010 I published an early attempt to apply this approach to budget estimation, which arrived at a higher estimate of capital cost, but I now see that as being too high.   At that stage, before the availability of the NREL SAM package providing estimates of solar thermal output and cost, 2010, 2011, it seemed that Big Dishes with ammonia storage would be the best solar thermal strategy.  It now seems clear that central receivers are preferable, and there is much better evidence re probable future costs.)

It therefore seems to me that the paper falls far short of establishing its basic claim.  Trainer 2012b applies my approach to the Australian situation, again making all assumptions and derivations transparent.  Australia is more favourably endowed with renewable resources than most if not all other countries, especially re potential biomass.  However the conclusion I arrive at is that the ratio of energy investment to GDP would have to be much more than 9 times the rich world average, and thus would be unaffordable.  Note that this is assuming use of 35 million ha for biomass production, almost twice the cropland area, which is far more than Farine et al. (2011) are willing to assume.

I would welcome critical feedback on my world and Australian analyses.   (F.Trainer@unsw.edu.au)

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Appendix: Basic assumptions and derivation for the above capital conclusions. 

Note the capital cost estimates are for future cost, not present, and generally assume 50% reductions from present for PV and solar thermal and 20% for wind. (…following Hearps and McConnell, 2010.)

Wind: Future cost of capacity to supply 1 Watt in winter, assuming capacity factor of .38, 4% embodied energy cost, 10% loss in long distance transmission plus local distribution…$4.62.

PV: Future cost of capacity to supply 1 Watt in winter, assuming 10% embodied energy cost, 15% loss in long distance transmission plus local distribution…$12.81.

Solar Thermal: Future cost of capacity to supply 1 Watt in winter, assuming 10% embodied energy cost, 15% loss in long distance transmission plus local distribution…$16.

Thus capital costs for the EDM scheme:

Wind, 13.5 GW x $4.61/W = $62.4 billion

PV, 9 GW x $12.81/W = $115.3 billion

Solar Thermal, 27 GW x $16/W = $432 billion

Biomass, 24 GW x $.8/W* = $19 billion

Total = $628 billion

*This is a common figure for a large and therefore maximally efficient generating plant and probably does not include reduction due to embodied energy cost of the plant, or due to the long transport distance large plant would require.  It is also likely that the biomass-gas-electricity generation efficiency assumed in this figure is much higher than the maximum .28 Harvey reports. (2011).

References

AEMO (2011), South Australian Interconnector Feasibility Study: http://www.electranet.com.au/assets/Uploads/interconnectorfeasibilitystudyfinalnetworkmodellingreport.pdf

Clugston, C., (2012). “Ever increasing non-renewable natural resource scarcity”,  Email circular. 19^th Jan. 2012. (See also Clugston, C., (2010), Increasing Global Nonrenewable Natural Resource Scarcity—An Analysis, The Oil Drum,  Apr. 6.)

Farine, D. et al., 2011. “An assessment of biomass for bioelectricty and biofuel and for greenhouse gas emission reduction in Australia”, Bioenergy, doii:  10.111/j.1757-1707.2011.o1115/x

Harvey, L.D., 2010. Caron Free Energy Supply, London, Earthscan.

Hearps, P. and D. McConnell, (2011), Renewable Energy Technology Cost Review, University of Melbourne. http://energy.unimelb.edu.au/index.php?page=technical-publication-series

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Working Group 111, Mitigation of Climate Change, Special Report on Renewable Energy Sources and Climate Mitigation. June, 2011.  http:www.srren.ipcc-wg3.de/report

NREL, (2010, 2011), System Advisor Model, (SAM), https://www.nrel.gov/analysis/sam/

Oswald, J.K., M. Raine, H.J. Ashraf-Ball, (2008), “Will British weather provide reliable electricity?”, Energy Policy, 36,  3202 – 3215.

Trainer, T., (2010), “Can renewables etc. solve the greenhouse problem? The negative case”, Energy Policy, 38, 8, August, 4107 – 4114. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.enpol.2010.03.037

Trainer, T., (2012a), “Can the world run on renewable energy? A revised negative case.” http://socialsciences.arts.unsw.edu.au/tsw/CANW.htm

Trainer, T., (2012b), “Can Australia run on renewable energy? The negative case.”  http://socialsciences.arts.unsw.edu.au/tsw/CANA.htm

Wood, A, T. Ellis, D. Mulloworth, and H. Morrow, (2012), No Easy Choices: Which Way to Australia’s Energy Future.  Technical Analyses. Grattan Institute

As you might have guessed from the title, it was decidedly cool towards nuclear’s future prospects. Below I sketch some thoughts on what was wrong (and right) about the article. Interestingly, I understand that the author of this piece (Oliver Morton) will be joining us at the Breakthrough Dialogue in San Francisco in June 2012 — so I’m sure we’ll have some robust dinner conversations!

In his assessment of the current situation in Japan — 52 of its 54 reactors shuttered (at least 6 permanently), 100,000 people displaced by the evacuation resulting from the 20 km exclusion zone, and the speculation that Japan’s share of nuclear in the country’s electricity mix over the next few decades could decline rapidly or evaporate completely — the article is accurate and suitably sanguine.

The energy supply problems Japan now faces, due to the lack of baseload electricity for heavy industry and domestic consumption, is putting real pressure on the economy, and of course on the social fabric of the nation and the people’s respect for government.

As reported by The Breakthrough Institute blog (see table to the right), costly imports of fossil fuels to partially cover the shuttered reactors has led to a chronically increasing fuel bill and the country’s first trade deficit in 30 years (to the tune of -$32 billion).

From a climate change perspective, it also looks bad — emissions are rising steeply as the Japanese electricity sector once again ‘goes fossil’, as illustrated in the carbon-intensity-from-energy chart below:

An obvious question to ask is, would Japan have faced this situation today if it had never pursued nuclear energy? I think the answer is two-fold:

Cosmo refinery fire - who knew, who cares?

(1) No, because even if a few coal- and gas-fired power station had been wrecked and burned by the earthquake/tsunami, no one would have cared. This is evidenced by low-level media coverage, and no future follow-up or mention by environmental groups, of the Cosmo refinery fire (which spewed petrochemical wastes into the local suburbs of Chiba for days following the earthquake).

(2) Yes, because a historically more fossil-fuel-dependent Japan would have faced an ongoing trade deficit over many years, if the 30 % nuclear portion of its electricity supply had instead always been supplied by coal and gas. Japan is one of the least energy-independent nations in the OECD, needing to import virtually all of its fossil fuels (and uranium — but it needs relatively little of this, costing ~$1.2 billion per year).

So, nuclear power — or, more to the point, radiophobia (see Footnote) — has caused a major economic and social upheaval in Japan, post-Fukushima. But over the last 40 years, nuclear power has also substantially reduced Japan’s need to import coal and LNG, and kept its ongoing carbon emissions lower to the tune of roughly 250 million tonnes of CO2-e per year.

Anyway, back to The Economist article. Japan is, it is claimed, just the latest context setter for what the author posits are fundamental and socio-economicaly fatal problems with nuclear energy — the public fear that translates into risk aversion from the market, utilities and investors, the potentially high (but actually unknown) cost of cleanup following major accidents, the finger pointing that is possible for specific cases of poor regulation, laxity in the culture of operations, and unavoidable human error.

(In his book Prescription for the Planet, author and SCGI president Tom Blees spent considerable space describing how these types of problems have dogged nuclear power in the past, and explained what he thinks is needed to fix them, especially under an expanded future scenario — but to explain this requires a different post for another day).

I disagree with Morton that:

Barring major technological developments, though, nuclear power will continue to be a creature of politics not economics, with any growth a function of political will or a side-effect of protecting electrical utilities from open competition.

Politics and social stigma certainly matters in the short term — these are clearly the overriding reasons behind the inability of Japan to restart its reactor fleet, and why Germany has turned away from its reactors. But as Per Peterson (and others) have emphasised, if the “renaissance that wasn’t” is to happen after all, nuclear energy will have to win the war on cost.

Yet for an article in a magazine called The Economist, the Morton article is remarkably vague about the economics of alternatives to nuclear. Let’s look at the two arguments:

In liberalised energy markets, building nuclear power plants is no longer a commercially feasible option: they are simply too expensive. Existing reactors can be run very profitably; their capacity can be upgraded and their lives extended. But forecast reductions in the capital costs of new reactors in America and Europe have failed to materialise and construction periods have lengthened. Nobody will now build one without some form of subsidy to finance it or a promise of a favourable deal for selling the electricity.

I concede that it is not feasible to build nuclear reactors in a fully liberalised energy market. But exactly what would be? The large coal, hydro and nuclear plants that underpin the baseload electricity supplies of Europe, North America, Australia, Japan and China were all built with substantial (typically dominant) investment from the public sector. Here’s a challenge: can you name any country that has built the majority of its historical large-scale electricity supply infrastructure without strong government support? Anywhere, anytime?

To dismiss nuclear energy by saying that it can’t compete in the new energy markets, without buttressing this statement by explaining what will be commercially feasible, is a serious oversight. I can proffer an answer, based on what I see happening today in the U.S., Australia and elsewhere — it is gas, especially the low-capital-cost open cycle gas turbine (OCGT) plants, that wins in this scenario. OCGTs can be cheaply, quickly and incrementally added to an existing grid to deal with additional peak loads, with little risk — at least in the short- to medium-term. As to their long term capacity, well, that will depend sensitively on fuel price and market pricing structures. But these aren’t providing the core supply role.

An economic victory for nuclear will have to come (if it does come within the next 50 years) from an ever increasing focus on standardised designs and their accompanying construction and operating licences, modular components or fully modular units with integrated passive safety systems, some considerable learning experience from building multiple reactors of the same design, and cooperative government-commercial financing, among other factors. This is starting to become a reality in Asian countries like China and South Korea (based on AP1000, APR-1400 and related Generation III+ designs), although the end result remains far from clear. At present, in most countries, however, fossil fuels still rule.

In 2010 the world’s installed renewable electricity capacity outstripped its nuclear capacity for the first time. That does not mean that the world got as much energy from renewables as from nuclear; reactors run at up to 93% of their stated capacity whereas wind and solar tend to be closer to 20%. Renewables are intermittent and take up a lot of space: generating a gigawatt of electricity with wind takes hundreds of square kilometres, whereas a nuclear reactor with the same capacity will fit into a large industrial building. That may limit the contribution renewables can ultimately make to energy supply. Unsubsidised renewables can currently displace fossil fuels only in special circumstances. But nuclear energy, which has received large subsidies in the past, has not displaced much in the way of fossil fuels either. And nuclear is getting more expensive whereas renewables are getting cheaper.

In this statement, Morton correctly identifies some of the key limitations facing large-scale non-hydro renewables — intermittency and unsubsidised cost. But he wholly fails to explain what the implications of the variability problem is (the need for overbuild of generation capacity and expensive/unfeasible large-scale energy storage), nor whether, if an effort is made to deal practically with these problems in real national electricity grids, the ‘increasingly cheaper’ renewables will ever become cheap enough (when all relevant real-world factors are considered) and reliable enough (without natural gas ‘backup’), to actually substitute for and displace fossil fuels (or nuclear) at the scale required.

Now as regular readers will know, there has been a lot of attention to this general problem on Brave New Climate (e.g., Solar combined with wind power: a way to get rid of fossil fuels? AND 100% renewable electricity for Australia – the cost), so I won’t dwell on it here. Yet for The Economist to just leave the economic argument at this point, with a poorly contextualised homily that completely ignore the realities of what large-scale renewable energy systems without nuclear require, is breathtakingly shallow. (Unless of course Morton meant to imply that neither nuclear OR renewables will ever cut it against fossil fuels, but then, another Pandora’s Box on fuel supply and environmental damage is opened.)

Radiation realities versus radiophobia - will the scientific and medical realites be heard above the din of hysteria? I argue that eventually, they must do, because the world, and especially countries like Japan, have no other choice.

The Economist concludes with the following:

In the energy world, nuclear has found its place nourishing technophile establishments like the “nuclear village” of vendors, bureaucrats, regulators and utilities in Japan whose lack of transparency and accountability did much to pave the way for Fukushima and the distrust that has followed in its wake. These political settings govern and limit what nuclear power can achieve.

There is truth in this statement. But equally, there is much missing from it. Political and social settings of the future will be governed by a mix of energy-price, energy-security and climate-change-mitigation realities that MUST be faced. Fossil fuels have to be replaced. Energy costs from fossil fuels will rise as demand continues to increase, and supply — especially from conventional sources — declines and becomes increasingly regionally concentrated.

In this context, the past is only a weak guide to the future, and as George Monbiot once again sagely pointed out, there is no primrose path to a low-carbon future.

