Chris Goodall: The green movement must learn to love nuclear power
The public debate about energy options needs to be realistic
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Independent Minds
This country faces a serious energy crisis. Within a decade a large fraction of the UK’s antiquated power-generating capacity, both coal-fired and nuclear, is due to close. If it is not replaced, we face a nightmarish future of power shortages and blackouts. In the meantime, we desperately need to reduce this country’s greenhouse gas emissions: 90 per cent of our energy currently comes from fossil fuels. This country’s current and past emissions are far more than our share of the world population. Unless we reduce our carbon pollution urgently, we will be in breach of our moral, as well as EU and UN, obligations.
These enormous twin challenges mean we need to get real about energy. At the moment the public discussion is intensely emotional, polarised and mistrustful. This is particularly the case for nuclear power – too often people divide into sharp pro- or anti-nuclear positions, with no middle ground. Every option is strongly opposed: the public seems to be anti-wind, anti-coal, anti-waste-to-energy, anti-tidal-barrage, anti-fuel-duty and anti-nuclear. We can’t be anti-everything, and time is running out. Large projects take many years to construct.
It’s important to understand the scale of the challenge. Yes, Britain has enormous renewable resources – but as David MacKay’s excellent new book, Sustainable Energy –Without the Hot Air shows, we will need country-sized energy investments to extract them. You hear a lot about wave and wind, but if 1,000 km of Atlantic coastline were completely filled with Pelamis wave machines, this would generate enough electricity to cover less than 10 per cent of our current consumption. Delivering two thirds of today’s electricity supply from wind would require a 30-fold increase in British wind power. Both of these are technically feasible, but would require massive and sustained investment as well as higher prices for electricity.
In contrast, small-scale and unobtrusive renewable installations such as solar photovoltaic panels on residential houses will only ever make a tiny contribution to our overall energy supply – though panels providing solar hot water are already a good investment. In general, the land-use implications of renewables are critical, because their energy density is so low: to provide one quarter of our current energy consumption by growing energy crops, for example, would require half of Britain to be covered in biomass plantations. Even “concentrated solar power” plants in the Sahara desert will need a lot of space – at least 15,000 sq kms – about the same size as Yorkshire and Humberside put together. Clearly, anyone who wants to live on renewable energy but expects the associated infrastructure not to be large or intrusive is deluding themselves.
Two thirds of Britain’s energy consumption today goes into heating and transport. Big efficiency savings are possible in both. By electrifying heating using heat-pumps, it can be made four times more efficient; electric cars are also much more energy-efficient than fossil-fuel cars. Of course, making these technology switches will require a significant increase in Britain’s electricity production, all of which must be low-carbon. While consuming less energy overall is certainly an option, consuming less electricity is not.
The public debate about energy options needs to be realistic. Energy plans can be made to add up in different ways with differing contributions from competing energy sources. But a decision needs to be made soon about what proportion should be supplied from each technology. Including nuclear power in this mix will make a low-carbon and energy-secure future easier to achieve. Nuclear power has substantial drawbacks, but the consequences of not embracing it are likely to be significantly worse.
Germany provides a useful cautionary tale. Despite huge subsidies for solar panels, photovoltaics have not yet replaced one per cent of fossil fuel electricity generation. Indeed, because Germany – under pressure from well-meaning environmentalists – is phasing out nuclear power, it is inexorably turning back towards dirty coal: 30 new coal plants are planned, including four burning lignite (brown coal), the dirtiest fuel of all.
Bridging the energy gap at the same time as phasing out fossil fuels won’t be easy. To succeed with this choice, we need to develop clear and reliable support from a wide spectrum of the UK population – not just a few politicians who may not be around in five years time, or a tight circle of environmental or industry lobbyists. So far, the public has not been fully engaged. Nevertheless the issue is vital – one of a small handful of questions on which a genuine and informed consensus is now desperately needed. We have no time to lose.
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Comments
Incidentally, he didn't mention that Dave MacKay's book is available free on the net...
http://www.withouthotair.com/
There's nothing fabulously new in there, but he's a very sharp guy (a mathmetician at Cambridge university) with his head screwed on right and he does a great job of wading through all the numbers and figuring out what they all mean.
Why are not we willing to back alternative sources, with so much enthusiasm? The answer is really simple, ignorance and shortsightedness.
COOL IS COOL.
david
Please bear in mind that wind turbines, the only renewable generators being built in any number at the moment , need backing up with firm generators to the tune of 92% of their installed capacity.
http://www.parliament.uk/documents/uplo
The next train for Cloud 9 will be leaving from platform 5...
