The Japanese government should consider a fundamental change in its current nuclear energy policy if it wants to recover the public’s trust in nuclear power, writes Tatsujiro Suzuki, Director of the Research Center for Nuclear Weapons Abolition at Nagasaki University. According to Suzuki, staying on the current path will undermine Japan’s economic and political security. Courtesy of The Conversation.
Six years have passed since the Fukushima nuclear disaster on March 11, 2011, but Japan is still dealing with its impacts. Decommissioning the damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant poses unprecedented technical challenges. More than 100,000 people were evacuated but only about 13 percent have returned home, although the government has announced that it is safe to return to some evacuation zones.
In late 2016 the government estimated total costs from the nuclear accident at about 22 trillion yen, or about US$188 billion – approximately twice as high as its previous estimate. The government is developing a plan under which consumers and citizens will bear some of those costs through higher electric rates, taxes or both.
The Japanese public has lost faith in nuclear safety regulation, and a majority favors phasing out nuclear power. However, Japan’s current energy policy assumes nuclear power will play a role. To move forward, Japan needs to find a new way of making decisions about its energy future.
Uncertainty over nuclear power
When the earthquake and tsunami struck in 2011, Japan had 54 operating nuclear reactors which produced about one-third of its electricity supply. After the meltdowns at Fukushima, Japanese utilities shut down their 50 intact reactors one by one. In 2012 then-Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda’s government announced that it would try to phase out all nuclear power by 2040, after existing plants reached the end of their 40-year licensed operating lives.
Now, however, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who took office at the end of 2012, says that Japan “cannot do without” nuclear power. Three reactors have started back up under new standards issued by Japan’s Nuclear Regulation Authority, which was created in 2012 to regulate nuclear safety. One was shut down again due to legal challenges by citizens groups. Another 21 restart applications are under review.
U.S. Energy Information Administration
In April 2014 the government released its first post-Fukushima strategic energy plan, which called for keeping some nuclear plants as baseload power sources – stations that run consistently around the clock. The plan did not rule out building new nuclear plants. The Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI), which is responsible for national energy policy, published a long-term plan in 2015 which suggested that nuclear power should produce 20 to 22 percent of Japan’s electricity by 2030.
Meanwhile, thanks mainly to strong energy conservation efforts and increased energy efficiency, total electricity demand has been falling since 2011. There has been no power shortage even without nuclear power plants. The price of electricity rose by more than 20 percent in 2012 and 2013, but then stabilized and even declined slightly as consumers reduced fossil fuel use.
U.S. Energy Information Administration
Japan’s Basic Energy Law requires the government to release a strategic energy plan every three years, so debate over the new plan is expected to start sometime this year.
Public mistrust
The most serious challenge that policymakers and the nuclear industry face in Japan is a loss of public trust, which remains low six years after the meltdowns. In a 2015 poll by the pro-nuclear Japan Atomic Energy Relations Organization, 47.9 percent of respondents said that nuclear energy should be abolished gradually and 14.8 percent said that it should be abolished immediately. Only 10.1 percent said that the use of nuclear energy should be maintained, and a mere 1.7 percent said that it should be increased.
Another survey by the newspaper Asahi Shimbun in 2016 was even more negative. Fifty-seven percent of the public opposed restarting existing nuclear power plants even if they satisfied new regulatory standards, and 73 percent supported a phaseout of nuclear power, with 14 percent advocating an immediate shutdown of all nuclear plants.
Who should pay to clean up Fukushima?
METI’s 22 trillion yen estimate for total damages from the Fukushima meltdowns is equivalent to about one-fifth of Japan’s annual general accounting budget. About 40 percent of this sum will cover decommissioning the crippled nuclear reactors. Compensation expenses account for another 40 percent, and the remainder will pay for decontaminating affected areas for residents.
Under a special financing scheme enacted after the Fukushima disaster, Tepco, the utility responsible for the accident, is expected to pay cleanup costs, aided by favorable government-backed financing. However, with cost estimates rising, the government has proposed to have Tepco bear roughly 70 percent of the cost, with other electricity companies contributing about 20 percent and the government – that is, taxpayers – paying about 10 percent.
