A brief note on nuke economics
It is not actually the up front investment that makes nuclear power schemes so unattractive to private capital - it's the back-loaded cleanup liability. This is an unusual kind of risk (most investment projects have an initial investment, then a period of profits, then end), and its risk of a quite toxic kind - you know it's there and that it's big, but it's way out in the future and almost impossible to estimate. This is why the nuke industry, when angling for government support (but I repeat myself) usually focuses on some guarantee of the cleanup liability. Since putting this on the public balance sheet doesn't actually make it go away or make it any less unattractive, I find myself slightly gratified that one consequence of the now-dying post-Thatcher free-market consensus is that it made nuclear power development in the Anglosphere more or less economically impossible.
Bottom line is that poorly regulated nuclear plants are quite dangerous and very expensive; well-regulated nuclear plants are very safe and very very expensive. Trying to square this circle is the root cause of most nuclear industry bollocks.
"You know it's there"
ReplyDeleteIndeed, but it's interesting how much is said and written on this topic without acknowledging that it's there. It's a big, nasty killer assumption and often the reaction to big, nasty killer assumptions is to pretend that they're not there. It's just too scary to imagine there there may not be a magic-pony source of eneregy wen the oil runs low.
In 1979, nuclear power was talked about as if the clean-up risks did not exist. By the mid-80s they were recognised in official discourse because political activities had put them on the agenda. The nuclear PR industry exists to take them off the agenda.
Guano
I would point out that quite a lot of industrial projects have cleanup liability too; this is a fairly common problem with brownfield development generally, and is dealt with in various ways, including ignoring it, not building anything on the site, private-funded cleanup or public-funded cleanup. I don't know how currently-operating industrial projects handle cleanup liability.
ReplyDeleteBasically they insure it; size matters though, as does the time horizon and there being quite a good track record from which to get an actuarial estimate. For nuke plants it's just so big and so uncertain that you can't find an insurer who will go near it. (also in industrial cases the cleanup liability is generally smaller than the value of the land while in nuclear cases it's much bigger).
ReplyDeleteMore generally, what's your preferred solution for supplying power to the UK over the next few decades?
ReplyDeleteI've heard it suggested that we'll punt the cleanup problem forwards by continuing to run the UK's nuclear power stations past their design lifetime, as commissioning replacements is prohibitively expensive, new coal plants probably about as politically popular, and natural gas rising in price as the North Sea depletes.
Somebody (was it you, dd?) also highlighted a fundamental contradiction in nuclear engineering.
ReplyDeleteThat nuclear build is just another low technology build project (steel and cement) but these are characterised by high degrees of variation from the build plan (stereotypically, think of the lump hammers used to make things fit in Grand Designs). But nuclear engineering requires high precision manufacture ... or else.
This makes cost overruns inevitable and any realistic cost estimates worthless.
Pete:
ReplyDeletewell focusing on energy reduction would be a good place to start. There's massive scope domestically, given how crap most of our housing stock is. The technology actually exists to do this, which is more than can be said about most of the favoured solutions of our political masters.
Basically wind and loft insulation. I am not a power expert and don't propose to become one, but you can see that the economics of wind stacks up because a) people are actually building them and b) well, a).
ReplyDeleteTidal for base load.
ReplyDeleteIt's clear that there is substantial and ill-defined cost associated with decommissioning and waste handling which would provide a strong argument for the introduction of nuclear power to the UK. But the current situation is that we already have a nuclear legacy in the form of a dozen or so existing sites and a bunch of intermediate and high level waste (much of which is directly or indirectly attributable to weapons development). It would not necessarily be the case that a new generation of reactors designed with waste minimisation and decommissioning in mind would have any great effect on the tractability of the overall cleanup and storage problem.
ReplyDeleteWe certainly need something to plug the gap until renewables are ready to form the backbone of the energy infrastructure. Coal just outsources the costs of pollution to the poorly regulated countries from which we source it (e.g. Russia, Colombia). Oil and gas are the most likely candidates, probably with some sort of carbon capture and storage. CCS seems to me to be very much subject to the same sort of handwaving and wishful thinking as nuclear decommissioning, and will no doubt require some form of expensive government assistance.
