Green, ethical, energy issues in the news

ABrass

shinytop said:

Martyn1981 said:

Sounds insane, but it's nuclear, and so very possible now.

Slight niggle, there are a few small (almost petty) issues in that article. Nothing too important, like saying HPC is 2.3GW, when its 3.2GW, and that SZC is due to open early 2030's, when it has been approved, but no contract agreed nor issued. That's similar to HPC getting approval in 2012 (and a CfD award), but not approved till 2015. I'd doubt SZC could be generating before 2035, even if agreed today.

I only mention these small points, as it could mean other parts of the article are slightly out too, but they could also be spot on.

I'd also point to the suggestion that the RR SMR's could be a quarter of the price of HPC. My understanding is that they would need subsidy support to sell the first few, as the price will be uneconomic, before they can get down to HPC costs. Only after that could they / might they get down to sub HPC generation costs as they predict. But the hoped for price, I think I recall £60/MWh, is already higher than wind and PV in the UK.

Nu-Scale is more advanced than RR, and expected to be cheaper, but they've had loads of problems, and rising costs. Interesting to see costs now estimated at $90/MWh, so ~3x more than some US PV and on-shore wind generation already (location dependant).

[Edit - Just a thought, but taking the old £60/MWh estimate figure for RR SMR's, applying index linking from 2012, and converting to dollars, gives me a figure of ~$90/MWh.]

Lastly, the recent budget announcement was good for nuclear, but as stated is 'upto' £20bn (that's just the subsidy support, not the cost), to provide upto 25% of future leccy demand. I suspect the real figures will be far, far lower.

25% of future leccy demand, could be around 25GW of nuclear - but 5yrs ago the Gov was advised by their advisers, the National Infrastructure Commission (NIC), to slow down their plans for 16GW of nuclear, and instead stop at HPC + 1 (most likely SZC), then review the situation, as they now (5yrs ago) suspected RE + storage would be cheaper.

For context, off-shore wind CfD's in 2017, the year before this advice, were issued at £74.75/MWh (2021/22 delivery) & £57.50/MWh (2022/232 delivery). In 2019 CfD's were issued at £39.65 & £41.61, then 2021 auction (2022 results) at £37.35. HPC contract was issued at £89.50. [All prices using 2012 baseline before index linking].


Tbf, whilst I think it's worth paying a small amount more for our leccy if it means avoiding the long term issues of nuclear, and now, in reality, it looks like avoiding nuclear is actually the cheaper option .... I'd still suggest that some subsidy funding of SMR's is worth it, just to make sure we aren't missing out on a viable source of generation. I don't think it is now viable (economically), but that's just my opinion, and I'd be a hyporcrite to support tidal lagoon research in Swansea*, which will be expensive, possibly nuclear level expensive, without at least considering some research into SMR's.

*Swansea will be expensive, because its small, but being small, it will be quicker and easier to test out the idea, before considering larger schemes, such as Cardiff, which would be 10x the size, and roughly half the cost per MWh.



Edit - Update, the article suggests a 6yr life for the reactors, but looking at the company's website, it states:

95% uptime, 72 month fuel cycle, < 3 month refueling period

So it looks like it runs for 6yrs, before refueling, giving it a cf of 95% (I make it 96%(?)), which only makes sense if it continues to operate. Another article suggests it operates for 20-24yrs.

This seems to come around every few months.  Everybody knows wind/solar are cheaper per kWh generated than nuclear. But is it fair to compare SMR/nuclear with wind/solar?  One is available 95% + of the time, the other.....isn't.  A comparison with tidal or with a package that can deliver 95% of the time (wind/solar plus storage) would perhaps be more meaningful. 

I don't recall seeing any serious, viable scale-able plans or designs for such a package that would work in the UK, let alone costed ones.  

A minor niggle, it isn't available 95% of the time (also, hah!), it's producing power 95% of the time. Just like renewables it will produce power when it feels like it. Nuclear also needs storage.

shinytop

ABrass said:

shinytop said:

Martyn1981 said:

Sounds insane, but it's nuclear, and so very possible now.

Slight niggle, there are a few small (almost petty) issues in that article. Nothing too important, like saying HPC is 2.3GW, when its 3.2GW, and that SZC is due to open early 2030's, when it has been approved, but no contract agreed nor issued. That's similar to HPC getting approval in 2012 (and a CfD award), but not approved till 2015. I'd doubt SZC could be generating before 2035, even if agreed today.

I only mention these small points, as it could mean other parts of the article are slightly out too, but they could also be spot on.

I'd also point to the suggestion that the RR SMR's could be a quarter of the price of HPC. My understanding is that they would need subsidy support to sell the first few, as the price will be uneconomic, before they can get down to HPC costs. Only after that could they / might they get down to sub HPC generation costs as they predict. But the hoped for price, I think I recall £60/MWh, is already higher than wind and PV in the UK.