…The likelihood is that if we press for gas with CCS, we’ll get gas without CCS. As the difficulties with carbon capture and storage mount up, investors will flee. But the gas plants will still be built and the public won’t perceive a great deal of difference between gas with or without abatement. It could scarcely be a better formula for ensuring the abandonment of the UK’s carbon targets.

The environment movement has a choice. It has to decide whether it wants no new fossil fuels or no new nuclear power. It cannot have both. I know which side I’m on, and I know why. Anyone who believes that the safety, financing and delivery of nuclear power are bigger problems than the threats posed by climate change has lost all sense of proportion.

Oliver Morton’s article is not really about environmental imperatives, but even on the economic and public risk fronts, it sorely lacks this crucial sense of proportion. His essay also fails to address the practicalities of the cost and energy supply problems facing a world without fossil fuels. So I ask, how realistic is The Economist about this critical global issue?

————

Footnote

Some interesting articles from last week that provide a more grounded perspective include:

(NPR) Trauma, Not Radiation, Is Key Concern In Japan

(Nature) Japan’s nuclear crisis: Fukushima’s legacy of fear

Also worth reading is the testimony of the leading American radiation expert John Boice, and the transcripts from the Health Physics Society press conference on March 1 (also summarised here).

Reproduced with permission of the authors, these sections describe and justify some of the key design choices that went into the making the IFR a different — and highly successful — approach to fast neutron reactor technology and its associated fuel recycling.

These excerpts not only provide a fascinating insight into a truly sustainable form nuclear power; they also provide excellent reference material for refuting many of the spurious claims on the internet about IFR by people who don’t understand (or choose to wilfully misrepresent) this critically important technology. Click here for part 1 (metal fuels and plutonium).

The second extract, on coolant choice and reactor configuration, comes from pages 108-111 of Plentiful Energy. To buy the book ($18 US) and get the full story, go to Amazon or CreateSpace. (Note that the images below do not come from the book).

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The Coolant Choice

Liquid sodium was the choice of coolant from the beginnings of fast reactor development, because the neutron energies must remain high for good breeding and sodium doesn’t slow the neutrons significantly. (Water does, and so nullifies breeding.) But sodium has other highly desirable properties too—it transfers heat easily and removes heat from the fuel quickly; it has a high heat capacity which allows it to absorb significant heat without excessive temperature rise; its boiling point is far too high for it to boil at operating temperatures, and importantly, even to boil at temperatures well above operating; and finally, although a solid at room temperature, it has a low enough melting point to stay liquid at temperatures not too far above that. In addition, there is no chemical reaction at all between the sodium and the structural materials making up the core (such as steel and zirconium). It is chemically stable, stable at high temperatures, stable under irradiation, cheap, and commonly available.

Further, as a metal, sodium does not react at all with metal fuel either, so there is no fuel/coolant interaction as there is for oxide fuel exposed to sodium. In oxide fuel, if the cladding develops a breach such reactions can form reaction products which are larger in volume than the original oxide. They can continue to open the breach, expel reacted product, and could possibly block the coolant channel and lead to further problems. Metal fuel eliminates this concern.

For ease of reactor operation, sodium coolant has one supreme advantage. Liquid at room pressures, it allows the reactor to operate at atmospheric pressure. This has many advantages. Water as a coolant needs very high pressures to keep it liquid at operating temperatures. A thousand- to two-thousand-psi pressure must be maintained, depending on the reactor design. Thick-walled reactor vessels are needed to contain the reactor core with coolant at these pressures.

The diameter of the vessel must be kept as small as possible, as the wall thickness necessary increases directly with diameter. With the room-pressure operation of sodium coolant, the reactor vessel, or reactor tank as it is called, can be any diameter at all; there is no pressure to contain. And leaks of sodium, if they happen, have no pressure behind them, they drip out into the atmosphere, where generally they are noticed as a wisp of smoke. The important thing is that there is no explosive flashing to steam as there is when water at high pressure and temperature finds a leakage path.

Its principal disadvantage is that it is highly chemically reactive with oxygen, in water or in air. It must not be exposed to either so it must be maintained in an inert gas environment. Argon, a relatively common noble gas, which itself is completely non-reactive and heavy enough to blanket surfaces and keep them blanketed, is the obvious choice to do this. Its opacity is little more than a nuisance; techniques have been developed over the years to deal with it.

Editor’s Note: Click here to download a PDF of an excellent 50-slide presentation from Argonne National Labs, called “Sodium as a Fast Reactor Coolant“. The two Argonne images shown above are slides from that presentation.

The IFR uses a pool, rather than loop design, with the non-radioactive secondary sodium circuit immersed in the primary reactor pool and then directed to a double-walled sodium-water heat exchanger in a separate building, where the steam is generated.

The Reactor Configuration in the IFR

The reactor configuration—that is, the arrangement of the vessel containing the core and the necessary piping—is important too. The piping that carries sodium coolant exposed to radiation in the core, the primary sodium as it is called, mustn’t ever leak to the atmosphere. Primary sodium is radioactive; short-lived Na-24 is formed, which has a fifteen-hour half-life and decays with two hard gammas, at 1.38 and 2.75 MeV. Gamma radiation at energies this high is penetrating and hazardous to humans. Its half-life is short enough that it dies away reasonably quickly. But as sodium burns in air with a heavy white smoke, radioactivity would spread from a leak.

A pool configuration eliminates this possibility. It keeps all primary sodium and its associated piping inside a double-walled tank. Radioactive sodium is never exposed to the atmosphere, if the primary system does leak it merely leaks sodium back into the pool. The heat in the primary sodium is transferred in a heat exchanger inside the tank to a secondary cooling circuit. Only non-radioactive sodium from the secondary cooling circuit is brought out of the vessel. This piping may develop a leak, but there can be no spread of radioactivity from it. Radioactivity from sodium leaks is a non-existent problem in the pool reactor configuration.

The pool configuration is a conscious choice, just as the fuel and coolant materials choices are. The reactor tank is sized large enough to accommodate all the primary system components. The core itself, the primary piping, and the primary heat exchanger (where the heat is transferred from the radioactive primary sodium) are submerged in the pool of primary sodium. The tank boundary has no penetrations; it is a smooth walled tank, and it in turn sits in another larger diameter tank. This guard vessel provides double assurance that there will be no leaks to the room. Unpressurized, a leak of sodium from the primary vessel would go into the space between the two vessels. That space is “inerted” with argon gas, and instrumentation is provided to monitor the space for any leaks into it. (There were none in the thirty-year lifetime of EBR-II.)

It should be noted that of the two possible reactor configurations, pool or loop, each is suited to one particular coolant type. The water-cooled reactor, because of its high pressures, needs a small-diameter reactor vessel and the loop design is almost mandatory. The sodium-cooled reactor, because of its low pressure coolant can have any sized vessel. The primary coolant is radioactive, so it’s best to have primary components, piping, and connections inside the primary tank.

The pool is a natural choice, and it was the choice ofArgonne’s designers of EBR-II in the late 1950s. The loop design, of course, is possible, and in fact it became the choice for theU.S.breeder development in the late sixties and seventies, and several of the breeder reactors built around the world were given this configuration, but for a number of reasons it is not the natural choice for sodium cooling.

As will be seen in the chapter on safety, sizing the pool to provide enough bulk sodium to absorb the heat of accident conditions adds some remarkable extra safety properties to the system. It allows safe regulation of the reactor power even under conditions where an accident has disabled the control and safety systems (see image above). In such an accident the massive pool of sodium provides ballast—heat can be absorbed until the natural reactivity feedbacks of a metallic-fueled core come in strongly enough to reduce the reactor power to harmless levels.

These “natural reactivity feedbacks” reduce reactivity as the core expands from the increased temperatures of an accident. Neutron leakage is much more important to reactivity in a fast reactor than a thermal reactor. In a fast reactor, neutron cross-sections are small and neutrons typically travel tens of centimeters before being absorbed, compared to distances of fractions of a centimeter in thermal reactors.

The core dimensions are small too, so a large fraction of the neutrons are born close to the boundaries and many leak from the reactor. Small increases in the core diameter due to temperature increase in turn increase neutron leakage in the axial direction and give reactivity reductions sufficient to reduce reactor power.

However, it occurred to me that I’ve never tried to define the main message of the BraveNewClimate.com blog, nor really reflected on who the chief audience is. So let’s try.

In reality, both have evolved over time. Back in late 2008 – early 2009, when the blog (and my thinking on climate change policy) was in its infancy, it would have read something this:

2009 MM: Communicate the scientific evidence for anthropogenic global warming to the general public and policy makers, and advocate the need for, and urgency of, effective mitigation.

2009 TA: People seeking understanding of past climate change, current/future impacts, and the basis of modelled forecasts – all explained in relatively straightforward terms. A secondary target audience was those who were confused by, or enamored of, the repeated assertions of ‘the sceptics’.

Although I was proud to have developed the website on this scientific and philosophical foundation, neither of the above MM or TA are appropriate to BNC’s central purpose in 2012. So let’s try again.

2012 MM: To advocate an evidence-based approach to eliminating global fossil fuel emissions, based on a pragmatic and rational mix of nuclear and other low-carbon energy sources.

2012 TA: Environmentalists who disregard or oppose nuclear energy, and instead believe that renewables are sufficient (or that continuing to rely on fossil fuels is a rational energy policy).

The main message changed because I became progressively more interested in educating people on practical solutions to the problems of global change, rather than preaching doom-and-gloom. This shift in purpose was not because I don’t still consider the impacts of climate change to be incredibly serious and the evidence (ever increasingly) compelling — I do! It’s rather that I found the generic message of: “This is really bad, we must do something!” to be ineffectual, unappealing, and frankly, depressing. Besides, there are other sites that do this very well, so I now tend to leave it in their capable hands.

Instead, I became interested (okay, obsessed is a better word) with grasping and communicating the high-level issues associated with which low-carbon energy solutions will work most effectively at displacing fossil fuels and thus ‘solving’ climate change, at scale, in time, and within reasonable costs.

The new target audience is more specific than previously – this is quite deliberate. The rationale goes something like this, using admittedly broad and weakly quantified generalisations:

A) Roughly 50 % of the public (at least in OECD countries) are somewhere between reasonably and very seriously concerned with climate change, and want action to be taken to phase out fossil fuels. Within this fraction, 10 % have looked pragmatically enough at the problem of future energy supply to support a rational mix of nuclear and ‘renewable’ sources. Another 30 % are somewhere between mildly to fairly strongly opposed to nuclear fission, and hope (or earnestly believe) that a completely renewable-energy-powered society is feasible. The final 10 % of this segment of the populace are implacably anti-nuclear (for various reasons) and this opposition matters to them far more than climate change.

B) The other 50 % of the population range somewhere between indifferent to strongly sceptical of the anthropogenic climate change problem, and are most concerned with energy security and cost. Most, perhaps 40 %, accept the premise that nuclear energy can deliver an alternative to fossil fuels, although many within this group don’t believe that nuclear can or will displace fossil fuels any time soon. Perhaps 5 % refuse to ‘believe’ in climate change but still like the idea of renewable energy as the eventual successor to fossil fuels, and the other 5 % strongly favour nuclear energy for non-climate reasons.

C) Policy makers (politicians) are of secondary importance, because they will follow public sentiment rather than drive it, especially when urgency is not perceived to be high (c.f., war time).

I aim, via BNC, to provide the evidence and supporting arguments to persuade the 30 % of Group A that nuclear power cannot be spurned if they want real and effective action on climate change, and to reinforce the positive arguments for nuclear (and a sensible balance of renewables) within the 40 % of Group B who could: (i) move from weak to strong support for nuclear, and (ii) might be convinced that taking real action on climate change need not imply ill-conceived or uneconomic energy policies.

I have skipped over a lot of the nuances behind my position, but that’s at least the broad-brush motivations.

Feedback is welcome: e.g., Who do you refer on to BNC? How and why did you find BNC? What is your MM when you talk to people about climate and energy? Who is your TA?

——————-

Footnote: Two important and related BNC posts: A Necessary Interlude and Thinking Critically About Sustainable Energy

How close did Japan really get to a widespread nuclear disaster?

By Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger

Posted on Slate Thursday, March 1, 2012, at 4:55 PM ET

With an eye to the first anniversary of the tsunami that killed 20,000 people and caused a partial meltdown at the Fukushima power plant in Japan, a recently formed nongovernmental organization called Rebuild Japan released a report earlier this week on the nuclear incident to alarming media coverage.

The crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in Okuma, Fukushima prefecture as of February 2012. Issei Kato/Getty Images

“Japan Weighed Evacuating Tokyo in Nuclear Crisis,” screamed the New York Times headline, above an article by Martin Fackler that claimed, “Japan teetered on the edge of an even larger nuclear crisis than the one that engulfed the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant.”