Regardless of which option is chosen, the essential nature of a stable energy infrastructure always seems to lead to a willingness on the part of government to provide substantial subsidy to ensure supply. They are just more visible in the nuclear field.
Coal just outsources the costs of pollution to the poorly regulated countries from which we source it (e.g. Russia, Colombia)
ReplyDeleteI find this slightly puzzling because surely most of the pollution from using coal to generate power happens when you burn it, rather than when you mine it?
Incidentally, one of the signs of somebody not knowing what they're talking about is when they talk about requiring nuclear for the "Base load".
ReplyDeleteBase load isn't a good thing, its a rough limit on generating technologies which can't be switched on/off easily. Basically its how much energy you need in the night.
All else being equal, you'd have zero load if you could.
surely most of the pollution from using coal to generate power happens when you burn it, rather than when you mine it?
ReplyDeleteNot necessarily, especially in the case of a rich country buying coal from a poor one. Mining can have severe effects on the local environment via deforestation/top soil removal, water table depletion and pollution, soil contamination, particulate air pollution and so on, all of which have health impacts on the local population. Mitigation of these impacts tends not to feature highly on the government agenda in poorer countries. This also doesn't touch on the unsafe working practices often to be found hand-in-hand with the lax environmental regulation.
Conversely, in the rich country burning the coal, there will likely be fairly strict requirements for the scrubbing of pollutants from the power plants (possibly soon extending to CO2), and the fly ash is usually washed and incorporated into building aggregates and suchlike, so the local environmental impact is likely to be less than that experienced around the mine from which the coal originated.
Ah ha. Thanks, Jakey. I still instinctively think in terms of Lanarkshire-type deep pit mines, but of course in Colombia and Russia and West Virginia and other poor countries, it's more a case of chopping the tops off mountains and hollowing them out.
ReplyDeleteIt would seem that in a highly financialized energy industry the controlling investors in nuclear plants could structure and manage their investments in such a way that by the time the bill comes due, they've extracted their holdings and are out of the business. That's what everyone else does, anyway.
ReplyDelete"Base load" is often used confusingly to refer to "non-intermittent supply"; the problem with wind is that it may have zero supply at a time you can't really control.
ReplyDeleteThe problem of supplying power when the wind isn't blowing is a real and tricky one. Denmark has lots of wind power, but relies on being able to import power during lulls. The UK has a small amount of wind power, making this not an issue yet.
Personally I'm suprised there isn't more solar-thermal power yet, especially in countries closer to the equator.
but relies on being able to import power during lulls
ReplyDeleteeveryone uses this as if importing electrical power was some disgusting sexual perversion. I am 100% up for importing nuclear energy from France, as I don't really have many environmental concerns about nuke power per se. In many ways you could say I like my nuclear energy like I like my women; cheap, French and paid for by someone else.
If the US wasn't run by idiots they'd be investing heavily in solar thermal.
ReplyDeleteI'm pretty sure you can't build a windmill with a windmill (or a bunch of windmills) as the sole source of power for the windmill-building industry. I'm even pretty sure you can't fix this without some sort of magic electron-bucket tech.
ReplyDeleteAll the non-fossil-carbon metal refining tech takes lots of electricity -- which is fine -- delivered consistently for days -- which is not fine. Hydro can do that and nuclear can do that. Wind and solar can't do that unless we can get that magic electron-bucket tech. Same with the heavy-duty process chemistry to get the binder for all the fiber+glue composites, or to do all the chemical process industry associated with any kind of solar photo-voltaic tech.
Wind and solar are great for some things, but neither is sufficient to run a post-fossil-carbon economy that has, frex, trains in it.
So _somebody_ is going to have nukes; the questions of what kind and how much and so forth depends a lot on what kind of steel mills we wind up with when we stop using limestone and coke to reduce iron ore in blast furnaces.
