Nuclear Green in a Nut Shell

I among others have been challenged for taking advocacy positions instead of offering analyses, and listening to people who disagree with my views. Yet I and others, for example Barry Brook, are simply advocating positions we arrived at by analysis after talking to people who hold different views. I came to the conclusion that I advocate by asking how a post carbon grid would operate. I assumed that everything was on the table, but what the climate scientists were telling us we needed to get rid of 80% of our CO2 emissions. I did a brief sector by sector analysis of the energy economy, and determined that the most obvious place to start was the generation of electricity for the grid, the sources of space heat, and hot water, and the replacement of fossil fuels in transportation. Since I was not sure about the elimination of fossil fuels in other sectors. i decided that it would not be wise to assume that the sectors I was ignoring were good candidates for an 80% fossil fuel reduction. This included agriculture, the military, and air and water born transportation.

I concluded that the electrification of rail transportation was practical, and that electrical rail had good potential to replace long range trucking. I further concluded that solar systems could provide hot water in many parts of the country, and that there was good potential to use solar for space heating in some areas. I also noted that in much of the country, air conditioning was the rule in homes, offices and businesses. Although ground source heat pumps are efficient, they are expensive and also expensive to service. Air source hear pumps rely on a technology that is very similar to air conditioning, Replacement cycles for air conditioning systems are such that most of the cost of air source space heating conversion would be covered by the cost of replacing worn out air conditioning systems.

I had some doubts about biofuel replacements for fossil fuels, but I came to the conclusion that batteries and capacitors technology was evolving rapidly enough to replace fossil fuels in non rail surface transportation by 2050. Thus electrification offered a significant part of the solution, and thus it was very important that the decarbinization of the grid would approach 100% by 2050.

I then looked at efficiency, of which much was expected. I quickly discovered that there was a serious conceptual problem with the efficiency solution. Economists have known for 150 years about Jevons Paradox. Jevons a 19th century resource economists, had discovered that greater efficiency in the use of coal lead to more demand for coal. Other economists have noted that if efficiency does not always lead to an increase in energy demand, a rebound effect is quite robust. And thus in the absence of energy price increases efficiency cannot be counted on for big carbon use savings.

I noted that some other people were advocating a simplified lifestyle. Most people, i thought, would prefer to not adopt such a lifestyle. I concluded that the simple lifestyle was likely to lead to greater social conflict, a diminished quality of life, and a lower life expectancy. Some people were pointing to Cuba as a model for a low energy simplified society, but i felt that such a choice came with the cost of political and human rights for the Cuban people, and that most of the people of Cuba would prefer a high energy lifestyle if they could choose. The evidence for this was obvious, Cuba was a dictatorship. The communist party of Cuba maintained control of political power, and was prepared to use violence against anyone who objected.

Thus I felt that there was no alternative to replacing CO2 emitting electrical generation capacity with post carbon electrical sources. I had not ruled out renewables, but I felt that intermittency was a problem to be solved. I looked at the problem of intermittency, and asked renewable advocates what they would do when sun and wind failed. Use the grid for backup they answered. But I asked, I thought we wanted to get rid of carbon sources on the Grid. After they discovered I was not going to accept the Grid answer, they offered efficiency. When i brought up Jevons and rebounds, they turned to backups like batteries, pump storage, and Compressed air storage. I investigated all of these proposed back up technologies and found that they were all expensive and were inefficient to boot. Compressed air storage, required the of natural gas. A further renewable strategy is to create redundant solar and wind facilities, and link them with an expanded grid. The linked system is more likely to provide reliable electricity, than stand alone solar or wind units. However like energy storage backups, the redundancy plan turns out to be more expensive than conventional nuclear power systems. I did offer one novel renewable back up plan. Molten Salt Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactors can be built with low prices and have attractive features that makes them useful in peak power.back up roles. LFTRs thus could provide reliable, relatively low cost backups for renewables. But, the LFTRs would be capable of operating full time. Thus it would be cheaper to remove the renewable electrical sources from the system and simply operate the LFTRs full time.

When I calculated the cost of renewables with backup, and compared it to the cost of nuclear power I reached the conclusion that nuclear power was cheaper. Renewable advocates rejected this conclusion. Nuclear has to be more expensive, they said. They complained about how unsafe reactors are. They pointed to the so called "problem of nuclear waste." They raised the issue of nuclear proliferation. They argued that we were running out of uranium.