The larger crisis was a worst-case scenario imagined by Japanese government officials dealing with the situation. If workers at the Fukushima Daiichi plant were evacuated, Fackler writes, some worried “[t]his would have allowed the plant to spiral out of control, releasing even larger amounts of radioactive material into the atmosphere that would in turn force the evacuation of other nearby nuclear plants, causing further meltdowns.”

Fackler quotes former newspaper editor and founder of Rebuild Japan Yoichi Funabashi as saying, “We barely avoided the worst-case scenario, though the public didn’t know it at the time.”

To say that Japan “barely avoided” what another top official called a “demonic chain reaction” of plant meltdowns and the evacuation of Tokyo is to make an extraordinary claim. One shudders at the thought of the hardship, suffering, and accidents that would almost certainly have resulted from any attempt to evacuate a metropolitan area of 30 million people. The Rebuild Japan report has not yet been released to the public, but there is reason to doubt that Japan was anywhere close to executing this nightmare contingency plan.

The same day the New York Times published its story, PBS broadcast a Frontline documentary about the Fukushima meltdown that invites a somewhat different interpretation. In an interview conducted for that program, then-Prime Minister Naoto Kan suggests that the fear of cascading plant failures was nothing more than panicked speculation among some of his advisers. “I asked many associates to make forecasts,” Kan explained to PBS, “and one such forecast was a worst-case scenario. But that scenario was just something that was possible, it didn’t mean that it seemed likely to happen.”

The authors of the Rebuild Japan report also spoke with Kan, along with about 300 others. According to the Times, these interviews turned up evidence that the Tokyo Electric Power Company was looking to abandon the teetering power plant, a plan that would have significantly worsened the crisis.

But was this ever really going to happen? Kan told PBS that his Cabinet members had said Tepco “wanted to withdraw,” but adds that the company’s CEO “would not say clearly [to Kan] that they wanted to withdraw, or that they wouldn’t withdraw.” The producer of the Frontline documentary, Dan Edge, said in an interview posted to the PBS website that the Fukushima workers he interviewed said they were told they on the evening of March 14 that there would be a complete evacuation, but then told the next morning that there would not be.

All this suggests there was significant confusion and indecision, and there is no question that what happened at Fukushima demands critical investigation and accountability. Whether or not Tepco mismanaged Fukushima after the tsunami hit, there is evidence that company officials had delayed upgrading the plant ahead of time and ignored the risk of a tsunami large enough to breech the seawall.

The Rebuild Japan report seems, on its face, to have been produced by a highly credible team of “30 university professors, lawyers and journalists.” But even a seemingly legitimate study deserves a skeptical eye. Yet Fackler and the Times chose not to quote a single independent expert on nuclear energy besides Rebuild Japan’s Funabashi. It should have been a red flag that Rebuild Japan gave its report to journalists a full week before releasing it to the public, which prevented outside experts from evaluating its claims. Another hint that the report merited a contrary opinion was the fact that it excluded any account from Tepco executives, who refused to be interviewed by Rebuild Japan investigators.

There’s no question that the findings from the Rebuild Japan study merited coverage, but the Times might have shown more awareness of the fallacy of the worst-case scenario. “In any field of endeavor,” wrote physicist Bernard Cohen in his classic 1990 study, The Nuclear Energy Option, “it is easy to concoct a possible accident scenario that is worse than anything that has been previously proposed.” Cohen goes on to spin a scenario of a gasoline spill resulting in out-of-control fires, a disease epidemic, and, eventually, nuclear war.

Cohen concludes his fantastical thought experiment by saying, “I have frequently been told that the probability doesn’t matter—the very fact that such an accident is possible makes nuclear power unacceptable. According to that way of thinking, we have shown that the use of gasoline is not acceptable, and almost any human activity can similarly be shown to be unacceptable. If probability didn’t matter, we would all die tomorrow from any one of thousands of dangers we live with constantly.”

It was perfectly reasonable for the Japanese authorities to have imagined and considered the very worst possible course of events in the aftermath of Fukushima meltdown. But it’s a mistake to oversell the risks of such a scenario in hindsight. Yes, things could have turned out much worse—just as they could have turned out much better. As the Times and the rest of the news media cover the anniversary of the tsunami, they would do well to keep Cohen’s warning in mind.

Ted Norhaus and Michael Shellenberger

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Barry Brook: For those who are interested, here is the full relevant section from Bernard Cohen’s 1990 book:

The Worst Possible Accident

One subject we have not discussed here is the “worst possible nuclear accident,” because there is no such thing. In any field of endeavor, it is easy to concoct a possible accident scenario that is worse than anything that has been previously proposed, although it will be of lower probability. One can imagine a gasoline spill causing a fire that would wipe out a whole city, killing most of its inhabitants. It might require a lot of improbable circumstances combining together, like water lines being frozen to prevent effective fire fighting, a traffic jam aggravated by street construction or traffic accidents limiting access to fire fighters, some substandard gas lines which the heat from the fire caused to leak, a high wind frequently shifting to spread the fire in all directions, a strong atmospheric temperature inversion after the whole city has become engulfed in flame to keep the smoke close to the ground, a lot of bridges and tunnels closed for various reasons, eliminating escape routes, some errors in advising the public, and so forth. Each of these situations is improbable, so a combination of many of them occurring in sequence is highly improbable, but it is certainly not impossible.

If anyone thinks that is the worst possible consequence of a gasoline spill, consider the possibility of the fire being spread by glowing embers to other cities which were left without protection because their firefighters were off assisting the first city; or of a disease epidemic spawned by unsanitary conditions left by the conflagration spreading over the country; or of communications foul-ups and misunderstandings caused by the fire leading to an exchange of nuclear weapon strikes. There is virtually no limit to the damage that is possible from a gasoline spill. But as the damage envisioned increases, the number of improbable circumstances required increases, so the probability for the eventuality becomes smaller and smaller. There is no such thing as the “worst possible accident,” and any consideration of what terrible accidents are possible without simultaneously considering their low probability is a ridiculous exercise that can lead to completely deceptive conclusions.

The same reasoning applies to nuclear reactor accidents. Situations causing any number of deaths are possible, but the greater the consequences, the lower is the probability. The worst accident the RSS considered would cause about 50,000 deaths, with a probability of one occurrence in a billion years of reactor operation. A person’s risk of being a victim of such an accident is 20,000 times less than the risk of being killed by lightning, and 1,000 times less than the risk of death from an airplane crashing into his or her house.7

But this once-in-a-billion-year accident is practically the only nuclear reactor accident ever discussed in the media. When it is discussed, its probability is hardly ever mentioned, and many people, including Helen Caldicott, who wrote a book on the subject, imply that it’s the consequence of an average meltdown rather than of 1 out of 100,000 meltdowns. I have frequently been told that the probability doesn’t matter — the very fact that such an accident is possible makes nuclear power unacceptable. According to that way of thinking, we have shown that the use of gasoline is not acceptable, and almost any human activity can similarly be shown to be unacceptable. If probability didn’t matter, we would all die tomorrow from any one of thousands of dangers we live with constantly.

This whole chapter (and the book) is superb: http://www.phyast.pitt.edu/~blc/book/chapter6.html

Guest post

Click here for a printable 6-page PDF version of this response.

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This is a personal response to Lang’s (2012) article critiquing the peer-reviewed paper Elliston, Diesendorf and MacGill (2011) ‘Simulations of scenarios with 100% renewable electricity in the Australian National Electricity Market’, referred to hereinafter as EDM (2011).

I appreciate the large amount of work that Lang has done in attempting to assess our work. However, I think his critique is premature, because he has misunderstood the intent of our work, which was clearly identified as exploratory. It is the first of a series of planned papers that will pick up on some of the issues that he has raised (and others) and step by step prepare the ground for an economic analysis. Several other questions that he raises are simply repetitions of questions that we have already raised and in some cases answered in EDM (2011).

Lang appears to be confused and mistaken in some key issues, such as the reliability of generation, where his conclusions are incorrect and potentially misleading.

Reliability of generation

Lang misunderstands and hence misrepresents our result that, in its baseline scenario, supply does not meet demand on six hours per year. He draws an incorrect conclusion from this result to claim that ‘renewable energy cannot realistically provide 100% of Australia’s electricity generation’. However, he overlooks the fact, clearly stated in the abstract, the main body and the conclusion of EDM (2011), that all our scenarios meet the same reliability criterion as the existing polluting energy system supplying the National Electricity Market (NEM), namely a maximum energy generation shortfall of 0.002%. This criterion inevitably means that any energy supply system, including the existing fossil-based system, is likely to fail to meet demand on at least several hours per year.

This is simply realistic, because no electricity supply system has 100% reliability. To achieve this ideal would require an infinite amount of back-up and hence an infinite cost. For this reason, electricity supply systems have reliability criteria such as Loss-of-Load-Probability (LOLP, the average number of hours per year that supply fails to meet demand) or energy shortfall. The NEM uses the latter. Since Lang refers to LOLP later in his article, he presumably partly understands this fundamental principle of electricity supply, yet somehow forgets this when critiquing the principal conclusion of our paper.

His oversight invalidates his conclusion. Hence our conclusion stands: namely that, subject to the conditions of the model, a 100% renewable electricity system is technically feasible for the NEM based on commercially available technologies.

Lang’s belief that we must add 20% reserve plant margin is also based on misunderstanding and confusion.  The generating capacity of our baseline renewable energy system is 84.9 gigawatts (GW) and the maximum demand on the NEM in the year we simulated, 2010, was 33.65 GW at 3 pm on 11 January. Our baseline renewable energy mix met this demand with several GW of gas turbines in reserve. Applying the conventional definition would give us a reserve plant margin of 150%. Clearly the conventional concept of reserve plant margin needs rethinking when there is a very large percentage of renewable energy supply. However, Lang’s notion that we would need 33 GW capacity of gas turbine capacity to become ‘reliable’ is inappropriate, because it would give our renewable energy supply system a greater reliability than the existing fossil fuelled system The key parameter is the reliability of the whole supply-demand system, whether measured by LOLP or energy shortfall, not the reliability of individual technologies or the amount of reserve plant.

Of course, a more detailed model would have to take account of network failures; regional variations in supply, demand and transmission capacity; and extreme weather events. These are expected to entail adjustments to the supply mix and a variety of demand-side measures.

EDM (2011 and 2012 submitted) show that we can reduce the baseline gas turbine capacity of 24 GW in the renewable energy mix, while maintaining the reliability of the generating systems, in several different ways. These include either increasing the CST generating capacity while keeping the solar multiple fixed (the approach of Wright & Hearps (2010)); or increasing the solar multiple while keeping the CST capacity fixed; or reducing the winter peak demand by various measures.

Biofuelled gas turbines

Lang claims incorrectly that “Gas turbines running on biofuels are not a proven, commercially viable electricity generation technology at the scale required (IEA, 2007)”. Putting aside his phrase ‘at the scale required’, which I’ll return to shortly, it should be noted that his IEA reference is five years old and does not support his assertion. It is a 4-page pamphlet, which does not discuss biofuelled open-cycle gas turbines, the technology used in our paper.

Open-cycle gas turbines are a commercial technology, proven for several decades. They are used both as peaking plants in electricity supply systems and as jet engines on aircraft. If you fly on some overseas airlines today, the jet engines of your aircraft may be fuelled partially or totally on biofuels. Gas turbines can be fuelled on oil, natural gas, bio-ethanol, biodiesel, etc., with little or no modification, although for some fuels a modified fuel preparation system may be required. However, it’s actually easier to burn biofuels in gas turbines on the ground, because one doesn’t have the problem of keeping the fuel temperature high. EDM’s scenarios assume conventional aero-derivative gas turbines burning the above biofuels.

Small modifications to gas turbines are required to burn syngas (a mixture of hydrogen and carbon monoxide that can be produced from fossil fuels or biomass) and such flexible fuel turbines are commercially available from GE and other manufacturers. So, if syngas derived from biomass were to become one of the future biofuels, there seems to be no good reason why the turbines in mass production would be significantly more expensive than unmodified gas turbines.

An alternative option to gas turbines is conventional gas and diesel gen sets, which have increasingly impressive efficiency and low capital costs (eg. $800/kW for a 50MW plant in SA that can connect to grid and start in 2 minutes).

Lang’s phrase ‘at the scale required’ could be applied unfairly to all the commercially available technologies in our 100% renewable electricity scenario. If we assume that the transition to 100% would occur over several decades, there would be no unsurmountable problem in scaling up the technologies, including gas turbines. Hence, the term ‘at the scale required’ is irrelevant. All the new renewable energy technologies used in our models can be scaled up very quickly, because they can be readily mass-manufactured and the installation on sites is straightforward. For instance, China doubled its wind capacity each year for five consecutive years commencing 2005. Global solar PV capacity has increased at about 40% per year over the past decade. For comparison, nuclear power stations are a much slower technology to scale up, because they are gigantic construction projects and much of the work is site dependent.

