Japan has some energy issues right now; I think that is something no one is going to argue with. The country had, prior to March 11 2011 utilized the combined generating capability of 54 nuclear power stations to supply a substantial chunk of the based load of Japans’ energy needs – or around 30% of total generating capacity. The system has long been described as a gold plated energy generation and transmission system.
Now, one year on from the events of March 11 2011 all but 2 of those 54 stations are currently in cold-state idles. The two remaining will be taken offline before summer 2012.
This is going to leave what is a 30% hole in the generating capability of the country before summer demand kicks in. Utilizing extra generating capability from coal, oil and LNG this will be able to be bought down to around a 9-10% undersupply. That will be around 41 days without adequate supply to meet forecasted demand.
A couple of things come to my mind on this. The first is the sustainability of choices being made right now. The other is the mindset of the people here and how they are looking to managing the energy shortfall. For today I will look at the first.
One is the reactionary behaviour of pulling all 54 plants offline and replacing them with coal, LNG and oil. Yes, TEPCO is burning oil in power stations to try and make power to meet demand, even now in the lull between winter and spring. This behaviour isn’t just limited to Japan either – Germany is randomly shutting down their nuclear generation infrastructure as well.
As smartplanet.com has written “Like or dislike nuclear power, its reactors do not emit carbon dioxide – the global warming culprit. So guess what’s happened to Japan’s CO2 footprint since it started shutting down its nuclear plants and replacing them with CO2 spewing fossil fuels?”
The New Scientist has the answer to that question; “A permanent shutdown (of Japan’s nuclear) would boost annual CO2 emission by 60 million tons – or more than 5 percent – as the nation draws extra power from burning fossil fuels, according to the country’s Institute of Energy Economics”.
The reliance on nuclear by the Germans is even more profound. New Scientist has done the math on their shut down as well and its 5 times worse then the result of Japan’s idling of its nuclear infrastructure; “The additional German emissions alone could add up to more than 300 million tons by 2020, which according to the World Nuclear Association, would ‘virtually cancel out the 335-million-ton savings intended to be achieved in the entire European Union by the 2011 Energy Efficiency Directive’,” New Scientist notes.
At the end of the day, in my mind the long term sustainability of the replacement energy sources is not being considered closely enough and needs to be reconsidered with much haste before too much money is wasted on infrastructure which will in a few years be rendered useless due to its emissions factoring.
Ultimately, greenhouse emissions are a worldwide issue. The absurdity and stupidity of the destruction of one countries economy to introduce a ‘carbon scheme/tax’ whilst other countries continue with the status quo is alarming. As Australia begins to tax carbon to save a few million tons, Germany will emit 300 million tons more. Ironically the export of coal from Australia to Germany wont be taxed either.
The amount of time, effort and money being put into capitulating on how to create a new global energy framework wastes money that could be used to come up with a unified solution – something far more effective then the squabbling that has been the case.
Lets look next door to Japan and China’s efforts to deal with its power problems.
While other countries equivocate on nuclear policy in a post-Fukushima era – Germany has famously decided to abandon nuclear – China is going for it. It is currently building 27 nuclear reactors and it could install 100 or more by 2030, according to the World Nuclear Association. That’s nearly a quarter of the 432 reactors that the WNA says operate in the world today.
It’s all part of a plan – goodness knows China can plan – to move away from the fossil fuels that are wreaking havoc on air quality and health and also spewing greenhouse gases in a country that derives 80 percent of its electricity from coal-fired plants. While China’s energy engine is also making steady solar and wind advances, make no mistake: It will rely on nuclear.
So it was really no surprise, in fact, not even news this week when the media went atomic with reports that Gates is talking to China National Nuclear Corp. about possibly developing a reactor with them. We’ve known that since last June, when CNNC posted a brief statement on its website confirming that its boss and and second-in-charge had met with Gates and his Terra CEO, John Gilleland.
What makes an eventual China deal plausible is that Terra’s reactor fits a design known as “fast neutron reactor,” or FNR. China plans — there’s that planning again — to shift heavily towards FNRs by 2050, according to the WNA.
