Forsmark nuclear power plant (photo Natalia Svedlund)
Sweden is faced with the possible shutdown of its entire nuclear generating capacity. This could result in grid instability, price hikes and much higher greenhouse gas emissions, writes Rauli Partanen, an independent analyst and author on energy and the environment. Partanen calls on policymakers to take action to avoid a Swedish nuclear phaseout.
Nuclear power in Sweden has become uneconomical. Wholesale prices of electricity in Sweden have been much lower than the breakeven price for nuclear generation. Electricity has been sold at a record low price of €20 per megawatt hour (MWh), while the cost of generating nuclear power has been in the same ballpark, or even slightly higher. In addition, the Swedish government has set a tax on nuclear power, which has been steadily rising. After the latest hike, it amounts to about a third of the wholesale price, roughly €7 per MWh.
Rauli Partanen is author, most recently, of The World After Cheap Oil (with co-authors Harri Paloheimo and Heikki Waris), published by Routledge in 2015.
The publicly owned utility Vattenfall, which owns and operates seven reactors in Sweden, announced recently that if the government does not remove the nuclear tax, it would close down all of its reactors by 2020. This, in addition to the earlier announcements by the German utility Uniper (the company was created when E.On split its business; Uniper got the nuclear and fossil fuels part) to close down two of its three reactors prematurely, would mean a massive loss of generating capacity in Sweden and in the common Nordic electricity market. The ramifications would be huge.
How did this situation arise? To put it frankly, Swedish energy policy has been messy when it comes to nuclear power. After the oil crises in the 1970s Sweden moved away from fossil-based electricity production with record speed. In addition to its existing hydropower fleet, the country built twelve nuclear reactors, commissioned between 1972 and 1985. Their total capacity was over ten gigawatts, but three plants have since been closed: Barsebäck 1 (600 MW) in 1999, Barsebäck 2 (600 MW) in 2005 and Oskarshamn 2 (638 MW) in 2015. The current operational capacity is around 9000 MW. Nuclear power has produced between 40 and 50 percent of Sweden’s electricity.
This combination gave Sweden one of the cleanest, most affordable and secure electricity grids in any industrialized country. The average carbon emissions per kWh of electricity produced have been roughly 20 grams. The nuclear power plants produce at around 5 gCO2/kWh. If the world’s energy would be produced as cleanly as Swedish electricity, the climate change problem would be well on its way to be solved. Consider for example that the carbon balance of electricity in Germany, which arguably has the most ambitious and radical energy and climate policy today, is many times higher at roughly 500 gCO2/kWh.
Possibly the Swedes have been taking their clean and affordable electricity system for granted. Even before the last reactors were started up and connected to the grid, Swedish nuclear energy policy made a U-turn. After the Three Mile Island nuclear accident happened in the United States in 1979, the Swedes decided they needed to close down their nuclear fleet by 2010. This killed the future prospects of nuclear power in Sweden, although little was actually done to replace the nuclear fleet with anything.
With all four older reactors announced for closing by 2020, more than 2,500 MW of capacity will be lost. That is roughly equal to the total capacity of the Finnish nuclear fleet
Then, when it came to the crunch in 2010, Sweden made another U-turn, allowing nuclear power to be maintained after 2010 and even making it legal to build new nuclear reactors, as long as they replaced the existing aging reactors. But a lot of damage had been done by this time. The fact that the political order had declared nuclear power “obsolete in a few decades”, darkened the prospects of the sector considerably.
Insidious problem
In the 1990s, the Swedish government passed a tax on nuclear power, in anticipation of the shutdown. It was roughly €3 per MWh in the beginning, but after numerous hikes it is now over €7, accounting for roughly a quarter of the production costs of nuclear energy. The government collects around half a billion euros from the tax annually. The combination of this tax and record-low prices of electricity have seen to it that no new reactors have been seriously proposed in recent years. Even the planned upgrades to existing reactors have been largely forgotten, since the reactors are likely to be shut down way before their licences expire.
The tax is only a part of the problem. The deeper and more insidious problem are crashing electricity prices throughout Sweden, the Nordic market and even much of the Western Europe. There are several reasons for this, of which the most prominent ones include:
- The economic slowdown since 2008 and the accompanying European-wide reduction in demand for electricity.
- The increase of especially wind power in the Nordic market, made possible by price-premiums and tariffs.
- The continuing trend of industry moving out of Europe’s shrinking markets to other countries with cheaper labour, growing markets and laxer environmental regulation.
- The low carbon prices in the European emission trading scheme (ETS), partly a result of the three other factors.
As a result, electricity spot prices in Sweden have been around €20 per MWh for some time. Even without the nuclear tax, this is lower than the total production costs of nuclear.
Shutdown
The Swedish utilities face another challenges in addition to low prices and taxes. The Swedish law on nuclear safety requires reactors to be fitted with what is called an independent core cooler to improve their safety in the event of a Fukushima-style accident. These improvements need to be in place by 2020. This means investment decisions have to be made soon, during 2016 in most cases. Since the planned operating life of some of the older reactors ends in the early 2020s, it is not worth investing in new safety measures unless they obtain extensions to their planned lifetime.
The closures already decided upon – 2,500 MW in total – would mean Sweden would not be a net exporter anymore. Sweden could become a net importer
Both Vattenfall and OKG, which is majority owned by German Uniper and minority owned by Finnish Fortum, announced in 2015 that they will close down the older reactors before 2020. These include Ringhals 1 and 2 (Vattenfall) and Oskarshamn 1 and 2 (OKG). The planned 50 year operating lives of these reactors will end by mid-2020. Until recently the owners were planning extensive maintenance projects and upgrades to extend the lives to 60 years.
Now the situation has turned completely on its head. Oskarshamn-2 was already undergoing significant repairs and maintenance aimed at extending its operation to 60 years and having spent roughly €1 billion on them, when the operations were stopped in mid-2015, with a later decision to never start up the reactor again. Fortum, the minority-owner, was firmly against this, but Uniper did not budge. With all four older reactors announced for closing by 2020, more than 2,500 MW of capacity will be lost. That is roughly equal to the total capacity of the Finnish nuclear fleet currently.
And it did not end there. In early 2016, Vattenfall announced that if the Swedish government does not remove the nuclear tax, it will prematurely close down its remaining five reactors as well. These include Ringhals 3 and 4 and Forsmark 1, 2 and 3. All of these reactors currently have 60 year planned operating lives extending to the early 2040s. They would, however, also need the independent core coolers to be installed by 2020. Closing these reactors down would remove roughly 5,000 MW of capacity.
Subsequently, Uniper recently announced that it is considering closing down the last remaining, biggest and most modern (along with its twin-unit Forsmark 3) nuclear reactor in Sweden, Oskarshamn-3, if the situation does not change. This would bring the closures to around 9,000 MW. This is almost equal to Finland’s average electricity consumption, and equal to twice the electricity Denmark uses, 34 TWh, in a year.
Capacity void
So what would be the result of a Swedish nuclear shutdown in terms of grid balance? Sweden is a net exporter of electricity. Depending on available hydropower, Sweden exports between 10-20 TWh of electricity annually. This corresponds to roughly 1,200-2,500 MW of constant power being exported. Most of this ends up in Finland. The closures already decided upon – 2,500 MW in total – would mean Sweden would not be a net exporter anymore, and Finland would have to find its imports from somewhere else. It could even mean Sweden would become a net-importer, depending on the spare, largely unused capacity Sweden currently has.
