1.8 nukes per day by 2050?

[eclipse]

Hi all,
a good friend of mine (Anglican Minister doing a Phd into the Christian response to climate change) argues that to maintain a modern life and spread it to the rest of the world we'll need to build 1.8 nukes a day. It's about replacing oil as a transport fuel and jet fuel. This is what he said recently on the Australian Christian Environment group on Facebook.

Speaking of hard data, let's crunch a few numbers. You are suggesting that nuclear alone can meet the entire energy demand of the human population over the coming decades (presumably excluding solar energy embodied in crops), crucially, without addressing questions of lifestyle or consumption. So if we're looking at something like 9.5 billion people by 2050, all of whom aspire (presumably, or at least on average) to a typical consumerist western lifestyle, as exemplified by the USA, then let's work out how many nuclear plants we'll need. The current per capita electricity demand of an average US citizen is around 13,000 kWh. Now this is an average, so there are plenty of people in energy poverty amongst US citizens, so the kind of lifestyle we're talking about everyone aspiring to is north of here, but let's stick with it. So 13,000 kWh times nine billion is 123.5 trillion kWh. Now the figure for US electricity demand is but a fraction of US consumer energy demand. First, it also excludes a large amount of energy from products that are presently made elsewhere and imported into the US. Precise figures for this are difficult to find, but we're doing back of the envelope here, and I've seen calculations that put this at something like 1/3-1/2 again on top of local electricity consumption in the US. Let's be conservative and say 1/3, bringing us up to about 165 trillion kWh. On top of this, we're also running a fully electrified transport sector (not just cars, but trucks and trains and presumably, if possible, agricultural and mining equipment), many many desalination plants (enough to be greening the Sahara, as well as providing for very significantly increased water demand from a much larger population in many areas that will have depleted their available precipitation and groundwater) and presumably, also some kind of very extensive air travel (no change to lifestyle assumptions) - all on nuclear. I'd love to get numbers on any of these, but I'm guessing they are going to add more than a few percent to the total (air travel alone, if all 9.5 billion were flying like an average UK resident, would add more than another 100 trillion kWh if the new nuclear-powered air travel were as energy efficient as jet power). So let's just say we're most likely looking at northward of 200 trillion kWh per annum. A typical mid-sized 1GW nuclear plant running at 90% capacity might generate 7,884 GWh annually. Crunching the numbers, this means we'd need something like 25,000 1GW nuclear plants. If we're thinking 2050, then this means 658 plants every year, or 1.8 each and every day between now and 2050.

Now let's acknowledge that it is unrealistic for even the brightest techno-optimist to expect everyone in the world to have reached a US level of consumption by 2050, but even if we extend the goal out to 2100, then we're still basically building a nuclear plant a day every day (and by the time we're done, we'll be building new ones to replace the ones we first started building).

MODERATOR
Eclipse you know from commenting on BNC that "a good friend of mine argues...." is not good enough. Where are your links/refs? Same rules apply on the forum as on the blog.

Hi Moderator,
I edited the post to explain who he was and then put quote marks around what he said. I didn't think his claims would be an issue as his numbers come from public data and assumptions built into the argument itself, which are open to critique.

[anonposter]

The numbers are probably about right (Sustainable energy without the hot air gives 195 kWh day^-1 person^-1 for the UK with 15 for food but also doesn't include desal).

Personally I'd probably go with tens of SMRs per day though (factory production should help make lots of them).

On the issue of whether it's possible, I should note that Boeing has been managing more than one airliner a day lately so if we wanted to I think we very well could build nuclear reactors at the rate we'd need to.

[jagdish]

I have no argument with using nukes where applicable but some uses particularly air transport will always need liquid fuels. Peak oil is already in sight and coal should be preserved as the feed for synthetic fuels.
Fossil fuels in general and coal as the worst case, give out particulate matter which is very bad for health. Radioactivity of nuclear fuels is easily manageable by comparison. The coal is a very useful input but must be converted to gas or benign liquid fuels like DME in a controlled management in a plant.

[eclipse]

May 17, 2012 20:43:42 GMT 9.5 jagdish said:

I have no argument with using nukes where applicable but some uses particularly air transport will always need liquid fuels. Peak oil is already in sight and coal should be preserved as the feed for synthetic fuels.
Fossil fuels in general and coal as the worst case, give out particulate matter which is very bad for health. Radioactivity of nuclear fuels is easily manageable by comparison. The coal is a very useful input but must be converted to gas or benign liquid fuels like DME in a controlled management in a plant.

