Group items tagged

In the WEO’s central New Policies Scenario, which assumes that recent government commitments are implemented in a cautious manner, primary energy demand increases by one-third between 2010 and 2035, with 90% of the growth in non-OECD economies. China consolidates its position as the world’s largest energy consumer: it consumes nearly 70% more energy than the United States by 2035, even though, by then, per capita demand in China is still less than half the level in the United States. The share of fossil fuels in global primary energy consumption falls from around 81% today to 75% in 2035. Renewables increase from 13% of the mix today to 18% in 2035; the growth in renewables is underpinned by subsidies that rise from $64 billion in 2010 to $250 billion in 2035, support that in some cases cannot be taken for granted in this age of fiscal austerity. By contrast, subsidies for fossil fuels amounted to $409 billion in 2010.

Short-term pressures on oil markets are easing with the economic slowdown and the expected return of Libyan supply. But the average oil price remains high, approaching $120/barrel (in year-2010 dollars) in 2035. Reliance grows on a small number of producers: the increase in output from Middle East and North Africa (MENA) is over 90% of the required growth in world oil output to 2035. If, between 2011 and 2015, investment in the MENA region runs one-third lower than the $100 billion per year required, consumers could face a near-term rise in the oil price to $150/barrel.Oil demand rises from 87 million barrels per day (mb/d) in 2010 to 99 mb/d in 2035, with all the net growth coming from the transport sector in emerging economies. The passenger vehicle fleet doubles to almost 1.7 billion in 2035. Alternative technologies, such as hybrid and electric vehicles that use oil more efficiently or not at all, continue to advance but they take time to penetrate markets.

The use of coal – which met almost half of the increase in global energy demand over the last decade – rises 65% by 2035. Prospects for coal are especially sensitive to energy policies – notably in China, which today accounts for almost half of global demand. More efficient power plants and carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology could boost prospects for coal, but the latter still faces significant regulatory, policy and technical barriers that make its deployment uncertain.Fukushima Daiichi has raised questions about the future role of nuclear power. In the New Policies Scenario, nuclear output rises by over 70% by 2035, only slightly less than projected last year, as most countries with nuclear programmes have reaffirmed their commitment to them. But given the increased uncertainty, that could change. A special Low Nuclear Case examines what would happen if the anticipated contribution of nuclear to future energy supply were to be halved. While providing a boost to renewables, such a slowdown would increase import bills, heighten energy security concerns and make it harder and more expensive to combat climate change.

The future for natural gas is more certain: its share in the energy mix rises and gas use almost catches up with coal consumption, underscoring key findings from a recent WEO Special Report which examined whether the world is entering a “Golden Age of Gas”. One country set to benefit from increased demand for gas is Russia, which is the subject of a special in-depth study in WEO-2011. Key challenges for Russia are to finance a new generation of higher-cost oil and gas fields and to improve its energy efficiency. While Russia remains an important supplier to its traditional markets in Europe, a shift in its fossil fuel exports towards China and the Asia-Pacific gathers momentum. If Russia improved its energy efficiency to the levels of comparable OECD countries, it could reduce its primary energy use by almost one-third, an amount similar to the consumption of the United Kingdom. Potential savings of natural gas alone, at 180 bcm, are close to Russia’s net exports in 2010.

In the New Policies Scenario, cumulative CO2 emissions over the next 25 years amount to three-quarters of the total from the past 110 years, leading to a long-term average temperature rise of 3.5°C. China’s per-capita emissions match the OECD average in 2035. Were the new policies not implemented, we are on an even more dangerous track, to an increase of 6°C.“As each year passes without clear signals to drive investment in clean energy, the “lock-in” of high-carbon infrastructure is making it harder and more expensive to meet our energy security and climate goals,” said Fatih Birol, IEA Chief Economist. The WEO presents a 450 Scenario, which traces an energy path consistent with meeting the globally agreed goal of limiting the temperature rise to 2°C. Four-fifths of the total energy-related CO2 emissions permitted to 2035 in the 450 Scenario are already locked-in by existing capital stock, including power stations, buildings and factories. Without further action by 2017, the energy-related infrastructure then in place would generate all the CO2 emissions allowed in the 450 Scenario up to 2035. Delaying action is a false economy: for every $1 of investment in cleaner technology that is avoided in the power sector before 2020, an additional $4.30 would need to be spent after 2020 to compensate for the increased emissions.

