It’s interesting to note that the Russians have several new nuclear plants under construction, including a fast breeder, despite their enormous fossil fuel resources. What do they know that we don’t know?
- Jack Ellis
Probably nothing at all Jack, although admittedly it is useful to consider the difference between knowing and thinking where high level energy economics is concerned. For instance – as I stare at the wintery Swedish sky – I find myself thinking about the brilliant lectures that I may or may not be asked to give on nuclear economics.If not, which is likely, my thoughts often wander to imaginary conversations and conference presentations in which I display my knowledge of this subject to various energy celebrities, as well as students and colleagues.
A few years ago, after the publication of several of my articles on nuclear, Dr Amory Lovins challenged me to an online debate about nuclear. I reacted by explaining to him that an online ‘gig’ was not to my taste, but if he or his admirers could provide me with a plane ticket, hotel accommodation and some walking-around money, I would leave for the airport that evening if that was required in order to provide him with the opportunity to obtain the satisfaction that he felt he deserved.
Dr Lovins was in Sweden fairly soon after he issued his challenge, and I contacted the organization – The Tallberg Forum – that invited him here, offering (in vain) to give that gentleman a chance to clarify his anti-nuclear logic for both me and an audience of his peers. I had in mind those occasions in the youth of a former boss of the (U.S.) Federal Reserve System, Alan Greenspan, when he appeared on the same stage in New York City, and playing the same instrument, as the great jazz saxophonist Stan Getz. I predicted to colleagues that the outcome of my encounter with Lovins would be comparable to the Getz-Greenspan sessions, with Lovins in the Greenspan role.
By way of providing an example of what I would have to deal with, and easily overcome, I have selected a few lines from one of the most outlandish articles ever published in a major ‘learned’ journal (Foreign Affairs, 1992-93). Amory Lovins and Joseph Romm signed their names to the following fallacious statement.
"For example, the Swedish State Power Board found that doubling electricity efficiency, switching generators to natural gas and biomass fuels and relying upon the cleanest power plants would support a 54 percent increase in real GNP from 1987 to 2010 – while phasing out all nuclear power. Additionally, the heat and power sector’s carbon dioxide output would fall by one-third, and the costs of electrical services by nearly $1 billion per year. Sweden is already among the world’s most energy-efficient countries, even though it is cold, cloudy and heavily industrialized. Other countries should be able to do better".
This is fiction, bunkum – a figment of the imagination of Messrs Lovins and Romm, and especially of their Swedish informants. If the present estimates of world population growth are even approximately correct, then unless per-capita energy requirements sink drastically, or some developments in the near-miracle class take place with unconventional energy resources, a systematic wave of reactor construction is unavoidable. Although generally denied, in almost every country in the world, scientists, engineers and industrial managers are attempting to convince their governments of the futility of attempting to maintain or raise standards of living without more nuclear!
In addition, many observers refuse to understand the deleterious macroeconomic implications associated with investing in excessive – EXCESSIVE – amounts of renewables and alternatives. Countries that make this mistake will find their international competitiveness steadily decreasing relative to those countries with another approach to energy sanity.
Returning to the clumsy falsifications of Lovins and Romm, neither those gentlemen nor many other commentators on energy economics understand the flexibility of nuclear energy – a flexibility based on the perfection and exploitation of future nuclear technologies. There will be multiple auto-shutoff and control systems capable of minimizing human error, the use of gravity instead of electricity to flood overheated reactor cores with huge amounts of water, small-and-medium-sized reactors (SMR – or modular – reactors) specifically designed to eliminate any shortcomings of existing larger equipment, ‘pebble bed’ reactors in which the reactor fuel is encased in graphite ‘pebbles’, which makes meltdowns nearly impossible, etc.
Disposal of nuclear ‘waste’ remains an issue, but only because political expediency has kept governments from organizing the least-cost and secure storage of this ‘dross’, and the same apparently applies to restrictions against nuclear fuel being continuously reprocessed/recycled until it is ‘clean’. The latter is inevitable though, because in the long run reprocessing/recycling will be essential to maximize the energy output of nuclear fuel, and lower the cost of producing electricity Incidentally, this is the argument that will lead to the adoption of breeders, and not a sudden love of plutonium.
A few years ago, I felt forced to comment on several compositions that turned thumbs down on nuclear energy. Among these were one by Dr Benjamin Sovacool (2010), who provided a pseudo-scientific argument as to why a nuclear renaissance should be aborted. Similarly, in the New York Times, Diana Powers (2010) reviewed the work of Professor (of economics) John O. Blackburn of Duke University (USA), who was assisted by a graduate student named Sam Cunningham. The conclusion Blackburn and Cunningham arrived at was that a crossover point has been reached for the cost of electricity generated by nuclear and Solar Voltaic systems. The figure they gave was sixteen cents per kilowatt-hour (=16 c/kWh) for both. A diagram in their work showed the cost of nuclear rising, and that of solar falling. Many diagrams of that nature are being published or referred to at the present time, especially with regard to the Energiwende in Germany. They are without the slightest scientific value.
Under the heading of cost, Dr Sovacool has some interesting information for amateurs and non-thinkers. His levelized cost figures include 3-7 cents/kWh (= 3-7 c/kWh) for hydro, 5-12 c/kWh for wind, 18-30 c/kWh for nuclear, and 20-80 c/kWh for solar voltaics. For what it is worth, his figure for solar voltaics does not match that cited by Ms Powers, which often happens, and which is the kind of phenomenon I ignore. I ignore it because all we need now to settle the nuclear riddle is the absolute and indubitably correct cost of nuclear equipment, calculated by professionals. Incidentally, I happen to believe that that cost has already been calculated in the U.S. Department of Energy. In fact, I don’t see how any other conclusion is possible.
An important item above is that hydro is often considered the lowest cost source of electricity, which I make a point of telling my students to remember. Without knowing (or being interested in) the exact cost figure for hydro, I once used Swedish and Norwegian data to show that employing nuclear and hydro resulted in the same unit costs for electricity. I obtained this because Norway has almost 100 percent hydro, and Sweden has almost 50-50 hydro and nuclear, and since (before deregulation) Sweden and Norway had about the same (aggregate) electric price, the cost of nuclear must have been approximately the same as the cost of hydro.
There is more on this topic in my forthcoming book (2015), although not much more is required. Regardless of what has happened in Germany and Japan, and what is happening, those countries will probably be the most nuclear intensive countries in the world at mid-century. Don’t make the mistake of thinking that present intentions and actions are serious.
References
Banks, Ferdinand E. (2015). Energy and Economic Theory. Singapore, New York and London: World Scientific (Forthcoming) (2007).
The Political Economy of World Energy: An Introductory Textbook. Singapore, New York and London: World Scientific. Khaleel, Shehu (2012).
‘Post Fushima disaster: the fate of nuclear energy’. Energy Pulse (March 20),
Powers, Diana S. (2010). ‘Nuclear energy loses cost advantage’. The New York Times. (July 25: Global Issues).
Sovacool, Benjamin K. (2010). ‘Questioning a nuclear renaissance’. GPPi Policy Paper No. 8. Lee Kwan Yew School of Public Policy (Singapore)
Comments
Log in or sign up to join the conversation.