Germany plans to shut down its entire nuclear fleet by 2022. Right now, of the original 17, only 7 are still running. The Fukushima nuclear accident in Japan of 2011 was the trigger for Germany’s abandonment of emissions-free nuclear as part of its clean energy goals. Maximilian Auffhammer at the Energy Institute at Haas reviews a paper by his colleagues that has modelled the whole-system effects of the shutdowns, then compared the results with a no-shutdown model. It’s been done plant by plant to carefully track the consequences: which energy sources stepped in (coal, gas), what happened to electricity prices (they rose), what happened to emissions (they went up). Auffhammer quotes estimates of the cost in damages of those increased emissions as $12bn ($150 per German), explaining that the benefits of the shutdown in terms of lower accident risk and reductions in spent fuel storage costs come “nowhere near” that $12bn. He concludes that the paper does not simply point to keeping nuclear, it points to a grid with more renewables. Admittedly, the cost of creating that grid is still not known.
I spent the first fifteen years of my life in Northern Bavaria, right next to the wall facing East Germany and Czechoslovakia. The air quality was reminiscent of what you encounter in some of the worst polluted places on earth these days. Snow would fall, two days later it was brown and black from the particulate pollution spewing from coal fired power plants on the other side of the wall, and the cars zooming by at 120 mph powered by leaded high octane gasoline in the West.
Nuclear rose to 25% of electricity generation. Then Fukushima happened
Part of Germany’s strategy to fight air pollution, while providing a reliable supply of electricity was to invest heavily in nuclear power plants. While I was growing up, there was a lively debate around the safety of these reactors and how to deal with the spent fuel storage issue. Much of this debate reached mainstage when the Chernobyl reactor exploded in 1986 and most of us schoolkids were not allowed to go outside and play in the rain (we usually did that because sunshine is rare in Northern Bavaria). Until 2011, Germany generated about one quarter of its electricity from nuclear power. Then Fukushima happened. And Germany decided to retire its nuclear fleet.
Total shutdown by 2022
Today the number of reactors is down from its peak of 17 to 7 reactors, which are all slated to be shut down in the next three years. Today Germany generates 12% of its power from nuclear and north of 40% using coal. My fellow Germans are at the same time heavily investing in the renewable future, rolling out solar, wind, and biofuels. Under the new European mandate to be carbon free by 2050, this is going to be interesting as nuclear power is, well, carbon free. So the question many of us had was what the current consequences of the nuclear shut down have been on the indicators we care about – air pollution and carbon emissions.
Simulating the system effects of shutdown
Enter stage left – a new paper by our fabulous graduate student Stephen Jarvis (who will be on the market next year), Olivier Deschenes (UCSB) and recent Energy Institute visitor Akshaya Jha. They do something really clever to estimate the effect of the nuclear shutdowns.
What we need to know is what the remaining power plant fleet would have done if the nuclear power plants had not been phased out. We call this a counterfactual. Sort of like a parallel universe (which we never see in reality. Beam me up Scotty!). They employ a machine learning algorithm to study changing patterns of production in response to individual plant shutdowns, using hourly electricity load data, and then use those patterns to simulate a system with the nukes shut down. (Yes, for you critical super nerds, that is an oversimplification, but this is a blog and you can read the paper here: “The Private and External Costs of Germany’s Nuclear Phase-Out”.)
Coal, Gas replaces Nuclear: 5 lessons to learn
This is one of these beautiful papers that asks a hugely policy-relevant question, uses cutting-edge methods and teaches us 5 important things:
- The shutdown worked. Production from nuclear power plants went down drastically. Duh. But it’s always good to check that your algorithm works and your data are properly read into your ‘puter.
- The decrease in nuclear production was offset by production from coal- and gas-powered plants in Germany as well imports from its European neighbours.
- The cost of electricity generation went up due to the phaseout, resulting in higher prices. This is not surprising, given that the marginal cost of generation for nukes is very low (they cost a pretty penny to build though).
- The most important finding is that emissions of (often not very salient) local (think NOx, SOx and other crud) and global (think CO2) pollutants went up quite a bit. If you translate the increased emissions into damages in dollars, that number is $12 billion a year (about $150 per German).
- The benefits in terms of lower accident risk (which is very salient, since the idea of a nuclear accident is very scary) and reductions in spent fuel storage costs come nowhere near the $12 billion dollars in damages.
So where is the rub? A lot of people are going to read this paper and interpret this as economists throwing shade on the nuclear phaseout. I think this is only part of the story and maybe not the most important takeaway message.
A Renewables grid would give different results
The paper, like any econometric paper, has to rely on data from the past. In this case, this means the paper assumes the historical grid as its counterfactual. Not some shiny new solar, wind, biofuel and alicorn powered 0% emissions grid. If we had that grid, these numbers would change. In that world, if you turned off a nuke, a shiny clean renewable plant would “ramp” up (or storage would kick in). Marginal costs for renewable energy (at least the ones generating electricity) are very low, but we have discussed the economics of grid-scale renewables at length on this blog.
So, what I am saying is that the costs of this phaseout in a future grid do not necessarily have to be as high as the ones cited in the paper. It all depends on the economics of the renewable grid. But for now, Germans are paying the price from the phaseout in terms of higher rates, worse air quality and increase GHG emissions.
***
Maximilian Auffhammer is the George Pardee Professor of International Sustainable Development at the Energy Institute at Haas, part of the University of California, Berkeley.
