Nuclear Power Not Efficient Enough To Replace Fossil Fuels, Study Finds

[jpak]

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/03/080304100413.htm

Nuclear energy production must increase by more than 10 percent each year from 2010 to 2050 to meet all future energy demands and replace fossil fuels, but this is an unsustainable prospect. According to a report published in Inderscience's International Journal of Nuclear Governance, Economy and Ecology such a large growth rate will require a major improvement in nuclear power efficiency otherwise each new power plant will simply cannibalize the energy produced by earlier nuclear power plants.

Physicist Joshua Pearce of Clarion University of Pennsylvania has attempted to balance the nuclear books and finds the bottom line simply does not add up. There are several problems that he says cannot be overcome if the nuclear power option is taken in preference to renewable energy sources.
For example, the energy input required from mining and processing uranium ore to its use in a power plant that costs huge amounts of energy to build and operate cannot be offset by power production in a high growth scenario. There are also growth limits set by the grade of uranium ore. "The limit of uranium ore grade to offset greenhouse gas emissions is significantly higher than the purely thermodynamic limit set by the energy payback time," he explains.

<snip>

However, it is the whole-of-life cycle analysis that Pearce has investigated that shows nuclear power is far from the "emission-free panacea" claimed by many of its proponents. Each stage of the nuclear-fuel cycle including power plant construction, mining/milling uranium ores, fuel conversion, enrichment (or de-enrichment of nuclear weapons), fabrication, operation, decommissioning, and for short- and long-term waste disposal contribute to greenhouse gas emissions, he explains.

Nuclear may stack up against the rampant fossil-fuel combustion we see today, but only by a factor of 12. This means that if nuclear power were taken as the major option over the next forty years or so, we would be in no better a position in terms of emissions and reliance on a single major source of energy than we are today given the enormous growth nuclear required over that timescale.

<more>

[NMDemDist2]

1. hope you have your flame proof suit on

:hi:

[jpak]

3. I'm a seasoned mossy-backed E&E flame warrior

not to worry

:evilgrin:

:hi:

[NMDemDist2]

4. why yes,

yes you are

:rofl:

[Javaman]

7. And just where is nnadir? he's usually the first one out of the gate

trying to put a different spin on these types of reports. Or shooting down the poster.

I have some popcorn if you like while we wait?

:popcorn:

[jpak]

8. Time out

:evilgrin:

[havocmom]

2. . (mark for later)

[GliderGuider]

5. That seems like a reasonable assessment.

And it doesn't even sound like he took Peak Oil and Gas decline rates and time lines into account, which would only make matters worse. A lot of the problem comes down to required growth rates and the substitutability of electricity in the face of oil and gas depletion.

Nuclear can't fill the gap. Hydro can't fill the gap. We don't want coal. That leaves all our eggs in a couple of windy, sunny baskets. I distinctly remember my mama warning me about the dangers of that.

[phantom power]

6. I imagine there's some clever reason...

why renewables get around these same problems. To wit: the EROI for wind power, or solar, or what-have-you, also sets limits to their growth rate. And those EROI figures aren't that high, so that growth rate is going to be sharply limited.

The argument regarding emissions is just as bogus as it always is, no matter how many times it gets used. I'm supposed to penalize nuclear power because we currently use fossil fuels as the primary energy source for resource extraction and manufacturing? But I don't have to penalize wind farms or solar collectors for the same problem?

[kristopher]

11. What do you base the claim on: EROI "not that high" for wind??

It is certainly reasonable to extrapolate from the data below that the 7Mw offshore turbines now being tested are going to have an EROI that is above 50, probably well above. Where does it have to get to before you change your determination of "not that high"??

Repeat of previous post:
This graph is based on technology that is three generations old, deployed offshore, which means it is in a good wind location. Offshore wind delivers a capacity factor of around 44% vs onshore at 30-33%.
The models being deployed now offshore are 3.0 to 3.6Mw per turbine. The ones in testing phase are around 7Mw per turbine.