This decision has generated criticism both from experts and consumers. In a December 2016 poll by the business newspaper Nihon Keizai Shimbun, one-third of respondents (the largest group) said that Tepco should bear all costs and no additional charges should be added to electricity rates. Without greater transparency and accountability, the government will have trouble convincing the public to share in cleanup costs.
Other nuclear burdens: Spent fuel and separated plutonium
Japanese nuclear operators and governments also must find safe and secure ways to manage growing stockpiles of irradiated nuclear fuel and weapon-usable separated plutonium.
At the end of 2016 Japan had 14,000 tons of spent nuclear fuel stored at nuclear power plants, filling about 70 percent of its onsite storage capacity. Government policy calls for reprocessing spent fuel to recover its plutonium and uranium content. But the fuel storage pool at Rokkasho, Japan’s only commercial reprocessing plant, is nearly full, and a planned interim storage facility at Mutsu has not started up yet.
The best option would be to move spent fuel to dry cask storage, which withstood the earthquake and tsunami at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant. Dry cask storage is widely used in many countries, but Japan currently has it at only a few nuclear sites. In my view, increasing this capacity and finding a candidate site for final disposal of spent fuel are urgent priorities.
Japan also has nearly 48 tons of separated plutonium, of which 10.8 tons are stored in Japan and 37.1 tons are in France and the United Kingdom. Just one ton of separated plutonium is enough material to make more than 120 crude nuclear weapons.
Many countries have expressed concerns about Japan’s plans to store plutonium and use it in nuclear fuel. Some, such as China, worry that Japan could use the material to quickly produce nuclear weapons.
Now, when Japan has only two reactors operating and its future nuclear capacity is uncertain, there is less rationale than ever to continue separating plutonium. Maintaining this policy could increase security concerns and regional tensions, and might spur a “plutonium race” in the region.
As a close observer of Japanese nuclear policy decisions from both inside and outside of the government, I know that change in this sector does not happen quickly. But in my view, the Abe government should consider fundamental shifts in nuclear energy policy to recover public trust. Staying on the current path may undermine Japan’s economic and political security. The top priority should be to initiate a national debate and a comprehensive assessment of Japan’s nuclear policy.
Editor’s Note
This article was first published by The Conversation and is republished here under a Creative Commons licence.
Helmut Frik says
At energy collective where as it seems only nuclear fans are allowed to comment, and others are blocked, they claim that nuclear is replaced by coal, oil and gas power only.
This is correct for the first years after fukushima desaster.
But if I look at Figure 7, and extend the lines to 2017 for another two years to this year, The use of Coal oil and gas is likely to have fallen to the level of 2007 again and falling further, so nuclear is being replaced by dropping enegy use and renewable power expansion.
I also have problems to see wherethe proposed additional coal capacity should have place in the existing market in Japan. Althoug expansion of renewable generation is still slow in Japan.
Karel Beckman says
Have you ever been blocked at The Energy Collective? I doubt it very much. Don’t spread misinformation please. TEC has a lot of nuclear supporters among its readers but we do publish nuclear-critical articles there and allow all civil comments.
R. L. Hails Sr. P. E. (ret.) says
A valuable article. It is fully understandable that the Japanese public has turned away from nuclear power. And the back end problems were identified as significant issues.
I might contribute, although I know nothing about Japan. {I, a retired engineer, worked on a score of US nukes, nine like Fukushima (plus two score carbon fueled power plants), led the engineering team on the first US dry cask storage facility and spend decades assessing advanced technologies.}
All US nukes require, for survival, electricity during and after any conceivable problem. Fukushima, a plant designed with slide rules in the early 1960s, failed that requirement. The State of the Art in plate tectonics and tsunami science, predicted, several years before the event date, that the plant might be unsafe. The electrical gear, located in the basement could short out by the expected reassessed flood. TEPCO was told but did nothing. A modest investment would have saved that plant and avoided this disaster. All nukes should be reassessed as science reveals more about their safety standards and fixed as needed. And fairness demands the statement that this earthquake and tsunami were enormous by any standard.
