Cambridge physicist David MacKay is receiving heaps of praise for his new book, "Sustainable Energy-without the hot air." Described by boingboing as "the Freakonomics of conservation, climate, and energy," The Guardian has declared the book "this year's must-read." And when I saw this blurb among the endorsements from academics,I took it to the loo and almost didn't come out again.I knew I had to take a look. (Naturally, I jumped ahead to the chapter on nuclear energy.)
- Matthew Moss, Private Secretary to the Vice-Chancellor, University of Cambridge
With clarity and objectivity, MacKay walks the reader through detailed explanations of nuclear fission, uranium, thorium, land use, and safety. And in a section called Mythconceptions, he dispels several of the popular arguments against nuclear power.
Sustainable Energy can be downloaded for free at MacKay's site here, though the quality of this remarkable book really deserves remuneration. And besides, who would want to read "the unlikeliest beach book of the year" on theirBuilding a nuclear power station requires huge amounts of concrete and steel, materials whose creation involves huge CO2 pollution.
The steel and concrete in a 1 GW nuclear power station have a carbon footprint of roughly 300 000 t CO2.
Spreading this “huge” number over a 25-year reactor life we can express this contribution to the carbon intensity in the standard units (g CO2per kWh(e)),
carbon intensity
associated with construction= _______300× 109 g_______ 106 kW(e) × 220 000 h = 1.4 g/kWh(e), which is much smaller than the fossil-fuel benchmark of 400 g CO2/kWh(e). The IPCC estimates that the total carbon intensity of nuclear power (including construction, fuel processing, and decommissioning) is less than 40 g CO2/kWh(e) (Sims et al. 2007).
Please don’t get me wrong: I’m not trying to be pro-nuclear. I’m just pro-arithmetic.
Comments
"Producing lots of electricity – plan EE stands for “economics.” The fifth plan is a rough guess for what would happen in a liberated energy market with a strong carbon price. On a level economic playing field with a strong price signal preventing the emission of CO2, we don’t get a diverse solution, we get an economically optimal solution that delivers the required power at the lowest cost. And when “clean coal” and nuclear go head to head on price, it’s nuclear that wins. (The capital cost of regular dirty coal power stations is £1 billion per GW, about the same as nuclear; but the capital cost of clean-coal power, including carbon capture and storage, is roughly £2 billion per GW.) Solar power in other people’s deserts loses to nuclear power when we take into account the cost of the required 2000-km-long transmission lines (though van Voorthuysen (2008) reckons that with Nobel-prize-worthy developments in solar-powered production of chemical fuels, solar power in deserts would be the economic equal of nuclear power). Offshore wind also loses to nuclear, but I’ve assumed that onshore wind costs about the same as nuclear.
Here’s where plan E gets its 50 kWh/d/p of electricity from. Wind: 4 kWh/d/p (10GW average). Solar PV: 0. Hydroelectricity and waste incineration: 1.3 kWh/d/p. Wave: 0. Tide: 0.7 kWh/d/p. And nuclear: 44 kWh/d/p (110GW).
This plan has a ten-fold increase in our nuclear power over 2007 levels. Britain would have 110GW, which is roughly double France’s nuclear fleet. I included a little tidal power because I believe a well-designed tidal lagoon facility can compete with nuclear power.
In this plan, Britain has no energy imports (except for the uranium, which, as we said before, is not normally counted as an import)."
The whole book's available on-line for free at withouthotair.com.
http://rethinkingnuclearpower.googlepages.com
I also have written to Energy Secretary Chu recommending MacKay's book.
You can read more reviews and order the book on amazon.com.