Energy return on investment (EROI), economic feasibility and carbon intensity of a hypothetical Lake Ontario wind farm


"Although the energy demands used from the Wind Power Note and Elsam studies are normalized on a per-MW basis, it is not assumed nor suggested that the energy requirement for a wind turbine is linearly proportional to its capacity rating. No evidence suggests that this is the case; rather, it can be assumed that larger turbines will require proportionally less energy during their life cycles than smaller turbines. This is a likely result of economies of scale energy cost savings. However, each of the four turbines analyzed (in the Wind Power Note, Elsam and this analysis) are within a half-megawatt of capacity rating. Thus, the margin of error will be much smaller than if an analysis of a 100 kW turbine was performed using this method. Additionally, the goal of this analysis is to provide a reasonable approximation of the energy requirement and energy return on investment (EROI) expected for turbines used in a Lake Ontario wind farm. As the farm remains hypothetical, a close approximation is the extent of what can sensibly be achieved, and certainly well suited for this initial analysis.







Table 3: Per turbine energy requirement, production, EROI, and energy payback period.

Table 3 provides a breakdown of the predicted energy requirements of the GE 1.5 MW and Vestas 1.65 MW turbines using the values from the Wind Power Note and Elsam studies. In relation to their expected lifetime power production, an EROI of between 28.3 and 36.7 is calculated for the GE turbine and between 30.5 and 39.6 for the Vestas turbine. The average energy requirement is about 4.22 million kWh for the GE turbine and 4.64 million kWh for the Vestas turbine. The energy payback period for both turbines is less than one year."


http://www.eoearth.org/article/Energy_return_on_investment_%28EROI%29%2C_economic_feasibility_and_carbon_intensity_of_a_hypothetical_Lake_Ontario_wind_farm


And this from an older study of land based wind farms by the editor of the article above. This analysis iss basesd on technology this is literally antiquated,:

Energy from Wind: A Discussion of the EROI Research
"...The EROI for wind turbines compares favorably with other power generation systems (Figure 3). Baseload coal-fired power generation has an EROI between 5 and 10:1. Nuclear power is probably no greater than 5:1, although there is considerable debate regarding how to calculate its EROI. The EROI for hydropower probably exceed 10, but in most places in the world the most favorable sites have been developed....
...Another reason that larger turbines have a larger EROI is the well-known "cube rule" of wind power, i.e., that the power available from the wind varies as the cube of the wind speed. Thus, if the wind speed doubles, the power of the wind increases 8 times. New turbines are taller than earlier technologies, and thus extract energy from the higher winds that exist at greater heights. Surface roughness -- roughness determined mainly by the height and type of vegetation and buildings -- reduces wind velocity near the surface. Over flat, open terrain in particular, the wind speed increases relatively fast with height...."
http://www.theoildrum.com/story/2006/10/17/18478/085

[phantom power]

14. Meanwhile, back in the real non-extrapolating world it is 18:1

And even that is somewhat optimistic, as it doesn't take into account effective losses incurred by taking into account intermittency.

[kristopher]

16. Again, what do you base that on?

The analysis I presented is based on the GE 1.5 and the vestas 2.0.

While this particular location is predictive instead of a recording of performance, both of those units are deployed offshore in Europe. Given the historical wind records available at Lake Ontario and the known performance characteristics of the various turbines there is absolutely no reason to doubt the analysis.

Since the GE 3.6 offshore turbine is essentially the same as the 1.5 there is also no reason think that the input on that unit is significantly higher than the 1.5; however, we know that the output IS significantly higher.

Your 18 number, I suspect, is based on averages of old technology including turbines as small as 500kW. Also, your number quite possibly includes only terrestrial sites, which range in capacity factor from 18%-33%.

Offshore wind is between 40%-44%.

The turbines being field tested now are 5mw and 7mw and perhaps something in between.

These turbines are not radically different than the ones currently deployed, mostly they have larger rotors and heavier duty components related to carrying the associated stresses.

There is no reason to reject this technology an harp back to an unsupported claim of 18. No reason, that is, if you are being intellectually honest.