Imports could be increased from Poland, the Baltic countries, Germany, Russia through Finland and a few other places. Most of these countries have dirty or very dirty electricity mixes
If the other reactors – 5,000MW – are also shut down, there would be a huge capacity void in the Nordic power market, and Sweden would become a big electricity importer in a very short time. Especially during low wind productivity and during cold spells in winter, Sweden would need to import large amounts of electricity. During these times, however, Sweden’s neighbours would also need a lot of electricity. The likely sources for these additional imports would be mainland Europe.
Finland would have to rely on its eastern neighbours for maximum imports (interconnection capacity to the east is 1,400 MW). During higher demand, even these imports might not be enough.
What could be done to replace the nuclear capacity at risk? There will be one nuclear reactor – Olkiluoto 3 in Finland – coming online before 2020 at a capacity of 1,600 MW. In addition, Finland will likely build another 1,300 MW of wind power, with perhaps similar additions from Sweden. Sweden and Norway have had a common electricity certificate program, which has a goal of building 20 TWh worth of wind power. This equals to about a third of what the nuclear fleet now produces.
Sweden’s lobbying organization for wind power has written that it thinks Swedish nuclear can be replaced by building many times more wind power than Sweden has now, and by dealing with peak hours and low winds by building gas turbines. This amount of wind would be hugely uneconomical to build. The gas turbines could also cost billions of euros, and they would be running only a few hours during the year, making them monumentally bad investments. At current market conditions, nobody would build either of these without very generous subsidies from the government.
The current supposedly market based system mixed with government subsidies and arbitrary taxes is proving to be a failure
Since the grid needs dispatchable power, the role of wind power will be limited unless similar increases in energy storage can be realised. The most realistic replacements for nuclear in addition to wind power are hydropower (mainly upgrading current plants) and burning wood, peat, natural gas and coal. It should be remarked, however, that none of these energy sources will be economical to build on their own in the current situation. Finland has already made a decision to give up coal in the 2020s. At the same time, Sweden is talking of dismantling some of its hydro power to restore river biodiversity.
Imports could be increased from Poland, the Baltic countries, Germany, Russia through Finland and a few other places. Most of these countries have dirty or very dirty electricity mixes, and increasing imports from them will mean that this extra power will be produced at marginal cost, most likely by burning coal. So while the imported electricity would in theory have the “average” grid carbon content of the exporting country, in reality the addition would come from burning coal with a carbon balance of 800-1,000 gCO2/kWh. As this will happen outside Sweden, these emissions might be ignored in the Swedish discussion. Out of sight, out of mind.
Rising emissions
Let’s look in more detail at what the implications might be of a Swedish nuclear phase-out for greenhouse gas emissions The Swedish nuclear fleet would produce more than 900 TWh of clean electricity during its current, licensed lifetime with a carbon burden of roughly 20 gCO2/kWh. Here are three simplified scenarios of what could happen if the nuclear energy is replaced with various energy mixes.
Scenario 1 – Mostly clean at 200 gCO2/kWh
In the most optimistic scenario, most of the alternative energy would be low-carbon, with very little imports from Poland or the Baltic countries. The electricity in Finland has a carbon balance of around 100 gCO2/kWh on average. Replacing Swedish nuclear with a mix that has 200 gCO2/kWh (only slightly lower than the median carbon balance of biomass, 230 gCO2/kWh, according to the IPCC) would increase the carbon burden manifold. Over 180 million tons of extra carbon dioxide would be released into the atmosphere during the remaining lifetime of the nuclear reactors that were shut down. This equals to three years of Finland’s total emissions, from all sectors.
Scenario 2 – Clean power and something else
If roughly one half of the production would be replaced with other clean production, like wind and hydro, and the other half with natural gas, biomass and some coal-fired imports, we get an average carbon balance of roughly 350 gCO2/kWh. This is over ten times higher than Sweden’s current electricity has, and it would increase the average carbon balance for the grid many times over. It would result in 330 million tons of added emissions, which equals to almost six years of Finland’s total emissions.
Scenario 3 – Natural gas equivalent
If the alternative energy would have a similar carbon balance as the German grid, 500 gCO2/kWh, equal to the emissions of gas-fired power, it would increase the carbon balance of the grid by more than ten times. This would be a likely result if much of the power would need to be imported (although imports would not show in Sweden’s carbon balance). It would result in over 450 million tons of added emissions, equalling 7.5 years of total Finnish emissions.
Rising prices
Losing a large amount of low-cost baseload capacity will also lead to higher prices and more frequent price spikes. Imports would increase, and some old thermal power plants would be restarted, with possible investments needed to increase the maximum power of current generation capacity. The timeframe of five years is rather short for any big investments. If production can’t meet normal demand, plants that provide reserve power will be started up. These have a very limited total capacity however, and the costs are high.
Affordable electricity has been one of the important factors in the competitiveness of Nordic industry. In this new situation, those affordable prices could disappear too fast for industry to be able to accommodate
In the longer run, new capacity will get built. The options for clean energy production are limited, so most capacity would tend to be thermal power or imports. This could bring average electricity prices much closer to the prices of near €100/MWh during the recent cold spell in January, when Finland had to import a lot of electricity from Estonia’s dirty power plants.
If the shutdowns are realized fully, grid operators may need to require some industry to shut down during peak demand hours. This would carry a high price in two ways. First, the high price of electricity that would precede this situation would in itself strike a blow to both industry and domestic electricity users. When factories need to be paid to shut down production and send workers home, the situation has become serious indeed. This would be done mainly in order to keep the grid stable. Secondly, the productivity of national industry would be impacted.
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Affordable electricity has been one of the important factors in the competitiveness of Nordic industry. In this new situation, those affordable prices could disappear too fast for industry to be able to accommodate. At the same time, household energy bills would go up, reducing their spending elsewhere.
Is there something we could do?
What could be done to avoid this outcome? The utilities in Sweden want to get rid of the nuclear tax. Political decisions would need to be made quickly, preferably during first half of 2016. There may be other possible solutions, but the schedule is quite tight for any major market reforms. Those reforms are, however, also direly needed. The current supposedly market based system mixed with government subsidies and arbitrary taxes is proving to be a failure.
Sweden has just announced that it aims to be world leader in decarbonization, and wants its energy sector to be carbon-neutral by 2050 or even earlier. Shutting down thousands of megawatts of low-carbon power will cost Sweden decades of hard work in this decarbonization project. Both the energy companies as well as the politicians involved need to weigh the situation carefully and negotiate with care and cool heads.
Editor’s Note
Rauli Partanen (@kaikenhuippu, @Climate_Gamble, raulipartanen@gmail.com) is an independent author and communicator on energy and its role in the environment and modern society. He is the main author of Climate Gamble – Is Anti-Nuclear Activism Endangering Our Future? (with co-author Janne M. Korhonen, published in 2015) and The World After Cheap Oil (with co-authors Harri Paloheimo and Heikki Waris, published by Routledge in 2015). He is also co-founder and vice chair of Ecomodernist Society of Finland, a new environmental NGO.