Do yourself a favour, thomasth, and Google 'Pebble Bed reactor'. then see if you can still justify your hysterical assertion that "Nuclear is vastly expensive, will be decades coming on stream, will not provide adequate power. There will be shortages of uranium, massive pollution problems, ghastly safety hazards."
And bearing in mind hte numbre of wind turbines we have now versus the number we'd need to provide "adequate power", wts aren't looking so safe either and ew'd still need something to back them up; if it's not nuclear, we're back to the global warming increasing coal, gas and oil.
Scroll down to accident data
http://www.clowd.org.uk/pages/clowdAcci
Nuclear power produces a significant quantity of highly radioactive waste. I've lost count of the nuclear power plants that have leaks and safety problems. Most recently Magnox Ltd were fined by the EA for a 14 year leak (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/46826
We need nuclear power like we need a hole in the head.
To all those people that have had a 'change of mind,' was it anything to do with a brown envelope stuffed full of 50s?
All technologies produce significant quantities of CO2 throughout their lifecycles for example the production, installation and maintenance of 2000 wind turbines and you'd still need your nuclear power station for the backup.
Eon Netz are the German grid operators and the largest wind developers in Europe.
Eon Netz’s recent submission to the House of Lords Select Committee of Economic Affairs on the Economics of Renewable Energy comments on the backup needed for wind in the UK, all 92% of it: http://www.parliament.uk/documents/uplo
The “Tyndall Centre Technical Report 30, July 2005 Conclusion 5, Security of decarbonised electricity systems” refers to the back up plants needed for wind turbines: "We observed that wind generation has a relatively small capacity credit. At lower levels of wind penetrations the capacity credit of wind generation is found to be about the same as the average load factor of wind. However, as the level of wind penetration rises, the capacity credit begins to tail off. That is why in order to maintain the same level of system security a significant capacity of conventional plant will still be required.
However, these conventional plants will be required to run either occasionally and/or at part load when shortages of supply are likely to occur due to a low total wind power output. Considering that conventional plants at full load are the most efficient and generate the lowest amount of CO2 emission (per electricity produced) such occasionally and/or part-loaded plants will be less utilised and/or produce more CO2 per electricity produced."
Any ideas on how we might power the country please?
At first glance:
It is not the case that 90% of elecricity is generated from fossil fuels: what is the case is that 90% of installed generating capacity is fossil-fuel based. The nuclear generating capacity is used far more than the fossil-fuel based.
Heat pumps will only make heating "four times more efficient" if the heating is electrically-powered in the first place: electricity is, however, a very inefficient way of transmitting heat, so that if you were to "electrify" heating in order to use heat pumps, you would lose a large part of the gain by the act of electrification.
Electric cars are only more efficient than fossil-fuel cars at the point of use: the inefficiencies in generating end transmitting the electricty used need to be taken into account, although, if well-managed, most electricity for charging could be drawn at night from (mostly) nuclear sources.
Power stations are being closed to meet EU Directives; if we fail to close them we'll pay heavy fines to the EU. We can expect blackouts by 2015. One way to combat this will be to keep some of our aging nuclear plants running - on this basis, I'd rather we had new nuclear plants asap.
To put GW into perspective, a medium sized conventional power station will have an installed generating capacity of about 1GW (1000MW).
and the entire grid would need replacing anyway. The amount of copper required to do this would completely outweigh any possible gain.
Most of the plants are also in existing sites, and so would merely need upgrading.
In terms of grid demand the nuclear option is far more efficient.
Other misconceptions on this thread include the isolation of the risks of nuclear waste as being unique.
The long term waste is by definition far less potent at any point of time than the short lived waste - that is why it decays over such a long time scale.
A full-scale commitment to nuclear would in any case treat this waste as fuel, and burn it in more advanced reactors.
The uranium thrown away in coal waste from mining contains around 30 times the energy of the coal! We have a very good basis for designing the reactors needed to use this.
The industrial wastes from many processes, including making solar panels, have a half-life of forever in any case.
A completely clean way of generating power is as frequent as virgin births.
We need to get rid of the grid.
That's my point.
The slightest study of this would show that it is entirely impractical, probably everywhere, certainly in Britain, where for instance tapping streams to produce power would be orders of magnitude too small, as would be household wind turbines.
In any case your point about copper running out makes no sense, as aluminium could be used with a small hit on performance.
No sane person would want to be near a nuclear plant end of argument
The question fanny_ann needs to ask is which would you prefer at the bottom of your garden:
- 200 x 2MW 100m tall wind turbines AND a nuclear power station
or
- a nuclear power station
Wind turbines need backing up - according to Eon Netz, the biggest wind developers in Europe, with 98% of their installed capacity.