Spent fuel is poorly named. The metals and materials in the fuel have their properties slightly changed in the fury of the nuclear reaction. When important properties, e.g. shape or material properties are slightly altered, the fuel is deemed spent and sent to a nearby pool of water where its intense radioactivities calm down. But it contains perhaps 90 %+ of its latent energy. After a decade, it is feasible to either reprocess it (repackage it) as fuel, bury it in a grave, or put it in massive garbage cans (expensive containers) for short time, a few decades. This empties the pool, make space for more spent fuel.
These options for the “back end” of the fuel cycle are interrelated with national security issues and politics. Japan may seek a different way than either the US, or China, two important foreign nations.
Japan is a nation of highly educated, talented, industrious people with a dense population and has little native fuels. To my knowledge, most of it is seismically active. If the nation can accept and engineer nuclear power plants, considering the above, it will enrich the society. No society could tolerate another Fukushima. Energy is vital for survival and prudent risks must be taken.
The people should decide.
priffe says
What you are saying is that Fukushima could easily have been avoided IF they had secured the emergency power supply.
And as the meltdown happened, the emissions would have been contained IF they had installed what we have here – a security valve with a filter, to release the pressure. As it were, they couldnt, and there was a hydrogen explosion, with the consequences we have seen.
The prime minister himself refused to let them release the pressure, from what I have heard. After the accident, he became negative to nuclear. Go figure.
Now the Japanese can continue to burn fossils, while watching Korea, China, Russia and India develop power for the future.
USA and EU have also lost the initiative, due to activism, folly, poor science and the media scare.
Everyone inclduing the IPCC realizes that renewables will not replace fossil in the next few decades. And certainly not fossil PLUS nuclear. Be honest, please.
In the long run, solar certainly will, when we have figured out storage. Wind is a distraction.
TheMeerkat says
Nuclear high science of denial won’t work after sadly start of ongoing tragedy at Fukushima.
Science behind Energiewende in Germany is not poor at all.
I love Energiewende because of challenge, commitment, transparency, applied science, capability to absorb even more applied science in future, redundancy, lower financial risk than nuclear.
Of course Energiewende have drawbacks like anything else but I think Japan should follow that practical example with an even better project.
Nuclear industry with 5 meltdowns reactors in 50 years proven as poor science by now.
Craig Phillips says
Thorium molten salt reactors are the answer.
Why […] have the Japanese not been all over this possibility is the real question. For less than 1/4 of 1% of the $188 billion spent by the Japanese government since Fukushima , the Japanese could have built their own molten salt reactor project just like Oak Ridge Laboratories had in the 1960’s and early 70’s;
– Reactors that can never suffer meltdown, unlike light water reactors (LWR)
– that operate at atmospheric pressure only (instead of massive pressure in LWR’s) enabling them to be built in modular fashion possibly like Boeings on an assembly line with MUCH lower build costs
– that enable the use of almost all the fuel, leaving less than 1% leftover as waste (unlike LWR’s that are the exact opposite leaving almost 99% waste having only used less than 1% of the fuel)
-That already have a massive bank of research data from Oak Ridge National Labs from the “Molten Salt Reactor Project” which included building a pilot reactor of 9 MW which ran for 9000 hours over 3 years and worked perfectly, information that is now public domain and on which the Chinese taken & are utilising in their current 300 million Molten Salt reactor research project
Uranium fuel dissolved into a molten salt mix would be a massive advancement for nuclear energy as it would provide these advantages over the current LWR technology.
However even better would be to jump to Thorium instead of uranium, because Thorium has even MORE advantages;
-Thorium is more common than Uranium ( approx. 4 times )
-Thorium is present in every single country of the world with some countries having large concentrations
-Thorium does NOT require enrichment unlike uranium – so no need for any centrifuges, which give greater clarity as to which nations are developing atomic power for civilian purposes or to develop weapons
-Thorium waste while minuscule in volume contains rare stuff that’s great for science, and of the rest of it, 70% is okay in 30 years, and the rest within 300 years
Come on Japan; lift your game!
