In my last post, I looked at how, despite renewable expansion, emissions were still rising. I focussed mainly on coal, but clearly it’s wider than that: multi-billion fossil fuel investment continues. In this post I will look at what is arguably another big issue- the attempt, to rebrand nuclear as a solution. Certainly some people in the UK and elsewhere think that there is a case for nuclear as part of a low carbon answer to climate change, although others do not agree. Even leaving aside the safety, security and waste issues, they say it’s too expensive and takes too long to build compared with renewables.
That debate continues, but in terms of what’s actually happening on the ground, the battle has arguably been won by renewables - they are expanding very rapidly around the world, leaving nuclear mostly stalled. Even China’s nuclear programme, currently at around 60 GW, is tiny compared with its renewables capacity, which hit 1.82 TW last year and is still expanding fast.
However, nuclear is still in the game in some locations, with, for example, Russia trying to export its nuclear technology and fuel services. And more generally, while the nuclear industry may mostly have to accept a lesser role globally, as renewables expand to high percentages of overall power, that in fact may be seen by them as a new opportunity- on the argument that nuclear will be needed to back up variable renewables.
The latest example seems to be Denmark, famed for its anti-nuclear ‘Atomkraft Nein Danke’ stance, with renewables now supplying over 80% of its power and aiming to get to 100% of all energy by 2050. That will require new grid balancing capacity, the most obvious being storage- with excess renewable output being stored in batteries or converted to hydrogen for use when there is renewable supply lull or a peak in demand. But evidently there is also now government interest in nuclear- and the idea of small modular reactors (SMR). It’s hard to see how this would be viable for occasional backup. Large conventional nuclear plants are expensive to build and inflexible to run, and current designs for SMRs are no better – and trying to make them flexible is likely add even more to the cost. So it seems very odd.
Spain also has a high renewable percentage, Portugal too, though, unlike Denmark and Portugal, Spain does have some nuclear plants. But it is planning to phase them out. Certainly they were no use in avoiding the recent large-scale total Iberian blackout- Spain’s nuclear plants evidently can’t run competitively when renewables are at peak. So, as it seems happens regularly, they were throttled back- most of the power was coming from wind and solar. We still don’t know what exactly went wrong, but it does seem that the remaining nuclear plants tripped out due to a grid overload signal, and PV solar also cut out for some reason. Perhaps a bit prematurely, the Spanish prime minister said that ‘there is no empirical evidence that the incident was caused by a surplus of renewables or a lack of nuclear power plants in Spain.’ He added ‘we are not going to deviate a single millimetre from the energy road map we have planned since 2018. Not only are renewables our country’s energy future, they are our only and best option. They are the only way to re-industrialise Spain.’
It may turn out have been a simple line fault, but it’s also possible that it was due to lack of synchronous inertia on the grid system. Large conventional fossil fuel fired or nuclear plants have large heavy spinning turbo-generators that help balance short-term output perturbations. PV solar has none, wind turbines only a small amount. But it would be crazy to build large expensive fossil or nuclear plants to provide rotational inertia for usually rare events. There has been talk in the past of using just the turbo-generator sets of old closed plants, unpowered except for grid power, to provide ‘spinning reserve’ rotational inertia. However, if its needed, there may be easier and cheaper ways to do this electronically, via fast response storage and inverter systems- virtual synchronous inertia. Tidal lagoons and barrages are another option- they offer large scale energy storage capacity along with significant rotational inertia. So too do hydro projects. So inertia issues are not necessarily a major problem.
Needless to say though, despite there being no poof as to what actually happened as yet, there was a rush to early judgement and speculation by some of the media - along the lines that ‘you can’t rely on renewables’ and ‘this is what you get with net zero’! So far though, most of this invective has bounced off. Anti-nuclear Germany, currently gets around 63% of its power from renewables, and aims to get to net zero carbon with no nuclear. Occasionally there has ben some pressure to go back to nuclear but it has been resisted and certainly the ‘baseload for grid balancing’ case for nuclear seems very weak.
Meanwhile, the UK is getting 50% of its power from renewables, but is struggling to fund its proposed new nuclear plant at Sizewell: EdF evidently is no longer able to help out- it has enough financial and operational problems with its troubled EPR programme in France. It has also halted its initial SMR programme. The UK however is still keen to promote SMRs, although Westinghouse has pulled out of the race. The basic problem with nuclear technology, old or new, small or large, is cost - renewables like wind and solar are far cheaper, and storage backup is also now getting cheap. The UK does need to get moving on hydrogen storage for the longer term, and also heat storage, which some see as better than heat pumps in some locations, possibly with green AD biogas as a storable energy source. Tidal lagoon power, though still a bit too costly, is also beginning to be talked up again. All of these are arguably a lot more promising for balancing than new nuclear.
So what’s likely to happen? There’s no question that the nuclear lobby has been pushing hard to get back in the game after the 2011 Fukushima disaster in Japan, which had led to nuclear programme reversals around the world, but in Asia especially. There were huge public demonstrations of opposition. But, in time, the phase out or cut back programmes planned by some Asian governments (including Japan, Taiwan and Thailand) faded away and nuclear is back in favour- although renewables are now seen as the main energy supply options in most cases. Not least since, even there, though lower than in the West, the constructions costs and investment risks of new nuclear are high, compared with solar and wind.
However, some also see carbon removal and biomass carbon capture playing a carbon negative role, especially in countries where there are a lot of agricultural carbon emissions- and also land. But as I noted in my last post, although there may be some exceptions, the economic and ecological viability of that approach on a large scale is debatable- expanding renewables even faster looks like a better bet. Though, as with nuclear, the debate continues…
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