This article was originally written in Finnish and will be published by Energiauutiset 3/2016 www.energiauutiset.fi Published in English with permission.
Excellent work .
Huge problem , not only in Sweden . Europe , Asia , etc .
Agree, and this problem is also prevalent in the US, where natural gas turbines are all too happy to fill the voids, where the intermittent sources increase market price volatility, and availability of bulk storage options do not match locational needs; i.e. pumped storage in sunny or windy onshore regions. NIMBY for offshore wind or 140m hub heights also dominates eastern load centers, no different than nuclear will be phased out for more political & environmental activism.
Excellent article Rauli, as well as follow up comments by all.
“The options for clean energy production are limited, so most capacity would tend to be thermal power or imports.”
“This amount of wind would be hugely uneconomical to build.”
“Since the grid needs dispatchable power, the role of wind power will be limited unless similar increases in energy storage can be realised.”
Wrong, wrong and wrong. It is funny to see these claims dropping out of nowhere without anything supporting them, so I will answer them in style. Anyone who reads this should turn to google to see for themselves who is right:
-The potential to produce electricity from renewables in Sweden is many times greater than its need. Wind alone could provide all the energy needed.
-Wind power already is the cheapest source of electricity to be newly build in Europe.
-Sweden already has huge hydropower plants, their output could be balanced with the wind output, plus it is next to Finland with huge hydro storage capacities as well.
Wind power can be build very quickly, too. If Sweden manages it well, there will be no reason to not shut down its nuclear fleet.
The article was quite long already, so I chose not to explain those points further. Here are a couple of comments:
This article assumes a framing of relatively market-based solutions. I am not getting into a discussion where nuclear, because of extra taxes, is uneconomical, while at the same time some other source with subsidies is viewed as economical. The “goal posts” need to stay in one place.
1) Regarding the timeframe, five years is a short time to build a few tens of TWh of clean power production capacity. The reason why I chose to say what I did was due to
a) I have not seen any real-world plans on this, and the Swedes have been “shutting down” their nuclear fleet since 1980 already.
b) All the experts (pro-renewable as well) working in the field that I interviewed and asked for comments agreed on this. Further, they thought that my text was being rather optimistic.
2) About the economics of wind power. First: Currently, there is practically no wind power being built without subsidies or feed-in tariffs. So while it might be cheap to build wind capacity, nobody is doing it in a market-based environment. I have nothing against wind power, but like other energy sources, it needs to account for its own costs.
Also, I have not seen anyone saying that it is cheaper to build new wind than to keep these nuclear power plants operating. They produce at roughly 20 €/MWh. That is the point.
Further, to my main point on the uneconomics of building so much wind: building sufficient capacity of wind would start to cannibalize its own value, but still be unable to meet the POWER required by the grid at low wind times. So yes, its relatively cheap to produce ENERGY with wind, but it does not offer reliable POWER, which is as important. When it would be windy, the price of electricity would go to zero. Why would someone build more wind if they know that most of their production will happen when all the other wind farms are also producing, making price of electricity to fall near zero? This will happen way before enough wind has been built to replace the nuclear.
3) Yes, Sweden has plenty of hydro (but it is considering dismantling some due to ecological reasons). It is already being used to balance the grid for supply and demand. The point is that they have limited POWER. Also, that capacity is and could be used to replace heavy-carbon production in mainland Europe, instead of using it to replace low-carbon and low-cost nuclear in Sweden. Finland cannot build much more hydro currently.
And please note on the last point that there is a condition: Wind power will be limited, UNLESS similar energy storage emerges.
About Sweden “managing” something energy related. The main point of my article was that currently Sweden is NOT managing it. They have built a lot of wind in the last couple of years, but as the subsidies died down, so did the building of new capacity. And no, they are nowhere near in replacing their nuclear capacity yet.
Also, Sweden just announced it wants to be carbon-neutral by 2045. Closing down almost half of its current low-carbon capacity will take that goal a decade or two farther, at least. (No, the guys talking about climate goals have not yet realized this, nor is there any discussion in Sweden about this as far as I know, and I have asked around).
Well stated.
Sweden is lucky , having huge hydro and wind potential . End of the day , investments in green looks less that in fossil and/or nuclear power generation units . Balancing can be a problem . But is a technical problem , means soluble ! The couple wind- hydro is typical for good balance .
Good luck Sweden !
What is the biggest difference between Sweden and Denmark in energetics? Danish consume 6 MWh of electricity per person per year, Swedish consume 14 MWh per person per year. Maybe they have more use for it? Maybe, but Swedish use 225 GJ of total energy per person per year and Danish use 145 GJ per person per year.
It seems to me, that Swedish should stop wasting energy at first and make some wind, this can be done quickly and they have enough hydro to fill gaps.
Danes do not have much energy-intensive industry. Swedes (and the Finns) do. To put it bluntly: We make the steel for them Danish windmills.
And given the clean electricity in Sweden and nowadays also in Finland, its a good thing we do. If that steel was made in Denmark, Germany or let alone in China, the emissions would be huge.
On yearly basis 1/3 or all electricity in Sweden is used by papermills – not steel plants. Further, in Sweden direct heating of houses with electricity is common. During chilly periods more than 10 GW out of about 25 GW is used for heating. Not so clever.
Exactly! We in Sweden (and Finland) produce what ex. the Danish use in their, in comparison, small industries. We in Swedan have Iron ore; Steel making capacity and this and many more industries are power consumption demanding. To compare the danish per capita usage of energy is not relevant in any way.
Futhermore the polical will is obviusly to close the power capacity in Sweden. This in a industrial inviroment that uses lot of energy is not so bright to do. The power using industry doesen’t stop use energy so what is the outcom of that? We, the people are most likely to front huge rice to our private power use. We don’t live in the south of europe.. The winters are cold and long.. It’s pure madness that’s happening regarding down sizing/stopping the Swedish nuklear capacity..
I have serious doubts of this countrys future.
A few thoughts:
1) I think Germany is an object lesson in how abandoning nuclear will hurt a country’s climate change credentials no matter what great work they do elsewhere, a lesson Sweden should learn from.
2) Seems to me it’s appropriate that nuclear pay additional taxes to cover future decommissioning costs and that nuclear plants be upgraded to meet new safety standards. These are the real costs of nuclear.
3) While I agree that the existing fleet should be maintained in the absence of an immediate alternative and even extended in the absence of a viable zero-carbon alternative in the medium term, I find it curious that nuclear is unable to compete in the electricity markets. It seems appropriate that we should be looking for a post-nuclear zero-carbon alternative.
To elaborate on your second point: Nuclear in Sweden is already paying to cover future decommissioning and handling the waste. This tax now in question, as far as I know, has nothing to do with that, but is simply an extra tax to make nuclear less competitive (a fiscal tax to collect money to the government). They have a similar one in Germany if I’m not mistaken.
And on your second point, I agree partly. Nuclear is, even with the high costs of newbuild plants in western countries, reasonably competitive, given its good capacity factor and long plant lifetime. Installing wind power is lower cost per capacity, but when you take into account the total amount of energy produced during plant lifetime, nuclear is cheaper (this is for example according to IEA recent report). The baseload produced by nuclear is also of higher value to society than intermittent wind (especially when share of wind increases).