Nu-Scale is more advanced than RR, and expected to be cheaper, but they've had loads of problems, and rising costs. Interesting to see costs now estimated at $90/MWh, so ~3x more than some US PV and on-shore wind generation already (location dependant).

[Edit - Just a thought, but taking the old £60/MWh estimate figure for RR SMR's, applying index linking from 2012, and converting to dollars, gives me a figure of ~$90/MWh.]

Lastly, the recent budget announcement was good for nuclear, but as stated is 'upto' £20bn (that's just the subsidy support, not the cost), to provide upto 25% of future leccy demand. I suspect the real figures will be far, far lower.

25% of future leccy demand, could be around 25GW of nuclear - but 5yrs ago the Gov was advised by their advisers, the National Infrastructure Commission (NIC), to slow down their plans for 16GW of nuclear, and instead stop at HPC + 1 (most likely SZC), then review the situation, as they now (5yrs ago) suspected RE + storage would be cheaper.

For context, off-shore wind CfD's in 2017, the year before this advice, were issued at £74.75/MWh (2021/22 delivery) & £57.50/MWh (2022/232 delivery). In 2019 CfD's were issued at £39.65 & £41.61, then 2021 auction (2022 results) at £37.35. HPC contract was issued at £89.50. [All prices using 2012 baseline before index linking].


Tbf, whilst I think it's worth paying a small amount more for our leccy if it means avoiding the long term issues of nuclear, and now, in reality, it looks like avoiding nuclear is actually the cheaper option .... I'd still suggest that some subsidy funding of SMR's is worth it, just to make sure we aren't missing out on a viable source of generation. I don't think it is now viable (economically), but that's just my opinion, and I'd be a hyporcrite to support tidal lagoon research in Swansea*, which will be expensive, possibly nuclear level expensive, without at least considering some research into SMR's.

*Swansea will be expensive, because its small, but being small, it will be quicker and easier to test out the idea, before considering larger schemes, such as Cardiff, which would be 10x the size, and roughly half the cost per MWh.



Edit - Update, the article suggests a 6yr life for the reactors, but looking at the company's website, it states:

95% uptime, 72 month fuel cycle, < 3 month refueling period

So it looks like it runs for 6yrs, before refueling, giving it a cf of 95% (I make it 96%(?)), which only makes sense if it continues to operate. Another article suggests it operates for 20-24yrs.

This seems to come around every few months.  Everybody knows wind/solar are cheaper per kWh generated than nuclear. But is it fair to compare SMR/nuclear with wind/solar?  One is available 95% + of the time, the other.....isn't.  A comparison with tidal or with a package that can deliver 95% of the time (wind/solar plus storage) would perhaps be more meaningful. 

I don't recall seeing any serious, viable scale-able plans or designs for such a package that would work in the UK, let alone costed ones.  

A minor niggle, it isn't available 95% of the time (also, hah!), it's producing power 95% of the time. Just like renewables it will produce power when it feels like it. Nuclear also needs storage.

I knew you (or somebody) would say that. 

ABrass

It'd also be really nice to see Nuclear meet it's capacity factor claims for a change. Globally it is around 80% and in the UK typically between 70-80%.

Nuclear is reliable, except when it isn't.

NigeWick

Martyn1981 said:

Nu-Scale is more advanced than RR, and expected to be cheaper, but they've had loads of problems, and rising costs. Interesting to see costs now estimated at $90/MWh, so ~3x more than some US PV and on-shore wind generation already (location dependant).

As you're aware, I am completely anti nuclear due to its cost, time taken to start producing and possibility of catastrophe, especially as sites are likely to be at the seaside where storm or rising level could cause rapid closure. Not to mention the thousands of years storing the waste.
 
I look forward to new cheap sodium batteries being available to store excess renewables for use when the sun isn't shining and/or wind not blowing.

Martyn1981

I thought this was important. Whilst not energy specifically, it is energy related.

Looks like the world population won't reach as high a peak as estimated.

[Note - Going back, but less common these days, some tried to blame AGW on a growing population due to out of control birth rates in 'other' countries. But those claims (on here) have been debunked many times, and nearly a decade ago the late Hans Rosling gave an utterly brilliant Ted talk showing that the birth rate was now under control, but that the population could grow to ~11bn due to folk living longer.]

How we produce our energy, and how quickly we transition to RE is still up to us, but a slower rise in population, and a lower peak, will of course help with CO2(e) emissions.

World ‘population bomb’ may never go off as feared, finds study

The long-feared “population bomb” may not go off, according to the authors of a new report that estimates that human numbers will peak lower and sooner than previously forecast.

The study, commissioned by the Club of Rome, projects that on current trends the world population will reach a high of 8.8 billion before the middle of the century, then decline rapidly. The peak could come earlier still if governments take progressive steps to raise average incomes and education levels.