The MIT article on nuclear : The biggest factors limiting the growth of nuclear power in the near term are financial and regulatory uncertainties, which result in high interest rates for the upfront capital needed for construction. Nuclear power is half the cost in China and South Korea and almost as cheap in Russia and India. The countries with more favorable regulations is where nuclear power is being built. The IAEA list of nuclear reactors under construction. Country Number of reactors Nameplate watts Expected TWh generation China 27 27230 200 TWh Russia 11 9153 70 TWh S Korea 5 5560 44 TWh India 6 4194 32 TWh Taiwan 2 2600 20 TWh Bulgaria 2 1906 15 TWh Ukraine 2 1900 15 TWh Others 10 10000 80 TWh China and India are expecting to scale nuclear construction to several hundred gigawatts by 2030-2035.

China will start exporting reactors in 2013. Those reactors will be very affordable and middle eastern countries will be eager buyers and China will have no qualms about selling them nuclear power. The MIT article talking about lack of scaling of nuclear power before 2050 is talking about the USA and Europe building almost zero new power generation and having regulations and business which makes it expensive. I am surprised that MIT made such clear mistakes in their energy articles.

Quoting an official document published online earlier this week, the report said the number of people living less than 10 kilometres from the plant in Jiangxi province, which borders Anhui, had been underestimated.

The document also pointed out that a 5.7-magnitude earthquake hit the region in 2006 and a 4.6-magnitude tremor rattled the same area in September.

However, the fast neutron reactors also have potential drawbacks, including a potentially riskier cooling system.

The State Oceanic Administration considers that "the western Pacific Ocean to the east and southeast of Fukushima Prefecture has been clearly affected by the nuclear plant accident" and has ordered the related agencies to strengthen the inspection of the marine products off the coast of Fukushima for radioactive materials. On August 15, China's State Oceanic Administration announced that the evidence their survey ship had collected off the coast of Fukushima indicated a much wider contamination of the Pacific Ocean than the Japanese government had admitted so far. If the firefly squid was caught in this survey, they are talking about the Pacific Ocean 800 kilometers east of the Fukushima coast.

If China’s dash for thorium power succeeds, it will vastly alter the global energy landscape and may avert a calamitous conflict over resources as Asia’s industrial revolutions clash head-on with the West’s entrenched consumption

China’s Academy of Sciences said it had chosen a “thorium-based molten salt reactor system”. The liquid fuel idea was pioneered by US physicists at Oak Ridge National Lab in the 1960s, but the US has long since dropped the ball. Further evidence of Barack `Obama’s “Sputnik moment”,

Chinese scientists claim that hazardous waste will be a thousand times less than with uranium. The system is inherently less prone to disaster.

“The reactor has an amazing safety feature,” said Kirk Sorensen, a former NASA engineer at Teledyne Brown and a thorium expert

“If it begins to overheat, a little plug melts and the salts drain into a pan. There is no need for computers, or the sort of electrical pumps that were crippled by the tsunami. The reactor saves itself,” he said.

“They operate at atmospheric pressure so you don’t have the sort of hydrogen explosions we’ve seen in Japan. One of these reactors would have come through the tsunami just fine. There would have been no radiation release.”

why aren't the nuke reactors in the world thorium-based, by now? Evans-Pritchard says it's because thorium cannot be made into weapons: US physicists in the late 1940s explored thorium fuel for power. It has a higher neutron yield than uranium, a better fission rating, longer fuel cycles, and does not require the extra cost of isotope separation.The plans were shelved because thorium does not produce plutonium for bombs.

Evans-Pritchard further says western-lifestyle needs nuclear power, and no one has died from nuclear power: I write before knowing the outcome of the Fukushima drama, but as yet none of 15,000 deaths are linked to nuclear failure. Indeed, there has never been a verified death from nuclear power in the West in half a century. Perspective is in order.

The International Atomic Energy Agency said the world currently has 442 nuclear reactors. They generate 372 gigawatts of power, providing 14pc of global electricity. Nuclear output must double over twenty years just to keep pace with the rise of the China and India.