Still, we need to find ways to make cheaper clean energy, otherwise fossil fuels will continue their supremacy. But that includes ways on how to make nuclear energy cheaper as well. There are ways to do that as well (which could have an article of their own I guess), but one example can perhaps best showcase the situation on safety and the “level playing field”:
If other energy production was faced with the same safety standards regarding radiation as nuclear, all burning (except for natural gas perhaps) would have to stop immediately. Burning biomass or coal releases too much radiation to the surroundings. Even my wood-fired sauna by the lakeside would have to be dismantled or switch to electricity. And this does not even touch on other health hazards (particle-pollution, greenhouse gases). As has been widely studied, even with all the accidents and the waste, nuclear is one of the safest way to produce energy.
For wind it depends on whether it’s onshore or offshore. On an LCOE basis even the IEA report shows onshore wind to be competitive with nuclear (BNEF and Lazard are much more definitive about this). To be fair, many of the wind projects in Northern Europe are offshore and those are for sure more expensive than nuclear.
But, the biggest problem with nuclear, in my view, is the industry itself. They just can’t get a project without extensions and cost overruns. Here in the UK, what’s going on with Hinckley C is an absolute debacle. The government may ram it through in the end, but at huge political cost and further hardening of attitudes against nuclear.
I agree with the thrust of your article that we should hang on to our existing nuclear capacity because it seems very unlikely to me that we will see a nuclear renaissance until SMRs and MSRs mature which is still some years down the road.
Wind power requires more transmission capacity and some sort of backup from a powersource that can power up on demand, so for the whole society windpower is more expensive than nuclear power. This is seen in Sweden as fixed fees are raising steadily. Despite same low electricity energy prices as in late 90’s households now pay a lot more on their bills.
And in the debate is external costs not ever included, in EU almost half a million people dies every year as a consequence from burning fuels – both fossile and biofuels. More people dies per produced kWh in all the alternative power solutions than who dies due to nuclear despite nuclear figures are calculated with estimates of Chernobyl and Fukushima deaths that now have been proven to overestimate by 2-5 times.
Sweden subsidies of reneweables to push out nuclear hasn’t even lessen release of co2 but rather the opposite due to all the concrete, steel,… that was produced (wind power uses up to 40 times more of such resources per produced kWh).
And all but 1 rivers are used for hydro power with the result that species has dissapeared and other species are kept in small population by breeding up outside their habitat.
Forests in sweden has also lost species due to forest industry and open land is about to loose species due to farming.
It is easy to understand that everything man does has consequences, and reneweables can only be used to a certain amount.
Nuclear power and solar energy are the types that has least consequences per produced kWh.
Unfortunately solar energy is expensive and even more for a full solution as it requires expensive energy storage. In sweden one third of a solar cell production would be needed to be seasonally stored to the four coldest and darkest months – per household that would cost 10-20 times more than the solar cell power system.
Not just in Sweden my friend: http://tinyurl.com/juxbdx4 See also http://tinyurl.com/zg6w23x
Pauli you say “And on your second point, I agree partly.”
Which part then? The part I noticed was the claim that those taxes are needed to cover decommissioning costs. Is that true? In Ontario at least, decommissioning costs have been factored in to electrical rates and monies go into a trust fund that can’t be touched other than for decommissioning purposes.
Ike,
Oh damn, it seems I misspelled, I meant the third point. (got confused as I started with the second point and then moved to the third one…)
Congratulations!
“The current supposedly market based system mixed with government subsidies and arbitrary taxes is proving to be a failure”
Yes, I completely agree!
It is not just the Nordic system that is in for a nasty shock.
Essentially, the same, politically constructed, so-called “market-based” system is bankrupting all or most European suppliers of dispatchable power generating capacity. The gigantic losses incurred by these “serious” power suppliers is discounted by the “green” enthusiasts, gullible politicians and over-excitable journalists who mendaciously claim that “renewable energy” is driving down wholesale electricity prices! “Happy happy” talk of unlimited GW of “cheap”, mass, distributed storage (Powerwalls and such) filling the gap, fails to take into account that only about 1 GW of mostly subsidized, nearly all of limited duration, but in any case far from cheap storage was installed worldwide during 2015.
We do not yet know how the consequences of the inevitable shortages of dispatchable capacity will reveal themselves. But when this happens, wholesale prices must respond, very negatively for consumers and to the huge financial advantage of anyone lucky enough to still own dispatchable capacity, as Norway discovered during the winter 2010 – 2011 when its reservoirs fell below 20% of their capacity. Every fossil plant in the region was base-loading power into Norway to reduce its dependence on hydro.
I think the solution is simple, the dispatchable power producers need to start demanding higher prices for their objectively more valuable electricity, since it’s there when other intermittent sources are less able to produce.
Progress has some common characteristics, the most important being: “less dependency on land and nature” .
Renewables are the opposite of progress. They require enormous space and makes us dependent on the weather. They have no future and are a sad waste of resources and a denial of human ingenuity.
There is no technology yet to leave the fossil fuel era.
Eventually, nuclear technology with likely thorium MSR and compact fusion reactors will take over. Placed close to the consumer, they eliminate large grids, saving billions.
We should not be too concerned for CO2, the basic compound of life on earth. We should do vigorous nuclear research.
If and when. Nuclear has been in decline for quite some time in most parts of the world. I have very little faith in the nuclear industry making a significant contribution on this front in terms of new generation capacity.
“Eventually, nuclear technology with likely thorium MSR and compact fusion reactors will take over.” So the 60 years old dreams are still around? They are always far off and have nothing to do with reality.
It appears inevitable from this analysis that average CO2 emissions per kWh will be rising in Northern Europe. In result, Sweden might withdraw from its objective of full decarbonization by mid-century. Vattenfall’s new coal power plant in Hamburg, Germany, will likely be in operation for another 40 years anyway. It has also become apparent that none of the four bidders (thee Czech and one German) for the company’s eastern German lignite power operations has offered a sufficient price to justify a takeover. Under that circumstance, Vattenfall might decide to retain ownership of these four power plants. Alternatively, a German foundation could be formed to sustain the lignite industry in Lusatia and possibly also the Rhineland. In any case, a good deal of high-carbon low-cost electricity will continue to be available on the European grid.
The coal power plants commisioned recent years are all from decisions from 2008 and before the financial crises that year, and the coal power plants are very delayed, with disastrous financial result. The low elctricity prices are due to over production. If there is an over production with the low prices, who will commision a coal power plant? If no more fossil plants are commisiond, why do you think that that average CO2 emissions per kWh will be rising in Northern Europe? Is it really worth calling this an “analysis”?
If Sweden goes ahead and closes ~8000 MW worth of nuclear production by 2020, at least part of that production will be replaced with something else, and due to the short time frame, a big chunk of that will be imports. With the new transmission connection to mainland Europe, those imports will largely come from there. Baltics, Poland, Germany…
Right now, coal and other fossil fuels have the largest marginal cost of production, and among those, the oldest and most inefficient plants have the highest costs. With a capacity void of that size, those old plants will see a new lease of life in producing and transmitting electricity to Sweden and Finland (or at least they get to operate more to supply domestic markets because there will not be any extra capacity coming to the mainland from the Nordic countries).