The very long payback times of nuclear plants create the very large risk that improvements in other areas will lower the price of electricity. I've seen estimates of the profitability of nuclear plants that rely on electricity prices remaining constant for over 60 years. To me this seems rather unlikely , especially given the cost decreases that are likely to continue to occur for wind, geothermal and particularly solar power over the next decade or two, let alone 60 years.
ReplyDelete>delivered consistently for days
ReplyDeleteCan somebody correctly reproduce that quote about "myths operating in men's minds without them being aware of it"? I, being basically an improperly educated engineer cannot, but I'm thinking it will be the epitaph for this period in human history.
Haven't humans for most of recorded history made "hay while the sun shines"? Presumably the hunter-gatherers before them took the day off if it rained (or maybe they always made sure to hunt when it rained as the rain dampened the prey's senses, I dunno). I suspect they spent those off days telling stories and having sex and maybe repairing their implements.
But nowadays you got blokes (and birds) showing up every morning at 9 and leaving at 5, and you gotta have something for them to do or you are screwed. There are iron-clad contracts for delivery dates, and you are more than screwed if you miss them.
We can't imagine any other way, but this way of life is only a couple of hundred years old, no?
As Cian implied, why do we need energy in the night? Aren't we supposed to be getting some rest?
We need to learn to separate out actual "needs" from what are just expectations. The vast, vast majority of the biomass on this planet gets on quite happily without any artificial power source at all. Be we, the supposed pinnacle of evolution, can't survive if we are unable to turn a light bulb on at 2 in the morning?
Not good.
-- a different chris
"The ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong, are more powerful than is commonly understood. Indeed, the world is ruled by little else. Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influences, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist. Madmen in authority, who hear voices in the air, are distilling their frenzy from some academic scribbler of a few years back. I am sure that the power of vested interests is vastly exaggereated compared with the gradual encroachment of ideas…. But, soon or late, it is ideas, not vested interests, which are dangerous for good or evil…"
ReplyDelete-John Maynard Keynes
Having a reliable source of low carbon electricity at two in the morning is not particularly difficult. As Australians are willing to charcoal agricultural waste or simply dump mulga roots in Spencer Gulf for under $200 per ton of carbon sequestered, the UK could just burn gas if they need to and pay about one cent per kilowatt-hour to have the carbon dioxide released removed from the atmosphere. This is not much of a sacrifice and if the Australians try to charge too much the Sudanese will be willing to do you a deal. (Mind you, Australia should clean up it's own electricity sector. You'd think they'd be in more of a hurry to do something about climate change what with their country managing to be both under water and on fire for the past couple of months.)
ReplyDeleteHydro can do that and nuclear can do that. Wind and solar can't do that unless we can get that magic electron-bucket tech.
ReplyDeletePumped storage, flywheel storage, fuel cells, ice storage, capacitor storage, continent-wide grids (it's unlikely to be calm and dark all over Europe and North Africa simultaneously)...
The very long payback times of nuclear plants create the very large risk that improvements in other areas will lower the price of electricity
ReplyDeleteAbsolutely.
Hydro can do that and nuclear can do that
On the other hand, nuclear doesn't have the turn-off-and-onability that was what made gas so popular in the first place. So you either have to build enough nuke capacity to handle the peakest of peak loads (very very expensive), or you need storage. A nuclear-based strategy is actually just as dependent on the "magic electron bucket"[1] as wind, solar or anything except natural gas really. The biggest pump storage station in the UK is Dinorwic, and it was built specifically because of the perceived need to balance loads with the generating capacity of Trawsfynydd and Wylfa.
[1] Not really.
Can everyone here who's not yet read "Without Hot Air" go away, read it, and then come back? Ta.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.withouthotair.com/
Chris Williams
David MacKay discusses storage requirements in Chapter 26 of Sustainable Energy—without the hot air (summary: 1200 GWh storage needed for a complete conversion of UK to renewable energy generation; there's probably enough suitable valleys in the UK to store 100–400 GWh as pumped storage, depending on how many SSSIs it is acceptable to destroy; so other forms of storage and demand management will be necessary).