The new forecasts are good news for the global environment. Once the demographic bulge is overcome, pressure on nature and the climate should start to ease, along with associated social and political tensions.

But the authors caution that falling birthrates alone will not solve the planet’s environmental problems, which are already serious at the 8 billion level and are primarily caused by the excess consumption of a wealthy minority.

zeupater

Martyn1981 said:

I thought this was important. Whilst not energy specifically, it is energy related.

Looks like the world population won't reach as high a peak as estimated.

[Note - Going back, but less common these days, some tried to blame AGW on a growing population due to out of control birth rates in 'other' countries. But those claims (on here) have been debunked many times, and nearly a decade ago the late Hans Rosling gave an utterly brilliant Ted talk showing that the birth rate was now under control, but that the population could grow to ~11bn due to folk living longer.]

How we produce our energy, and how quickly we transition to RE is still up to us, but a slower rise in population, and a lower peak, will of course help with CO2(e) emissions.

World ‘population bomb’ may never go off as feared, finds study

The long-feared “population bomb” may not go off, according to the authors of a new report that estimates that human numbers will peak lower and sooner than previously forecast.

The study, commissioned by the Club of Rome, projects that on current trends the world population will reach a high of 8.8 billion before the middle of the century, then decline rapidly. The peak could come earlier still if governments take progressive steps to raise average incomes and education levels.

The new forecasts are good news for the global environment. Once the demographic bulge is overcome, pressure on nature and the climate should start to ease, along with associated social and political tensions.

But the authors caution that falling birthrates alone will not solve the planet’s environmental problems, which are already serious at the 8 billion level and are primarily caused by the excess consumption of a wealthy minority.

Hi

I've seen a number of press reports on similar findings recently and these all seem to be based on UN data related to global birth rates etc - however, when looking into the methodology and detail, the headlines often misrepresent what the data actually shows .... whether this results from misunderstanding or intentionally pushing a particular narrative is unclear, but it happens .... the population conclusion of the report itself is pretty much in line with UN population lower banding 'medium' predictions and likely therefore simply reflect what the UN expectation is on it's low end predictions, so not really anything new, probably just something timed to trigger news articles for some reason or other ...

Take for example the UN data on birth rates, that is represented as annual births per thousand population ... the issue here is that although the numerical value has been falling for decades, the rate is still higher than a 1:1 replacement, however most of the representations show this as a percentage decline compared to the previous year which many see as evidence that, based on current data, the population will fall in the future as the population explosion wave ages and finally drops out of the dataset .... unfortunately, simply basing a conclusion on this provides a logical fallacy because the data at hand doesn't show what people think it shows ....

Okay, so why? .... well let's look at the data - annual births per 1000 population .... this isn't the birth rate per 1000 fertile females per year, which would need to equate to ~2 (so 1f+1m partner) over a lifetime and would be the basis of a logical approach to population studies, but it is a foundation for flawed onward analysis .... why? ... because any rate of population change based on birth rate is currently skewed by the existing population ... so how does this skew the data and any linked results/conclusions? ... because the existing population explosion wave within the dataset is diluting the effect of births on the dataset and therefore lowering the apparent births/1000 and therefore temporarily increasing the rate of decline .... the same number of births per year will show as a decline in birth rate over the previous year until the population associated with increased birth rate wave has fallen out of the dataset (aka .. died) .... the issue there is that when this has happened, the annual birth rate per 1000 will inevitably start to climb .... think about the effect of that on extrapolating future population density based on a straight line trend analysis of what is essentially flawed concept data!!!!

I agree with the caution afforded by the authors, it's totally necessary considering the potential for others to raise quite serious counterpoints on both data & conclusions, obviously including the serious impact of reduction in infant mortality over the period of UN dataset availability ... then there's the increased life expectancy and it's affect on the prime data .... these all need to be modelled together as opposed to analysed separately, and it looks like there's plenty of evidence that the UN themselves are not even doing this, whether they're fully aware of it, or not! ... 

Take for example their projections of future total population which anticipates a gradual reduction in population growth until it starts to fall somewhere around 2090 (UN link below) ... using their own dataset this almost straight line reduction cannot be correct .... the very fact that their own data shows population increasing at ~2%/year through the 1950's, 60's and into the early 70's with the current rate being ~0.88%, there'd be a logical annual growth deficit (population reduction) of somewhere around 1.1% (2.0-0.9) expected to start around now (population global cohort starting to reach age 70+), yet apart from a slight dip in growth (probably pandemic related) over recent years, the predicted rate of population change doesn't show this at all .... odd really, based on their own historical population data, logic would predict that deaths will soon be greater than births by ~1.1% for around 20+years, thus showing a global population decline in red on the graph for the appropriate time, however, the 'official' position is that the rate of population increase will slowly decline from ~+0.88% in 2023 to ~+0.47% in 2050, totally ignoring logic .... something is very wrong somewhere!!!!