No, I don't think getting addicted to a massive coal-to-liquids rush is a good idea. Electric cars, electric trolley buses, etc can replace much of our liquid fuel use and the rest can come from synthetic fuels and hydrogen. Nukes will provide the high ERoEI baseload power required to manufacture other fuels.

Hey, we can always go back to airships instead of jets? Halfway between a cruise and a jet-airline.

[anonposter]

May 17, 2012 20:43:42 GMT 9.5 jagdish said:

I have no argument with using nukes where applicable but some uses particularly air transport will always need liquid fuels. Peak oil is already in sight and coal should be preserved as the feed for synthetic fuels.

What about Arctic oil or Antarctic oil? Not that I think we should be drilling for any of it but wouldn't be surprised if we end up doing exactly that.

May 17, 2012 20:43:42 GMT 9.5 jagdish said:

Fossil fuels in general and coal as the worst case, give out particulate matter which is very bad for health. Radioactivity of nuclear fuels is easily manageable by comparison. The coal is a very useful input but must be converted to gas or benign liquid fuels like DME in a controlled management in a plant.

Methoxymethane is a possibility though the boiling point and flash point are a bit low for my liking (JP-5 would probably be ideal if we could make it cheaply enough).

May 17, 2012 21:35:34 GMT 9.5 eclipse said:

No, I don't think getting addicted to a massive coal-to-liquids rush is a good idea.

Preserving coal mining jobs (which that would do) might actually help us get electricity production switch over to nuclear, then we can replace the coal with CO₂ from the atmosphere later on.

May 17, 2012 21:35:34 GMT 9.5 eclipse said:

Electric cars, electric trolley buses, etc can replace much of our liquid fuel use and the rest can come from synthetic fuels and hydrogen.

Yes, though I'm of the opinion that you're better off with trams instead of trolley buses in areas which aren't really steep and electric cars may not have sufficient range and fast enough recharge (though plug-in hybrids can fix that problem).

May 17, 2012 21:35:34 GMT 9.5 eclipse said:

Hey, we can always go back to airships instead of jets? Halfway between a cruise and a jet-airline.

depletedcranium.com/why-heavy-lift-airships-are-not-going-to-happen/ has some good reasons why that won't be happening (or at least why we should hope it doesn't happen).

[Barry Brook]

Eclipse, did you read my paper on Energy Policy on this topic (or the blog post?).

Could nuclear fission energy,etc., solve the greenhouse problem? The affirmative case

In the scenario I paint, a decarbonised world will need about 8,800 GWe of average final power (to do everything, including replacing oil). I guesstimated that ~4,500 of that would come from nuclear fission. This results in the following discussion on build rates:

3.4. Can nuclear plants be built quickly enough?

Could more than five thousand large nuclear power plants (Table 2) be built worldwide during the next 50 years? The World Nuclear Association’s Nuclear Century Outlook7 has forecast a high
estimate of 1350 GWe of nuclear plant in operation by 2030,
based on current national plans. This would leave an additional
4022 GWe to be built between 2030 and 2060 in order to meet
the assumptions of Table 2, implying a (linear) rate of 134 GWe
per year.

The peak global build rate was 30 GWe in 1984; regionally
however, France opened 63 GWe of new nuclear capacity between
1977 and 1999—an average rate of over 2.5 GWe per year (Mackay,
2008, p. 171). France’s GDP constitutes 4.1% of the combined 2010
total of the European Union, United States, China, Japan, Russia,
South Korea, India, Canada, Brazil and Mexico ($51 trillion8). If only
these nine countries plus the European Union, all with GDP4$USD
1 trillion and already using commercial nuclear power, built additional
nuclear capacity at the same rate as France achieved over
more than two decades, then this would imply a potential build rate
of 70 GWe per year. If France’s inflation-adjusted GDP9 increase of
187% since 1977 is also factored in, the possible rate rises to
130 GWe. Clearly then, a global target of 134 GWe per year between
2030 and 2060, while ambitious, is feasible on historical grounds.
This is underscored by the substantial nuclear plans for economically
emergent populous countries like China (Zhou, 2010) and India
(Grover and Chandra, 2006).

[eclipse]

Yes, cheers Barry, and I linked to that page on the Facebook group. I also liked your Tom Blees quotes and threw them in for good measure.

[Bas]

May 8, 2012 18:24:30 GMT 9.5 eclipse said:

... if we extend the goal out to 2100, then we're still basically building a nuclear plant a day every day... 