Kevin J. Rice says
Yes and No: MSR’s use liquid sodium as coolant, which reacts with every freakin’ thing around. Apparently the main economic problem w/ MSR’s is the pipes only last 10 years before they are corroded. This is a big problem. I like the Gen 4 helium-chamber carbide-ball “pebble-bed” reactors better from a safety standpoint. Alas. Neither option will get funding, it’s stupid since solar/wind/battery tech is riding an experience curve down to very, very low $/MWh. Would be nice to have $ for low-probability but high-payout fusion ideas like PPP and sonofusion, though, instead of it all going to ITER.
Ian Hore-Lacy says
MSRs use fluoride salts, not sodium. Similar to aluminium smelter. http://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/current-and-future-generation/molten-salt-reactors.aspx
Ian Hore-Lacy says
Japan’s arrangements for the back end of the fuel cycle have been carefully worked out and progressively implemented since 1984. The main hold ups have been problems with a DIY local vitrification plant at the tail end of the French reprocessing plant (based on Areva La Hague), and new regulations published in November 2013. While the seismic aspects were OK, the overall NRA safety review is taking longer than expected.
The J-MOX plant is also delayed and operation is expected from September 2019.
Details in: http://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/country-profiles/countries-g-n/japan-nuclear-fuel-cycle.aspx
Philip D'Angelo says
As T.S. Eliot said “Only those who risk going too far can possibly find out how far they can go.” I understand the reluctance of society to trust what they believe has failed.
Three significant nuclear events in ~66 years of nuclear generation with Approx. 450 commercial Rx on-line world-wide. These events just like plane crashes, tsunamis, earthquakes, wars, volcanos etc. etc… make us more aware of the limitations of our control over our environment and man-made events but they also force us to exercise our genius to finds ways to cope with and find ways around them. Human progress is not a self-starter, it needs to be pushed and big events, good and bad, provide the motive force to move forward even if it appears to be up hill. Some people move away to “Safer Places” if they live in areas of natural disasters, others stay and learn how to live within its limitations. What it comes down to is nothing is perfectly safe and we all are assessing Risk every minute we live whether we know it or not. As Helen Keller said “Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure or nothing”. I prefer to find out how far we can go. I am not trying to be cavalier, just trying to bring some perspective to life and the risks of living life on a blue marble in an infinite universe.
Consider that events, even when planned in detail do not always conform to forecasts. Fuku had multiple levels of provision for backup power. But the emergency plan assumed that the infrastructure in the surrounding community and the on-site Diesel Generators would be available, which was a deficiency that should have been obvious to anyone reviewing the EP. Essentially, a perfect storm ran head-first into an imperfect emergency plan and a new reality was born. The perfect reason to never assume.
Where do we go from hear? Mankind is paying the price for lessons learned and it is up to mankind to choose to learn, adapt, and overcome or to stop. Nuclear power is a technology that makes sense for long-term high volume power production. The bright-light of experience based knowledge needs to be brought to bear on nuclear system design issues as well as on the political, social and management failures that precipitated these events. The Fuku events could have been and most assuredly should have been addressed in the initial design and construction phase but while placing blame may sooth egos it is not long lasting. We must look forward and consider that we are paying the price for the experience gained and therefore, have an obligation to focus on cleaning up Fuku and using the knowledge gained to minimize future events, permitting the beat to go on. Mankind has no choice but to clean up the mess, so we may as well benefit from the knowledge gained.
priffe says
One lesson is to build better reactors, which is being done.
And a good lesson can be learnt from Fukushima 2, where they avoided catastrophy through a concerted effort to supply emergency power by using cables up to a mile long iirc.
And from Fukushima 1, we can also learn that in spite of the poor design and the human failure, noone died from radiation.
Noone.
The radioactive scare kill many more than radiation itself.