ReplyDeleteYeah, Gareth, but you have the same problem with nuclear. Nuclear has the advantage of being predictable, but the disadvantage of producing lots of electricity when nobody much needs it.
ReplyDeleteA lot (and I mean A LOT) of problems would be solved by thinking in terms of reduction of demand. The way we heat houses is a disgrace, for example.
Also if you had a smart metering system, then there would be an incentive to use energy when it was cheap (store it in fuel cells [I dunno, its not my area. Magic fuel cells run by pixies, or someowt], or to heat a well insulated building, or charge a car). A lot of things use electricity intermittently, and there are potentially ways of using it that way. Or alternatively not. Like i said, so not my area.
there's probably enough suitable valleys in the UK to store 100–400 GWh as pumped storage, depending on how many SSSIs it is acceptable to destroy
ReplyDeleteThat's not really what he says; the figure of 400GWh comes from the existing capacity, plus two sites in Snowdonia that were considered when the Dinorwig station was built (neither of which are SSSIs), plus 14 locations in Scotland which already have hydroelectric power stations that could be converted to pump storage.
I am also a little chary of MacKay's arithmetic on nukes (not through any fault of his own), because he talks about the cleanup cost by reference to the budget of the Decommissioning Authority, and discrepancies between budgets and out-turns are often pretty substantial in context.
ReplyDeleteI don't mean that there are literal SSSIs in every case, or that there aren't lots of valleys which could be dammed: I'm just alluding to the fact that building pumped storage is environmentally destructive and politically costly. If you're just adding up numbers to see if a plan is technically feasible then you can ignore this kind of issue, and if you have the political capital to do a Three Gorges Dam and displace a million people then of course there's plenty of space in the UK for pumped storage.
ReplyDeleteWell, in this case it seems that you would only have to build another 2 new dams (Bowydd and Croesor), and upgrade another 14 existing dams to allow them to be used for storage as well as generation. So not really very much environmental or political damage to get to the 400GWh mark. No one is going to lose their seat in Parliament because Loch Lomond is now 80 cm deeper.
ReplyDeleteGetting to 1200GWh might be a different matter.
A North Sea interconnector might also change the game, since it would plug us into Norway, land of rather large hydropower reserves. Conventional hydro's not as flexible as pumped storage, but it is pretty flexible.
ReplyDeleteI'm sure that MacKay's not the last word on this issue, but he appears to be working in the right ballpark, which is more than can be said for many experts on comments threads.
As D2 and me (who also had a relative building Dinowic) will tell you, it's actually pretty unobtrusive, though breathtakingly expensive.
Chris Williams
Its a pretty amazing place to visit.
ReplyDeleteReading about this, it strikes me that a lot of stress on the grid could be avoided by just weaning the British off tea. Or at the very least weaning them on to samovars.
ReplyDeleteNo one is going to lose their seat in Parliament because Loch Lomond is now 80 cm deeper.
ReplyDeleteProbably you don't literally mean Loch Lomond, but just in case you do: Loch Lomond is only about 7 m above sea level. Suppose by some means you could use 5 m of that as "head", you could store about 0.8 GWh in that 80 cm.
Also, assuming that you mean for Loch Lomond to be the upper reservoir, what would you use for your lower reservoir?
ReplyDeleteI suspect that we'd be using Loch Lomond for the lower reservoir, and some handy steep-sided corrie plus another dam for the upper one.
ReplyDeleteChris Williams
I _do_ have an idea for ground-level pumped storage in the Home Counties, but it's quite radical, relying as it does on a really close knowledge of the geology of Nevada, the exact radiation-proofing properties of London Clay, and the yield of a fission bomb. Somehow I doubt it will ever meet the environmental audit.
ReplyDeleteCW
Regarding nuclear, the National Grid's reserve requirement is scaled to cover the two biggest point sources of electricity going offline at the same time. Those are, in fact, two nuclear power stations (one is Sizewell-B, I forget the other).
ReplyDeleteAlso, assuming that you mean for Loch Lomond to be the upper reservoir, what would you use for your lower reservoir?