So the extra production replacing nuclear will be made on the “margin”. That margin is often (and this is not an opinion) thermal power plants, which right now operate on a low capacity factor and are on the brink of being economically not profitable. No new plants will be needed, since the ones used now can often run more of the time. But that is maybe even worse, since Poland and the Baltic countries have old marginal production capacity that produces at 1000 gCO2/kWh.
To put it bluntly, Sweden might well be “saving” the coal and oilshale (Estonia) industry that has been struggling for the last years, at least for the time being.
Marginal costs are of little concern in Germany, where the continuation of lignite mining is regarded as a social necessity in regions that have made no provisions for prematurely retiring fossil fuel generation. The prospect that Vattenfall’s eastern German lignite assets could soon be sold at far below their book value has not evoked any proposals for simply turning off some of these plants. The required funds might be drawn from current EEG annual revenues of €28 billion if the German energy transition was not so inflexible and commensurately self-defeating. The Vattenfall sale has also underlined the lack of cost coverage for mining land reclamation and the threat of enduring water contamination in the Spree River, which flows right past the Bundestag where these developments may ultimately have to be debated. Across the border, Poland is planning an immense lignite mining project beginning around 2030 with three new power plants that would be in operation for another half-century.
Jeffrey,
Sounds interesting, and terrifying. I was not aware of that project in Poland. If Sweden does close its nuclear (which I hope it won’t) then there is likely a bigger market for that coal power. Do you have a link to that project, some news etc for further reference? Thanks.
If the prices go up, nuclear plants in Sweden will not be decommisioned. if there is an incitament and as already done, it is easy to to build 10 GW wind + 10 GW solar per annum in just Germany. And > 2GW wind per annum in Sweden alone. As stated above, the major system fault with the swedish electricy system is that >10 GW of the about 25 GW peak electricity demand in winter is used for heating.
The thing is, the regulator will shut down the plants by end of 2020 no matter what the price of electricity is, unless they make the investment decision to install those external core coolers now. And right now, it does not look economical to have those plants invested on and operational. Hence, environmentally speaking, it would probably be a great idea to remove that tax.
And, those winds and solars you mentioned can still be built, and they can replace carbon intensive production together with nuclear in mainland europe, and we can cut even more emissions.
I suspect that no matter which way the nuclear thing goes, those wind and solar capacity are going to be built only if they get some subsidies (if they appear solely market based, then great! So far that has not happened nearly anywhere). With the current situation with nuclear, the question is whether the extra, nuclear-specific tax should be removed or not. Imagine wind and solar having a similar tax! What I’m looking for here is a step towards a more level playing field.
In January, I had written an article about the enduring role of coal in Europe that included a treatment of the new 100 square kilometer opencast mining site planned by Polska Grupa Energetyczna (PGE) at Gubin-Brody. The lignite mine would be adjacent to the border and within sight of the Vattenfall Jänschwalde lignite power station. Following a decade of preparation, 17 Mt of lignite annually are to be extracted at that location. Three mine-mouth plants are intended for power generation, each with approximately 830 MW net capacity and a design efficiency of 40 percent. Regrettably, the article was not published at Energy Post due to insufficient coherency. However, it is difficult to imagine what analysis written over the last two months on the coal industry could have qualified as coherent. The fact that Vattenfall may now not be able to sell its eastern German assets would seem to indicate that either those operations will remain in Swedish hands, or the German government will set up a foundation to take them over from Vattenfall. The silence of German and perhaps also Swedish politicians on this issue is deafening.
and you scratch that thing importing from Baltics, Lithuania have ~70% imports, 15% wind, rest imported natural gas and some hydro, Latvia imports less, but mainly in spring when they have hydro, only Estonia have excess capacity, but its dirty oil shale, they have some wind too, but hey its usually windy in whole region.
And for building more wind just look for example feb 22 nordpoolspot prices in Denmark with increasing wind it only will be worse
correction 21 feb, sunday, prices of 1ct/kWh
VS, right. I wanted to touch this more in the article, but there was simply no space.
Lithuania actually just got a new 700 MW transmission cable to Sweden, which they wanted to use to import electricity from Sweden. When they joined EU, they had to close down their Ingalina power plant (RBMK-type, the same that was in Chernobyl, so its understandable), At the same time, EU promised to offer secure energy supply to Lithuania in exchange for closing down Ingalina (this whole thing is perhaps something that would need an article of its own to clarify).
Now it seems that some Swedes think they could use that cable to import energy from the Baltics/Russia. For me it seems that is unlikely to happen. And if it did, that energy would be very dirty.
well Belorus is building 2x1200MW NPP nearby Lithuania, which mainly would reuse existing power lines from closed Ignalina NPP, but it’s not nordpoolspot so real availability is question plus Baltics have plans to synchronize with west…
Quite right VS!
Dispatchable capacity cannot “wash its face” under these politically inspired, so-called “market” conditions!
The whole region is moving towards a surrealistic dependence on inter-connectors for electricity security! Or a bizarre, semi-religious belief that “smart grids” and “cheap” storage will suddenly solve the problem!
Sweden’s 8 GW nuclear shut-down in only four years time might be the trigger for Europe’s technically ignorant, political classes to wake up!
Who knows?
The s**t will hit the fan when
You can’t blame for the wholesale price. Nuclear power plants are owned by consortiums who have activities in both sides of the grid. As a power producer they sell to the grid, as an energy supplier they buy from the grid, owning both activities means they are not exposed to the risk of a fluctuating price. Power plants are not built to make a profit on the spot market, they are here to serve as an insurance for the energy suppliers. The spot market is mostly a gentlemen agreement.
Same goes for policies : we are talking about the so called “nuclear renaissance” since 2000 ! Even when nuclear activists are drafting the energy policy of countries you can’t rely on nuclear for future use. See : UK, France, Finland, Czech Republic… Since 15 years they kept supporting nuclear and still nothing new excepts more debts.
As they say : it’s the economy, stupid !
Nuclear is expensive and you can’t even know how expensive it is until the thing is finally built ! Then these nuclear power plants are not made to be retrofitted. When people are saying they need some billions euros to extend the life of nuke these are only the minimum requirements you know you need to pay… there are no guarantess you won’t need to pay some more billions euros two years later (assuming the plant won’t self destruct in the meantime like TMY, Chernobyl, Mayak or Fukushima.).
So on the production side you don’t know what nuclear is costing you and when it’s available.
On the consumption side, nuclear was owned by monopolies so they basically knew what would be their needs during the lifetime of the plant and could decide on the price (if you think a fixed price is a subsidy how should we call a guaranteed margin!). Today you can see hundred of thousands of consumers leaving you in a matter of days so you need to be able to build, buy or sell powerplants on a very short term and if it’s easy to change ownership of a wind turbine, this is simply not possible to change the ownership of nuclear powerplant every two years.
Nuclear is simply not fitted for the modern consumer-centric electricity market…
I think nuclear activists should stop to talk only to each others and be a bit more open to the reality of the market. Governments can’t do anything for you, what you need is to convince banks to join in and there is a long way to gobecause there is currently no way they will keep their money in such a hasardous investment as repairing a NPP.