This article is published with permission
Keep up with Energy Institute blogs, research, and events on Twitter @energyathaas
Peter Farley says
A Few comments:
1. The main original motivation for renewables in Germany was to get rid of nuclear, only later did it turn to getting rid of coal based pollution so if there had been no anti-nuclear movement, renewables would never have received the subsidies that led to the massive cost reductions seen today
2. If you used up to date data you would get quite a different result. In the last 12 months Germany has averaged 25% of its power from coal not 40% and wholesale power prices have been lower in absolute terms than they were since 2005
3. The cost of Fukishima has been estimated at over $500 bn and still rising. An accident in Germany would affect far more people. If radioactive water leaked into a river rather than the Pacific Ocean, it would be catastrophic for the whole German economy, not that of a relatively isolated Japanese province so one could imagine costs of $2-3 trillion dollars. Even if that were a one in 500 year possibility for a reactor. That is 17/500 x 2 trillion dollars, far more than the temporary cost of higher power.
4. Reactors don’t play well with renewables, they don’t ramp fast enough and even if they could, the cost of power would rise disproportionately as higher capital and maintenance costs per MWh would ensue so the system would reach equilibrium at about 30% renewables unless significant storage was installed.
6. Parts of Germany are getting short of water in summer already and nuclear power plants evaporate off about 20 m tonnes of water per year per GW. If you were to have say a 75% nuclear grid that would 1000 GL of water for the cooling towers
Bernard Durand says
Peter, coal or gas fired plants also need a lot of water for cooling. Actually, they consume and pollute much more riverwater in Germany than nuclear plants, so is it also of water cunsumption for extraction and cleaning of coal and lignite before use. Why aren’t you also complaining about that ?
Incidentally lignite is also a (dirty) coal, so the figure of 40 % is correct.
Coal+lignite are killing every day germans with the atmospheric pollution they are responsible of, and this is much more than Tchernobyl. Did you know that?
Peter Farley says
Bernard you are right about coal although the coal plant itself uses less water, about 20%, but when taking into account the water used in coal mining it is probably very similar.
CCGT plants use 1/3rd to 1/5th of the water used by a nuclear plant, because only the steam turbine needs a condensor.
However as I said water use is becoming an issue and whatever thermal source you use to make steam to drive a turbine it is a problem
robertok06 says
????? WTF ??
4. Reactors ramp up sufficiently fast to do load following mode without trouble. They do it every day in France, and probably often also in Germany.
What they can’t do is to fill in the weather tantrums of the wunderbar wind and PV. The regulation of such tantrums should fall on the shoulders of, and paid by entirely by, those who create them… i. e. wind and PV.
Logic.
Bas Gresnigt says
Even with deep negative electricity prices, nuclear plants continue to produce at more than 60% of max. capacity as shown by sheet 9 of this 2014 Fraunhofer PPT:
https://www.ise.fraunhofer.de/content/dam/ise/de/documents/publications/studies/daten-zu-erneuerbaren-energien/Energy_market_2014_12_31.pdf
Not strange since decreasing output is expensive for NPP’s.
It generates fuel rod poisoning (Xenon) so those have to be changed earlier, and increases the risk on shrink cracks which imply a long outage. As experienced by French and German NPP’s.
robertok06 says
6. Off the mark.
The biggest US nuclear plant, Palo Verde, is located in Arizona, driest and hotter part of usa, with no river, no lake, no sea nearby.
Get a clue on nuclear before writing about it, it’ll save you from making such silly statements.
Enough anti-nuclear propaganda!
Arasan Aruliah says
Dear robertok06,
Let’s keep the comments grown up and civilised.
Arasan (Editor)
Peter Farley says
Robert you really should take your own advice,
France fills the gaps with hydro, pumped hydro, and gas as well as imports. Its nuclear plants only supply a little over 50% of annual system peak demand and at system low even after ramping down as much as practicable are putting about 20% of their output into pumped hydro and exports.
The graphs are around the internet if you look for them
As for Palo Verde it uses 60,000 gallons a minute of waste water from Phoenix a city of 1.6m people
Christoph Barthe says
@1: there no sensible anti-nuclear movement in China, but production of solar panels had moved to China anyway. Apparently progress in renewable cost & technology is possible without having an anti-nuclear movement at home.
@2: don’t forget the cost for subsidies (EEG-Umlage, etc)
@3: the cost of Fukushima are largely related to an exaggerated fear of ionizing radiation. International radiation protection recommendations consider a reference level of max 100 mSv per year as acceptable in an emergency. Below that level an additional cancer risk to the public is nor discernible. In none of the affected communities around Fukushima this level was exceeded. According to British scientists the 160.000 relocations after the accident were not justified in view of the social burden toe the public caused by the relocations. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0957582017300782
@4: “Reactors don’t play well with renewables” This is correct. But it is no reason to prefer renewables. A recent OECD study shows that excluding nuclear from the portfolio doubles system cost. Least cost are achieved with high shares of nuclear. Link here: https://www.oecd-nea.org/ndd/pubs/2019/7299-system-costs.pdf
@5: ?
@6: so what. Germany’s coastline is long enough to accommodate any reasonable number of NPP’s. Technological progress will allow the use of nuclear heat for industrial and other purposes.
Peter Farley says
1. Mass Production of solar panels originated in Germany and the major cost reductions from $350/MWh to about $120 occurred when Germany was still dominant. Now that the Chinese have continued the cost reductions their nuclear program has been continually revised down and in fact no new reactors have been ordered since 2016
2. Don’t you think that the nuclear plants were unsubsidised in their day
3. I don’t disagree that the evacuations were exaggerated but the cost of clean up of the plant itself is in the hundreds of billions.
4. If high nuclear shares are the most economical why does the UK have to offer double the price for nuclear for twice as long as they are contracting offshore wind for.