Ian Hore-Lacy says
Though 1960s technology, there was nothing fundamentally wrong with the Fukushima Daiichi reactors. If they had been built 10 metres higher above sea level* most people would never have heard of them. (*or other sensible provision made re generators, coolant pumps and a bit of waterproofing lower levels.)
Yes, newer reactors are better, but they dont really need to be to achieve safety, even in seismic Japan.
Helmut Frik says
Well that’S the usual problem with black swans. Once they have shown up and the desaster is there everybody sees that “if we would have done this and that” the desaster would not have happened.
But it’s only “after” that the things become obvious.
John Fuoto says
Light Water Reactor produced plutonium is a mixture of Pu isotopes that make it completely unsuitable for use as a nuclear weapon. Nor are there effective ways to separate the isotopes as it is for uranium. Let’s stop the incorrect assumption that fuel discharged from a commercial LWR contains Pu suitable for nuclear weapons. “Burning” weapons grade Pu in MOX fuel rods and recycling the reactor grade Pu is the most effective and efficient way of making sure that Pu can’t be used for a nuclear bomb.
K Ricci says
Although reactor grade plutonium cannot make a RELIABLE high-yield nuclear weapon, USA national lab simulations show that it could be used to make an unreliable, low-yield weapon with an unpredictable yield between 100 tonnes TNT and 4 kilotonnes TNT equivalent energy. This would not be useful as a tactical or strategic nuclear weapon for national defense, but could still be an attractive option for a terrorist group. So reactor grade plutonium must be safeguarded carefully. Consuming the reactor grade plutonium in a reactor seems to me like a good way to prevent the buildup of a large stockpile of this potentially dangerous material.
Nigel West says
Japan, having suffered the dropping of two atom bombs, adopted nuclear power in the 1960s. Despite being located in an active seismic zone they were able to engineer nuclear power stations to safely withstand the forces. Then came Fukushima in 2011. The structure withstood the earthquake but the crest of the sea wall was too low to hold back the tsunami which resulted in critical power supplies being flooded. Yet despite these set backs, Japan is now restarting their reactors. Because fundamentally the risks of accidents is low and is declining.
Contrast this with the politically driven/green paranoia over nuclear in Germany. Germany is not located in an seismic zone, tsunamis are not an issue and their engineering skills are amongst the best in the world with a reputation for over engineering that is reflected in their nuclear stations being amongst the best in the world with a good safety record. Here, after 2011, the environmental lobby seized an opportunity to prematurely close nuclear and tried to impose this around Europe by calling for unjustifiable and unnecessary measures at European nukes to be implemented that were designed to close as many plants as possible.
Fortunately the UK and France were not fooled by environmental propaganda and wisely decided to not over react after Fukushima.
Priffe says
Hear hear.
The German position and Merkel’s is truly a mystery to those who thought Germans stood for rationality and French for emotion.
Helmut Frik says
Not really, there are too many engineers in germany who undersatnd the concept of black swans, and the fundamental problem of such occasions.
Mrs Merkel has a PhD in Physics, and for sure could explain to you very well how nuclear power works in Detail, and also why it is no way to go further for germany.
And also it’s a cost factor. It way too expensive. All german utilities have understood this part. The business model is missing.
priffe says
All the more remarkable then. The development of even safer and more economical reactors relegated to Korea, Russia and China.
While you continue to burn coal and gas. Indefensible, from every perspective.
https://energypost.eu/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/AgoraGermanElectricity01-19December2016-1024×564.jpg
https://energypost.eu/end-energiewende/
Helmut Frik says
The use of coal and gas is shrinking for power production.
Nigel West says
…..but will increase significantly as Germany closes nukes. Just like Japan after 2011.
Helmut Frik says
Germany closes nukes since many years, and CO2-emissions are falling despite of this. Germany closes nukes acording to a shedule, and builds wind and solar according to a shedule, while Japan closed all nukes without any plan prior to this.
priffe says
Or, perhaps investments in renewables peaked in 2014 as Germany is reaching the maximum wind power the grid can handle.