ReplyDeleteLomond is the lower reservoir, Loch Sloy the upper one, per David MacKay's website. I don't know how practical that is, but it's what he says.
CW: the figure you're looking for is that the melt cavity radius in metres is 4-12 times the cube root of the yield. So a 500kt bomb will get you a spherical hole about 100m across - storage of half a million tons of water. That's very roughly ten Dinorwigs, if my sums are correct. And you'll have to bury the bomb at least 800 metres deep to avoid surface cratering.
ReplyDeleteAnd you'll need to work out where your upper reservoir's going to be too, unless you're planning to set off _two_ bombs at different depths and then tunnel between the melt cavities.
I suppose you could just use the Thames as your upper reservoir. Let river water drain down through the borehole into the melt cavity to generate power, and pump it up again to empty the cavity (and effectively store power). The water might be a bit, you know, glowy, though.
ReplyDeleteLateral thinking. Do it under the sea - somewhere not too far from Boris Airport, perhaps. Nice and shallow.
ReplyDeleteAlthough you'd want to watch out for the Richard Montgomery.
"unless you're planning to set off _two_ bombs at different depths and then tunnel between the melt cavities". That's the one - actually two tunnels to the surface, where the pump turbines would be.
ReplyDeleteNB, gentle reader, I am not completely serious about this idea.
Chris Williams
AJ: I think you may be confusing the volume of the Dinorwig reservoir with that of the surge pond. The working volume at the electric mountain is something like seven million cubic metres.
ReplyDeleteWe're going to need a bigger bomb.
ReplyDeleteCW
Well, that's always an option.
ReplyDeletefivemack: thanks, that figure did seem a bit small.
ReplyDeleteRight then, in that case we'll need a bigger bomb. But the bigger it is, the deeper you have to bury it, so the more fall it has and thus the more power it generates. Dinorwig's got a fall of about 300m and a working volume of seven million cubic metres. Double the fall and you halve the working volume needed to store the same amount of energy.
A bit of Excelling reveals that a one-megaton bomb, buried a thousand metres deep, would create a 160m wide cavity with the same energy storage potential as Dinorweg.
That seems well within the limits of current technology. Multi-megaton bombs have been tested underground successfully. A five-megaton bomb (the largest tested underground by the US) would give you about nine Dinorwegs worth of power.
And the best bit about this plan is that nothing could possibly go wrong!
ReplyDeleteI do like the idea of using nuclear weapons (which we can provide at little marginal cost, since currently the best-case outcome for them is that they get chucked away unused) to build renewable energy plants. I suspect that this would go a long way to addressing the common conservative objection to renewables Alex identified a while ago (ie, having a nuclear bomb involved in the process would make the electricity produced substantially less gay).
And the best bit about this plan is that nothing could possibly go wrong!
ReplyDeleteOf course nothing could go wrong with it. Didn't you read my commment at all? I've made a spreadsheet.
Also, I have just been informed, my plan has been rated Aaa by Moody's Nuclear Industry Consulting.
having a nuclear bomb involved in the process would make the electricity produced substantially less gay
You've put your finger on something here. I regularly read US complaints that much or possibly all right-wing policies are dictated by what would annoy liberals most. So if you tell an American rightwinger that he should conserve fuel, he will reply that he is actually going to buy a bigger car and leave it idling in his drive for a couple of hours a day, just to spite you.
ISTR Adam Yoshida filmed himself doing just that, and indeed turning all the lights on in his house, turning the heating and aircon up full blast, and sitting there at his computer being uncomfortable.
ReplyDeleteI've got an even manlier (and slightly safer) idea, actually. You dig two much bigger caverns, each with a capacity of the order of a hundred million cubic metres. Either you'll need to use multiple megaton-range bomb or one absolutely colossal 40 megaton bomb buried 3.6 km deep. Make it 4 km just to be on the safe side.
ReplyDeleteYou flood one cavern with water and then you detonate a small nuke, say kiloton-range, in it. One kiloton is enough energy to flash-boil a hundred million tonnes of water to 1000 degrees.