Eclipse,
In 2012 nuclear installed ~1GW.
Renewable installed ~115GW (incl. ~35GW solar and ~45GW wind).

Taking into account that:

• Nuclear produced 17% of the world electricity at ~1980, and since then is in decline, in 2012 producing ~10% only.
  
• Production of wind+solar was near zero in 1980, and was in 2012 more than nuclear in big parts of the world such as China.
• Even production of nuclear is declining the last several years, while production of wind+solar grows with ~20%/year.
  
  

I think that renewable may fulfill the need, but nuclear (fission) for sure not.

Main reasons for the decline of fission nuclear:
Expensive (even far more than renewable), old technology, also dangerous (even more than up-to-date lignite).
In the end Fusion may save the day.

[sod]

Nuclear seems to be retreating, not expanding. 2013 was not a good year for nuclear.

This is a pretty good sum up:

www.businessspectator.com.au/article/2014/1/13/energy-markets/nuclear-renaissance-stone-cold-dead

The International Atomic Energy Agency has downwardly revised its projections, and now anticipates nuclear capacity growth of 23 per cent to 100 per cent by 2030. Historically, the IAEA's upper projections have been fanciful, while its low projections also tend to be too high (by 13 per cent on average) but provide a reasonable guide nonetheless. So growth of 23 per cent by 2030 − annual growth of a little over 1 per cent − is about as much as the industry can realistically hope for.

The IAEA will further reduce its projections when it factors in last year's annus horribilis. Perhaps the most striking developments were in the United States, where the industry is finding it increasingly difficult to profitably operate existing reactors − especially ageing reactors requiring refurbishments − let alone build new ones. Almost half of the world's reactors have operated for 30 years or more, so the problem of ageing reactors is starting to come into sharp focus

The outlook in the US is pretty dark as well. Best hope is on China?!?

[David B. Benson]

One does well to follow
www.world-nuclear-news.org/
and summaries offered by
www.world-nuclear.org/

For example, one might care to check
www.world-nuclear.org/NuclearDatabase/rdresults.aspx?id=27569&ExampleId=62
for a list of nuclear reactors under construction around the world.

[Grant]

Well the Breakthrough Institute is a friend of nuclear power but they have this to say about the indelible relationship between coal and steel production.

thebreakthrough.org/index.php/programs/energy-and-climate/steeling-ourselves-for-more-coal/

The vast disparities in steel consumption in the world today suggest that a significant increase in overall steel consumption is inevitable and probably desirable. We are however reaching the limits of how efficiently steel can be produced, and despite multiple opportunities to improve the rationality of steel use, it appears clear that we will need to mine hundreds of millions of tonnes of coal each year to produce steel for decades, and more likely, generations to come. These realities should be borne in mind by those who claim there are no significant barriers to 100% renewable energy.

[Roger Clifton]

Grant – you assert (without any argument) that there is an "indelible relationship between coal and steel production". I'm quite sure that you are unable to justify such a statement.

Iron is an ordinary metal; it is halfway down the electrochemical series. Metals above and below it are produced by many diverse means, and I'm sure any chemist would be able to reel off several possible ways to reduce iron from its ores.

Here on BNC, we have discussed at length a means of electrolysing uranium metal out of a chloride melt, where the uranium had been dissolved into potassium chloride at a temperature much lower than its metallic melting point. The metal comes off at the cathode in a flaky but elemental form. A similar process extracts aluminium from its fluoride melt as standard industrial practice. If it can be done for uranium and aluminium it can certainly be done for iron. Sure, that requires a lot of non-carbon, probably nuclear, power to replace a lot of coal that would have been destined for the greenhouse.

Of course if it is more profitable to reduce iron ore by using dirt cheap coal and dumping its wastes into the atmosphere at zero cost, then a cynical blast furnace owner might threaten us with the end of all steel production unless they are given dirt cheap coal and an inalienable right to poison the greenhouse. But for those of us who did chemistry at school, it is our responsibility to the community to call him out for the lie.

Grant, let's hear some argument in your own words that concludes that steel requires coal, and how much of it.

[Grant]

You are right Roger, I can't justify such an indelible relationship. What I can say is the Breakthrough Institute seems to take that position. Perhaps because China was offered as the leading steel maker ("In the year 2000, China produced 15% of the world's steel. Today almost half of the world's steel is made in China, with Chinese steel production increasing by over 500% since 2000.") and I had already presented the projection of energy sources from China in 2050 and those projections showed China as still employing huge coal sources, despite being the alternative energy kings, I put 2+2 together and engaged in a bit of inappropriate shorthand. I'm also looking for a serious narrative that shows fossil fuel being phased out and I'm not finding it. I'm wondering whether any alternative that isn't associated with a major population drop off is really serious.

