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IEA Chides China on Electricity Use

From today's New York Times:
The International Energy Agency on Monday called for China to revamp its electric power industry, noting that waste and inefficiency contributed to the need for the country to add enough new, mostly coal-fired, power plants every two years to equal the entire electricity generation capacity of France or Canada.

In a report issued at its headquarters in Paris, the energy agency was especially critical of China’s decision to limit increases in electricity prices, saying that this prompted Chinese consumers and industries to use considerably more energy than they needed.
Although some of my readers disagree, I couldn't help but think of that Robert Samuelson column from last week that put the global energy challenge in such stark relief.

Click here for the press release from IEA. Click here to order the report.

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Comments

Brian Mays said…
The Chinese waste not only energy. Rapid growth and low-cost labor have resulted in a system in which waste of all kinds is rampant. In Chinese factories, often it is more economical to simply catch and throw away defects than to prevent them in the first place. A high level of scrap is not viewed as a problem. It is enough to make anyone seriously interested in conservation squirm, but as McKinsey Quarterly has noted, things will have to change if Chinese industry is going to continue to archive results.

Nevertheless, this type of attitude carries over to the use of energy as well. But more importantly, this is an example of something fundamental, which seems paradoxical at first: it takes energy to conserve energy.

Right now, it appears that China is going to go with coal and nuclear, because they are the only energy sources that fit the bill. For the sake of air quality (and CO2 emissions) lets hope that they pursue nuclear as far as possible.
This is actually good.

We need low prices to spark demand and in turn encourage new build. And new build, using better technology, is good for the environment and consumers. Improvements in efficiency are what periods of stagnation in demand are for.
Brian Mays said…
It's just a shame that, according to the quote above, most of the new build currently is coal fired. That's not going to do any good for China's air quality.
Brian Mays said…
Well ... I thought that was one of the jobs of the IAEA.

It is very challenging to get something useful for a bomb out of commercial fuel, and some designs are more challenging than others. If we are talking about the Pebble-Bed Modular Reactor that the South Africans have been working on, it is extremely difficult to get anything out of those pebbles. All of the fuel and the fission products are contained in little silicon-carbide barriers, which are very strong and can withstand very high temperatures. With the amount of effort that it would take to get anything out of that, a terrorist might as well purchase some yellow-cake and build his own enrichment facility. It would be easier.
Brian Mays said…
Okay, this thread is long dead, but since you bring up the points....

Sure the pebble bed reactor has online refueling, but this is not a new concept. The reactors in Canada can also refuel while in operation.

And while the number of pebbles (they're each about the size of a tennis ball) does make management a bit more challenging, it is not as bad as you make out. The fact that the pebbles are radioactive is an advantage from a security standpoint, since (1) they are hazardous for any potential thief to handle and (2) any errant pebbles can easily be found with common radiation detectors -- it's difficult for radioactive pebbles to hide.

As for bombs, I've already covered the second point: that is, if it is more trouble for rouge governments to extract the potential bomb-making material from the pebbles than to enrich natural uranium themselves, then it is more trouble for terrorists as well. Stealing pebbles is a very stupid way to go about building a nuclear bomb.

As for "dirty" bombs, the hype is much more than the reality. Assuming that you have not been injured in the actual explosion, then protecting yourself from one of these devices is as simple as going inside, closing the windows, and taking a shower. The radioactive material would be so dispersed by the explosion that you will not get sick from it, and if you are worried about cancer down the road, then I suggest that you eat plenty of green vegetables and refrain from smoking.

Besides, pebble bed reactor fuel is not a good candidate for these weapons either. It is difficult to come by (as mentioned before), and since the radioactive material is contained in a substance that can withstand temperatures of over 2000 degrees Celsius, it doesn't result in the type of material that is easily inhaled or ingested. Since any radioactive material will work for this weapon -- because the true damage that one of these devices causes is psychological, not physical -- if I was a terrorist, I would obtain radioactive material from any one of the many medical or university facilities that have them. These facilities are often far more vulnerable than the most weakly protected nuclear plant. Yet we don't hear objections to building modern medical facilities in developing countries ... why is that?

As for terrorist attacks, in a conventional water-cooled reactor, such as those in the US and France, the objective of the terrorist would be either to disable or destroy the safety systems and drive the reactor to a melt-down or to drain the coolant from the spent fuel pool in hopes that this would create some sort of accident. In the pebble bed reactor, however, there are fewer safety systems to disrupt and they are not essential for protecting the public. Even if the coolant (which keeps the reactor core cool) and the most important safety system are removed, the core simply heats up, conducts its heat to the surrounding environment, and then cools down. It's a financial disaster for the owners -- the plant will never run again -- but the radiological consequences are minor.

So, it sounds like the pebble-bed design -- as well as other advanced designs such as this -- are a promising technology for developing countries who hope to get away from polluting fossil fuels and biomass burning. In fact, the Chinese have already realized this, which is why they have an aggressive program to develop this technology as quickly as possible.

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