The biomass fuel would be derived mostly from the residues of existing crops and plantation forests. Hence the land required would not compete significantly with food production or native forests. During a non-drought year it is estimated that around 30% of Australia’s electricity could be supplied from biomass residues (Diesendorf 2007, chapter 7). To allow for drought, our baseline scenario generates about 14% and other scenarios discussed in EDM (2011 and 2012 submitted) generate less than that.

Hydro, CST, PV and wind

Lang’s comments on the constraints on water releases are pertinent and will be taken into account in our future work. However, hydro plays a minor role in EDM’s current scenarios and his constraints are unlikely to change our principal results. More generally, there appears to be no good reason for assuming that the present operational strategy for hydro, or indeed for the whole electricity grid, would be optimal for a 100% renewable system. Hence some of the sensitivity analyses in our ongoing simulations are designed to explore different operational strategies.

Most of Lang’s comments on CST and PV are actually questions and most of the answers are already given in the paper. For instance:

• Spilled energy is reported.
• The capacity factor for CST of 60% is not a direct assumption of the model, but instead is determined by the choice of solar multiple and locations.
• A check of the performance of Australia’s existing wind farms shows that an average capacity factor of 30% is about right. Some have higher values and others lower.

Winter peak demand reductions

Although demand reductions play a minor role in the first EDM paper, the authors see no good reason for excluding them from the system. They are recognised as having huge potential by the IEA and in European Union energy policy. They play a more significant role in EDM’s forthcoming second paper. Many energy researchers, including the present writer, consider demand reductions to be ‘negawatts’, a well-known term in sustainable energy. These reductions can be achieved from energy efficiency, solar air conditioning, solar hot water and by off-loading certain energy users for a few hours during periods of high demand and/or low supply. Indeed, occasionally off-loading aluminium smelters for periods up to two hours is current practice, helping to avoid blackouts in existing electricity supply systems when supply fails to meet demand.

Transmission and economics

EDM’s first two papers have the ‘copperplate’ assumption and hence are not designed as a basis for doing the economics of 100% renewable electricity. If all goes to plan, our third simulation paper will begin the complex task of examining transmission requirements. After that a preliminary examination of the economics could be justified. Simulation modelling must first be done with the ‘copperplate’ assumption removed. Lang has not done this. His calculations are indeed ‘crude’, as he admits, and full of dubious assumptions, so there is no need to spend time and space commenting on them in detail here.

However, it must be mentioned that Lang’s assumption, that the capital cost of open-cycle gas turbines is $5,051/kW, is too high by a factor of over six.  These are the same gas turbines as currently used with fossil fuels. EPRI (2010, Table 7.15), a study cited by Lang, gives a capital cost of $801/kW sent out. Lang’s huge error greatly inflates his cost estimates of the renewable energy scenarios.

Also, since the EDM model assumes a dramatic scale-up of the numbers of each of the renewable energy technologies, over a long time frame, it is inappropriate to use their current prices.

There is no doubt that all biofuels (except landfill gas) are more expensive than current world prices for fossil gas. However, with peak oil already reached (according to the IEA), and natural gas and coal seam methane being the principal potential substitutes for oil in transportation and petrochemicals, the long-term price trajectory for gas is likely to be up and up. Carbon prices may also become more widespread and much higher in the long-term. Meanwhile the prices of biofuels are likely to decline with scale of production. So it’s unclear whether gas will still be cheaper than biofuels in (say) 2030.

Conclusion

‘Simulations of scenarios with 100% renewable electricity in the Australian National Electricity Market’ is the first in a series of planned papers that are step by step removing simplifying assumptions on the simulation modelling of 100% renewable electricity. The first paper removes several of the assumptions made in the ground-breaking work by Wright & Hearps (2010). The second paper, currently being peer-reviewed for an international scholarly journal, offers a much more detailed sensitivity analysis than the first. The third, for which research is in progress, will commence the examination the effects of transmission constraints. The fourth is planned to be a preliminary exploration of the economics. Meanwhile, other papers are being published on the analysis of Australia’s solar and wind data. It is hoped that each paper will answer more of the questions that Lang and other readers may ask.

The conclusion of Lang’s critique, that our first paper shows that “renewable energy cannot realistically provide 100% of Australia’s electricity generation”, is incorrect and potentially misleading. The error seems to be based on a misunderstanding of the fundamentals of the reliability of electricity supply. No electricity supply system can be 100% reliable. Our 100% renewable electricity systems have been designed to meet the same reliability criterion as the existing polluting system.

Our simulation modelling shows that a 100% renewable electricity system is technically feasible for the National Electricity Market based on commercially available technologies. It also shows that there is no need for base-load power stations. As acknowledged in our paper, the modelling needs further refinement, notably the removal of the ‘copperplate’ assumption and inclusion of a greater diversity of wind farm sites. However, these two particular refinements, taken together, will offset each other to some extent, and so they are unlikely to change our principal qualitative result. Other refinements, such as consideration of network failure and extreme weather events, must be considered in relation to the detailed geographic distribution of renewable energy supply and demand, and of demand management operations.

Lang’s comments on hydro constraints are pertinent and will be addressed in future research. However, since existing hydro plays a minor role in our current scenarios, the hydro constraints are unlikely to affect the principal qualitative result, although they may have a small quantitative impact.  Most of Lang’s other objections and comments are minor.

At this stage it is premature to attempt an economic analysis. When this is eventually done, realistic assumptions must be made about future prices of renewable energy technologies in large-scale mass production, gas turbines and their fuels, and future carbon prices. Lang’s economic estimates are tied to current prices, apart from an overestimate of the capital cost of gas turbines by a factor of over six. Hence his cost figures are gross over-estimates.

References

Diesendorf M (2007) Greenhouse Solutions with Sustainable Energy. Sydney: UNSW Press.

Elliston B, Diesendorf M. MacGill I 2011, ‘Simulations of scenarios with 100% renewable electricity in the Australian National Electricity Market’, Solar 2011 conference, Australian Solar Energy Society, Sydney, 30 November-2 December. http://www.ies.unsw.edu.au/docs/Solar2011-100percent.pdf

EPRI (2010), Australian electricity generation technology costs – Reference case 2010. http://www.ret.gov.au/energy/Documents/AEGTC%202010.pdf

Lang P (2012) ‘Renewable electricity for Australia – the cost’. http://bravenewclimate.com/2012/02, accessed 23-2-2012.

Wright, M. & Hearps, P. (2010), Zero Carbon Australia Stationary Energy Plan, Technical report, Beyond Zero Emissions. http://media.beyondzeroemissions.org/ZCA2020_Stationary_Energy_Report_v1.pdf

Reproduced with permission of the authors, these sections describe and justify some of the key design choices that went into the making the IFR a different — and highly successful — approach to fast neutron reactor technology and its associated fuel recycling.

These excerpts not only provide a fascinating insight into a truly sustainable form nuclear power; they also provide excellent reference material for refuting many of the spurious claims on the internet about IFR by people who don’t understand (or choose to wilfully misrepresent) this critically important technology.

The first extract, on Fuel Choice, comes from pages 104-108 of Plentiful Energy. To buy the book ($18 US) and get the full story, go to Amazon or CreateSpace.

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Metal Fuel

The IFR metal alloy fuel was the single most important development decision. More flows from this than from any other of the choices. It was a controversial choice, as metal fuel had been discarded worldwide in the early sixties and forgotten. Long irradiation times in the reactor are essential, particularly if reprocessing of the fuel is expensive, yet the metal fuel of the 1960s would not withstand any more than moderate irradiation. Ceramic fuel, on the other hand, would. Oxide, a ceramic fuel developed for commercial water-cooled reactors, had been adopted for breeder reactors in every breeder program in the world. It is fully developed and it remains today the de facto reference fuel type for fast reactors elsewhere in the world. It is known. Its advantages and disadvantages in a sodium-cooled fast reactor are well established. Why then was metallic fuel the choice for the IFR?

The Integral Fast Reactor (IFR) system

In reactor operation, reactor safety, fuel recycling, and waste product—indeed, in every important element of a complete fast reactor system—it seemed to us that metallic fuel allowed tangible improvement. Such improvements would lead to cost reduction and to improved economics. Apprehension that the fast reactor and its associated fuel cycle would not be economic had always clouded fast reactor development. Sharp improvements in the economics might be possible if a metal fuel could be made to behave under the temperature and radiation conditions in a fast reactor. Not just any metal fuel, but one that contained the amounts of plutonium needed for reactor operation on recycled fuel. Discoveries at Argonne suggested it might be possible.

Metal fuel allows the highest breeding of any possible fuel. High breeding means fuel supplies can be expanded easily, maintained at a constant level, or decreased at will. Metal fuel and liquid sodium, the coolant, also a metal, do not react at all. Breaches or holes in the fuel cladding, important in oxide, don’t matter greatly with metal fuel; operation can in fact continue with impunity. The mechanisms for fuel cladding failure were now understood too, and very long irradiations had become possible. Heat transfers easily too. Very little heat is stored in the fuel. (Stored heat exacerbates accidents.) Metal couldn’t be easier to fabricate: it’s simple to cast and it’s cheap. The care that must be taken and the many steps needed in oxide fuel fabrication are replaced by a very few simple steps, all amenable to robotic equipment. And spent metal fuel can be processed with much cheaper techniques. Finally, the product fuel remains highly radioactive, a poor choice for weapons in any case, and dangerous to handle except remotely.

Important questions remained—whether uranium alloys that included plutonium could be developed that had a high enough melting point and didn’t harm the fuel cladding, while at the same time retaining the long irradiations now possible for the uranium EBR-II fuel. Early metal fuel had swelled when irradiated—the reason it had been discarded. But the swelling problem had been solved for all-uranium fuel. EBR-II had been operating with fairly long burnup uranium metal fuel for over a decade. Long-lived metal fuel resulted from metal slugs sized smaller in diameter than the cladding that allowed the metal to swell within the cladding. If properly sized, the metal swelled out to the cladding in the first few months of irradiation, and when it did, it exerted very little stress on it. After that, the fuel would continue to operate without any obvious burnup limit nor any further swelling.

Before the metal swelled sufficiently to give a good thermal bond with the cladding the necessary thermal bond was provided by introducing liquid sodium inside the cladding. The compatibility of liquid sodium with uranium metal allows this. As the fuel swells, sodium is displaced into the empty space at the top of the fuel pin, provided to collect fission product gasses. The bond sodium is important. It provides the high conductivity necessary to limit the temperature rise at the fuel surface and therefore the temperature of the fuel itself. The swelling itself, it was found, is caused by the growing pressure of gaseous fission products accumulating in pores which grow in size in the fuel as operation continues. But as swelling goes on, the pores interconnect and release the gasses to the space above. At less than 2 percent burnup the point of maximum swelling is reached, and the interconnections become large enough that sodium enters the pores. This, in turn, has the effect of restoring heat conductivity, which then acts to minimize the fuel temperature rise in the fuel.

The Fuel Conditioning Facility at EBR-II, the prototype of the IFR. Near the centre of the picture (with checkered cardigan) is Dr. Charles Till, who directed the IFR programme from 1984-1994 and is one of the authors of "Plentiful Energy".

The soundness of the basic uranium design had been established by thousands of uranium fuel pins of this design that had been irradiated without failure in EBR-II. But now, metallic uranium-plutonium would need to be designed to accommodate swelling. Would the plutonium content cause swelling behavior different from uranium alloy? And, more worrying, plutonium forms a low-melting-point eutectic (mixture) with iron, below the temperature required for operation. A new alloying element would be necessary to raise the eutectic melting point. Zirconium was known to be helpful in that. Zirconium also suppressed the diffusion of the cladding elements, iron and nickel, into the fuel. Iron and nickel form a lower melting point fuel alloy; worse, they form those alloys in the fuel next to the cladding. Zirconium solves these problems. Ten percent zirconium was chosen as optimal, because higher amounts gave fuel melting points too high for the techniques we intended to use to fabricate the fuel. Ten percent gave fuel with adequate compatibility with the cladding, and a high enough melting point to satisfy operating requirements, and could be fabricated with simple injection-casting techniques.

Thus the fuel would be a U-Pu-10Zr alloy. But would it work? Ten percent burnup, about three years in the reactor, was our criterion for success. We would have one set of tests initially, and everything depended on its success. In the event, the fuel passed 10% with no difficulty. It got close to 20% before it was finally removed from the reactor. There were no failures (such as burst cladding). The very first IFR fuel assemblies ever built exceeded the burnup then possible for oxide fuel in the large programs on oxide development of the previous two decades. Metal fuel which included plutonium had passed the test. All the benefits from its use were indeed possible. The program could then turn to a thorough sequence of experiments and analysis to establish, in detail, its possibilities and limitations.