5. Sorry
6. a) Germany has a problem transmitting wind power from the north even though a considerable proportion of the wind and solar is already located in the south. If the southern renewables were scaled back or eliminated in favour of North Coast nuclear, the North south transmission corridor woulds have to be doubled or tripled.
b) because in almost almost all modern economies minimum demand is falling faster than maximum demand, a nuclear system needs even more backup than a renewable system. If you build enough nuclear to provide 95% of system peak demand with hydro providing the rest, the average CF of the plants will less than 60% and at times the system CF will be around 35%. While it is possible to ramp nuclear plants it increases maintenance costs and reduces annual production so at 55% CF the cost per MWh is almost double the cost at 92%. If you build enough nuclear to provide annual demand allowing for periods of outages you will need to provide about 40% of peak demand from other sources what will they be?
c) The nuclear industry has had 60 years to devise uses for waste heat and largely failed, why is the technology suddenly going to become available to use it now. Worse because of the low operating temperature of nuclear plants, it is even more important to keep condensor temperature low. Low condensor temperature means low grade heat that is pretty much useless for anything but space heating and perhaps warming greenhouses
d) If the nuclear industry was based on the North Coast that implies new nuclear plants. There is not a new nuclear plant anywhere in the western world that has a cost of less than US$110/MWh. A combination of wind solar and pumped hydro can deliver power for no more than US$65 and follow load without any technical consequences
Wolf Gehrisch says
“A combination of wind, solar and pumped hydro can deliver power for no more than US$65 and follow load without any technical consequences” —
Indeed, if you had enough capacity for pumped hydro, solar and wind-power would be the ideal solution for electricity supply. Unfortunately there is way too little such capacity and you can’t add significantly more to what is already available. The other solution where you use power to X to generate hydrogen for electricity storage is elegant but very inefficient and thus far too expensive.
Peter Farley says
I agree hydrogen is inefficient, but even with all its inefficiencies if it can deliver power for say $80-90/MWh it is cheaper than new nuclear. Power to heat/ice can also be 70-80% efficient in fact in the temperature range between -10 and +50 C well designed heat pumps coupled with phase change materials (eg ICE, wax saline solutions) can be 300-400% efficient so I think you will find that in the long run Power to heat will form a large part of the storage equation
Bas Gresnigt says
Christoph,
The anti-nuclear movement in China may create little publicity in Western papers, but it’s rather effective. It stopped a.o. the construction of a nuclear fuel reprocessing plant.
Furthermore it contributed to the 2016 Beijing decisions that a nuclear construction start is only allowed when there is no substantial resistance in the public.
Which decision stopped nearly all construction starts of new nuclear since 2016…
Christoph Barthe says
thanks for the note, Bas. I was half aware that there is some anti-nuclear activity going on in China, but thought that it had only appeared recently, so that it cannot be made responsible for the success of solar in China. But please correct me if I am wrong.
Bas Gresnigt says
Sorry, I’m not aware that the anti-nuclear movement is responsible for the success of Chinese solar. I think that it’s cheap labor and hard work by their engineers.
Bas Gresnigt says
Christoph,
“International radiation protection recommendations consider a reference level of max 100 mSv per year as acceptable in an emergency. Below that level an additional cancer risk to the public is nor discernible.”
Please can you indicate who published those recommendations and where??
The max allowed radiation level for nuclear workers is 20mSv/a.
The max allowed radiation level for the population should be much lower as children and especially newborn, are far more vulnerable than adults due to their much higher cell division rate.
Around cell division the DNA is single stranded, so DNA damage cannot be repaired. Hence the organisms is far more vulnerable.
It explains the highly significant increased levels of newborn with serious
congenital malformations (and stillbirth) such as Down syndrome, abnormal limbs, malformations of the heart, limbs, etc. in areas with fall-out levels of 1mSv/a >1500km from Chernobyl: http://goo.gl/ZTqxLB
Furthermore the significant increased levels of genetic damage for newborn around nuclear facilities up to 40km away as found by several studies.
E.g. http://goo.gl/RzZwcV
Christoph Barthe says
Bas,
a reference level of max 100 mSv per year is recommended by the International Commission on Radiological Protection (ICRP) in its Publication 103
http://www.icrp.org/publication.asp?id=ICRP%20Publication%20103
Reference levels refer to emergency exposure situations, not planned ones like those for nuclear workers in normal work conditions. (table 4, p. 94)
In an emergency the ICRP considers max 100 mSv/a a tolerable exposure level, if it is necessary to avoid “disproportionately disruptive” actions (Table 5, p.97), (like in my view e.g. long-term relocations). The Commission considers that exposures above 100 mSv/a “would be justified only under extreme circumstances, …” (page 96, Par. 5.9.3.).
The reasoning for the 100 mSv/a limit is given in A.4.1 (page 173): “There is….general agreement that epidemiological methods used for the estimation of cancer risk do not have the power to directly reveal cancer risks in the dose range up to around 100 mSv.” This means that below 100 mSv/a the risk is too low to be statistically distinguishable from other cancer risks. Any measure to reduce such a low risk further should therefore meet the “principle of justification” (page 14), This means, the measure should do more good than harm in order to be justified.
Regarding prenatal exposure, the ICRP concludes that this would not be a specific protection case, i.e. would not require protective actions other than those aimed at the general population. (par. 6.4, page 115). The “highly significant increased” rate of birth defects, you mention, is not confirmed by the ICRP. According to the ICRP the “detriment adjusted probability coefficients for heritable disease up to the second generation are 0.2 % per Sv for the whole population” (page 143, “Principal conclusions and recommendations”).