Even more overproduction in Summer will only cause more problems. Yes I know there are theorists who claim you could handle 100% renewables by trickery, but the rest of us have to live in the real world.
Can give you hundreds of links if necessary 🙂
http://www.environmentalprogress.org/big-news/2017/1/13/breaking-german-emissions-increase-in-2016-for-second-year-in-a-row-due-to-nuclear-closure
https://www.ft.com/content/719ea15e-68fa-11e5-a57f-21b88f7d973f
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/jul/07/brown-coal-wins-a-reprieve-in-germanys-transition-to-a-green-future
http://www.theenergycollective.com/robertwilson190/328841/why-germanys-nuclear-phase-out-leading-more-coal-burning
http://www.climatechangenews.com/2017/01/16/germany-must-halve-coal-power-to-meet-2030-climate-target/
http://www.rp-online.de/politik/gabriel-kein-wettlauf-bei-kohle-aus-aid-1.6533415
Helmut Frik says
Since 2014 nearly another 10GW of wind power was installed, and it is still not “more than the grid can handle”. As it looks another 10GW or more will be installed in the next two years, and nobody expects any problefs from this.
Grid behaviour is fact, links are not.
Nigel West says
Germany’s plan is not working CO2 emissions are increasing. You think you know better than the facts as Priffe has laid before you?
Helmut Frik says
[….]
The overall emissions in germany did rise, due to rising emissions in the transportation sector and rising emission in the building sector due to colder winter. CO2 emissions in the power sector have been falling.
Nigel West says
That is not true. Scientists and engineers do not believe in ‘black swans’. Engineers identify and then assess risks on the basis of probability and either eliminate or manage them. The decision taken to close nukes in Germany is purely political as there is no issue with safety at German nukes. Mrs Merkel as a physicist knows this very well. Deluded Greens do not.
Indeed in 2011 Mrs Merkel promised that Germany would not let itself be rushed into abandoning nuclear power by the Fukushima accident in Japan. She said “I am against shutting down our nuclear power plants only to have atomic power imported into Germany from other countries,” she told the Bundestag in March. “That won’t happen on my watch.”
Offshore wind power and DC links from northern Germany to the south is proving far too expensive.
Helmut Frik says
[censored – no personal remarks]
Being aware of the impossibility to forsee all combinations of possible risk wich includes the impossibility to calculate them, is the base of engineering in safety-relevant environments.
Mrs Merkel changed her mind post Fukushima. She recognised there will always be circumstances of unknowln likelyhood which are not considered in the designs. This is a well known fact in engineering.
Nigel West says
[no personals]
There is no issue with nuclear safety in western Europe. Operators and regulators ensure that. If there were issues the regulator would not license them to operate.
Nuclear safety demands that all likely risks are identified, assessed and controlled. Attached is an ONR document on safety – no mention of your ‘black swans’ nonsense.
http://www.onr.org.uk/saps/saps2014.pdf
‘Black swans’ is just an anti nuclear construct.
Helmut Frik says
No, black swans are a general engineering experience.
It’s this kind of hybris which kills nuclear alongside economics. The concept of black swans are accepted in engineering, and you cannot avoid them. There are some methods to reduce their likelyhood. E.g. average traffic lights from a amnufacutrer where I know the head of development here, have two controllers (+ a safety unit controlling the result on hostile green etc), from different manufacturers, with different operating systems, applications developend by different development teams in different programming languages. To make it less likely that a unexpected event happens in both of the redundant controllers at the same time. And that’s just lowe level safet system. A black swan in that area could cause a hand full of dead or injured persons. So they try to avoid it. Risks of nuclear power systems are seveal digits higher.
Nigel West says
Good, you are now talking about real engineering not mythical ‘black swans’.
Take the EPR, it has defence in depth meaning layers of protection around the reactor core. Also redundant control systems and safeguarding. A duplicated I&C system and an independent way of shutting down the reactor if the I&C system should fail.
Stop worrying, German engineering is very good.