Anyway as you states in your alternative the only risk you can find is a short term rising of emissions if renewable alternatives are not fast enough to grow (assuming for various reasons you would not able to connect as much renewables in Sweden as german developpers can certainly install in 6 months), so it won’t change the face of the earth… That’s only a few years of CO2 certificates which will finance CO2 reductions in other places of Europe.
Your article is actually a good reminder that we can’t really take for granted the emissions reduction from nuclear in the near future and probably that renewables would need to be growing even faster than we imagined as they will need to replace both fossil fuels and the nuclear capacity that will disappear.
What’s really really dumb is letting those already-built-and=working-fine nukes close because of unfair pitting of over-taxed nukes against subsidized renewables. Crazy! It’s not just happening in Nordic areas, It’s the same in North America.
There really needs to be an adjustment of market mechanisms too. Spot prices are fine for short-term needs but for base load there needs to be some sort of longer-term contracted pricing scheme put in place for guaranteed delivery to establish financial justification for capital-intensive assets like nuclear.
Come on we all know ageing nuclear reactors are a nightmare to maintain. As I said nuclear owners are not exposed to the spot price as they buy their own electricity. What you need is a nuclear technology which is cheaper, smaller and more reliable.
…the “lights start going out”!
Hello Rauli,
You may appreciate this article, as increasingly we in the US hear about Hinckley C, but not much further into Europe on the impacts of closing nuclear plants.
In NY, where I am currently, there are 6 reactors. Two at Indian Point, close to NYC that the ‘centers of power’ want to close without alternate generation sources. While far from the city on Lake Ontario, there are 2 stand alone small reactors (one is adjacent to the other pair, but different ownership) that their owners want to close as they’re at the end of their life & no longer economical, but the ‘centers of power’ want them to remain open… as again, there is no alternative power generation.
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/explosion-technology-cheerleading-draws-flourish-pragmatic-hans-hyde
Yes, maybe it is a bit premature for Sweden to close so much of it’s nuclear capacity, before replacements can be built.
But let’s be clear on the main point: nuclear power must be abandoned as fast as possible, not only because of the (still unresolved!) fuel waste that will be dangerously radioactive for thousands of years, but also because that kind of centralized power generation is too fragile for today’s extreme weather events, and possible terrorism.
Remember that only a fraction of the radioactive waste produced in Europe during the last decades have been finally laid to rest anywhere. Most of it is still in temporary storage only. The EU recently issued a directive stating that member states had to find final solutions for this stuff.
Who is gonna pay for guarding that stuff for thousands of years? Who will even remember what is buried where and how dangerous it is in a few thousand years?
I kind of disagree with you. Here is my reasoning:
1st, nuclear waste. We have not yet deposited any of it, but mainly this is due to two things: 1. there is no rush, its quite safe where it is now so why hurry and 2. the decision is political, and when you mix nuclear energy with politics, its going to be a mess almost every time. Finland will start its repository in a few years.
Also, that waste is actually not that dangerous people commonly believe (this is due to totally unrealistic demands made on the “possible harm caused by it”). After abt 1000 years the radioactive dose from the spent fuel will be similar to fresh fuel put in the reactor, which means its safe to be near. Its actually safe to be near much, much earlier. The problems we have with the waste are not technical, nor are they economical, nor do they have anything to do with health and safety (as compared with other human activities). They are mainly political: we need to decide what to do with the waste. Solutions are readily available, but it is a tough decision politically (Finland and Sweden has made those very democratically so it is not impossible).
Nobody needs to guard this stuff for thousands of years. There is nothing to guard, spent fuel is mainly U238 (which is only slightly radioactive and mildly toxic as a heavy metal) and some (under 1 percent) reactor grade plutonium (same thing as above). The actually radioactive stuff will be mostly gone in abt 300 years (like strontium-90 and cesium-137 which have half-lives of abt 30 years).
There are arguments for both centralized power generation (power plants and big wind&solar farms) and distributed (smaller plants & farms). For example, it is much easier to actually weather proof just a few plants than to do it for hundred smaller plants, although of course the distributed network doesn’t suffer so much damage from a local event. We also have a centralized transmission network, and we would need a lot more of it if we want to have a reliable super-grid that is required often by distributed schemes (moving all that electricity from many locations to others).
I would like to see us “fight” terrorism with other tools than just using it for anti-nuclear ends to spread more fear and terror. But I do agree that large power plants in general, as well as chemical / biological factories and such, should be assessed for terrorist threat.
Similar forecasts (instabilities, high prices, price spikes, outages, etc) were made by many authors about the German Energiewende in the first decade of this century when the Energiewende took steam.
Despite many English publications about supposed instabilities and to be expected outages, none turned out. The already reliable German electricity supply became even more reliable!
The initial high price spikes disappeared gradual as loads and generation adapted. The averaged whole sale price gradually decreased further to an even lower level.
Sweden is in a much better situation with:
– its large hydro, which allow fast adaptation to changing demand and wind generation.
– its large space, which allow for fast development of more wind.
– the strongly improved state of Power-to-Gas.
So it will end with less CO2/KWh as the total nuclear cycle produce substantial amounts as shown by studies referenced in this overview (~50% of natural gas).
Thanx for bringing in a bit of sense! There are too many errors and misinformation in Rauli Partanen’s post, so I couldn’t be bothered to list them all.
Rauli, you need to update your knowledge base 🙂 There are big things happening in the energy sector that you seem to be unaware of. Check out f.ex. Cleantechnica.com for a few days. Lots of news about new renewable energy being built around the world, but also deeper analyzes, especially by Zachary Shahan
A typical “troll” comment! You can’t be “bothered…”? Shame on you!
Bas
I don’t actually care that much what someone has written about german grid before (I have written some stuff myself as well, so far my fears have been panning out more accurately than I would have preferred), and that is no argument for or against anything in my article. What I do care about is the German emissions. Have you checked what has been happening with them in the 2000s? I have. Practically nothing (perhaps half a percent down per year). Electricity & heat gco2/kwh are actually up a bit.
I use IPCC and NREL (National Renewable Energy Laboratory in the US), among other institutions, as a source for my data for co2/kWh for various energy sources. The median estimate for nuclear is 10-13 gCO2/kWh. About the same as wind, several times lower than solar PV. Which are all low carbon in my books.
That article you linked mentioned for example the so called Storm&Smith -website/study. That is not even peer reviewed (although that did not prevent Sovacool from using it as a source in his paper on the matter). S&S study is full of ridiculous assumptions. Lets take just one: Forsmark NPP in Sweden, which has very meticulous bookkeeping on what energy and materials have gone into it (I mean real life book keeping). S&S manages to get “model” it to have almost 60 times as much energy inputs that has actually gone into it!
And another: They also readily assume that one uranium mine consumes more energy than the whole country it is located in. Priceless. But still this “study” gets cited and recycled around year after year like a broken record.
So can we stay with mainstream science and not go cherry-picking to the fringes? IPCC is fine with me, doesn’t get much more mainstream than that.