Which sane person would want the 2000 wind turbines and the nuclear plant?
- it should be 2000 (not 200) x 2MW wind turbines and the last comment would read better the other way around - so trying again:
The question fanny_ann needs to ask is which would you prefer at the bottom of your garden:
- 2000 x 2MW 100m tall wind turbines AND a nuclear power station
or
- a nuclear power station
Wind turbines need backing up - according to Eon Netz, the biggest wind developers in Europe, with 98% of their installed capacity.
Which sane person would want the the nuclear plant and 2000 wind turbines whenthey can just have the nuclear power station?
Sorry, no you can't just have the wind turbines if you want the lights to stay on.
Nuclear energy has to be constantly bailed out by governments and no safe or fool proof way has been found to dispose of the waste.
We also have safety problems that have massive long term health problems .
We really want some form of energy production that does not rely on uranium from foreign powers so that we can be independent and not held to ransom in the future
There is also the problem of double standards with Iran and other countries that are arguing their case for uranium for electricity, How can we argue they can not be a nuclear if we are buy arguing the case for are nuclear electricity
Onshore wind turbines could be built in small clustres up and down the country regardless of other technologies so Im not sure what your saying here fanny_ann, whether they're going to help much in reducing CO2 emissions and securing our electricity supply is another matter altogether.
And what's the point of providing the 98% backup from another renewable source, just have the other renewable source (it's got to be a firm generator of course i.e. there on demand when we need it).
And which valleys are you going to flood and which mountains are you going to hollow out for the hydro power? Incidentally the loss of energy in its transfer i.e. pumping water back into the dams is huge. Hydro is really more of a storage facility than a generator.
I'm interested in your figures i.e. what percentage of our current 76GW of generating capacity will be provided by which source and hby what percentage could we reduce demand?
We may not be able to keep the lights on at night as we do now but this may be the case in only a few years time as there is an energy gap coming, besides life may not be the same cosy life style in the future as we cannot keep using more than the planet has to give, we cannot carry on living the way we are and that is the whole point of trying to find alternatives
Jane Davis and her family, farmers and originally pro-wind, have had to abandon their home, more than 900m from a wind turbine site because of amplitude modulation. DBERR know all about their situation and seem powerless to do anything as the wind turbine site apparently complies with ETSU-R97.
http://www.parliament.uk/documents/uplo
Basically ETSU-R97 is failing to protect the public. This means everyone around a wind turbine is under threat of having their homes rendered uninhabitable. Is it any wonder that there is so much protest?.
The Renewable Energy Foundation has just won a Freedom of Information ruling to view the data commissioned by our government on Amplitude Modulation:
http://www.ref.org.uk/Files/jc.lm.salfo
There is a lot of information at this link about the government’s failure to address noise from wind turbines; it includes reference to the member of the government’s noise working group who resigned:
http://209.85.229.132/search?q=cache:kH
Reports about wind turbines and noise:
http://www.viewsofscotland.org/libr
And at Batsworthy Cross, npower haven’t even complied with ETSU-R97
http://www.twomoorscampaign.co.uk/MAS-R
Nina Pierpont:
"In conclusion, based on these data, wind turbines should not be built within 1.5 miles of people’s homes. Let it be understood, however, that there will still be health and life quality problems caused by wind turbines beyond this radius. People living 1.5 to 3 miles from a proposed turbine site should be notified of potential health and life quality effects, and for this they should be appropriately compensated."
And her peer reviewed research into the effects of wind turbines on health:
http://www.windturbinesyndrome.com/
Modern nuclear reactor designs are several orders of magnitude safer than designs of even as recent as 15 years ago. And you would probably get no more radiation from one built at the bottom of your garden than you would from the bedrock your house is built upon (all rocks are slightly radioactive, especially granite) or the radon gas seeping into your cellar, or the americium isotope in your smoke alarm. So have a sense of proportion, please (often a difficult thing in this debate, I know...).
And I think I would rather have a nuclear power station at the bottom of my garden than have the view from it blighted by the gigantic towers and blades of wind-farms that would otherwise have to stretch from horizon to horizon to produce the same amount of energy.
http://www.carboncommentary.com/200
"The rising costs of UK nuclear energy
"The fall in the pound's value undermines any financial case for nuclear energy, writes Chris Goodall from Carbon Commentary, part of the Guardian Environment Network"
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2
What the supporters of nuclear energy seem to have overlooked is that this is the corporate 'solution' to carbon emissions which is predicated on the assumption that if the energy 'issue' can be solved the current growth-based economy can continue in "flat out" mode.