Helmut Frik says
There is no “mythical black Swan”. It is just the fact the the ability of human brains are limited, and only factors and factor combinations which are recongnised can go into a design – in the best case.
German engineerds know the limits of engineerging. What you describe for a reactor is what is standard for a usual traffic light. Ant they have hundrtdthousands of identical systems in the field and protocol every unusal behaviour. And still would never ever promise that they have considered _every_ posibility their system could fail. [….]
Helmut Frik says
It was the conservative Party which closed the nuclear power staions in 2011, being aware of the fundamental nature of black swans. In Japan the majotrity of population does not support restarting nuclear power. And ony two or thre reactors are running again, delivering a negible amount of electicity.
priffe says
But they should have installed a filtered pressure valve in the reactor buildings, as we did in Sweden already in the eighties. Then they would still have had the meltdown, but not the athmospheric release from the hydrogen explosion.
That is what really shocked me about the Japanese failure, besides the unprotected emergency power supplies. A lot of people must have known about these fallacies. Why did noone react? I think they did, but they have a bureacratic problem.
priffe says
And there you are, burning massive amounts of coal and Russian gas, and still relying on your coal burning nuking neighbours to supply you when the wind isnt blowing and the sun isnt there – like in December 2016. Doesnt that concern you?
It is the same with the Japanese, replacing nuclear with imported gas.
How different things would have been if the world had followed the French and the Swedes and replaced fossils with nuclear already in the 80’s. The trends we are seeing now are alarming.
We should develop better nuclear instead of wasting our resources on non-working solutions like the so called Energiewende. Germany should have taken the lead long ago.
Helmut Frik says
Priffe, germany does not rely on any neighbour when the wind does not blow or the sun does not shine. And also the exports do not change significantly when there is a lot of wind or so. Although there is a lot of expoert and import capacity from germany to the neighborhood.
But our nuclaer fans west of us in France and belgium reliy heavily on german reserves when it becomes cold or the intermittend nuclear power production in therir aging nuclear plants stops once again.
The share of coal for power production in germany is declining.
As well as the amout of gas imported by Japan is falling again.
priffe says
Nuclear certainly needs an update; Germany has contributed nothing to this.
When you talk about “Intermittance” and nuclear, which is a very reliable way of generating Power often with over 80% accessibility, while defending the truly intermittent solar and unreliable wind and solar power, then you unfortunately place yourself with the loonies.
Helmut Frik says
Wind and solar are variable, but in themselves very reliable, because of their hhigh number of independent production units. Massive redundance.
Nuclear power stations are intermittend. Either they produce at about full power or not at all. A gigaatt or more production capacity can vanish from the grid in less than a second without prior notice. Doel and Thiange do so many times per year, being famous for this behaviour. They are simply getting old.
priffe says
Thiange and other reactors are old and should be updated. What you say is not a problem with nuclear power; it is a problem because lazy or crazy politicians haven’t seen to that the hardware is updated.
Especially turbines need to be replaced.
It is time to build new and even safer nuclear.
priffe says
Why German CO2 emissions are not falling.
And how exporting your excess wind power is hurting the EU power generation.
[no personals]
https://energypost.eu/german-conundrum-renewables-break-records-coal-refuses-go-away/
Helmut Frik says
Well, the data of export shows in the recent half year that export does not vary significantly wether the wind power production in germany is 2 or 37 GW, so it does not look like wind power generation is expoerted. If you asume that nuclear power is exported, toe data fits much better.
About 7 GW of closures of coal power stations are expected for this and the next year.
Nigel West says
The turbines may be reliable, but wind energy is not reliable, and the sun even less so. If those energy sources were reliable back-up at 100% capacity would not be needed. Even renewables fanatics have now accepted the intermittency problem. Hence the need for complementary storage, flexible demand or back-up generation. That’s in the Energiewende plan too.
Doel and Thiange should be replaced with new nuclear.
A country with say ten 1 GW reactors could rely on having 9 available all the time. So only needs 1 GW of backup. Whereas 10GW of renewables needs 10GW of back-up.