Unlike today’s conventional reactors, FNRs do not slow down, or “moderate”, the neutrons that split out of atoms and serve as the heat source that eventually drives a turbine to make electricity. FNRs can be more efficient and cost-effective. Depending on the design, they can burn both the depleted and spent uranium left over from the conventional nuclear fuel cycle. And FNRs tend to use as fuel the weapons-grade plutonium left over after burning uranium, rather than leaving the plutonium as hazardous waste as happens in today’s reactors. Terra uses an FNR design called a “traveling wave.”
Almost all of the world’s 432 operating commercial reactors are conventional water-cooled, uranium-fueled models. They produce weapons-grade waste, and if not managed properly they can dangerously melt down. That’s extremely rare, but it’s what happened at Japan’s Fukushima nuclear plant in March.
China is currently building conventional reactors, but it is intently developing a variety of other nuclear technologies that are potentially safer and less weapons-prone.
Besides FNRs, these include reactors that run on thorium fuel, as well as unconventional designs such as “pebble bed reactors,” “molten salt reactors” and, of course, fusion reactors – the Holy Grail concept that will nicely put atoms together rather than hazardously rip them asunder. Most of these concepts date back to the 1950s and 1960s, but lost out commercially for various reasons (in the case of fusion, no one has yet figured it out; stay tuned).
China would prefer to develop these alternatives through homegrown initiatives but it is demonstrating a possible willingness to work with foreign entities such as Terra.
China will, I repeat, will, develop these unconventional reactors. CNNC, the huge state-owned group talking to Gates and Gilleland, is just one of over a hundred nuclear organizations in China, many of which are also looking into alternative nuclear technologies. CNNC alone has declared it will invest $120 billion in nuclear through 2020. Thus, they represent the industry’s future.
This will pressure the rest of the world to do adopt alternative nuclear technologies, in order to compete economically. Plenty of companies are working on alternative nuclear around the globe. San Diego-based General Atomics is developing an FNR that could well challenge Terra’s. Huntsville, Ala.-based Flibe Energy is developing a thorium based molten salt reactor. Norway’s Thor Energy is making thorium fuel advances. South Africa’s Q-Power has an impressive pebble bed reactor on the drawing board. That’s just to name a few.
In the United States, President Obama’s Blue Ribbon Commission on America’s Nuclear Future is contemplating changing nuclear regulations in order to facilitate the development of these alternatives, which threaten the entrenched “nuclear as usual” crowd.
This type of investment into base load power options that are low emissions is the kind of sensible investment which the world could do with more of. Let us not forget the current crop of nuclear power stations are now based on 40 year old designs. With all the advances that we have made in technology the ability to make new types of stations hundreds of times saver and more efficient can’t be ignored.
What also can’t be ignore is the impact of current power generation fuels and their life-of-operation nuclear emission, such as coal. Don’t blinker yourself, remember that at the end of the day coal is a impure energy course that comes from the ground, replete with many nuclear impurities. From mining, transportation and burning even a nuclear content of parts-per-billion has huge impact given the thousands of billions of tons burned annually.
Looking at the research results we find “the waste produced by coal plants is actually more radioactive than that generated by their nuclear counterparts. In fact, the fly ash emitted by a power plant—a by-product from burning coal for electricity—carries into the surrounding environment 100 times more radiation than a nuclear power plant producing the same amount of energy”, so reported Scientific American. And Australia’s obsession with the politically created concept of ‘clean coal’ needs to just be killed off. We are smarter then that … I pray.
Related articles
- IAEA sees significant nuclear growth despite Fukushima (business.financialpost.com)
- Anglo-French nuke pact blesses 4th-gen reactors (go.theregister.com)
- Despite Fukushima, Nuclear Keeps Powering Ahead (technologyreview.in)
- Despite Fukushima disaster, global nuclear power expansion continues (arstechnica.com)
- Fear after Fukushima to push up carbon emissions (newscientist.com)
- Global fallout: Did Fukushima scupper nuclear power? (bbc.co.uk)
An Aussie In Japan 