Regarding the Chernobyl accident the WHO writes in its 2006 report:
“Given the low radiation doses received by most people exposed to the Chernobyl accident, no effects on fertility, numbers of stillbirths, adverse pregnancy outcomes or delivery complications have been demonstrated nor are there expected to be any. A modest but steady increase in reported congenital malformations in both contaminated and uncontaminated areas of Belarus appears related to improved reporting and not to radiation exposure.” (see:https://www.who.int/ionizing_radiation/chernobyl/backgrounder/en/ )
Hope this answers your questions.
Kind regards
Christoph
Bas Gresnigt says
That max. of 100mSv/year is for a short emergency period only.
When it takes 3.5days it implies a dose of 1mSv. It has been shown that 1mSv creates already genetic and health damage to youngsters, etc. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27038588
Prenatal radiation exposure of sperm in production creates not only significant increases m/f ratio of newborn (male sperm is smaller so less chance to be damaged by a radiation particle), but also significant higher chance on cancers like leukemia: https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn2422-nuclear-workers-children-have-increased-cancer-risk/
and of course also significant more stillbirths:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10543666
Regarding Chernobyl the WHO followed the directives of nuclear promoter IAEA (due to the 1959 agreement) and excluded all regions outside the immediate environment of Chernobyl, so it could conclude towards only 4000 deaths. That doesn’t imply that no health damage occurred. Opposite. Most occurred outside the immediate environment: https://www.global2000.at/sites/global/files/GLOBAL_TORCH%202016_rz_WEB_KORR.pdf
Christoph says
max 100 mSv p.a. is for emergency situations. These may persist of days or months. “1mSv creates already genetic and health damage to youngsters” – I don’t see the proof in the link. The ERR/Gy number is essentially based on values above 100 mSv/a.
IAEA may promote the peaceful use of nuclear technologies. But this does not justify the conclusion their information might lack credibility.
UNSCEAR has even withdrawn the 4000 death number, because of an insufficient scientific basis. Quote: “There is a tendency to attribute increases in the rates of all cancers over time to the Chernobyl accident, but it should be noted that increases were also observed before the accident in the affected areas. Moreover, a general increase in mortality has been reported in recent decades in most areas of the former Soviet Union, and this must be taken into account when interpreting the results of the accident-related studies.”
Bernard Durand says
Bas, You are intentionally confusing two concepts: – enacting of rules for public protection: because effect of very low doses of radioactivity is so weak that they are impossible to calibrate by epidemiologic studies but , in the principle, they cannot be completely excluded, application of LNT is required, although there is no epidemiologic basis to it.
– real protection of people, which is be based on clinical observations: I discussed this with 8 physicians specialists in nuclear medecine. These people can much better establish the relation betwen the dose and the effect, than physicians making epidemiologic studies in the field, because tthey know exactly the dose. They all told me that they did not believe in the LNT at low doses and consider that only doses higher than 100 mSv mays be dangerous, 50 for children;
By the way, according to you, how many people died in Germany of Tchernobyl radiations since 1986, and how many died of pollution from coal and gas fired plants ?
Bas Gresnigt says
Bernard,
“effect of very low doses of radioactivity … are impossible to calibrate by epidemiologic studies..”
Several epidemiological studies found solid scientific evidence that very low doses e.g. 30% of normal background of 2mSv/a, do create a.o. significant health damage to newborn. I consider the study in S.Germany after Chernobyl (1500km away) as one of the most solid thanks to unique circumstances:
– some districts got fallout and other similar nearby districts not (no rainfall from the passing Chernobyl cloud)
– each district had a birth register which registered all births anomalies according to a standard classification scheme.
– all births were included in the study.
http://www.ibis-birthdefects.org/start/cache/Congenital%20Malformations%20Stillborn.pdf
Apparently your specialists in nuclear medicine didn’t study their literature.
Anyway the fact that they assume that children are only twice more vulnerable than adults shows their poor knowledge. It’s clear that young children are >10 times more vulnerable, in line with theory, as their cell division rate is >10 times higher.
Read the study I linked and do the math, then you can conclude yourself how many deaths and how many impaired for life due to Chernobyl.
You then also understand why all nuclear out is so widely supported in Germany despite the high costs of being a pioneer with solar and wind..
Wolf Gehrisch says
You are just looking at the statistics of last year, which had a far above average electricity production from renewable sources and efficiency gains in energy use by industry. At the same time Germany was at the brink of having to shut off several regions because of threatening brown-outs. You cannot extrapolate this seemingly satisfactory situation into coming years. You should also consider that modern reactors have a probability of accident several orders of magnitude below 1 in 500 years and safety provisions that prevent the escape of radioactivity should an accident occur nevertheless. Fukushima was an earlier generation of reactors that did not have these features. Please try to be objective. By the way, reactors do have the ability of load following, albite not as flexibly as gas-fired power stations and for existing reactors that are already amortised, this is not a question of capital cost.
Bas Gresnigt says
@Wolf,
Why do you think that German grid operators lost their ability to keep the grid up and running with superior reliability?
When Germany closed 7 NPP’s in 2011 in response to Fukushima, I saw many statements in UK/US magazines that German grid would experience major black-outs.
None occurred. Germany stayed net electricity exporter in 2011. Their supply reliability stayed superior to that of USA (SAIDI figure ~10 times better).
Four nuclear reactors of the ~400 old nuclear reactors in the world exploded in ~18.000 reactor years. Assuming nuclear reactors become 45years old before closed, it implies a chance of 1% that a nuclear reactor explodes…
The new reactors (AP100, EPR, etc) are highly similar.
They only have more safety margins. Experience shows that such improvements don’t bring an improvement of a factor 10, but that a factor 4 is already nice.