Energy return on investment (EROI), economic feasibility and carbon intensity of a hypothetical Lake Ontario wind farm

Lead Author: Peter K. Endres (other articles)
Article Topics: Energy, Environmental economics and Net energy analysis
This article has been reviewed and approved by the following Topic Editor: Cutler J. Cleveland (other articles)
Last Updated: January 22, 2007
http://www.eoearth.org/article/Energy_return_on_investment_%28EROI%29%2C_economic_feasibility_and_carbon_intensity_of_a_hypothetical_Lake_Ontario_wind_farm

[phantom power]

18. My 18:1 figure came from here:

here

I'm sure we could play dueling data-sets all day. We could also agree to use your figures. I don't know that it changes my basic point much. My point is really that this is yet another analysis that applies stringent standards to nuclear power, without applying them to renewables. I think wind is a viable energy source. I think nuclear is a viable energy source, with some advantages and disadvantages.

OKItsJustME posted a paper, which did an analysis on the effect of combining some geographically dispersed wind farms to address intermittency. The data from that particular study demonstrated that it required 5:1 redundancy to obtain an 89% capacity factor via geographic dispersal. (89% being equivalent to a typical thermal coal or nuclear plant)

Those were land-based turbines, so maybe if you have an offshore setup you could improve somewhat over 5:1. I would be suspicious of anybody claiming better than 3:1.

I don't see that as a particular show-stopper for wind power, but it does have effects like adding to the cost using wind for consistent power, and it also increases the likelihood of generating unused energy, unless you have an extremely agile power grid (which we do not). That is the background for my quibble about EROI quotes for wind.

[kristopher]

23. That's what I thought

I had seen it and discarded it due to the criticisms I just posted. From the article: "This article reviews 112 wind turbines from 41 different analyses, ranging in publication date from 1977 to 2006."

Another point against using it is the policy incentives that were used across much of Europe, especially Germany. The feed in tariff they used encouraged development of the technology at the expense of efficiency; a large part of their production is from sites with poor to marginal resources.

I didn't comment on the nuclear article because I didn't have access to the original. I appreciate your critique of the press report and summary of the original, I'm sure it's valid.

I believe you are penalizing wind improperly to arrive you your 3:1 rating. The EROI that is listed in the study is based on actual production, not on nameplate capacity. In merging the two concepts - the effort to achieve baseload power and a discussion of capacity factor, with the measured performance vs costs of units in the field. If an offshore wind farm has an EROI of 50:1 that EROI isn't going to decrease when you aggregate it with other wind farms. There may be a penalty associated with transmission, however.

I think I was the one that posted the paper by Cavallo on dispersed generation for baseload. The one you are referring to is from 1995 and, again, is somewhat dated due to technology. If you want current theoretical work look to Archer & Jacobson. They have been cranking out a lot of material since 2005, but there is a global wind assessment and schematic for a worldwide baseload system built on wind.
It is certainly conceivable that we may pursue a path similar to what they outline.

You speak of storage once more. So once more I refer you to the V2G concept by Willett Kempton. There are huge savings on infrastructure gained by having the personal transportation fleet do double duty as a storage medium. This is one of the energy projects to address climate change that google just gave a large lump of funding to last year.

[losthills]

13. With wind and solar it's a one time expense.

They don't require fuel. Nuclear plants require fuel, and that's why there is no comparison. And that fuel is a finite resource, which is why nuclear power is no better than fossil fuels...

[phantom power]

15. Requiring fuel (or not) doesn't really bear on this growth rate.

The author's point is that if you imagine having to construct future nuclear reactors with the energy from existing ones, the lower your EROI, the slower you can grow new reactors. I'm just pointing out that the same logic holds for any energy source. For example, if we imagine having to build new wind turbines using the energy from existing ones, then our growth rate is likewise limited by their EROI.

It begs the question of being able to compare EROI numbers. I've seen numbers of 5:1 to 10:1 for nuclear. I've seen 5:1 all the way up to 30:1 for wind turbines, and 4:1 to 30:1 for solar. Because figuring out how to get a "true" EROI number is hard, and there is no standard guideline, it's unfortunately easy to spin these numbers a great deal. For example, if I wanted to make wind power look bad, I could claim that it's EROI is 5:1 compared to 10:1 for nukes. But are those the fair numbers to compare?