As the Fukushima I Nuke Plant accident has made abundantly clear to many people (clearly Evans-Pritchard is not one of them), it is the human errors that make up the accident - from the design of the reactor and the plant, fitting the pipes that don't fit, hiding the condition of the degrading parts and equipments and structures and the regulatory agency who helps the operator to hide them, to name only a few.

It doesn't quite matter how safe thorium is, when the most dangerous and unpredictable component of all is the humans

According to the State Oceanic Administration, the area said to be affected by radioactive materials is a 252,000 square-kilometer [corrected] area inside the 800 kilometer off the coast of Fukushima. Cesium-137 was found maximum 300 times the level found in the Chinese coastal waters, and strontium-90 was found maximum 10 times the level.

Texas has been experiencing a terrible heat wave this summer - along with much of the rest of the country. According to the Dallas Morning News, this heat wave has caused more than 20 power plants to shut down, including coal and natural gas plants. On the other hand, Texan wind farms have been providing a steady, significant supply of electricity during the heat wave, in part because wind farms require no water to generate electricity. The American Wind Energy Association (AWEA) noted on their blog: “Wind plants are keeping the lights on and the air conditioners running for hundreds of thousands of homes in Texas.”

This near-threat of a blackout is not a one-time or seasonal ordeal for Texans. Earlier this year, when winter storms were hammering the Lone Star State, rolling blackouts occurred due to faltering fossil fuel plants. In February, 50 power plants failed and wind energy helped pick up the slack.

Although far from the steady winds of the Great Plains, Cape Wind Associates noted that if their offshore wind farm was already operational, the turbines would have been able to harness the power of the heat wave oppressing the Northeast, mostly at full capacity. Cape Wind, vying to be the nation’s first offshore wind farm, has a meteorological tower stationed off Nantucket Sound in Massachusetts. If Cape Wind had been built, it could have been using these oppressive heat waves to operate New England’s cooling air conditioners. These three examples would suggest that the reliability of fossil fuels and nuclear reactors has been overstated, as has the variability of wind.

So just how much electricity can wind energy realistically supply as a portion of the nation’s energy? A very thorough report completed by the U.S. Department of Energy in 2008 (completed during President George W. Bush’s tenure) presents one scenario where wind energy could provide 20% of the U.S.’s electrical power by 2030. To achieve this level, the U.S. Department of Energy estimates energy costs would increase only 50 cents per month per household. A more recent study, the Eastern Wind Integration and Transmission Study (EWITS), shows that wind could supply 30% of the Eastern Interconnect’s service area (all of the Eastern U.S. from Nebraska eastward) with the proper transmission upgrades. As wind farms become more spread out across the country, and are better connected to each other via transmission lines, the variability of wind energy further decreases. If the wind isn’t blowing in Nebraska, it may be blowing in North Carolina, or off the coast of Georgia and the electricity generated in any state can then be transported across the continent. A plan has been hatched in the European Union to acquire 50% of those member states’ electricity from wind energy by 2050 - mostly from offshore wind farms, spread around the continent and heavily connected with transmission lines.

With a significant amount of wind energy providing electricity in the U.S., what would happen if the wind ever stops blowing? Nothing really - the lights will stay on, refrigerators will keep running and air conditions will keep working. As it so happens, wind energy has made the U.S. electrical supply more diversified and protects us against periodic shut downs from those pesky, sometimes-unreliable fossil fuel power plants and nuclear reactors.

Czech Industry & Trade Minister Martin Kocourek (right) told the Bloomberg wire service  September 8 the country will not give in to anti-nuclear influences from Austria or Germany. “Czech doesn’t need ideology.  What it needs is a rational update of its energy strategy.  The current ideology-driven policies of some countries is one thing; our reality is another.” If state-owned Czech utility CEZ builds all five reactors, worth about $28 billion, it will export electricity to Germany and Poland.  CEZ is expected to release documents related to the bid process next month.  The bidders are Areva, Westinghouse, and Rosatom.  An award for the first two new reactors to be built at Temelin is expected in 2013.

Czech utility CEZ plans Europe’s largest reactor complexes The Czech government is planning a significant expansion of nuclear energy now that Germany has moved to shutter its 17 reactors by 2020.  A national energy strategy would call for building two or more new reactors at Temelin and three more at Dukovany. The two sites house a total of six existing reactors and grid infrastructure. 