Operators try to avoid load following with nuclear as it costs substantial money. Reasons; Xenon fuel rod poisoning and increased chance for thermal cracks which often imply an outage of a month or so.
Peter Farley says
1. I wish Germany did prolong the life of their nuclear plants further while renewables were being built but they didn’t so you have the situation now where you can have new nuclear with a lot of storage or new renewables with probably less storage
2. Well the statistics for the year to date are way ahead of last year, so your claim that last year was exceptionally high is not well supported. 2018 was in fact a low year because output growth was less than capacity growth.
3. Modern reactors haven’t been around long enough to demonstrate superior safety.
4. You can ramp reactors when they are newly fuelled but that still increases cost of power because something like 90% of your costs are fixed. If you cycle them every day maintenance costs and unplanned outages will increase and life will be shortened further increasing the cost. As you near the end of the fuel cycle the control rods are already almost fully withdrawn and the plant becomes less and less flexible, that is why France has 3-4 times as much hydro as Germany and still imports power at system peak
5. As for objectivity.
Just look at the cost of new nuclear. Hinckley Point will cost about E25 m and deliver 25 TWh per year and peak output of 3.2 GW. It still needs spinning reserve and backup during refuelling. It has expected operating costs of about E35/MWh. For an average of 350 hours per year it will deliver half power and for a similar amount of time it will deliver none
3 GW of offshore wind 3 GW of onshore wind and 3 GW of bifacial tracking solar backed up by 4 GW/50 GWh of pumped hydro will cost about E17-18 b and deliver 29-35 GWh depending on the year. Output will never be zero, peak output will be 4 GW+ because wind+ solar is never completely zero. Operating costs will be about E12-15/MWh, the spinning reserves and outage backup are built in, there is no single point of failure, water usage is effectively zero and most of the generation can be within 200-300 km of the load, thus reducing transmission investment vulnerability and losses
Bernard Durand says
Peter, it makes little sense comparing production costs of electricity sources to judge of their interest. Wind and solar are not dispatchable and as a consequence of their intermittency, their market value at the outlet of the wind turbine or of the solar panel is nil, because they cannot be used directly by the consumer. They can be sold only when mixed with electricity produced by dispatchable sources.
Given that electricity consumption is nearly constant in Western Europe, the production cost of this mix is higher with wind and solar than without them, because you have much more installed capacities for the same production. A perfect example is Germany which has now more non-dispatchable capacities than dispachable capacities.
A proof of this is the observation that in Western Europe Countries, the price of electricity for households is proportionnal to the installed capacity per inhabitant of wind+solar
Peter Farley says
Bernard, the same is true for nuclear in reverse, nuclear power plants in France generate too much power when people don’t need it and too little when people do, That is why Japan and France built pumped hydro and France is a huge exporter/importer.
Germany has always taxed electricity whereas France encouraged radiant electrical heating to smooth the load on nuclear so the retail price is a poor guide to total cost of power. Frances wholesale prices i.e. ex generator, are already higher than Germany and there is a well founded belief that if France is to fund the major lifecycle extensions needed for its nuclear plants either power prices will have to rise 20% or the taxpayer will have to provide 10’s of billions of Euros to EDF.
To provide 25 TWh per year Hinckley Point is costing about 30 b Euros. Peak summer output will be 3GW, at 92% availability one of the reactors will be offline for 700 hours per year. For between 200 and 600 hours per year output will be zero.
30bn Euros will provide 6 GW of offshore wind, 4 GW of onshore wind and 6 GW of tracking solar 4 GW of batteries and 4 GW of pumped hydro. The system will have minimum output of 7-8 GW and annual output of 55 TWh and output will never be zero so the question of nominal capacity is not relevant, it is a question of cost and reliability. wind solar and storage wind hands down
Bernard Durand says
Peter, there is no symmetry between nuclear or coal and renewables. Renewables need dispatchable sources in addition, nuclear or coal needs not. The price of electricity in France has been very stable till 2007, which is the date of the first introduction of renewables in the mix, and is now increasing proportionnally to the installed capacity of renewables in the mix, as everywhere in Europe. This is observation, not theory
Peter Farley says
Bernard.
I just showed you that the most modern nuclear power plant in the world Hinckley Point
a) is more expensive than wind/solar/storage to build and operate
b) does need 100% backup during outages/refuelling.
Your observations are based on old data and highly subsidised nuclear
Bernard Durand says
Peter,
EPR is designed for a shorter duration of refuelling than older reactors. Furthermore, in France the number of reactors allows to overcome this problem. UK has neglected nuclear for too long. This was due to the abundance of coal, then oil, then gas on its territory.Those happy days are coming to their end, and UK will pay now for the procrastination of its politicians.
In France, the nuclear fleet was not subsidised, but financed by loans. The ” Cour des comptes” has calculated that the total expense was about the same than the subventions already granted to wind and solar for an electricity production ten times lower !
Peter Farley says
1. The EPR has a “shorter” refuelling time of 25 days and an availability target of 87%. i.e. The wind doesn’t stop for 25 hours let alone 25 days. 87% availability target means offline for 1,138 hours per year.
b) one would expect that the subsidies 30 years ago would have been much lower than today. The government has provided insurance (a subsidy), waste storage and eventual containment at unknown cost ( a subsidy) rescued Areva ( a subsidy) does not charge commercial rates for cooling water ( a subsidy) covers a large part of the security costs from police and military budgets ( a subsidy) carried much of the R&D costs in general government or military R&D budgets (another subsidy).
2. The UK has plans for 40 GW of offshore wind by 2030. It currently has about 8.5 GW so intends to build 3.2 GW which with the state of the art technology will increase supply by two Hinckley Points every three years.