[censored – no personals]
Helmut Frik says
The amount of wind in short prediction time is very reliable. Which is why wind and solar need lesss spinning reserves than e.g. nuclear.
The amount of backup needed depends on the grid size […].
[…]
This determines the backup needed, and this is only 100% if you use only one source at only one place.
“Zentraler Grenzwertsatz” is the name of the mathematical rule behind this behaviour.
Which is importand to understand especially wind power.
Wind power is uncorellated at distances of 1500km and higher. A basic fact in the behaviour of our athmosphere.
Which means that when you look at the highest and lowest 32% of wind power generation. If you connect 4 regions with unkorrelated wind power, the same level (in percent of installed nameplate capacity) shrinks to 4,5% of the time. If you connect nine uncorrelated areas, it shriks to 0,3% so half a day per year lull (if lull is defined as the lowest16% of output in one region), and half a day per year strong output.
If you connect sixteen of such regions, you get 0,0003% of the time the situation lull or high output, so half a day per century lull, and half a day per century high output. And so on.
With sun the uncorellated areas are smaller, but there is the corelaltion due to sun rising and falling. Which means you get a very reliable and predictable amount of sun power generation in larger areas, which represents a noon peak, and this peak can be extended by one hour for every 1000km the grid in question extends in east-west direction. And seassonality can be balanced out if connecting north and south hemisphere, if someone thinks this to be neccesary.
These are the basic physical and mathemathical rules on which you can design a reliable power supply system based on wind, solar, hydro and biomass, dynamic loads and storage.
Replacing Doel and Thiange with new nuclear pwoer stations would be extremely expensive, no company selling power on the marcet could cary such huge pemanent losses.
priffe says
It is amusing how you talk about black swans but dont think the giant grid experiment you are looking to try on Europe would not release any such birds on the unsuspecting populace.
We have a similar theorist in Sweden by the name of Söder and wind lovers here swear that his pdf is all we need to safeguard our power future. There was also a Spanish grid expert who had calculated that 100% wind could be balanced with the proper algoritm.
I wish them and the Energiewende the best of luck.
Helmut Frik says
There are major differences. First, you also need relatively big grids to balance out failing nuclear pwoer stations too. You could see very well this wienter how demand form france kept pwoer stations in sweden and poland running.
And the precaution against black svan events in bigger grids for renewables are comparatively simple – keep the backup power neccesary for more local damages running and available, and make it available for general backup. Germany has 20GW of such backup generating capacity, which just needs to be contracted. And with contracts there are many more GW of useful application which are mainly financed by the supported lokal infrastrure, but become economic with a little extra money. In our project there would be some MW possible in most projects, which have nothing to do with the power generation business.
Also blacks wan events, which you can not avoid by the kind of power generation you have, in case of enewables do not produce longer lasting effects, as far as it can be predited in any way, while with nuclear there are obcvious long lasting problems.
By the way diversity helps against black swan events, to limit their effects. Since diversitty of production is a base for wind and solar generation, this should produce a huge resilence against black swans.
Nuclear power has a serios cost problem with diversity.
Karel Beckman says
Time to stop this debate, folks? I don’t hear anything new anymore.
On German greenhouse gas emissions, see for example here: https://www.cleanenergywire.org/factsheets/germanys-greenhouse-gas-emissions-and-climate-targets
This includes a good chart with CO2 emissions.
The truth lies somewhere in the middle – there has been some decline of CO2 emissions but not impressive and far short of the targets.
priffe says
Thanks. I havent been here long enough to know, but it often happens on forums and in comments that a few voices repeat their views endlessly.
My gripe is that it is dishonest to pretend that we can rely on renewables, do without nuclear, lower emissions AND guarantee a reliable electric power supply, all over a few decades. We should make better choices, and to me it is obvious that nuclear has been the victim of decades of desinformation.
We should hold our politicians responsible and speak up against the hypocrisy.
Other then that I am a mere observer, not an activist.
Karel Beckman says
No it is not dishonest, it is a different view.
It may be wrong, but that is something else, that’s what the argument should be about