The superheated steam comes out the shaft, into your turbine complex, through the cooling towers, and then gets dumped as water back into the second cavern. Then you set off another bomb in the second cavern and back it goes.
Now, the terrifically environmentally-friendly (and so arguably not quite as manly) part of this plan is that the horribly radioactive water doesn't actually have to be dumped into the Thames at any point. It's a closed loop - it just cycles from one cavern to the other, over and over. And every time you do it you're generating of the order of 100 megawatt hours of completely carbon-free electricity.
1000 megawatt hours - sorry, dropped a nought somewhere.
ReplyDeleteAnd that doesnt't include the energy you can also generate from hydro power as the cooled water falls back into the second cavity. Which is actually going to be a lot more than you get from passing the steam through the turbines. God, this is genius.
ReplyDeleteI for one welcome a plan which involves the mass production of one-kiloton nuclear weapons. The marginal cost of Project Orion begins to look feasible, for starters.
ReplyDeleteBTW, Alex, you bastard, why did you have to remind me that Yoshida exists? One serious plus point of having a memory as bad as mine is that there's a whole universe of USENET arseholes whom I no longer recollect. Usually.
Chris Williams
Also, I have just been informed, my plan has been rated Aaa by Moody's Nuclear Industry Consulting.
ReplyDeleteYeah I didn't read your prospectus, but you're a good chap right college and all that, so what the hell.
ISTR Adam Yoshida filmed himself doing just that, and indeed turning all the lights on in his house, turning the heating and aircon up full blast, and sitting there at his computer being uncomfortable.
ReplyDeleteBecause nothing pisses off liberals more than breaking your heating/cooling system...
My friend's dad refused to insulate his house for similar kinds of reasons, and ended up paying a small fortune when a pipe burst.
In rough terms, ten of these double-cavity generators, running at about one explosion (note: must think of more mediafriendly word than "explosion". "Sunshine moment"? "Power cycle"?) a day each, and you could power the entire UK.
ReplyDeleteYou'd need to keep the existing reactor/reprocessing infrastructure to keep the supply of driver bombs coming, of course. Three thousand bombs a year is quite a step-up in production, but Sellafield-2 produces enough plutonium to manage (7.5 tonnes a year, easily enough for three thousand 1.5kg pits) and if need be we can start importing more spent fuel from abroad and reprocessing it. However, Aldermaston would need to be expanded dramatically from its current size to become, effectively, a bomb production line.
As CW alluded, there's been quite a bit of work done already on material-efficient kt bombs for the Orion project. We need to get Ted Taylor and Freeman Dyson on board as consultants.
(Sellafield, not Sellafield-2, sorry).
ReplyDelete"explosion" = "instant-delivery physical paradigm reconfiguration"
ReplyDeleteProblem with this, as I recall from the Secret State, is that there's nowhere in Britain with the sufficient geological rigidity to go setting off nukes regularly. This is why the British Top Secret Last Redoubt of the Great And Good ended up being above the main line from Paddington to Bristol. If it was going to collapse anyway, you might as well go somewhere pretty first.
ReplyDeleteAww. Not even if they were really, really small nukes? I mean, 1 kt isn't an awful lot by nuke standards.
ReplyDeleteThink creatively. There are certainly places where the lack of geological rigidity could be a feature rather than a bug. As Harri Webb said:
ReplyDeleteWhat Wales needs, and has always lacked most
Is, instead of an eastern boundary, an East Coast.
Yeah, but come the next cold snap, the absence of the Cheshire salt mines will prevent you from gritting the roads. You've not thought this through, have you?
ReplyDeleteGiven sufficient 1-kiloton bombs, there is a much easier way for Wales to get an east coast: simply annexe everything between the lines CHESTER-HULL and BRISTOL-KING'S LYNN. Stop line is the new Welsh east coast, which runs from the Wash to the Humber.
ReplyDeleteProblem with that, ajay, is that it leaves the Welsh wide open to a pincers movement through the Knutsford and Leamington Spa gaps.