But i was aware of a Generation IV nuclear technology that could answer all these issues. it was Molten Salt technology, and i knew about it, because my father had worked on it for 20 years. So I reviewed the evidence accumulated in Oak Ridge between 1950 and 1980. i reviewed the ORNL research, and looked at recent discussions. There seemed to be a strong case. Another Generation IV technology, the Integral Fast Reactor appear to also offer viable solutions to many unclear power issues, but is likely to be more expensive and more technologically challenging than MSRs, and objections may be raised on grounds of nuclear proliferation dangers. Generation III and even Generation II nuclear technology appear to be an acceptable bridge, but conventional nuclear technology does not solve all the problems that MSRs and IFRs will solve.

All of my conclusions have come by analysis. I have listened to the advocates of other viewpoints. My analysis points to the following conclusions:

1. Fossil Fuel are on their way out as energy sources.

2. Fossil fuel energy technology will have to be replaced.

3. Efficiency cannot be counted on to replace fossil fuels use.

4. Renewables require back up.

5. Renewables with fossil fuel back up will not meet 2050 carbon emission goals.

6. Renewables with energy storage back ups will be more expensive than nuclear.

7. Renewables with redundancy will be more expensive than nuclear.

8. Nuclear power is a less expensive and more reliable source of post carbon electricity than renewables.

9. Generation IV nuclear technology offers many attractive features, and could solve some or all of the objections now raised to nuclear power.

Since I first completed this analysis, I have reviewed its components on a number of occasions. My reviews continue to demonstrate that my analysis remains sound. During the last 3 years numerous studies related to components of my analysis have been published. These studies point to the same conclusions. Further, these studies have not received effective contradiction. This is the case for my original analysis. There is a growing body of evidence that the renewables paradigm has failed.

My advocacy is primarily based on reports of the findings of my analyses and the analyses offered by others. I believe that those who disagree with us need to offer strong reasons for doing so, or loose credibility. So far they have not done so,

Nuks and the Grid: "Smart Grid" Verses Smart Grid Design

A computer simulation of a nuclear dominated grid is not nearly as urgent an issue as the computer simulation of of a renewables dominated grid. We know that reactor generated power is reliable enough that a nuclear dominated grid will be at least as reliable as the present 20% nuclear grid. A sophisticated, multi-demintional computer model or modeling tools would still be of great value in designing a nuclear dominated grid. Questions such as new reactor location and size, and effects on grid could be modeled for answers. A modeling tool would be valuable for determining the most cost effective grid upgrades.

Grid reliability managers acknowledge that many improvements in the existing electrical transmission system are required to maintain over all system stability, and to serve new customers. Required improvements in the existing grid are estimated to cost somewhere in the $100 billion range. Many grid improvements are require whether or not renewable penetrate deeply into the grid.

Nuclear Green favors the use of local rather distant generation capacity, because reliance on local capacity decreases grid complexity, and thus is consistent with reliability. Eric J. Lerner states:

. . . limited use of long-distance connections aided system reliability, because the physical complexities of power transmission rise rapidly as distance and the complexity of interconnections grow. Power in an electric network does not travel along a set path, as coal does, for example. When utility A agrees to send electricity to utility B, utility A increases the amount of power generated while utility B decreases production or has an increased demand. The power then flows from the “source” (A) to the “sink” (B) along all the paths that can connect them. This means that changes in generation and transmission at any point in the system will change loads on generators and transmission lines at every other point—often in ways not anticipated or easily controlled . . .

Accounts of the August 2003 blackout in the North East suggest the fragility of the grid, especially when stressed. Yesterday I noted that renewables dominated transmission system holds the potential for disaster, and its reliability cannot be judged without sophisticated multi-demintional modeling tools. Yet renewables advocate, using the slogan, "smart grid," are touting just such a questionable grid expansion. The "Smart Grid" slogan should not be associated with the most urgently needed grid upgrades and improvements, however. Indeed much of the so called "smart grid" investment has nothing to do with the use of electronic management tools in grid management tasks. Rather proposals for the direction of massive amounts of electricity from remote wind and solar facilities to consumers hundreds and even thousands of miles away. The "smart grid" can up the cost of transmission system improvements to as high as two trillion dollars.

Clearly then managing grid upgrade costs will be a significant future tasks for grid modeling tools, whether or not a renewables dominated grid is ever built. Construction of a nuclear dominated grid, while offering a low cost alternative to a renewables dominated grid, still is likely to strain financial, materials, and labor resources for some time to come. Grid improvements must be prioritized, because we may not be capable of doing everything at once. Rather that building many large new transmission projects, a more economical approach to new power construction would use existing grid resources when ever possible, until construction peaks. Some less urgent but still desirable grid improvements should be deferred until the construction of post-carbon generation capacity decreases. Sophisticated modeling tools will help in determining priorities in transmission system improvements.

What we need is not just a smart grid, but smart grid design, that focuses on making intelligent choices about both generation capacity and the electrical transmission system.