Plutonium (Pu), a heavy metal (element 94)

Plutonium

The IFR fuel cycle is the uranium-plutonium cycle. In this, non-fissile uranium-238 is converted slowly and inexorably to fissile plutonium-239 over the life of the fuel. If there is a net gain in usable fuel material, the reactor is a breeder; if not, the reactor is a called a converter (of uranium to plutonium), as are all present commercial reactors. But all reactors convert their uranium fuel to plutonium to some degree. Water reactors convert enough that about half the power the fuel eventually produces comes from the plutonium they have produced and burned in place. A significant amount of the plutonium so created also stays in the spent fuel.

A large and lasting nuclear-powered economy depends on the use of plutonium as the main fuel. The truth about this valuable material is that it is a vitally important asset. Its highly controversial reputation has been built up purposefully from the activists, with little countervailing public awareness of its “whats and whys.” Its very existence is said to be unacceptable. In this way, breeder reactor development was stopped in the U.S. and today continues only fitfully around the world. The fact that present reactors fueled with uranium convert uranium to plutonium very efficiently indeed, creating new plutonium in yearly amounts comparable to the best breeders possible, is lost in the rhetoric. But facts are facts. The principal plutonium-related difference between breeders and converters is that breeders recycle their plutonium fuel, using it up, cycle after cycle, so the amount need not grow. Present reactors leave most of the plutonium they create behind as waste. For efficiency in uranium usage, there is little incentive to recycle it; perhaps a twenty percent increase in uranium utilization is achievable, at a considerable cost to the fuel cycle. (Other reasons, such as waste disposal, may make reprocessing of thermal reactor fuel attractive, but not the cost benefits of plutonium recycling.)

However, it is plutonium that brings the potential for unlimited amounts of electrical power. Plutonium no longer exists in nature except in trace amounts. Its half-life is too short: 24,900 years. The earth’s original endowment decayed away in the far distant past. It has to be created from uranium in the way we just described. Plutonium is a metal. It’s heavy, like uranium or lead. It is chemically toxic, as are all heavy metals if sufficient quantities are ingested, but no more so than the arsenic, say, common in use for many years. It is naturally radioactive, but no more so than radium, an element widely distributed over the earth’s surface. Its principal isotope, Pu-239, emits low-energy radiation easily blocked by a few thousands of an inch of steel, for example, and it is routinely handled in the laboratory jacketed in this way. It is chemically active, so in fine particles it reacts quickly with the oxygen in the air to form plutonium oxide, a very stable ceramic. If this is ingested, either through the lungs or the digestive system, as a rule the ceramic passes on through and the body rids itself of it. A popular slogan by the anti- nuclear organizers is that “a little speck will kill you.” Nonsense—a little speck of the ceramic plutonium oxide will not react further, and will generally pass through the body with little harm.

Plutonium has been routinely handled, in small quantities and large, in laboratories, chemical refineries, and manufacturing facilities around the world for decades. There have been no deaths recorded from its handling in all this time. A study of the wartime Hanford plutonium workers gave the unexpected result that these people on average lived longer than their non-plutonium-exposed cohort group. This was explainable as the likely result of better and more frequent checkups because they were involved in the study, but at the very least there was certainly no shortening of lifespan.

The last point is plutonium’s use for weapons. The very fact that Pu-239 is fissile makes this a possibility, as it does also for the two fissionable isotopes of uranium, U-233 and U-235. But plutonium for a time was exceptional because it could be chemically separated from the uranium that it was bred from, and it did not require the large, expensive diffusion plants necessary for the separation of the fissile U-235 isotope of uranium. But this ease of acquisition argument changed with the development of centrifuges. Now the fissile element U-235 can be separated from bulk uranium with machines. And instead of a stock of irradiated fuel, a chemical process, and facilities for handling, machining, and assembling a delicate implosion device, as one must have for plutonium, for uranium one has a nearly non-radioactive natural uranium feed, centrifuges that can be duplicated to give the number needed, and a nearly non-radioactive product, easily machined and handled, which allows a more simply constructed weapon. Plutonium can no longer be singled out as more susceptible to proliferation of nuclear weapons than uranium. The fact is that uranium now is probably the preferred route to a simple weapon in many of the most worrying national circumstances. Iran’s current actions are a case in point.

Plutonium-238 (plutonium oxide). Nuclear fission reactions release enough energy to increase the temperature of this sample of plutonium to red-heat. The heat produced by plutonium has been used as an energy source on spacecraft. Photo: Department of Energy.

Weapon-making is complicated by the presence of radioactivity. Plutonium processed by an IFR-type process remains very radioactive; it must be handled remotely, and delicate fabrication procedures are correspondingly difficult. Uranium is so much easier. This is not to imply that the large and sophisticated weapons laboratories like Los Alamos or Livermore could not use such isotopically impure reactor-grade plutonium; it is sufficient to say they would not choose to do so with much more malleable material available. And the beginner would certainly avoid the remote techniques mandatory for IFR plutonium.

This is the situation: Plutonium, as used in the IFR, cannot be simply demonized and forgotten. It is the means to unlimited electricity. The magnitude of the needs and estimates of the sources that might be able to fill those needs lead to one simple point: Fast reactors only, taking advantage of the breeding properties of plutonium in a fast spectrum, much improved over any uranium isotope, can change in a fundamental way the outlook for energy on the necessary massive scale. Their resource extension properties multiply the amount of usable fuel by a factor of a hundred or so, fully two orders of magnitude. Fine calculations are unnecessary. Demand can be met for many centuries, by a technology that is known today, and whose properties are largely established.

This technology is not speculative, as are fusion, new breakthroughs in solar, or other suggested alternatives. It can be counted on.

Guest post

Wood, A, T. Ellis, D. Mulloworth, and H. Morrow (2012) No Easy Choices: Which Way to Australia’s Energy Future. Technology Analysis. Grattan Institute, Melbourne.

This report is a valuable addition to the literature on the prospects for renewable energy in Australia, providing some recent data on key output and cost factors. It is especially to be commended for expressing a considerable degree of caution about this possibility, and pointing to the difficulties and problems that would have to be overcome. Almost all literature on renewable energy reinforces the faith that it can fuel energy intensive societies, and enable smooth transition to a carbon free economy. Over some years I have groped to a more confident statement of a case contradicting this position. (Trainer, 2012.)

The following brief comments indicate the strength of this case, and argues that the Grattan Report fails to recognise the reasons why it is very unlikely that the world can run on renewable energy.

The Report’s cost and output assumptions for the various renewable energy technologies seem to be inline with those in other recent documents. The explanation of the limits and difficulties associated with geothermal, carbon capture and sequestration, nuclear and biomass are especially valuable. Their estimate of biomass potential is a remarkably low c 500 PJ of primary energy, about 8% of the present Australian total, and their discussion of the logistical problems in getting large quantities of this low density material to generators is sobering.

I think that the major problem in the Report is that there is no analysis of the quantity of plant and the resulting capital cost of a total renewable energy supply system. Two years ago I published an attempt to do this, (Trainer, 2010a), and have now considerably improved the application of the approach based on more recent and more confident data. Trainer 2012 explores the amount and cost of plant needed to meet a 2050 world renewable energy demand assumed to be 1000 EJ of primary energy, about twice the present amount, in winter and net of long distance transmission energy losses and the embodied energy cost of the plant.

The conclusion arrived at is that the ratio of energy investment needed to GDP would be much less than derived in Trainer 2010a, but still unaffordable. It would be around 15 times as great as it is now – even though a number of significant factors difficult to quantify were not included in the analysis. These would multiply the ratio several times. (The output and capital cost assumptions used were more or less in line with those in the Grattan Report.) Combining more optimistic assumptions (including solar thermal plant costing one-quarter of today’s cost) would only reduce the total capital cost by 40%.

A draft paper applying the same approach to the Australian situation concludes that the investment to GDP ratio would be more than 10 times the rich world average, again not including several major factors.. Australia has much better renewable energy resources than most countries, especially regarding biomass (I assume 35 million ha, around 20 times the Grattan assumption, I do not say that this is a plausible area.)

The crucial issue, on which the Grattan Report does not comment and which makes a very big difference to the viability question, is to do with the effects of variability and intermittency on plant required and thus on capital costs. More accurately the question is, how much plant would be needed to maintain supply when demand peaks and when wind and solar energy are minimally available. Most renewable energy analyses discuss only in terms of average or annual demand, output, DNI, capacity factors, wind strength etc., and this is highly misleading.

Especially important is the question, how often is there a total or almost total absence of both wind and solar energy in the collection region, and for how many days do such gap events last. It does not seem that anyone has analysed Australian climate date to provide an answer to this question, let alone a thorough and convincing answer. However it is well established that Europe can experience several days of continuously negligible wind and sun. For instance Oswald et al. (2008) document several days in February 2006 when both sources contributed almost no energy, and one of these days was the coldest for the year in the UK, probably meaning that demand peaked.

Such gap events could only be dealt with satisfactorily via renewable energy if the capacity to store vast quantities of electricity was available, and it is not and is not foreseen. Mackay shows that even in the rainy UK pumped storage potential capacity would fall far short. Trainer 2012 details the impossibly high cost of tackling the storage problem via hydrogen. Nor can solar thermal heat storage do the job, because the required quantities would be much too large.

Note that the target taken in my approach, 1000EJ for the 2050 world, would provide all the world’s people with only about one third of the present Australian per capita consumption, so if the expectation is that renewable could fuel rich world affluence for all, the target taken in my analyses would have to be multiplied by 3 for this factor, and by another number to take into account any increase in Australian per capita energy use in the next 38 years.

Note also that the derivation takes the generally accepted projection IEA and others make/assume of a future 50% fall in PV and solar thermal plant capital costs, and 20% for wind, and this is very likely to be quite wrong. Materials and energy prices look like they will increase rapidly from here on. Clugston, 2012, reports a 13.5% p.a. rise in energy prices since 1999, and for minerals a 14.3% p.a. rise from then to 2008. For two years since the GFC the rate has actually risen to 20.1% p.a. (…all in inflation adjusted terms).

Unless the assumptions and/or the arithmetic in my analysers are quite mistaken they seem to constitute strong cases against the possibility of renewable energy meeting world or Australian demand.

This is not an argument against transition to full reliance on renewable energy sources. It is only an argument against the possibility of sustaining high energy societies on them. Trainer 2010b and 2011 detail the case that the limits to growth predicament cannot be solved by technical reforms to or within consumer-capitalist society and that there must be radical social transition to some kind of “Simpler Way”. This vision includes developing mostly small and highly self-sufficient local economies, abandoning the growth economy, severely controlling market forces, shifting from representative to participatory democracy, and accepting frugal and cooperative lifestyles. Chapter 4 of Trainer 2010b presents numerical support for the claim that footprint and energy costs in the realm of 10% of those in present rich countries could be achieved, based on renewable energy sources.

Although at this point in time the prospects for making such a transition would seem to be highly unlikely, the need to consider it will probably become more evident as greenhouse and energy problems intensify. It is not likely to be considered if the present dominant assumption that high energy societies can run on renewable energy remains relatively unchallenged.

References

Clugston, (2010), Increasing Global Nonrenewable Natural Resource Scarcity—An Analysis, The Oil Drum, Apr. 6.

Oswald, J.K., M. Raine, H.J. Ashraf-Ball (2008) Will British weather provide reliable electricity? Energy Policy, 36, 3202 – 3215.

Trainer, T. (2010a) Can renewables etc. solve the greenhouse problem? The negative case. Energy Policy, 38, 4107 – 4114.

Trainer, T. (2010b) Transition: Getting To A Sustainable and Just World. Sydney, Envirobook.

Trainer, T. (2012) Can the world run on renewable energy? A revised negative case.

Download the printable 33-page PDF (includes two appendices, on scenario assumptions and transmission cost estimates) HERE.

For an Excel workbook that includes all calculations (and can be used for sensitivity analysis), click HERE.

By Peter Lang. Peter is a retired geologist and engineer with 40 years experience on a wide range of energy projects throughout the world, including managing energy R&D and providing policy advice for government and opposition. His experience includes: hydro, geothermal, nuclear, coal, oil, and gas plants and a wide range of energy end use management projects.

Summary

Here I review the paper “Simulations of Scenarios with 100% Renewable Electricity in the Australian National Electricity Market” by Elliston et al. (2011a) (henceforth EDM-2011).  That paper does not analyse costs, so I have also made a crude estimate of the cost of the scenario simulated and three variants of it.

For the EDM-2011 baseline simulation, and using costs derived for the Federal Department of Resources, Energy and Tourism (DRET, 2011b), the costs are estimated to be: $568 billion capital cost, $336/MWh cost of electricity and $290/tonne CO2 abatement cost.

That is, the wholesale cost of electricity for the simulated system would be seven times more than now, with an abatement cost that is 13 times the starting price of the Australian carbon tax and 30 times the European carbon price.  (This cost of electricity does not include costs for the existing electricity network).