In any case I'll try to be more qualified in my comments in the future.

[Roger Clifton]

Grant - I share your gloom about future carbon emissions, the rate seems to be endlessly curving upwards, despite all the rhetoric by the leaders. One particular ray of hope was given in 2009 by the then Chinese Premier, Wen Jiabao to reduce the carbon intensity of each unit of GDP by 40-45% by 2020, compared to 2005. (ref)

This is an enormous challenge, considering the significant increase in the CO2 emission rate by China since 2005. Considering that we can expect the Chinese GDP to increase by a lot more than 45% between 2005 and 2020, even a successful achievement (per unit of GDP) would still see the rate of Chinese CO2 emissions rise.

Considering too, that popular pressure in China is much more about the quality of the air (smog), than about global warming, it does suggest that China will make popular reforms to significantly reduce its consumption of coal. However, that is as likely to imply an increase in the distribution (and leakage) of methane as any major increases in renewables and nuclear. The rate of nuclear building has yet to catch up with the rate of coal-fired building, and even then would have a long way to go to overtake coal-fired installations, if priority were assigned to it.

Still, if any nation knows how to make a Great Leap Forward, it would be China.

[Grant]

Jan 20, 2014 18:50:19 GMT 9.5 Roger Clifton said:

 
Considering too, that popular pressure in China is much more about the quality of the air (smog), than about global warming, it does suggest that China will make popular reforms to significantly reduce its consumption of coal. 

Not necessarily. As I indicated in my thread China - future hope or future dystopia coal conversion to principally natural gas seems to be a significant projected way of handling the smog problem. Here's a money quote.

China has recently pushed for investments in large-scale coal-fueled synthetic natural gas plants.
The associated carbon emissions, water needs and wider environmental impacts are, however, mostly
neglected and could lock the country into an unsustainable development path.

A further discussion indicates that the conversion while cleaning up a lot of smog uses more water and produces more CO2.

[cyrilr]

1.8 nuclear plants per day is entirely reasonable.

If you put the reactors in pairs, it is only 0.9 reactors/day. If you use larger reactors (or a team of smaller modular reactors) it drops down to only 0.5 sites/day. With (say) 100 countries building them at the same time, this means only 0.005 sites/day/country. This means that most countries would be starting to build 1-2 sites per year. That's entirely reasonable, in fact outright slow I'd say. France did a lot better than that, it went to 80% nuclear in 15 years (from about 20% nuclear).

[sod]

Jan 26, 2014 20:10:22 GMT 9.5 cyrilr said:

1.8 nuclear plants per day is entirely reasonable.

If you put the reactors in pairs, it is only 0.9 reactors/day. If you use larger reactors (or a team of smaller modular reactors) it drops down to only 0.5 sites/day. With (say) 100 countries building them at the same time, this means only 0.005 sites/day/country. This means that most countries would be starting to build 1-2 sites per year. That's entirely reasonable, in fact outright slow I'd say. France did a lot better than that, it went to 80% nuclear in 15 years (from about 20% nuclear).

sorry, but which two in the top 5 on this list of countries should build 1-2 nuclear reactors per year???

www.listofcountriesoftheworld.com/

there are about 30 countries with nuclear reactors today and there are some among that list that should better not have it. and some, which do not want to have them any longer.

The endless repetition of the comparison with France is misleading. (way too much weight put onto a single example. Why don t you do the same with alternative power?)

[Ed Leaver]

The endless repetition of the comparison with France is misleading. (way too much weight put onto a single example. Why don t you do the same with alternative power?)

In what way is comparison with France misleading? France remains the only example of a country that made the conscious decision to replace fossil fuel (oil) with nuclear in her electricity sector. The French did it and it works. In what way is such success misleading? As for alternatives, can you provide an example of any country that has provided 80% of its electricity reliably from alternative power? (Hydro is not alternative, and is limited. We can't all fit in Norway.)