              

HTH - Z

UN Data ....

Analysed Birth rates ...

Coastalwatch

Coastalwatch said:

It would appear that it's not just EV roll out that is impressive in China, at least according to the figures published in the article linked here.

Rather makes a mockery of our attempts at the pace of change here in the UK.

China installed 20.37 GW of PV in January-February period

China's NEA said this week that the country's cumulative PV capacity hit 314 GW at the end of February.

The NEW said that new PV installations China deployed 20.37 GW in the first two months of this year, up 88% increase year on year. About 8 GW of this capacity came from large-scale installations, with distributed generation PV systems accounting for the remainder.

https://www.pv-magazine.com/2023/03/23/china-installed-20-37-gw-of-pv-in-january-february-period/

Given our minimal size in terms of both land mass and population compared to China and in case I was being unkind with my summing up of the above I thought I'd delve a little deeper into figures by comparing PV Watts installed per person of each country  which may give a different perspective.

China's impressive roll out in Jan-Feb was boosted due to past hold ups caused by covid so no doubt inflated somewhat as a result. Interestingly the UK's figures for January also carried a similar boost. Unfortunately UK figures for Feb are not yet available on Gov.uk website.

The two months installation of 20.37 GW's in China is almost half as much again as the UK total to date. I find that just amazing.

Anyway UK's installed capacity for Jan was 69.5 MW and with a population of 68.85 M returns 1.01 W/person for the month.

Halving China's two month 20.37 GW to 10.185 GW and with a population of 1.454 B returned circa 7 W/person for the month.

In case the figures were but a small sample and adversely affected one way or the other then taking 2022 as a whole China's install was 6.8 times greater per head of the population than here in the UK.

So perhaps I wasn't being adversely harsh and that while fingers are often pointed at China as being the largest pollutors on the planet they are taking leaps and bounds in their efforts to lose that tag and in any case racing ahead of our meagre efforts when it comes to PV manufacture and installation.

2nd_time_buyer

Coastalwatch said:

Coastalwatch said:

It would appear that it's not just EV roll out that is impressive in China, at least according to the figures published in the article linked here.

Rather makes a mockery of our attempts at the pace of change here in the UK.

China installed 20.37 GW of PV in January-February period

China's NEA said this week that the country's cumulative PV capacity hit 314 GW at the end of February.

The NEW said that new PV installations China deployed 20.37 GW in the first two months of this year, up 88% increase year on year. About 8 GW of this capacity came from large-scale installations, with distributed generation PV systems accounting for the remainder.

https://www.pv-magazine.com/2023/03/23/china-installed-20-37-gw-of-pv-in-january-february-period/

Given our minimal size in terms of both land mass and population compared to China and in case I was being unkind with my summing up of the above I thought I'd delve a little deeper into figures by comparing PV Watts installed per person of each country  which may give a different perspective.

China's impressive roll out in Jan-Feb was boosted due to past hold ups caused by covid so no doubt inflated somewhat as a result. Interestingly the UK's figures for January also carried a similar boost. Unfortunately UK figures for Feb are not yet available on Gov.uk website.

The two months installation of 20.37 GW's in China is almost half as much again as the UK total to date. I find that just amazing.

Anyway UK's installed capacity for Jan was 69.5 MW and with a population of 68.85 M returns 1.01 W/person for the month.

Halving China's two month 20.37 GW to 10.185 GW and with a population of 1.454 B returned circa 7 W/person for the month.

In case the figures were but a small sample and adversely affected one way or the other then taking 2022 as a whole China's install was 6.8 times greater per head of the population than here in the UK.

So perhaps I wasn't being adversely harsh and that while fingers are often pointed at China as being the largest pollutors on the planet they are taking leaps and bounds in their efforts to lose that tag and in any case racing ahead of our meagre efforts when it comes to PV manufacture and installation.

Nice analysis!

michaels

Almost all of China is South of almost all of England so they make more watt hours per installed watt.

Perhaps we should also compare wind where we probably have the comparative advantage.

Coastalwatch

Thanks michaels, you've reminded me of a headline from a while back that China installed more wind generating capacity in one year than the rest of the world put together, but couldn't recall where from. Just had a quick search and it seems that was an under estimation, at least according to the International Energy Agency for the year 2021.

It would also seem that in '21 93% of all the wind generators installed were onshore. Not something we are renowned for here in England.

China was responsible for almost 70% of wind generation growth in 2021, followed by the United States at 14% and Brazil at 7%.

In 2021, of the total 830 GW of wind capacity installed, 93% were onshore systems, with the remaining 7% offshore wind farms.

https://www.iea.org/reports/wind-electricity