ReplyDeleteWell, they will ex hypothesi have a sufficiently large number of 1-kiloton bombs. And this is really the only application of nuclear energy that unquestionably works: scaring people.
ReplyDeleteWind and Solar decorrelate -- especially over large distances. Yo don't need a content-wide grid to provide stable power with them, just 1/3 of that will do it.
ReplyDeleteI wouldn't bet against solar and wind over the next 30 years. Those industries are agile, lots of tiny companies innovating in different ways. The ramp on them in incredible, especially solar. Nuclear is a behemoth that takes 10 years to get to running speed.
Wind and Solar decorrelate -- especially over large distances. Yo don't need a content-wide grid to provide stable power with them, just 1/3 of that will do it.
ReplyDeleteWell, solar obviously correlates over very large distances (a phenomenon known as "night"), and ISTR that there are occasional periods when it's calm all over Europe. You still need some storage or something.
There's not enough wind and solar to generate electricity for the UK. Doesn't matter how nimble companies are, you eventually run into physical limits. Especially when you consider lifecycles of the equipment.
ReplyDeleteStorage includes things like trickle chargers for electric vehicles, heaters, etc. As I said previously, with a smarter grid you end up with a much larger defacto storage system. There's also a lot of energy usage for things where it doesn't matter too much when they're used.
Storage is as much of a problem for nuclear, as it is for renewables, incidentally. One of the many problems I have with the nuke industry is that they never acknowledge this, despite using exactly the same argument to attack renewables.
In point of fact, the worst possible combination would be nukes and renewables. The best thing would probably be to have gas power stations to handle peaks (demand)/lulls (generation), better storage facilities and a system that incentivised better use of energy when it was available.
"On the other hand, nuclear doesn't have the turn-off-and-onability that was what made gas so popular in the first place. So you either have to build enough nuke capacity to handle the peakest of peak loads (very very expensive), or you need storage. A nuclear-based strategy is actually just as dependent on the "magic electron bucket"[1] as wind, solar or anything except natural gas really. "
ReplyDeleteIs this actually the case? How flexible are, eg, nitrate manufacturing and Al refining? Can you feed them power or not on a minute by minute basis?
(This is a question about theory. I'm sure existing plants have limitations in this respect, but you could build such a plant differently at, say, no more than 15% higher cost?)
My point is that, IF this is possible, and IF such industries form a large enough component of the economy, then the nuclear on/off-ness is a moot point, and the situation is actually somewhat different from the solar/wind situation.
Aluminium refining is really quite turn-off-and-onable. The amount of cheap electricity shoved out to Anglesey Aluminium was another important part of the load balancing strategy for Wylfa. I don't see how this makes the case for nuclear different from renewables though.
ReplyDeleteIs this actually the case? How flexible are, eg, nitrate manufacturing and Al refining? Can you feed them power or not on a minute by minute basis?
ReplyDeleteWhy would you need to? Wind power may not be predictable in the way that nuclear energy theoretically is, but in aggregate it doesn't bounce around from minute to minute.
Cian, my point (in the context of nuclear) was that we have
ReplyDelete- a variable load (homes, light industry etc) AND
- a flexible industrial load that can soak up whatever excess is available.
The idea, then, is you provision your nuclear grid to run at the maximum load required by homes, light industry etc, and have a few Al refineries and nitrate plants to soak up the excess. Whatever the homes and light industry don't use gets used to manufacture Al and nitrates (useful products in themselves) and thus the excess nuclear electricity does not go to waste. We can do this by having certain products (as opposed to hydro pump systems, or batteries) soak up the excess.
I'm not claiming that the numbers work out, either in terms of the amount of work of this sort, or the relevant costs. I'm simply raising it as a possibility, one more item that can be added to the toolbox.
Of course, in a different context, this same idea presumably also works for the solar/wind situation; but the economics in that case are different, and in that scenario presumably we still have instant on/off gas plants, so the problems that need to be solved are different --- my point was specifically how to use effectively a very large nuclear base load in the context of a demand that varies substantially during the day.