Steel and concrete. There was discussion about the coal requirements of steel. It is sobering. Its not just reduction of iron from ore, its fabrication of liquid steel from is components: iron, manganese/nickel/molybdenum, and carbon. Steel melts about 1500 C. In contrast, the outlet temperature of proposed HTGR's is about 1000 C. (Well, they do tend to build them from steel...) Wikipedia ('natch) has a fascinating blast furnace page, which makes passing mention of an EU ultra low CO2 steelmaking initiative using, electricity, hydrogen, biomass, CCS, and the like and looking for CO2 emissions reduction of about 50%. For the usual fee, of course...

Steel and concrete. Once upon a time a long time ago on a blog not all that far removed from this one, somebody posted a tcase study of the steel and concrete required to wring 680 MW of more (or less) useful electric power from various sources, on the assumption 680 MWe would need be added globally each day until 2050 to meet increased power demand. (Clean power demand. The author did not seem too keen on coal.) His results:

Wind: "To get 680 MWe average power, 680/0.235 = 2900/2.5 = 1,160 GE 2.5xl turbines per day, worldwide, spread over 340 km2 of land area (a square 18.4 x 18.4 km). Based on the University of Sydney ISA report (p145)... this will consume ~1,250,000 tonnes of concrete and 335,000 tonnes of steel per day. Every day, from 2010 to 2050. Adding 1 day’s energy storage using NaS batteries (to make it equivalent to the solar thermal example below), increases the mass of steel required to 455,000 tonnes per day."

Solar: "The material figures for the parabolic trough Andasol plant come from the detailed NEEDS report (p88). Based on these carefully document figures of an operational solar thermal plant, a 680 MWe build would equate to 2,215,000 tonnes of concrete, 690,000 tonnes of steel per day — shipped out to a remote desert site, each and every day, from 2010 to 2050."

Nuclear (Westinghouse AP1000) "To get 680 MWe average power, 680/0.915 = 743/1154 = 0.64 (close to 2/3) AP1000 plants per day, worldwide, or roughly 2 x AP1000 reactors every 3 days, from 2010 to 2050. This would require ~160,000 tonnes of concrete... and 10,000 tonnes of steel per day. That steel figure only accounts for rebar. An AP1000 takes about 40,000 tonnes total steel, or 26,000 tonnes of steel per day for our 680 MWe/day build.

(It should be noted that any storage -- hydro, battery, thermal, whatever -- that can be used to balance fluctuations from intermittent sources may also be used to shave load peaks from variable demand, thereby reducing the peak load on thermal generation, increasing its capacity factor, and decreasing unit cost.) 

Bottom line: nuclear consumes 5.7% as much steel as wind, and 3.8% as much steel as solar thermal. And keeps the lights on longer than one calm cloudy day at a stretch. (Requires twelve or more reactors. But we require more than twelve reactors.) 

[peterc]

The original post in this thread is not exactly new, and hasn't generated a great deal of traffic. Is this because perhaps others like me have trouble deciding what the good Rev. is getting at? i.e. is he anti-consumption or just anti-nuclear? If he's just trying to draw attention to where US levels of consumption can lead, he's got a point. If he's trying to bowl one against nuclear, as Ed Leaver has just demonstrated, he's missed the stumps by a mile: whatever applies to nuclear applies to renewables to the power 2.

Sod : "the comparison with France is misleading. (way too much weight put onto a single example. Why don t you do the same with alternative power?)"

Sod, if you can name us a fair sized country that uses alternative power to the same extent that France uses nuclear, then we can do the same with alternative.

[cyrilr]

There are no countries that use non-hydro renewables to anywhere near 80% (not even close to 40% in fact).

So the answer is simple. There are ZERO countries that get their majority of electricity supply from wind/solar/geothermal/tidal/wave COMBINED.

Sod has given lists of countries that have small power demands and get most of the power from large hydro-electric dams.

For some reason Sod seems to believe that this proves wind and solar are able to power the world with ample examples. Sadly it just shows how disconnected these people (renewable enthusiasts, nuclear haters, coal agnostics, they are all the same) really are.

[trag]

Jan 27, 2014 16:13:05 GMT 9.5 peterc said:

Sod : "the comparison with France is misleading. (way too much weight put onto a single example. Why don t you do the same with alternative power?)"

Sod, if you can name us a fair sized country that uses alternative power to the same extent that France uses nuclear, then we can do the same with alternative.

Alternatively, we can simply point to Ontario. France is not the only example of low CO2 emissions bought affordably and quickly with nuclear electricity generation; it is simply the best example. However, Ontario, while not an independent nation, is also an excellent example of how nuclear works, at an affordable price and on a short time line, when unreliables continue to fail, expensively and spectacularly.