At any rate, one thing to keep in mind is that in reality we use fossil fuels for most energy of construction, for everything. So we aren't actually constrained in this way, and growth rates for any non-fossil energy can be much greater, if we choose to spend our current energy budget accordingly. And why not? If we're going to use fossil fuels, using their energy to construct replacements for them is as good a project as any.

[OKIsItJustMe]

17. ...as good a project as any...

Here I disagree.

Typically, the energy usage you're talking about would be in "internal combustion engines" which just aren't terribly efficient, especially the way they're used on a construction site. High-powered electrical equipment would potentially be much more efficient (even if that electricity was generated by burning fossil fuels.)

The thing is, petroleum is so useful for other things (e.g. making plastics, fertilizers ...) it seems a shame to burn it all just to make heat.

[phantom power]

19. Sure, we could build equipment like that too. My current thinking...

about ICEs is that they use liquid fuels, and liquid fuels are great energy storage mediums due to their high energy density, both per unit mass and unit volume. And we have all the infrastructure to build them, since we've been building them for a hundred years.

Why not continue to use ICEs, but migrate to a carbon-neutral fuel cycle?

I mean, maybe somebody like EEstor will leapfrog them with god's own ultracapacitor, but then again maybe not.

[OKIsItJustMe]

21. I keep mentioning Hydrogen ICE's, but I'm told they're pointless

Naturally, I disagree. Hydrogen can be produced using any number of clean technologies, and works to level off power supplies (i.e. "make hayhydrogen while the sun shines.")

They also help make the transition to electric power. (Assuming someone like EEstor can eventually produce electric storage with the sufficient "oomph" to run construction equipment.)

Gasoline ICE ⇒ Hydrogen ICE
(allows current hardware to use clean fuel with minor modifications)

Hydrogen ICE ⇒ Hydrogen Fuel Cell
(allows same fuel to be used more efficiently - old equipment and new equipment use same fuel)

Hydrogen Fuel Cell ⇒ All Electric
(electric motors originally used with fuel cells are powered with miracle capacitors instead)

[kristopher]

30. Didn't you answer your question in a previous post

The ICE is not just inefficient, at only 12% fuel of pumped into an automobile being used for propulsion, it is obscenely inefficient. Then you have the losses associated with the use of H for storage. I forget the number but it is significant.

LIon batteries are nearly 100% efficient. It simply doesn't make sense to develop another fuel distribution infrastructure for another inefficient fuel. For the same investment, we can adapt, upgrade and modernize the electric grid to meet both transportation and residential/commercial electric needs.

The vehicle fleet rotates pretty fast, so sunk cost for the consumer isn't really a significant concern.

Heavy equipment can be run on either petroleum or biofuels.

My analysis of the current forces at work point to the the sunk cost in coal generation and mining as being the biggest obstacle to meeting climate change. I've never seen an accurate accounting, but conservative back of the envelope calculations make clear that someone stands to lose an unbelievable amount of wealth if we leave coal reserves in the ground and switch to wind.
Added on edit: Or any other renewable including nuclear (we very well might need it desperately).

[bananas]

22. According to the OP, fuel is a limiting factor - especially ore grade

'For example, the energy input required from mining and processing uranium ore to its use in a power plant that costs huge amounts of energy to build and operate cannot be offset by power production in a high growth scenario. There are also growth limits set by the grade of uranium ore. "The limit of uranium ore grade to offset greenhouse gas emissions is significantly higher than the purely thermodynamic limit set by the energy payback time," he explains.'

[losthills]

26. I don't think you answered either of my points.

Once a nuclear power plant has been built, it requires an ongoing external energy expense to acquire and enrich the fuel that it burns. Forever... Wind and Solar installations have no ongoing fuel expense. None... And the maintainance costs are also lower.

And the fuel that nuclear plants burn is going to run out at some point in time. And that makes them a bad investment....

[phantom power]

31. That's certainly a topic of nuke/antinuke debate...

I just don't think it's the topic of the author's article. I think discussion of fuel quality in the article was related to keeping the EROI as high as possible, because that gives you the best possible growth rate.