This is a highly dubious assumption since other resources 'issues' are also well on the radar, such as water shortages, depletion of fisheries, and the kind of complex amalgam of problems raised in a recent New York Times piece on California:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/22/us/22
Finally, uranium is another finite resource:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranium_de
They were prototyped in the US in the 60's, but fell out of favour because they are truly lousy at producing weapons grade materials and offered no revenue stream to the nuclear industry in processing fuel, as the complex building of fuel rods is not needed.
They are also inherently safe and radioactive waste, such as it is, is around 1% of that in present reactors and degrades within hundreds of years.
An unholy alliance of the coal industry, the military, the present nuclear industry which is committed to current designs and the ecological movement has hindered it's development.
It is a calm, rational, objective and scientific analysis of the problems facing us all in this century, and the possible solutions to them. It is refreshingly free of corporate propaganda, environmentalist hysteria, ideological tub-thumping, political point-scoring and other maladies that usually distort serious debate. A must-read.
A few places conveniently on the bank of a fast-flowing stream or perched in very windy locations aside, in most a realistic amount of power can't be generated anyway.
Even where you can, the cost and materials needed for back-up in batteries and so on make this about the most expensive way of generating miniscule amounts of power conceivable.
It would be hugely expensive and materials inefficient even compared to renewable resources done at realistic scale, such as off-shore wind, which itself comes in at an eye-watering £2600 KWh installed capacity, around £7800 Kwh for actual generating capacity, compared to around £3000 Kwh for nuclear according to the latest report from Ernst and Young.
Don't believe me? Look up the costs to run your house on renewables, without using the grid.
- TIMESCALE: It takes decades to build nuclear power plants. This is beyond our urgent schedule, as we need energy solutions RIGHT NOW to prevent the escalation of the climate crisis into something that can no longer be averted.
- UNNECESSARY: We can achieve the 40% CO2 emissions reductions by 2020 (IPCC science) *without* nuclear power. Greenpeace Finland have demonstrated that this is possible entirely with energy efficiency and renewables, without adding nuclear power, using the government's own figures and research (and thus MUST be possible elsewhere, as Finland is one of the world's energy-intense societies).
- AVERTS FINANCIAL AND INTELLECTUAL CAPITAL FROM RENEWABLE SOURCES: by focusing on nuclear power, we are depleting our capacity to search for other alternatives. Only by investing in safe, fundamentally sustainable, ethical, and renewable energy sources can we truly solve the energy crisis. Investing in nuclear is only another one waiting to happen after peak oil.
There are also a vast number of other reasons to continue to oppose nuclear energy, some of which are:
- PEAK URANIUM: uranium is also a finite resource that will run out in the next few decades, especially if uranium use grows significantly. This will be intensely problematic if/when we have spent all our money, technological development, and infrastructure building on an inherently unsustainable energy resource.
- URANIUM MINING IS EXPLOITATIVE. It is unsustainable and unethical. Not only does it leave a permanent scar on the earth and create huge amounts of radioactive waste, mining occurs either in pristine areas of untouched nature (which should stay that way) or in/near lands of indigenous peoples/ethnic minorities (who often have few rights or little say in the matter).
- DANGEROUS WASTE AND CHEMICAL UNCERTAINTY. Despite what some pro-nuclear scientists may say, we still have *NO* idea exactly how to store the radioactive waste from mining and spent fuel. Most radioactive nuclides in spent fuel are man-made and we have little knowledge of their chemistry due in part to their immense radiotoxicity. They may very well be water soluble under certain conditions, and thus escape more easily into the biosphere. How do these species behave on a geological timescale of hundreds of thousands of years? We have no idea. Moreover, we have no fool-proof technology for building storage vessels that would last tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, even millions of years (the *half-lives* of some radionuclides that are generated are hundreds of thousands or millions of years!!!). Our buildings and various constructions last for some hundreds of years, maybe thousands. Not nearly enough. We think the pyramids are old but they're only a few thousand years... We just DO NOT know and so cannot take risks such as these.
It is simply foolish and utterly bewildering to think that nuclear power could solve the climate crisis. It is replacing one environmental disaster with another one. To support nuclear power in the face of climate change means that the fundamental reasons for why climate change is happening have not been understood. We, as the human species, have exploited nature far beyond its limits and see it only as a "resource". Part of the fight against climate change is understanding this and fundamentally changing our ways. Making decisions like "yay lets go nuclear" simply aren't the way forward. They do not tackle the underlying reasons for why we are standing on this precipice, and will lead to an escalating series of further problems.
Karoliina Korkeila
Master of Chemistry
Environmental Educator
Active member of Friends of the Earth Finland