On the subject of Sweden: yes, it has large hydro capacity and could use it to load-follow large amounts of wind. But that misses the larger picture. Sweden has very good transmission connections to its neighbors. That hydro, wind AND nuclear they produce is used every day to replace coal power in their neighboring countries (Finland, Lithuania, Estonia, Denmark, and further still to Germany and Poland). Those exports will disappear and then some if the swedish nuclear fleet was to disappear (which it, gladly, is not doing at least for a few years yet). It would be an amazing day for the Polish coal industry. And even though I have nothing against the Polish, it is a day I would rather not see.
Your (IPCC & NREL) CO2 figures for nuclear concern emissions of operating nuclear plants. Those are only small part of the emissions of the necessary nuclear fuel cycle.
The main emissions are by uranium ore mining*), transport, milling, enrichment, fuel rod fabrication, etc.
Though less, we should also consider the emissions due to the guarded nuclear waste storage during centuries, etc.
Then also add the emissions (cleaning, etc) caused by the nuclear disasters in which near 1% of the nuclear reactors ended (chance bigger when they get older. 0.5% for old Swedish reactors?
So 200-800gr/KWh for nuclear is a good estimation (wind: 10-20gr/KWh, gas: 400-1000gr/KWh). Check the studies referenced in my previous link.
“German emissions … what … in the 2000s
I assume that it’s independent from the Energiewende that Germans now drive in bigger cars, which create more CO2.
So I restrict to electricity generation.
CO2 played hardly a role in the Energiewende decisions in the nineties. E.g. the idea that we consume all fossil fuel and nothing will be left for our grand-children (Rome report) was far more important then. The by far biggest motivator to start such big 50years ‘adventure’ (though studies showed it was feasible) in 2000, was the drive to move all nuclear out asap.
The share of Nuclear was in 2000 29%, is now 14% and will be zero in 2023. Thereafter reduction of fossil will take steam.
But in addition to nuclear, fossil was reduced also substantially already. From 360TWh in 2000 towards 338TWh in 2015 (from 62% towards 52% of production).
Furthermore, especially coal is now (partly) burned in 30% more efficient plants, so 30% less CO2/KWh.
So the CO2 reduction per KWh was ~10%.
The great fossil reductions will start after reaching the first target of the Energiewende in 2022.
________________
*) Not in EU, etc. But e.g. in Niger. France & allies even fight a war in Mali to keep the uranium ore transport route open from Niger to the sea.
Nope. These nubers are fron life cycle assesments. They include pretty much everything that has a significant effect: fuel production/enrichment/fabrication, plant construction, decommission etc. The guys doing these studies are not fools, they know what they are doing. As far as I know, the study done by NREL was one of the most comprehensive studies done on the subject.
Here is a quote from NREL:
“Collectively, life cycle assessment literature shows that nuclear power is similar to other renewable and much lower than fossil fuel in total life cycle GHG emissions.”
Check it out here: http://www.nrel.gov/analysis/sustain_lca_nuclear.html
So no, 200-800 gCO2/kWh is not a good estimation. 10-15 is a good estimation. Actually, it is the best estimation we have, scientifically. If you start adding up your own stuff, you are double counting (and adding imaginatory emissions as well since no amount of “double counting” would increase the emissions past 50 grams). So, again, can we stick with mainstream science instead of fringe cherries? This is the frigging National RENEWABLES lab, so I would guess they don’t have a big bias FOR nuclear…?
If Energiewende is “a project to rid a nation of nuclear power” it has been very successful, I admit. But it is often portrayed as climate change mitigation project, and used as an example how we should go about fighting climate change everywhere (ie close nuclear first , build shitloads of renewables with hefty subsidies/feed-in-tariffs)
Here is a graph of Germany’s burning in the 2000s.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/0olilxhn2pqrmbg/germany-burning-2000-2015.JPG?dl=0
2015 was the first year (due to some big wind projects coming online) that germany added significantly more clean energy than has been closed by nuclear. Here is another graph:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/rhpi6poyt8inlqv/germany-cleanelectricity2000-2015.JPG?dl=0
German grid still has average emissions of ~500 gCO2/kwh. It has been a horribly ineffective and expensive way to fight climate change, and can mainly offer us lessons on how NOT to go about it.
Rauli,
The “recent” (2011) IPCC special report and PPT concerns only renewable. Seems nuclear is off the table for them. Can you state a link to the IPCC study with conclusions about CO2/KWh of nuclear, etc?
NREL chose some ‘averages’ of selected studies, which they call ‘harmonization’. And most of their selected studies are done by pro-nuclear, so …
Even then, their result is 3-4 times higher than the 10-13grCO2/KWh that you state for nuclear (check their ‘factsheet’).
Their report, etc create the impression that some novice made them. E.g. Same emissions for classic and fluidized bed (super-critical) coal while fluidized bed coal has 30% higher efficiency which implies 30% less CO2/KWh, etc.
But lets see whether IPCC did a real study??
Furthermore:
1. There is a huge variance in the CO2 emission value over time.
– For nuclear it went substantially up. Mainly due to uranium ore becoming less rich, etc.
– For PV-solar and wind it went down (e.g. PV with thinner slices, etc) which deliver cost decreases of ~8%/a.
So results from <2011 have no value any more.
2. I didn't see info (yet) which shows that my previous estimate, which is supported by the most elaborate study I've seen (v.Leeuwen etal), is wrong.
I was referring to IPCC Assessment Report 5 (AR5) that came out in 2014.
Both IPCC and NREL did an assessment of available, peer-reviewed studies, and report their median results. This method leaves out fringe-studies and single anomalies and gives the best estimate that current literature gives. Ie. it does precisely what I have already twice been asking for: lets stick to mainstream studies and leave fringe cherry picking out.
The source is:
https://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar5/wg3/ipcc_wg3_ar5_full.pdf
*Chapter 7. Page 539.
Here is a link to a simplified version of the graph, showing only the median estimates, from our book on the matter:
https://climategamble.net/2015/12/01/carbon-intensity-of-electric-power-sources-weekly-pic/
But if you want to cherry pick your evidence, just say so. We can then proceed to cherry-picking the studies on climate change and prove that there is no such thing and we don’t have a problem. 😀
How do you know that the majority of studies on nuclear emissions is done by what you call “pro-nuclear” researchers, and are you implying that they are lying, by an order of magnitude?
NREL says on that page I linked to, this:
“Assuming consistent performance characteristics, the median LC GHG emissions estimates were nearly identical for PWR and BWR technologies after harmonization. The median life cycle GHG emission estimates for PWR and BWR technology types are 14 and 21 g CO2eq/kWh, respectively, as published, and 12 and 13 g CO2eq/kWh, respectively after harmonization.”
And I agree that PV panels have likely come down on their energy intensity, and therefore should have lower emissions. On the other hand, lately their manufacturing has been concentrating largely on China, which mean that their emissions would go up because of dirtier energy used for their manufacturing. I don’t know the exact numbers, so I stick with the mainstream median assessment: It is rarely spot on right but there is reason to believe that it is roughly in the ballpark.
The IPCC report (p.538-340) figures based on selected(!) studies (in gCO²eq/KWh):
– Gas: 410-650
– PV-solar: 18–180
– Wind: 7 – 56
– Nuclear: 4 – 110
As these figures are based on older research (~2011) you may assume that
emissions for:
– solar and wind went substantial down as reflected by their substantial price decreases;
– nuclear went substantial up as reflected in its substantial price increases (also depletion of richer Uranium layers).