3. Solar and storage plants are being built in the UK subsidy free and now onshore wind is to be allowed so in fact the UK will have plenty of new generating capacity without additional nuclear after Hinckley Point.
It will need some storage/ backup but for the foreseeable future has plenty of gas capacity. It also has plenty of unexplored opportunities for demand response, more pumped hydro, power to X, smart charging of EVs etc etc etc, but with increased interconnections to Europe it will soon be exporting excess wind and importing out of phase wind and excess solar from Europe, so I think it can count itself very lucky that has “ignored” nuclear. This year wind will exceed next year and within two years wind output will exceed gas
Bernard Durand says
Peter, this is mostly wishful thinking. Availability of wind power is garanteed at only 1 % of its capacity in Germany, and probably not much more in the UK.
Moreover, this availability is largely synchronous in Western Europe, an excellent paper of german researchers ( Linemann et al.) has confirmed it recently. This means that when you are lacking wind in a country, you are also lacking wind all over Europe.The same for excess wind.
Gas is not at all a solution if you want to avoid climate warming, . Moreover UK will not have gas extracted from its part of North Sea for very long now and will depend then heavily on foreign gas
Peter Farley says
1. The old wind farms which still contain the majority of German turbines had Capacity factors as low as 13% and annual online periods (above 5% capacity) as low as 30%. New machines are 40-55% CF and annual online time of 60-95% so whatever the old minimum wind figures were the future numbers will be much higher, so we should be able to use 5-7%
2. Most low wind periods occur when demand is relatively lower either on still sunny days or at night when demand is lower anyway so you don’t have to backup 85 GW system peak but rather about 60 GW coincident demand
3. If wind in 2035 has an average 43% CF then to supply say an average of 250,000 GWh (half German consumption) from wind then you need about 70 GW of wind. Following normal practice of a 15-25% overbuild say 85 GW 50/50 offshore/onshore. That would imply about 11,000 modern onshore turbines so half the number you have now. Minimum wind will be 5-6 GW hydro, biomass will supply another 10-12 GW leaving about 45 GW supplied from demand response and other sources. By that time you will probably have 100 GW of solar
If you keep the current gas capacity and run it the equivalent of 90% for 500 hours per year and install storage equal to 25% of wind and solar capacity for 8 hours , then you will have backup capacity of 25 GW of gas and 45 GW of storage. Probably 15 GW of that storage will be French, Swiss and Norwegian hydro leaving 30 GW of new storage. That will mean gas supplies 2.5% of annual demand and emissions will be 12 kg/MWh. Assuming a 30% cost decline from current storage costs, the storage would cost about E 40 bn roughly the cost of 5 GW of nuclear.
That assumes smart charging of EVs isn’t a big thing and thermal storage isn’t expanded. Most EVs have about 3-10 days typical storage on board. If there are 25 m EVs in Germany with an average 55 kWh stored and you can use 50% of the stored energy over 3 days that is an average of 10 GW.
I know of hydronic heating systems in Switzerland with 2000 litre tanks heated to about 40 C. If you have 10 m of those across Germany you have available storage of 120 GWh. If you know that a low wind low solar period is forecast and you preheat the system in the week before hand to 55 C that increases the storage to 200 GWh,
In summary there are dozens of ways of backing up a wind solar hydro system, even in Germany, which has about the worst possible combination of wind/solar/hydro and high energy density of any major country on earth
Peter Farley says
Bernard
Thankyou for pointing out the low minimum wind, I was sure you were wrong but I searched back and you are correct. It happened in January last year. This year in January February the minimum was about 10% of demand.
Fortunately for me I significantly amended the above comment before posting it. Thus I believe that gas backup will be in the system for a long time to come but the utilisation, like the current oil plants will be very low.
Like you I am a bit skeptical of hydrogen as a significant source of power generation, but it may be very useful at the margin. But shipping, aircraft, steel reduction and some other industrial heating applications will probably make it worthwhile
Bernard Durand says
Peter, no the back-up with gas will not be very low, unless the storage capacity becomes much higher than now.
An example is Spain, where the development of renewables made a large gas back-up necessary.
If you look at the present situation in Europe, the only countries having sofar low emissions of their electricity are those using hydroelectricity and nuclear as the main components of their mix.
Wolf Gehrisch says
Indeed, if you had enough capacity for pumped hydro, solar and wind-power would be the ideal solution for electricity supply. Unfortunately, there is way too little such capacity and you can’t add significantly more to what is already available. The other solution where you use power to X to generate hydrogen for electricity storage is elegant but very inefficient and thus far too expensive.
Bas Gresnigt says
Using superfluous wind & solar electricity (cost 1cnt/KWh or less) to generate hydrogen is expected to become economic / competitive against other methods such as steam reform.
Especially when ETS emission certificates rise further in price as expected. E.g. towards €50/tonCO₂ (now ~€25/tonCO₂).
So such projects are in preparation in Germany, NL, DK, etc. Even in UK.
Bernard Durand says
Bas Gresnigt, such projects are in preparation everywhere. A P2P looses 70 % of the energy and cannot be competitive. Furthermore you need 3 times more windturbines to produce the same quantity of electricity.
Bas Gresnigt says
Bernard,
What’s the issue?
When the P2G-S-G2P process buys the electricity for 1cent it will reproduce electricity for 3cent + the cost of the unmanned equipment…
Dutch part of the North Sea is 57,000km². We consume 120TWh/a.
When we install wind turbines on ~6% we have enough to produce all electricity and cover all those losses.
Bernard Durand says
Bas, because it is a marginal cost. Somebody will pay for the rest somewhere ( and also for environmental damages)
Peter Farley says
Bernard
If you include the costs of extraction and refinement of fossil fuels overall system efficiency of a gas turbine running at part load on distillate it loses far more than 70% of the energy. Even on NG it is barely 30% efficient.