Although it ignores costings, the EDM-2011 study is a useful contribution.  It demonstrates that, even with highly optimistic assumptions, renewable energy cannot realistically provide 100% ofAustralia’s electricity generation.  Their scenario does not have sufficient capacity to meet peak winter demand, has no capacity reserve and is dependent on a technology – ‘gas turbines running on biofuels’ – that exist only at small scale and at high cost.

Map of Australia's transmission lines. There are no transmissions lines to any of the proposed CSP sites, and the best solar areas are far removed from the existing transmissions infrastructure.Source: Grattan Institute, Figure 10.1 (attributed to DRET (2010), Grattan Institute)

Introduction

I have reviewed and critiqued the paper “Simulations of Scenarios with 100% Renewable Electricity in the Australian National Electricity Market” by Elliston et al. (2011a) (henceforth EDM-2011).

This paper comments on the key assumptions in the EDM-2011 study.  It then goes beyond that work to estimate the cost for the baseline scenario and three variants of it and compares these four scenarios on the basis of CO2 emissions intensity, capital cost, cost of electricity and CO2 abatement cost.

Comments on the EDM-2011 study

The objective of the desktop study by EDM-2011 was to investigate whether renewable energy generation alone could meet the year 2010 electricity demand of the National Electricity Market (NEM).  Costs were not considered.  The study used computer simulation to match estimated energy generation by various renewable sources to the known hourly average demand in 2010.  This simulation, referred to here as the “baseline simulation” proposed a system comprising:

• 15.6 GW (nameplate generation capacity) of parabolic trough concentrating solar thermal (CST) plants with 15 hours thermal storage, located at six remote sites far from the major demand centres;

• 23.2 GW of wind farms at the existingNEMwind farm locations – scaled up in capacity from 1.5 GW existing in 2010;

• 14.6 GW of roof-top solar photovoltaic (PV) inBrisbane,Sydney,Canberra,MelbourneandAdelaide;

• 7.1 GW of existing hydro and pumped hydro;

• 24 GW of gas turbines running on biofuels;

• A transmission system where “power can flow unconstrained from any generation site to any demand site” – this theoretical construct is termed a “copperplate” transmission system.

The accompanying slide presentation by Elliston et al. (2011b), particularly slides 5 to 12, provides a succinct summary of the objective, scope for their simulation study, the exclusions from the scope, the assumptions and the results.

The results of the baseline simulation show that there are six hours during the year 2010 when demand is not met, with a maximum power supply shortfall of 1.33 GW.  It should be noted that the supply shortfall would be significantly greater with higher time resolutions, e.g. 5 minute data rather than the 1 hour increments used, but this limitation is not addressed by EDM-2011.

The EDM-2011 approach is more realistic than Beyond Zero Emissions (2010) “Zero Carbon Australia – Stationary Energy Plan” (critiqued by Nicholson and Lang (2010), Diesendorf (2010), Trainer (2010) and others), especially because EDM-2011’s approach, as they say, “is limited to the electricity sector in a recent year, providing a more straight forward basis for exploring this question of matching variable renewable energy sources to demand.”  As the authors say, “this approach minimises the number of working assumptions”.

Despite the lack of costings, the EDM-2011 study is a useful contribution.  It demonstrates that, even with highly optimistic assumptions, renewable energy cannot realistically provide 100% of our electricity generation.  The baseline simulation does not have sufficient capacity to meet peak winter demand, has no capacity reserve, and is dependent on a technology – gas turbines running on biofuels – that currently exist only at small scale and at high cost.

The study is based on a number of assumptions that I argue are unacceptable:

1. a system with insufficient capacity to meet the winter peak demand and no capacity reserve margin would violate Australian Energy Regulator (AER) requirements;

2. the assumed capacity factors for the renewable energy generators are too high to be credible for the average plant life in a 100% renewable energy system;

3. the assumptions about the way the existing hydro and pumped hydro facilities can be used are not practical;

4. the assumptions about pumping and generating capacity of the pumped hydro plants are unjustified;

5. the practicable capacity of gas generators running on biofuels (and the capability of the biofuel system to provide the fuel and store it until needed) has not been demonstrated and critical details are glossed over;

6. the assumptions about a ‘copper-plate’ transmission system is unrealistic;

7. the assumptions about reducing winter peak demand is highly optimistic and not borne out by recent experience.

These assumptions, and the cost of the system simulated are discussed in the following sections.

Comments on the technologies and assumptions

Gas turbines running on biofuels

Gas turbines running on biofuels are not a proven, commercially viable electricity generation technology at the scale required (IEA, 2007).

Although some countries, e.g. those quoted by EDM-2011, do have some electricity generated by biomass, there are a wide variety of technologies used, and very little of it is gas turbines running on biofuels.  Much of it is in small plants, such as combined heat and power (CHP) fuelled by wood waste, chicken litter and other waste products.  Most of it is in thermal plants, not gas turbines.  IEA/OECD (2010), Table 3.7 lists four countries with some biogas capacity but this is mostly as reciprocating engine generators on waste dumps, sewage plants and the like.  According to Energy in Australia 2011 (DRET, 2011a),Australia has 231 MW of biogas generating capacity.

The land area that would be required for the required biofuel production would be unacceptable (1.6 million hectares of prime agricultural land in good years (Electropaedia); far more in droughts; this represents 74% of Australia’s irrigated agricultural land and 4% of all arable land (ARNA, 2009)).  The water requirements would also be unacceptable.  As would the truck movements required to collect the biomass.  A large commercial plant would need 100 to 200 truck movements per day and night collecting biomass from an area of 100 km radius (Simms et al., 2009)

The existing biomass electricity generation plants tend to be baseload or intermediate load plants.  Some of the European biogas systems, which use a biomass feed, take around 30 days to make the biogas from the biomass feed.  Such plants cannot be used for just the few days a year in winter when the CST, PV and Wind plants are unable to supply enough power to meet the demand.  The biogas plants listed in IEA (2010) Projected cost of electricity generation, Table 3.7 have assumed capacity factors of 80%, 85% and 90%.  These types of plants are not suited to the peaking plant role envisaged by EDM-2011.

Grattan Institute (2012) gives cost estimates for biofuel electricity generation inAustralia; however, the costs are based on a capacity factor of 70%. The report makes no mention of “gas turbines running on biofuels”.  The technologies mentioned are steam plants and reciprocating engines.  Following are three quotes from the report (Section 8):

For Bioenergy to provide 10% or more of Australia’s electricity needs it will have to use the large amounts of energy embodied within cereal crop residues

Even at 20 to 30 megawatts such plants require large amounts of biomass fuel to realise good capacity factors that are essential to offsetting the high upfront capital costs.

For a 30MW power plant at a 70% capacity factor the land area would be around 240,000 hectares and involve nearly 500 average sized wheat farms.

Note, these plants have to be run with capacity factors of around 70% to be economically viable.  They are certainly not the sort of ‘peaker’ plants envisaged by EDM-2011.

For the gas turbines running on biofuels to work as envisaged by EDM-2011, I envisage biogas would have to be produced throughout the year and stored for use during the few days in winter at the times when the remainder of the renewable energy generators cannot provide sufficient power.  The amount of biogas required per year is estimated to be 290 PJ (equivalent to 116% of natural gas consumed in electricity generation and 37% of total gas consumption in the eastern states in 2009-10).  But most of this is required over just a few short periods in winter.

The cost of electricity from the biogas plants is crudely estimated to be $563/MWh based on the 13% capacity factor assumed in the simulations.  Unlike natural-gas-fired gas turbines, which utilise low capital cost generators with readily available fuel, the biofuel proposal also requires capital intensive biofuel plants, year-round feedstock harvesting, and large-scale biogas storage and distribution infrastructure.

Given that the biogas option is so expensive, a cost estimate below was done for an alternative using natural gas instead of biogas.  All other assumptions are unchanged.

However, even this alternative would be much more expensive than a system that uses gas throughout the year.  In the baseline simulation, most of the gas generation would occur over a few short time spans each year.  That requires either the gas supply lines be sized to deliver the gas volumes needed over the short periods, or the gas must be stored at site for use when needed.  Either option will have a significant impact on the price of the delivered fuel and, therefore, on the cost of electricity.  The baseline simulation has 24 GW of gas generation capacity supplying 28.1 TWh of electricity per year.  However, EDM-2011’s Figure 3 shows that 26 GW is needed to provide a supply with no unserved energy and no unmet hours.  This capacity in the EDM-2011 baseline simulation is about 4 times the capacity of the existingNEMgas generators.

We should expect the generators’ fuel costs would increase by more than a factor of four.  One reason is that there is a small total consumption of gas over the year, but high usage rate for just a few short periods.  The gas supply system would have to provide the infrastructure to deliver the peak capacity demanded, but it would be paid for by a small quantity of gas sold per year.  So the gas price during the winter peak demand would have to be increased significantly.  A second reason the gas price would increase is that there would be a much higher demand for gas in winter at the same time as the gas demand peaks for winter heating.

Hydro

EDM-2011 assumes the water could be saved through most of the year and used on the few short periods in winter when the renewable energy generators cannot meet the demand.  This is not how our hydro schemes are designed to operate, nor capable of operating.  Here are some reasons why they cannot be operated in this way:

1. The generators would not be able to generate throughout the year to sell electricity at the time of peak demand.  Therefore, their revenue would be much less over the year.  So they would not be economically viable without a significant increase in the price they could charge for their electricity.

2. The hydro generation is needed throughout the year to balance the power surges in the system.  That is one of the most valuable functions of the hydro system and it will almost certainly be required to continue to serve that role.

3. Hydro cannot be stored all year and released in a massive river flush over a few days in winter.  To generate a great deal of energy over just a few days would mean large water releases which would compromise the management of storage and releases for irrigation and can cause flooding and unacceptable erosion to the river banks downstream.

4. If the management of storage and irrigation releases is compromised the water would be released in winter and not available for irrigation in summer.

Hydro generation is constrained by the average water inflows and the water storage capacity to level out the fluctuation in water inflows over the long term.  Snowy Hydro’s capacity factor is about 14%.  Total generation by hydro in theNEMin 2009-10 was 12,522 GWh, and less in 2008-09 and 2007-08.  This places an upper limit on the amount of hydro generation the simulation should generate.

It should be assumed the hydro generators will operate much as they do now.

Pumped hydro

The simulation assumes there will be no increase in the existing hydro and pumped hydro energy storage (PHES) capacity in the NEM.  The existing pumped hydro plants have a maximum energy storage capacity of 20 GWh (Lang, 2010).  There are also limits on the amount of energy that can be stored per hour and the time of day when pumping can occur.

The EDM-2011 simulation does not appear to limit the amount of energy that can be stored per day by the pumped hydro plants.  I estimate the upper limit on the rate of storing recoverable energy with the pumped hydro plants is (MWh stored per hour):

Furthermore, there is a minimum duration for which the pumps must be able to operate continuously once started (e.g. 4 hours).  So days when the pumps will not be able to run continuously for the minimum duration will not be able to store energy.

There is also a limitation on the hours of the day when pumping and generating can occur.  They cannot occur at the same time.  Since most of the excess power that would otherwise be spilled occurs during daylight hours when the CST plants are able to generate excess energy, it would seem that, in the simulation, pumping must be reserved for daylight hours when there is excess solar generating capacity.

It is not clear from the EDM-2011 paper how the model handles the distinction between the energy generated by hydro versus pumped-hydro in the two Australian facilities that are both hydro and pumped-hydro (i.e. Tumut 3 and Kangaroo Creek & Bendeela).  EDM-2011’s Figure 2 shows pumped hydro generating at 2.2 GW for 40 hours on 9 and 10 January – a total of 88 GWh.  This is not possible.  There is only 20 GWh of storage and the pumps can store energy at about 4.5 GWh per day.  The existing system would need to pump for about 7 hours with all pumps operating to be able to generate for 5 hours at 0.9 GW.  So, the maximum daily generation, on consecutive days, would be about 4.5 GWh (excluding draw down from storage).

It would seem, with EDM-2011’s assumption of pumped-hydro being dispatched first, the 20 GWh of available storage would not be recharged each day since only about 4.5 GWh could be recharged each day.  In the simulation, pumped hydro contributes little during the critical winter days shown in Slide 12 (Elliston et al, 2011b) and generates nothing on some days, e.g. July 1, 2, 5 and 6.

Only Wivenhoe is a ‘pure’ pumped hydro facility.  The other two facilities are mostly hydro, with a small pumped hydro capacity.  Therefore, it is more realistic for the EDM-2011 simulation to assume the hydro capacity is 6.6 GW and the pumped hydro can generate about 4.5 GWh per day at up to 0.9 GW on consecutive days (more for a short time if drawing down from 20 GWh of stored energy).