On September 15 CEZ named Daniel Benes, 41, as its new CEO with a mandate to execute a national energy strategy that includes building new nuclear reactors.  On September 20 Benes told financial wire services it will be his top priority linked to the goal of energy security for the Czech Republic.

On September 23 Czech President Vaclav Klaus (left) spoke at the United Nations in support of nuclear energy.  According to English language Czech news media, Klaus said: . . . “We consider what happened in Fukushima did not by any means question the arguments for nuclear energy.  These arguments are strong, economically rational and convincing.” He called Germany’s decision to close its reactors an “irrational populist event.”  In a parallel statement trade minister Kocourek said that CEZ would not expand renewable energy sources beyond 13% because it is unrealistic to expect to run a modern country on them.  He added CEZ “has big doubts” about biomass.

South Korea to invest in Romanian nuclear plant A South Korean nuclear energy consortium may invest in a project to build a third and a fourth reactor at Cernovoda in southeast Romania. The consortium replaces an investor group which pulled out of the project earlier this year.  The project manager for the new reactors is EnergoNuclear.  Right now Romania’s state owned electric utility holds an 85% share in the project and Italy’s ENEL holds another 9%. If the deal goes through, the South Korean group could take up to a 45 % stake in the project which is estimated to cost $5.7 billion.  Romania has two CANDU reactors at the site near the country’s Black Sea coast.  South Korea has experience with the CANDU design so it is plausible it may reference it in a proposal to build the next two units. This would be a huge win for AECL which recently was split up with its reactor division sold off for peanuts to SNC Lavalin.  AECL has marketed itself in eastern Europe hoping for this kind of development.

Success at Vogtle could draw investors to other atomic projects on the drawing boards in Virginia, Florida and the Carolinas, Fanning said. Future Nuclear Development If Vogtle fails, Southern may prove that the time for massive nuclear reactors is over, moving the nation toward smaller modular reactors or away from atomic power altogether, said Chris Gadomski, lead nuclear analyst for Bloomberg New Energy Finance.

“If the new projects are fumbled -- over-budget, behind- schedule -- then utilities will be much more hesitant to start new nuclear construction,” Gadomski said in a telephone interview. Southern and its partners have invested more than $3 billion into the site since 2009, Fanning said, receiving special dispensation from the commission to begin work on cooling towers and other structures not deemed essential to nuclear safety while they awaited final approval to build the reactors.

So far, Vogtle’s new reactors remain under-budget and on schedule to begin producing power in 2016 and 2017, Southern said in a Sept. 20 filing with Georgia regulators. Georgia consumers will pay $6.1 billion of the project’s costs through rate hikes, while the Obama Administration has pledged loan guarantees for another $8.3 billion.

Challenges Remain Vogtle still faces challenges. U.S. Representative Edward Markey, a Massachusetts Democrat, on Sept. 23 called for scrutiny of federal nuclear loan guarantees following the collapse of solar panel-maker Solyndra LLC, which received a $535 million loan guarantee. Vogtle’s opponents worry it will suffer the same cost overruns experienced by other first-of-a-kind reactors in the U.S. when new units were being built a generation ago, Sara Barczak, program director with the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy, said in an interview.

She’s also concerned that Vogtle may have to be redesigned to comply with tougher seismic standards crafted following Fukushima and an August temblor in Virginia. “We want them to get it right, get it worked out, because all they’re going to do is cost ratepayers and taxpayers money,” said Barczak.

A Master Plan The 104 nuclear power plants built a generation ago in the U.S. were customized to each operator’s whims and built without a true master plan, said John Polcyn, a consultant and senior nuclear adviser who has worked on about two dozen plants in the U.S., Japan and China. “The one thing the industry has really gotten mature about is standardization,” Polcyn said. “Is it perfect? No. But I tell you we are eons better than we were the last go-round.”

Miller and Fanning have sophisticated software to monitor every element of the project and pre-fabricated construction that’s first being tested at two plants in China. Miller describes his management style as “Whac-A-Mole,” dealing with problems immediately as they arise and planning for every contingency. His approach has been tested as Southern and its partners deal with suppliers who haven’t built to nuclear construction’s exacting standards since the 1990s.