In any case a electrolyzer/fuel cell combination can be up to 50% efficient
Van Snyder says
According to the United Nations Scientific Committee for the Effects of Atomic Radiation (UNSCEAR), Fukushima caused no deaths, injuries, acute illnesses, or chronic illnesses. They found no evidence of increased mortality or morbidity, and especially no evidence of increased risk of cancer. People in Fukushima Prefecture receive a lifetime dose of radiation, from natural sources, of about 170 mSv. For comparison, the dose from one abdominal CT scan, with and without contrast, is 30 mSv. UNSCEAR estimated the additional lifetime dose due to the accident to be “on the order of 10 mSv or less.”
Fukushima did do substantial damage to the alleged minds of journalists, politicians, and opportunists who make money from manufactured crises. The greatest damage it did was to convince German politicians to abandon nuclear power.
Bas Gresnigt says
Since ~1960 UNSCEAR gradually changed towards a nuclear promotion organization denying health damage, even when shown by scientific studies.
1. Two studies found significant increases in perinatal mortality in Japanese prefectures contaminated by Fukushima’s nuclear fallout.
The largest study covered ~17million people (results highly significant; P=0.0009).
The mortality increase being linear related to the radiation increase (fall-out level) and no relation found with the local tsunami damage.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27661055
2. The UN WHO expert committee concluded; up to 7% more cancers in later life for evacuated Fukushima children despite the speedy evacuation:
http://goo.gl/AaIZzk
So the IPPNW concluded towards ~20.000 radiation deaths:
https://www.psr.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/chernobyl-fukushima.pdf
Despite the luck that more than 90% of the airborne fallout was blown direct towards the Pacific ocean and the rest most towards the rather sparse populated north.
PS
I don’t know what CT scan equipment they use in your hospitals, but here the involved radiation is 2-10mSv. Even then, studies indicate significant negative health effects. E.g:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23694687
Bernard Durand says
@Bas Gresnigt,
-as far as I know, UNSCEAR is a panel of specialized scientists , as is the ICCP for the climate. Why should they lie more than ICCP? Could it be that, since 1960, knowledge on the effect of ionising radiations on human health has made a lot of progress ?
– are the irradiated persons at Fukushima already dead? If not, how do you know they will die and when they will die?
Bas Gresnigt says
In past decades nuclear industry in many countries was involved in appointing members of UNSCEAR. So now UNSCEAR promotes its interest.
Since 1960 increased knowledge and real life research results confirmed LNT again and again. E.g:
This solid study found that even an increase of 0.3mSV/a (= in many places 15% of natural background radiation) creates already significant higher risks on newborn with significant abnormal limbs, Down syndrome, heart defects, stillbirth, etc.
The US National Academy of Sciences confirmed LNT in 2006 again in its prestigious BEIR VII report. Since then nuclear industry tries to install a new committee which would produce a next BEIR report.
Your next question: Already dead?
Study e.g. the life span studies (LSS) by the RERF (Radiation Effects Research Foundation). They showed that the latency before the nasty health effects of increased low level radiation become manifest is between 10 and 60 years…
Similar as with a.o. smoking, asbestos…
It’s a shame that pro-nuclear now follows same tactics as the tobacco & asbestos industries. Worse, that even the WHO has to follow the IAEA (whose target is the promotion of nuclear) regarding the effects of radiation due to the 1959 agreement with the IAEA.
It delivers many discussions, e.g. about the deaths to expect due to the released radiation of Fukushima. Shown in this paper which illustrates that the WHO data will cause 20,000 to 120,000 cancers. Hence the 20,000 death estimate.
Christoph Barthe says
Bas,
please note this quote from ICRP Publication 103, page 76, par. (161):
“Collective effective dose is not intended as a tool for epidemiological studies, and it is inappropriate to use it in risk projections. This is because the assumptions implicit in the calculation of collective effective dose (e.g., when applying the LNT model) conceal large biological and statistical uncertainties. Specifically, the computation of cancer deaths based on collective effective doses involving trivial exposures to large populations is not reasonable and should be avoided. Such computations based on collective effective dose were never intended, are biologically and statistically very uncertain, presuppose a number of caveats that tend not to be repeated when estimates are quoted out of context, and are an incorrect use of this protection quantity.”
rgds
Christoph
Bas Gresnigt says
Apparently IPPNW knew that information as their estimation is a wide range: 20K to 120K cancers.
The WHO expert committee which estimates up to 7% more cancers in late life for evacuated Fukushima children, also gives a wide range: http://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/10665/78218/1/9789241505130_eng.pdf
The highly significant perinatal deaths increases in 9 prefectures (17million Japanese) concerns counted death numbers. Not computed or estimated numbers.
That study also found that the increase was linear related to the fallout level (significant relation), and not to the Tsunami damage.
Bernard Durand says
Bas, I am still waiting for your estimation of the number of premature deaths due to atmospheric pollution by fossil fuel plants in Germany since 1986.
As of perinatal deaths after Fukushima, could it be due to reporting, as it was the case for thyroïde cancer in Western Europe after Tchernobyl?
Bas Gresnigt says
Bernard,
Sorry, but I don’t know a decent study that shows premature deaths due to pollution by coal plants in Germany. Will be extremely difficult as the pollution by cars is so much higher. Also because those don’t have advanced filters that clean the exhaust air.
The increased perinatal deaths in 9 prefectures after Fukushima was extracted from the birth registers.