Study delivering 4gCO²eq/KWh was selected for nuclear while more elaborate studies showing >150gCO²eq/KWh were excluded…
It shows the bias. Not unusual as shown by the ridiculous low victim figures similar UN related organizations stated about e.g. Chernobyl.
From the NREL page: “These life cycle assessments have had wide-ranging results.”
You choose near the low end, I’m more skeptic and estimate ~50% of the emissions of gas. Also based on common sense.
Ok. so, in practice, you take the fringe study, I take the median.
It is great if solar and wind have gone down. Although, as noted in our website, these numbers do not include any storage or load following that has to be done with variable energy sources. And the number are also old in the sense that curently most panels are made in china with much dirtier energy – even though the processes and tech are more efficient.
One thing we have to remember with nuclear: gas diffusion enrichment, which was a large part of the energy input of nuclear, is no longer, as we only use centrifuges today (which are roughly 50 times more energy efficient).
Further, you mentioned poorer uranium deposits. Do you have some data on how this has changed in the last, say, decade?
Uranium price is pretty low, and that should reflect the costs of production inputs. And given that uranium price is just a few percent of nuclear energy total cost, it should not have a big impact on carbon emissions even if those prices were to increase significantly.
Also, about half of uranium is produced by in-situ leaching, where mining activities are minimal. Yet you seem eager to grow nuclear powers median emissions manifold.
I do remember one “study” by Jacobson et co on this. They even included the emissions from nuclear war into the emissions balance of civilian nuclear power, alongside of counting emissions from coal plants for the duration if a nuclear project was late from schedule. Would that happen to be one of the “elaborate studies” you mentioned? 😀
That study of 4Gco2/kwh might be the actual numbers from Forsmark power plant operating in the real world, its in the neighborhood if I remember right. It makes it kinda hard to leave out, it not being based on any models and such, but actual inputs. .
Considering Finland and France are both importing CO2 intensive electricity to make up for the delay in their atomic power plants that sounds pretty legitimate. When France was looking at building new nuclear and retiring old ones it was specifically mentioned there would have to be a large amount of natural gas power needed to cover a 10 year gap. (You need that grid reinforcement from the old nuke in order to build the new nuke)
Well, Finland is importing clean electricity mostly from Sweden, but anyway, I do see the point. Marginal electricity production is often coal (Sweden might be able to export somewhere else instead of Finland although transmission capacity is somewhat limited)
If we keep the goal posts roughly in the same place, I guess when wind and solar are not producing at capacity, coal is burned. So I guess that should be included in their carbon footprint as well: coal will be burned in the margin to make up for their non-production. That makes wind power roughly 60-70 % coal and solar PV 75-90 % coal.
France has new laws which target:
– to decrease nuclear share from >75% now towards <50% in 2025;
– to increase renewable fast (to replace the loss).
Indeed every time I drive now through France there are a lot of new wind turbines.
Are: “There are too many errors and misinformation in Rauli Partanen’s post, so I couldn’t be bothered to list them all.”
No. Either there are errors and misinformation and you point them out and then preferably give me credible citations to back your arguments up or there is no errors and misinformation as far as you are concerned. But don’t be a troll, throwing stuff in the air and not backing it up in any way.
You don’t have to point them out all at once, I’m totally fine going one by one, and I am also happy to learn of any mistakes I have made.
On the general subject of nuclear emissions, a recent study just came out and found uranium mining to cause 1 gCO2/kWh of emissions. Less than 10 percent of the 12 gCO/kWh nuclear produces.
Here is a news link on the matter.
http://thestarphoenix.com/business/mining/uranium-mining-contributes-small-fraction-of-total-nuclear-power-emissions-study-says
It’s a student study motivated by: “.. gaps in our understanding about what the actual emissions from the full nuclear fuel cycle…”
Funded by the Sylvia Fedoruk Canadian Centre for Nuclear Innovation.
The data came from uranium companies (because it would have been difficult to obtain otherwise).
So it’s nuclear filling the gap they left with other studies regarding the CO2 emissions of nuclear electricity with a rosy picture.
They probably only looked at leach mining and even then….
Yes, it is healthy to to skeptic about studies that are funded by industry or trade-organizations (but do note that the study was actually carried out in university I think). On the other hand, this is often used in a way that when someone who actually knows something about nuclear energy does a study of her expertise, it is brushed away as biased, on the grounds that “she actually works in the nuclear field”. Not saying you are doing that here, but it’s close (they are a centre for nuclear innovation, so you use that as an argument that they must be lying and/or biased).
And then you do it again in the next sentence: the data came from uranium companies. Yes, probably. But you then use that as proof that the data must be false and/or biased.
If you have actual arguments, lets hear them. I mean, how many times over can the data be screwed over with? 2 times (so its 2 grams instead of 1)? 5 times (5 grams)?
At some point, someone searching for actual evidence is bound to notice – given that there are many organizations in this world who would love to f*ck over any study that says anything remotely positive about nuclear.
I have been searching for these critiques. You know what? they are very rare, and almost always come as non-peer reviewed essays filled with no data and lots of fearmongering and fallacious arguments. I suspect that this is precisely because everyone working even near the nuclear industry knows that there is a shitload of people and organizations who would love to catch them on a lie or even a small error. The publicity would be instant and huge.
Yet the end of the story reads:
“Parker said the data came from uranium companies because it would have been difficult to obtain otherwise. The study was conducted independently and reviewed by other scientists, including noted nuclear skeptics, he added.”
Now he might just be saying that, but I’m sure the study can be read and criticized in a peer reviewed journal again by other. Again, people would love to catch them actually lying.
So lets try to stick to actual arguments, not fallacious arguments and speculations such as the ones presented.
On the subject of leeching, yeah, it might be, I don’t know I have not had time to read the whole study. But half of uranium is produced with leeching so even that would be big. Only roughly third is uranium mining, as some is also produced as a side-product of other mining activities (if I remember right, some anti-nuclear studies promptly calculate all of the mining activity on these cases to be from uranium, of course!).
There is a quote on the news article that does not mention it is only leeching but actually gives the impression its on the whole:
“One area with a lot of gaps that critics was pointing to was mining and milling. The thought was this gap in our understanding of greenhouse gas emissions from uranium mining and milling might be a significant contributor to total emissions.”
Parker’s paper, published in the peer-reviewed journal Environmental Science and Technology, found that uranium mining contributes about one gram of carbon dioxide equivalent per kilowatt hour to the nuclear fuel cycle.”
World nuclear news had a bit more informative article on the study, to be found here:
http://www.world-nuclear-news.org/EE-Low-emissions-from-Canadian-uranium-mining-0906167.html
It was only the local mining activities that were inspected, which has the highest ore quality in the world. The study seems rather rigorous:
“The life cycle assessment involved gathering information on all the greenhouse gases emitted by everything used in the mining and milling of uranium at three Saskatchewan sites, including fuel used in heavy machinery and to power facilities, the concrete and steel used in construction, emissions from flying workers to and from the mine sites and even took into account emissions from company head offices.”
“…They found the dominant sources of emissions to be the electricity consumed and the propane used for heating at the sites in northern Saskatchewan.”