Whether there is "enough" nuclear fuel to make nuclear energy worthwhile depends on whether you consider options such as fuel reprocessing, sea-water extraction, and breeding fuel from thorium to be viable. They all appear to be completely viable to me, but I can't predict whether anybody will actually do them on a scale that matters. If you assume the scenario that nobody is ever going to do anything but dig uranium ore out of the ground, and run it once-through, and that's it, then I can see how we might "run out" of fuel in the foreseeable future.

[OKIsItJustMe]

9. Misleading headline.

...

Pearce's analysis is based on current practice in the United States with regard to the mining and enrichment of ore. He suggests that rather than abandoning nuclear power, efforts should be made to improve its efficiency considerably. First, we could start utilizing only the highest-concentration ores and switch to fuel enrichment based on gas centrifuge technology, which is much more energy-efficient than current gaseous diffusion methods.

...

Now, please don't ask me to establish my "anti-nuke" credentials...

[OKIsItJustMe]

10. Original Paper Here

http://www.inderscience.com/search/index.php?action=record&rec_id=17358&prevQuery=&ps=10&m=or

Dr. Pearce's home page:
http://jupiter.clarion.edu/~jpearce/

[bananas]

20. Eurekalert headline: "Nuclear Cannibals"

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2008-03/ip-nc030408.php

Nuclear cannibals

Nuclear power will feed on itself

Nuclear energy production must increase by more than 10 percent each year from 2010 to 2050 to meet all future energy demands and replace fossil fuels, but this is an unsustainable prospect. According to a report published in Inderscience's International Journal of Nuclear Governance, Economy and Ecology such a large growth rate will require a major improvement in nuclear power efficiency otherwise each new power plant will simply cannibalize the energy produced by earlier nuclear power plants.

Physicist Joshua Pearce of Clarion University of Pennsylvania has attempted to balance the nuclear books and finds the bottom line simply does not add up. There are several problems that he says cannot be overcome if the nuclear power option is taken in preference to renewable energy sources.

<snip>

[losthills]

25. "Unsustainable " is the word....

Even if somebody has convinced themself that nuclear power is a solution to global warming (and they can live with the nuclear waste issue, the radiation issue and the environmental degradation associated with uranium mining,) sooner or later they've got to confront the reality that it's unsustainable. Why would any civilization in it's right mind invest billions of hard earned dollars on an energy source that they know is destined to run out?

I would invest my "energy" and my money developing the sources that we know are not going to run out. That's just common sense.

[hunter]

12. Nothing is. Not wind, not solar, not nuclear, not even coal.

Oil and natural gas were just too damned easy.

The civilization we founded upon easy oil and easy natural gas will inevitably collapse.

We need to think up a new sort of civilization real quick now, or billions of people are simply not going to survive.

[NNadir]

24. Well, if we assume that everything written in this journal is true...

...we can consider this article's abstract:

Renewables are not green. To reach the scale at which they would contribute importantly to meeting global energy demand, renewable sources of energy, such as wind, water and biomass, cause serious environmental harm. Measuring renewables in watts per square metre that each source could produce smashes these environmental idols. Nuclear energy is green. However, in order to grow, the nuclear industry must extend out of its niche in baseload electric power generation, form alliances with the methane industry to introduce more hydrogen into energy markets, and start making hydrogen itself. Technologies succeed when economies of scale form part of their conditions of evolution. Like computers, to grow larger, the energy system must now shrink in size and cost. Considered in watts per square metre, nuclear has astronomical advantages over its competitors.

http://www.inderscience.com/search/index.php?action=record&rec_id=14671&prevQuery=&ps=10&m=or

Similarly we have, again in the same journal,

Policy scenarios examined in this paper provide insights into the long-term role that nuclear power could play in abating CO2 emissions. Impacts are quantified for a strict phase-out of nuclear generation capacities, and are contrasted with scenarios allowing for a nuclear technology breakthrough under a specific carbon-tax regime. The energy-related global CO2 emissions are reduced by nearly 50% relative to the baseline in 2050 in the carbon-tax scenario, allowing for policies in favour of nuclear energy. On the contrary, the emission-reduction levels are less ambitious for the same carbon tax when a worldwide phasing-out of nuclear power is adopted. The substantial increase in contribution of nuclear energy projected for the carbon mitigation does not represent an acute threat from the uranium resources scarcity point of view for the time horizon of analyses. Nevertheless, the cost of nuclear fuel supplies and waste disposal might increase significantly without adjustments in the technology used.

http://www.inderscience.com/search/index.php?action=record&rec_id=17353&prevQuery=&ps=10&m=or

The fact is that nuclear energy does not have to be perfect to be better than everything else.