Bernard Durand says
Bas, you are not serious
https://env-health.org/IMG/pdf/dark_cloud-full_report_final.pdf
Please note that filters are not able to fix mercury , arsenic and fluor, which are present in the fumes of coal-fired plants. These elements, which are present in many coals are responsible in China for an extremely high numbers of deseases, including bone deformation and skin cancers
Bas Gresnigt says
I studied that action report long ago. Thanks.
Christoph Barthe says
is this paper of interest? you:https://www.nber.org/papers/w26598
Bernard Durand says
Christoph, yes of course. You can also read this one Kharecha, P.A., and J.E. Hansen, 2013: Prevented mortality and greenhouse gas emissions from historical and projected nuclear power. Environ. Sci. Technol., 47, 4889-4895, doi:10.1021/es3051197
Bas Gresnigt says
Thanks!
Bas Gresnigt says
A few corrections regarding the post:
1. The decision to phase out all nuclear was taken in 2000 (SPD-Green govt) and became law in 2002 when the utilities agreed to a scheme which implied all nuclear out in 2022. In 2003/5 two NPP’s were closed. https://www.cleanenergywire.org/factsheets/history-behind-germanys-nuclear-phase-out
2. In 2002 nuclear produced 31% of public electricity. In 2010 25%.
So nuclear share didn’t rise but decreased already.
https://www.energy-charts.de/energy_pie.htm?year=2002
3. Nuclear was not replaced by coal but by renewable!
The shares of coal in: 2002 50%; 2010 43%; 2019 29%…
Shares of renewable in: 2002 9%; 2010 19%; 2019 46%…
4. Carbon emissions due to electricity generation did not increase but decreased:
2002 654g/KWh; 2010 558g/KWh; 2018 474g/KWh. A decrease of 28%
(2019 will be lower again but UBA didn’t publish yet).
5. Imports did not offset the decrease of nuclear. Even in 2011 Germany stayed a net exporter of electricity despite the closure of 8 NPP’s!
The av. net export over 2011-2017 period is not 17TWh (stated in table 3), but 37TWh.
Net exports in: 2002 -1TWh; 2010 18TWh; 2018 51TWh.
(AGEB figures).
6. German households are paying a price for less GHG emissions and better air quality, but the av. household pays lower share of its income for electricity than the av. US household!
Comparison between US states shows that substantial higher KWh prices occur in states with less electricity consumption per household. One of the reasons; distribution / grid costs (which increase hardly with higher transport capacity) have to be paid from less KWh sold…
And av. German households consumes far less electricity than av. US household…
Bernard Durand says
Bas Gresnigt
The installed capacity of coal+lignite ( dont-forget lignite, which is also a coa!) is exactly the same in Germany now than it was in 2000, and the nuclear capacity has been replaced by gas and a little biomass.You can see that on data of the Fraunhofer institute.
The total capacity of dispatchable plants has thus slightly increased. Non dispatchable plants total capacity is now higher than that of dispatchable plants.This is the main reason of the increase of electricity price for households: a doubled investment for producting less electricity.
The CO2 emissions of electricity production have not decrease very much since 2000 and this is mostly due to the already strong increase of gas in the mix.
Gemany will be now addict to gas coming from Russia, and will ever reach its climate commitments
Bas Gresnigt says
Bernard,
Fraunhofer states a 10% decrease in the coal+lignite installed capacity between 2002 and 2019; in 2002 49GW; in 2019 44GW.
Sorry, but I cannot call that “exactly the same”.
Total capacity of dispatchable plants decreased 3% (non-renewable plants decreased 9%, which decrease was partly compensated by the increase of biomass).
The increase of the household electricity prices have little to do with double investments, but a lot with:
– the extreme high feed-in tariffs which owners of wind and solar get when they installed in the first decade of the Energiewende (25-60cnt/KWh), which tariffs are guaranteed during 20years. Those will end gradually after 2022.
– policy; energy taxes as we in NL now also have. So households consume less =>less CO2 (in NL, when we consume little electricity => less / even no tax).
The CO2 emissions of electricity production decreased 28% between 2002 and 2018.
More than nearly all other countries!
Figures from the Umwelt Bundes Amt, the official authority.
______
*) No earlier years stated, though the AGEB figures suggest that the 2000 figures are nearly the same as the 2002 figures.
Anyway, installed capacities don’t generate emissions & electricity. So they are of little relevance.
Bernard Durand says
Bas, you are right, coal+lignite is a little below, although you will have to add this year the Datteln coal-fired plant. But gas has increased ! And you should take into account the 10 % electricity which is not put on the transportation network, because it is consumed locallly by the producer.
Concerning CO2, when, according to you, electricity in Germany will produce the same amount /kWh than electricity in France did for years already, and how ?
How , according to you, the number of deaths produced by air pollution of fossil fuels fired plants compares to the number of deaths produced by Tchernobyl since 1986 in Germany?
Bas Gresnigt says
@Bernard,
Yes, gas generated public electricity increased from 8% in 2002 to 10% in 2019 in Germany.
When you want to include internal consumption then we should move to the less accessible AGEB figures as those account for all generated electricity (not only publicly available electricity).
French and German calculation of CO2 emissions are rather different. So the French have much lower figures. One cannot just compare without applying corrections.
Didn’t see any good study regarding the number of deaths due to coal fired power plants in Germany or another country with strong emissions regulations. Agree that its very difficult as in Germany (and NL, etc) those plants have a range of filters to prevent that they exhaust poisonous material, and fossil fueled traffic emits far more poisonous material.
I only saw an often cited (a.o. Greenpeace) flawed study which took a Rumanian plant which missed those filters and extrapolated then to W.Europe….
Anyway, fossil fueled plants are on the way out. So your deaths question is only relevant for history.