Concentrating Solar Thermal (Parabolic Trough)

EDM-2011 assumes a 60% capacity factor for CST. The details underpinning this are sparse, thus a number of questions arise.  Is the assumed capacity factor a realistic average for the life of the plant?  What is the basis for the assumed capacity factor for CST?  Does it take into account:

1. The system performance and reliability that is likely to be achieved over the full book life of the facilities?

2. Spilled energy?

3. Scheduled and unscheduled outages?

4. Outages in the long transmission lines (which are mostly in remote areas far from the major service centres, so repairs will take longer than for the existing system)?  Inevitably, these transmission lines will have lower reliability than theNEMaverage.  Therefore, the capacity factor of the wind and CST plants would be reduced because of transmission line outages.

PV

What would be the average capacity factor for a fleet of 14.6 GW of roof-top, fixed plate PV over a 30 year life?

• How much would have to be spilled because the distribution system cannot handle the peak power output and power surges?

• How much would the assumed 16% capacity factor be reduced over the 30 year assumed life of each installation as a result of, for example:

• Performance deterioration of the solar panels

• Performance deterioration due to collecting dirt and lack of cleaning

• Some PV installations stop working or are disconnected, for whatever reason, and are never fixed or reconnected

• Buildings are sold, new owners are not interested in maintaining the system; some don’t keep it connected

• Buildings are knocked down and rebuilt without reinstalling the original PV system (the cost analysis assumes an average 30 year life for the original installations).

Is 14.6 GW of roof top solar PV realistic?  That would be the equivalent of 1 kW for every man woman and child, or average of over 2 kW per dwelling.  The PV is assumed to be on residential dwellings many of which could be on apartment blocks with limited roof space.  Many of the houses may have tree shading and many will not have sufficient north facing roof space for a 2 kW system.

While the inclusion of 14.6 GW of rooftop solar may be theoretically possible, theNEMcould not accommodate such a concentrated non-dispatchable and variable energy supply without large-scale distributed storage and advanced ‘smart-grid’ management.  All of which is expensive, but no attempt has been made to cost this

Wind

The assumed capacity factor of 30% for wind seems too high for a 100% renewable system.  Although this is a valid figure for individual wind farms, much of the wind energy from a large-scale network of farms would have to be spilled.  So the system wide average capacity factor for wind would be less than 30% in an all renewable energy system comprising primarily solar and wind generation.

Transmission

The EDM-2011 simulation assumes a ‘copper-plate’ transmission and distribution system (“power can flow unconstrained from any generation site to any demand site”).  To achieve this assumption would require extensive additions to the existing transmission and distribution systems.  The additions would need to have the capacity to carry the full peak power output from each generator plant.

The distribution systems would have to be upgraded to carry the peak power output of the PV systems in each area, or have smart grids to curtail the power output of the PV systems when they exceed the capacity of the distribution and transmission systems.

The additions to the transmission system would incur additional energy losses.  Therefore, the 204.4 TWh of electricity generated in 2010 must be increased to account for the extra transmission and distribution losses.  Appendix 2 contains more about the ‘copperplate’ transmission system assumptions, options and the basis for the cost estimates.

Winter peak demand reductions

EDM-2011 suggest methods to reduce the peak demand in winter so the renewable energy system can meet the demand.  However, this approach is inconsistent with the stated objective which is to find a 100% renewable energy solution that can meet the 2010NEMdemand.

The relationship between energy efficiency and peak load is complex. As such, caution needs to be exercised in assuming that energy efficiency measures will invariably lead to commensurate reductions in peak demand.  Indeed, electric vehicles and other unforeseeable new sources of demand may increase the peak.

Scenarios costed and compared

I have made a crude estimate of the capital cost, the Levelised Cost of Electricity (LCOE) and the CO2 Abatement Cost for the EDM-2011 baseline simulation.  I have included an estimated cost for needed additions to the transmission and distribution systems to allow them to approach the ‘copper-plate’ assumption.

I have also analysed three additional scenarios with changes to some of the baseline assumptions. The changed assumptions include: sufficient generating capacity to meet all demand and maintain about 20% capacity reserve (which is less than a typical level for modern electricity networks, and much less than in theNEM); natural gas instead of biogas; reduced system-wide capacity factors for CST, PV and Wind, and less capacity for additions to the transmission system. The reduced capacity factors of CST, PV and Wind are compensated for by increasing the amount of generation by natural gas.  Also included is additional generation to compensate for the increased energy loss in the additions to the transmission system.

The scenarios (detailed in Appendix 1) compared are:

1. Baseline EDM-2011 simulation (i.e. gas turbines running on biofuels)

2. Baseline with gas turbines running on natural gas

3. Less renewable energy + more gas to improve reliability – Scenario 2 with most pumped hydro capacity reassigned to hydro, reduced pumped hydro capacity factor, reduced capacity factor of CST, Wind and PV, increased natural gas capacity and capacity factor.

4. Reduced transmission capacity + more gas – Scenario 3 with half transmission capacity from wind farms, half transmission capacity of interstate interconnectors and reduced capacity factor of CST, PV, Wind and pumped hydro generation because of transmission constraints.

Capacity, capacity factor and generation assumptions

This section summarises the capacity, capacity factor, amount of generation contributed by each technology and each technology’s share of the total generation.  These data are presented for the baseline (Scenario 1) and the three varied scenarios identified above as Scenarios 2, 3 and 4.

1. Baseline (i.e. gas turbines running on biofuels)

Table 1 lists the capacity, capacity factor, annual generation and share of total generation for each technology in the baseline scenario.

The capacity factors for hydro and pumped hydro energy storage (PHES) are not explicitly stated in the EDM-2011 paper.  I have estimated the capacity factors for the baseline case by subtracting the energy generated by the other technologies from the total 2010NEMdemand (stated by EDM-2011 to be 204.4 TWh).

2. Baseline with gas turbines running on natural gas

Scenario 2 is the same as Scenario 1 but with the gas turbines running on natural gas instead of on biofuels.  Table 2 would be the same as Table 1 except the ‘biogas’ column would be renamed ‘natural gas’.

3. Less renewable energy + more gas to improve reliability

The capacity, capacity factor, annual generation, and share for Scenario 3 are:

The total capacity is not the sum of the individual capacities because all but 0.5 GW of the PHES capacity is included in ‘Hydro’. The total generation is increased from 204.400 GWh to 214,600 GWh for an assumed 5% energy losses in the additions to the transmission system.  The capacity of OCGT is increased from 24 to 33 GW to ensure 20% capacity reserve above peak winter demand.  From Slide 12 (Elliston et al, 2011b), on July 1 peak demand is about 32.5 GW. At the time of peak demand there is little wind, no solar and no pumped hydro generation (because the pumped hydro was not recharged during the day).  So, all the generation must be provided by hydro and gas.  To maintain 20% reserve capacity (in case of unavailable generators) we need about 39.6 GW of gas and hydro capacity.  We have 6.6 GW of hydro capacity, (excluding the 0.5 GW of ‘pure’ pumped hydro capacity because it may not have been recharged as was the case on July 1, 2, 5 and 6).  So we need about 33 GW of gas capacity to give a 20% capacity reserve on1 July 2010.

4. Reduced transmission capacity + more gas

The capacity, capacity factor, generation and share for Option 4 are:

In this option the capacity of the transmission line from the wind farms is arbitrarily halved. The capacity factor and generation for wind is reduced because the transmissions line capacity is reduced.  The capacity factor and generation for CST is reduced because the capacity of the intestate interconnector lines is halved, so less power can be transmitted from the solar plants, at times.  The capacity factor and generation of PHES is reduced because the reduced capacity of the interstate interconnectors will reduce the amount of excess power that can be transmitted to and stored in the PHES facilities.  The capacity factor and generation of OCGT is increased to compensate for the reduction in contribution from Wind and CST.

To clarify the differences between these assumptions for the four scenarios, the capacity of the technologies is compared in Figure 1, the capacity factor in Figure 2 and the annual generation in Figure 3.

Transmission and Distribution assumptions

For estimating the cost of the transmission system additions needed to achieve the ‘copper-plate’ assumption (Scenarios 1, 2 and 3), I assumed the transmission lines from each CST plant and wind farm will be sized to carry the rated power output of each facility.  The transmission lines are assumed to run from the plant to the closest capital city or to the nearest entry point to the interstate interconnector lines.

The capital cities would have to be linked with interconnector transmission lines. For this crude cost estimating exercise I assumed their capacity must be sufficient to transmit the lesser of the peak demand at the receiver end or generation capacity minus demand at the sender end.

Figure 4 provides a graphic summary of the estimated capacities for the interstate transmission lines, as well as the renewable energy generating capacity (excluding biofuelled gas turbines) and the winter peak demand for each state.

For Scenario 4, the capacity of the transmission lines from the wind farms is half the rated capacity of the wind farms.  The capacity of the interstate interconnectors is half the capacity assumed for the ‘Copper-plate’ scenario (shown in Figure 4).  The capacity factor of the PV, CST and wind farms is reduced because of the transmission capacity constraint.  Increased generation from gas compensates for the reduced generation from the CST and Wind generators.

The distribution system must allow the 14.6 GW of roof top solar PV, which is located in the residential areas, to supply their peak output without curtailment.  It is assumed the transmission network would need to be ungraded to achieve this.

CO2 emissions intensity

Figure 5 compares the CO2 emissions intensity of the four scenarios with the 2010 NEMemissions intensity (DCCEE, 2010).  The emissions intensities for the scenarios are for fossil fuel combustion only.  Importantly, they are for gas turbines running on natural gas and operating at optimum efficiency.  They do not take into account the higher emissions produced when the gas turbines are operating at less than optimum efficiency, for example during start up, shut down, spinning reserve, part load and when their power is cycling up and down to respond to changes in demand and changes in the output of the PV panels and wind farms.  If these were included the emissions intensity for the three scenarios that use natural gas would be higher. They would also be higher if fugitive emissions were included.  The emissions intensity figure for the NEMincludes fugitive emissions.  None of the emissions intensities are life-cycle emissions so they do not include the emissions embodied in the plants.  The emissions intensity used for the calculations is 0.622 t CO2/MWh ‘sent out’ (EPRI, 2010).  See Appendix 1 for basis of estimates of CO2 emissions intensity.

Cost estimating methodology and assumptions

This section explains how the capital cost, Levelised Cost of Electricity (LCOE) and CO2 abatement cost for each scenario was estimated.

Except where otherwise stated, unit costs are derived from the Department of Resources Energy and Tourism (DRET, 2011b).

All costs are in 2009-10 Australian dollars.

Capital costs are ‘Total Plant Cost’ and do not include ‘Owner’s Costs’ and ‘Interest During Construction’ (IDC).

The inputs and intermediate calculation steps for each scenario are presented in Appendix 1.

Capital cost

Generation

The capital cost for each generator technology is the capacity times the unit cost ($/kW) for that technology.  The capacity of each generator technology for each scenario is in Tables 1, 3 and 4.  The unit cost for each technology, except gas turbines running on biofuels, CST and hydro, is the average of the high and low ‘Total Plant Cost’ in the DRET (2011c, 2011d) spreadsheets, converted to “sent out”. The central estimates are also presented in ACIL-Tasman (2010).  The costs in the DRET spreadsheet are ‘$/kW installed’, so they must be converted to ‘$/kW sent out’:

$/kW ‘sent out’ = $/kW ‘gross’ / (100% – ‘Auxiliary Load %’)

DRET unit costs for CST are for 6 hours thermal storage.  The EDM-2011 simulations assume 15 hours storage.  The capital cost for CST is factored up by 1.53 to account for the increase of solar field and thermal storage size to increase energy storage from 6 hours to 15 hours.  The factor of 1.53 was derived from the DRET (2011c) costs for CST without storage and CST with 6 hours storage, assuming a linear upscaling.

The DRET costs for PV are for 5 MW commercial installations.  However, the simulations assume residential, roof-top, solar PV panels.  These would normally be around 1 to 6 kW (say average 2 kW), not the 5 MW to which the DRET cost figures apply.  The capital cost for PV should possibly be factored up by about 1.5 or 2.  I have not done this in these analyses.

The DRET spreadsheets do not include ‘gas turbines running on biofuels’.  There is very little commercial experience or cost information available for this technology.  The capital cost and LCOE for gas turbines running on biofuels are based on $5,051/kW.  This was derived from (IEA, 2007), IEA (2010), Grattan Institute (2012) and considerations of what would be needed to provide a secure supply of biofuels inAustralia.   The cost estimate for gas generators running on biofuels has high uncertainty.

There is no capital cost for the hydro and pumped hydro plants because they already exist and there are no plans in the EDM-2011 baseline or the additional scenarios to build additional hydro plants.