It doesn't have to give every yuppie in Maine fuel for his and his Mom's E320 and fertilizer for the family estate's "sustainably managed forests," inherited generation after generation.

While I have been listening to "renewables will save us" talk for nearly 8 years - coupled with the bizarre hallucinations of the Walmart executive Amory Lovins about how "nuclear energy is dying," and a bunch of equally ditzy balderdash from electronic waste hawkers - that would be solar industry - about how solar electricity would have no external cost if it ever produced an exajoule per year - which it hasn't, won't and apparently can't - I've also been listening to "peak uranium" and all kinds of considerable twaddle of this sort.

I note that if the renewable industry were required to produce as much energy as fossil fuels, it would collapse tomorrow.

I've also been hearing - with studied indifference to the 5 or 6 billion people on this planet who don't on average consume as much power as an air conditioner on an E320 - about how "conservation will save us."

If we can only build 100 nuclear plants - the number built in the US over 15 years, most of which still operate - we will still be producing 100 times more energy than all the world's solar plants. If we can only build 5, we still be producing 5 times more energy than all the world's solar plants.

If we build 1000, we will still construct more capacity than all the world's coal plants.

In fact, in yuppie brat cult talk, this is like a yuppie telling a starving person that he should not eat crackers on the table because "they don't have enough protein."

I note that only nuclear energy is held by bizarre cults to be required to be able to do everything and that only nuclear energy would be required to scale by as little as a factor of ten to do everything.

It's well that the yuppie brat cults are getting ever and ever and ever more hallucinatory.

[kristopher]

27. Marvin and his troup of strawmen

Welcome back

[jpak]

28. Apparently not - cuz according to Jesse Ausubel (the paper *you* cite)

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2007-07/ip-rew071907.php

<snip>


Solar power also comes in for criticism. A photovoltaic solar cell plant would require painting black about than 150 square kilometers plus land for storage and retrieval to equal a 1000 MWe nuclear plant. Moreover, every form of renewable energy involves vast infrastructure, such as concrete, steel, and access roads. "As a Green, one of my credos is 'no new structures' but renewables all involve ten times or more stuff per kilowatt as natural gas or nuclear," Ausubel says.

<snip>

Now.

Parabolic trough solar thermal electric plants require 5 acres (~2 hectares) per megawatt or 2000 hectares per 1000 MW or 8000 hectares to produce the same amount of electricity each year as a 1000 MW nucular plant (assuming a 25% capacity factor).

8000 hectares is 80 km2 - not 150 km2 as Ausubel would have us believe...

http://www.eere.energy.gov/solar/cfm/faqs/third_level.cfm/name=Concentrating%20Solar%20Power/cat=Applications

<snip>

Q: Do concentrating solar power (CSP) plants require a lot of land? How much, exactly?

A: Relatively speaking, no. Consider Hoover Dam, for example. Nevada's Lake Mead, which is home to the dam, covers nearly 250 square miles. In contrast, a CSP system occupying only 10 to 20 square miles could generate as much power annually as Hoover Dam did in one recent year. And if we take into consideration the amount of land required for mining, CSP plants also require less land than coal-fired power plants do.

It's hard to say exactly how much land is required for a CSP plant, however, because this depends on its generating capacity and the particular technology used. For example, a 250-kilowatt plant composed of ten 25-kilowatt dish/engine systems requires less than an acre of land. And a parabolic trough system uses about 5 acres for each megawatt of installed capacity. But in any case, the solar resource needed to generate power using CSP systems is quite plentiful. Imagine being able to generate enough electric power for the entire country by covering about 9 percent of Nevada — a plot of land 100 miles on a side — with parabolic trough systems!

<snip>

It seems the good Dr. Ausubel is full of shit - but don't tell that to "green is bad" nuclear shill crowd....

:rofl:

[losthills]

29. Don't bring up mining.

It hurts their feelings.....