Transmission additions and distribution enhancements

The capital cost estimate for the transmission system additions is the product of the transmission line length, the transmission line capacity and the unit cost ($/MW.km).  The unit cost for additional transmission lines is estimated at $1,500/MW.km.  This is derived from the AEMO (2011) cost estimates for the South Australian Interconnector feasibility study assuming a mix of AC andHVDC transmissions lines.  The cost estimate assumptions and intermediate computation results are presented in Appendix 2.  The largest uncertainty is in the transmission line capacity for the interstate connectors.

The capital cost for the distribution system enhancements to carry the PV generation is estimated at 20% of the asset value of theNEMdistribution system.

Cost of electricity

The Levelised Cost of Electricity (LCOE) for the generator technologies was calculated using the NREL LCOE calculator.  The capital cost and capacity factor for each technology and each scenario are in Tables 1, 3 and 4.  The other input values are as per DRET (2011c, 2011d) spreadsheets for all except the gas turbines running on biofuels, hydro and pumped hydro.  Table 5 lists the other inputs.

The estimates of LCOE for generation using gas turbines running on biofuel assumes capital costs of $5051/kW (‘sent out’) and fuel price of $10/GJ to account for the costs involved with production, storage and transport.  All other inputs for calculating LCOE are the same as for natural gas fuelled OCGT.

The assumed LCOE for hydro is $50/MWh and for PHES is $300/MWh[1].

The LCOE for the additions to the transmission network were calculated using the NREL calculator.  The inputs are the capital cost (estimated as described above and shown in Figure 7) and the O&M costs.  The O&M costs were estimated from the 2010 NEMO&M cost for transmission factored in proportion of the line length of the new additions compared with the total length of existing NEMtransmission lines (AER, 2011). Book life was assumed to be 40 years and discount rate as per Table 5.

The LCOE for the enhancements to the distribution system assumed the capital cost to be the equivalent to 20% of the 2010 value of the NEM’s distribution system assets.   The O&M costs are assumed to be 20% of the NEM’s 2010 O&M costs (AER, 2011).

Costs not included in the cost estimates are:owner’s costs and interest during construction

1. biofuel generating costs may be understated

2. higher costs for natural gas to include the cost of building larger capacity gas pipes to supply 24 to 33 GW of peak gas generation (depending on the scenario), but with only 13% capacity factor to pay for the pipes (this means higher gas prices would have to be charged to pay for the high volume gas pipe system but with gas sales much less than the pipes could deliver).

3. Increased O&M costs for CST with 15 h storage instead of the 6 h for which the DRET O&M costs apply.

4. Costs for solar PV are probably too low (for kW sized, roof top, solar PV).

5. Cost of electricity for the existing NEM transmission and distribution network.  (Only the cost of the transmission additions and distribution enhancements are included.  If the LCOE for the existingNEM network was included it would increase the cost of electricity for all options and make no change to the capital cost or CO2 abatement cost.)

CO2 abatement cost

The CO2 abatement cost is the cost to reduce emissions intensity from the CO2 emissions intensity in theNEMin 2010 to the emissions intensity that would exist with the new scenario implemented; it is expressed as ‘cost per tonne CO2 abated’ ($/t CO2).

CO2 abatement cost = (LCOE₂ – LCOE₁) / (EI₁ – EI₂)

Where:

LCOE₁ = LCOE for theNEM in 2010

LCOE₂ = LCOE for the scenario

EI₁ = Emissions intensity for theNEM in 2010

EI₂ = Emissions intensity for the scenario

The LCOE and CO2 emissions intensity for theNEMin 2010 are taken as:

LCOE₁ = $45.40/MWh (AER, 2011; Chapter 1, Table 1.4)

EI₁ = 1.0 tonne/MWh (DCCEE, 2010, Table 5, weighted average forNEM)

The LCOE and CO2 emissions intensity for each scenario are in Appendix 1 (and charted in Figure 5 and Figure 6).

The inputs and intermediate calculation results for the CO2 abatement cost estimates are in Appendix 1.

Uncertainties in cost estimates

The greatest uncertainties in the cost estimates are in:

1. the fuel costs, capital costs and O&M costs for the gas turbines running on biofuels,

2. the cost of the solar thermal plants with 15 hours of thermal storage and their lifetime average capacity factor, and

3. the amount of additional transmission and distribution capacity needed.

Results

Capital cost, LCOE and CO2 abatement cost of the scenarios

Figure 6 compares the four scenarios on the basis of capital cost, cost of electricity and CO2 abatement cost.

Figure 7 compares the capital cost and cost of electricity for the ‘copper-plate’ additions to the transmission system (Scenarios 1, 2 and 3) and the scenario with reduced additions to the transmission system (Scenario 4).

Discussion

General

The EDM-2011 study reveals a great deal about the difficulty and cost of a largely renewable energy electricity system forAustralia’sNEM.

The study is more realistic than Beyond Zero Emissions’ “Zero Carbon Australia – Stationary Energy Plan” (critiqued by Nicholson and Lang, 2010; Diesendorf, 2010; Trainer, 2010; and others), especially because their approach, as they say, “is limited to the electricity sector in a recent year, providing a more straight forward basis for exploring this question of matching variable renewable energy sources to demand.”  As the authors say, “this approach minimises the number of working assumptions”.

Despite the lack of cost estimates – a deficiency rectified in this paper – the EDM-2011 study is a useful contribution.  It demonstrates clearly that, even with highly optimistic assumptions, renewable energy cannot realistically provide 100% of our electricity generation with currently available technology.  The baseline scenario does not have sufficient capacity to meet peak winter demand, has no capacity reserve and is dependent on a technology – gas turbines running on biofuels – that exist only at small scale and at high cost. Furthermore,Australia’s hydro and pumped hydro facilities cannot be used in the way assumed in the simulations.

Reliability of supply

The system simulated by EDM-2011 would not provide a reliable electricity supply.  The gas turbines running on biofuels and hydro-electricity provide nearly all the power, outside sun hours, on some winter days, e.g. July 1 to 6 for 2010 (Elliston et al., 2011b, Slide 12). However, the gas turbines running on biofuels system does not currently exist at commercial scale. Furthermore,Australia’s total hydro capacity cannot be run at full power for days and weeks at a time as is assumed in the simulation.  As such, without the assumed generation from these two technologies, the system simulated has near zero generating capacity for many hours in winter.  This would mean load shedding or rolling blackouts across theNEM, with no electricity for most consumers during those times.

If we substitute natural gas for biofuel for the gas turbines, we’d need capacity about equal to the winter peak demand (33 GW) to provide a reliable electricity supply with about 20% capacity reserve.  That means, nearly all the generation would be by natural gas on some days in winter.  The plants would be ‘peaker’ plants, not ‘baseload’, so they would be open cycle gas turbines (OCGT), which are the inefficient, high cost of electricity, high CO2 emissions type of gas technology.

Cost

For the baseline scenario (Scenario 1) the electricity supply would be unreliable and the costs for a system built in the current decade are estimated to be around $568 billion capital cost, $336/MWh cost of electricity and $290/tonne CO2 abatement cost (Figure 6).

That is, the wholesale cost of electricity for the simulated system would be seven times more than with the existing system, with an abatement cost that is 13 times the starting price of the Australian carbon tax (Energetix. 2011) and 30 times the European carbon price (European Energy Exchange, 2012).  (The cost of electricity does not include the costs for the existing electricity grid).

For Scenario 2 (natural gas substituted for biofuel in the baseline scenario) the cost of electricity is estimated at $280/MWh (Figure 6), which is about six times the 2009-10 average cost of electricity generation in theNEM.  The power supply would still be unreliable, but less so than with gas turbines running on biofuels.

For Scenario 3, where the assumptions are changed to provide a more reliable, mostly renewable electricity supply (although still not as reliable as we have now), more gas would be used and the cost of electricity is estimated at $286/MWh.  CO2 abatement cost is estimated at $306/MWh (Figure 6).

Scenario 4 – If the transmission capacity is reduced the capital cost and cost of electricity are further reduced (Figure 6) but more gas is used and more CO2 emitted (Figure 5).  This scenario has the lowest capital cost and lowest cost of electricity.

The assumed ‘copper-plate’ transmission system (Scenarios 1 to 3) adds $107 billion to the capital cost and $58/MWh to the LCOE (Figure 7).  The reduced additions to the transmission system (Scenario 4) adds $67 billion to the capital cost and $37/MWh to the cost of electricity (see Figure 7).  These costs are included in the capital costs, cost of electricity and CO2 abatements costs.

The transmission system additions are a high cost, especially when we consider there is no increase in demand driving these extra costs.  These costly transmission upgrades are only required if the policy objective is to implement renewable energy, rather than to provide low emissions electricity at least cost..

Baseload

EDM-2011 conclude “Achieving 100% renewable electricity also entails a radical 21st century re-conception of an electricity supply-demand system.”  They make their point succinctly in the last slide in their slide presentation where they state “Baseload plant is an outmoded concept” (Elliston et al. (2011b).

However, since the cost of electricity from the renewable energy option is some seven times the current cost of electricity, their study does not refute the fact that the “baseload plant” is still by far the least cost way to supply most of our electricity needs, and is far from being an “outmoded concept”.

The least cost way to meet the demand and reliability requirements is with a mix of generators that are located close to the demand centres, connected by relatively short transmission lines to the main demand centres and capable of supplying the power to meet baseload at all times, intermediate load during day time on week days and peak demand whenever it occurs.

The least cost option to match generation to the demand profile in most countries where large hydro capacity is not available such as inAustralia, is usually with coal, gas or nuclear for baseload, gas and hydro for intermediate load, and gas and hydro for peak load.

Bayless (2010) in “The case for baseload” provides “an engineer’s perspective on why not just any generation source will do when it comes to the system’s capacity, stability and control”.   He says:

The electric system is more than just the delivery of energy—it is the provision of reliability. First, the system must have capacity, that is, the capability to furnish energy instantaneously when needed. The system also must have frequency control, retain stability, remain running under varied conditions, and have access to voltage control. Each of those essential services for reliability must come from a component on the system. Those components are not free, and they don’t just happen. They are the result of careful planning, engineering, good operating procedures, and infrastructure investment specifically targeting these items.

The simple cost analysis presented here demonstrates that the renewable electricity system simulated by EDM-2011 cannot meet these requirements at anywhere near the cost of a conventional system.

Conclusions

I have reviewed and critiqued “Simulations of Scenarios with 100% Renewable Electricity in the Australian National Electricity Market” by Elliston et al. (2011a).  That paper does not analyse costs, so I have also made a crude estimate of the cost of the scenario simulated and three variants of it.  I conclude:

The costs for the simulated 100% renewable electricity system are estimated to be $568 billion capital cost, $336/MWh cost of electricity and $290/tonne CO2 abatement cost.  That is, electricity would cost seven times more than now, and CO2 abatement cost would exceed current carbon prices by 13 times the starting price for the Australian carbon tax and 30 times the European carbon price (at time of writing).

The electricity supply would be unreliable.

Any largely renewable electricity system for theNEMwould be high cost, as demonstrated here.  The changes made to the assumptions make little difference to the estimated capital cost, cost of electricity and CO2 abatement cost.

Recommendations

I recommended the simulation be rerun with the following changes:

1. Use natural gas instead of biofuel

2. Increase the gas generation capacity so there is sufficient capacity in the system to meet all peak demand and ensure 20% capacity reserve.

3. Check that the system can meet demand at the 5 minute time scale, not just the average demand over 1 hour.

4. Introduce constraints on hydro generation, pumped hydro energy storage rate, times of day for pumping and for generating and minimum number of continuous hours of pumping that match the actual constraints on the actual plants in theNEM.

5. Reduce the capacity of transmission lines from the wind farms to a percentage of their rated power output and reduce the maximum output of the wind farms accordingly; optimise (roughly) the transmission line capacity and generating capacity to achieve the least overall cost of electricity from the system.

6. Limit the peak output of the PV generators at a percentage of their peak power output to fit within the constraints of the distribution system; optimise (roughly) to achieve the least overall cost of electricity from the system.

7. Limit the capacity of the interstate transmission interconnectors (this would reduce the output of the renewable energy generators at some times and reduce the pumped hydro storage rate).

8. Do a loss of load probability (LOLP) analysis to check that the system being simulated meets the Australian Energy Regulator’s reliability requirements.

9. Do a simulation with a nuclear power scenario to provide an objective comparison of the cost for an alternative way to provide a low-emission electricity supply.

Estimate the costs of all scenarios and compare them on the basis of:

1. CO2 emissions intensity

2. capital cost

3. cost of electricity

4. CO2 abatement cost

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Professor Barry Brook, Dr. Jani-Petri Martikainen DrJohn Morgan, DrIan Nalder, Martin Nicholson, Graham Palmer, Dr. Gene Preston, Dr. Ted Trainer and two others in the electricity industry whom I cannot name, for their input and assistance with this analysis and reviewing this document.

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