NEI Nuclear Notes

First, an additional tidbit on our coverage of IEA’s World Energy Outlook 2011 , where we learned that the rumors of nuclear energy’s demise are greatly exaggerated. Just consider this chart from page two of the “Key Graphs” part of the report.  As you can see, the IEA sees nuclear’s future more in line with the measured growth of renewables rather than coal or oil’s steady decline. In its report, the IEA imagines a world without (or actually, with very little) nuclear power . It’s called the “Low Nuclear Case” scenario. And surprise! It’s not the utopia some would have you believe. The net result would be to put additional upward pressure on energy prices, raise additional concerns about energy security and make it harder and more expensive to combat climate change. Of course, it’s a projection, so it has to be taken with a grain of salt. But the data coming in from countries that have scaled back their nuclear energy plans show that the IEA is onto something. Fir...

We return, once more, to Germany where details are starting to emerge on the real costs of their nuclear phase out. Let’s start with emissions. According to an estimate by Laszlo Varro, the head of the gas, coal, and power markets division at the International Energy Agency emissions will rise significantly . Varro estimates that the nuclear phase out in Germany has caused a 25-million-ton annual increase in carbon dioxide emissions. The culprit, in large part, is the new coal power that has come online to meet the shortfall. 25 million tons is sort of abstract, but EPA has a pretty cool tool: the Greenhouse Gas Equivalencies Calculator . It finds more concrete alternatives to “tons of carbon dioxide” like “emissions from passenger vehicles.” Turns out 25 million tons of CO 2 emissions per year is equal to (pick your favorite one of the following): Annual greenhouse gas emissions from 4,446,984 passenger vehicles or CO 2 emissions from 52,743,297 barrels of oil. ...

Nuclear energy. It’s expensive, right? That’s what a lot of our friends at the Union of Concerned Scientists and Greenpeace keep saying. Alright, then let’s shut down some plants and start saving money, right? Surely, just on a cost basis alone, it makes sense. To be fair, let’s replace the electrons generated using fission with a mix of (more expensive) renewables and (relatively cheaper) fossil fuels. We can use more domestic coal, maybe import some natural gas and use local renewables to drive down electricity prices. That should save ratepayers real money every month. But wait. Something quite similar is happening in Germany and electricity prices have gone up, not down [FT, subscription req’d. Original article: “Electricity Prices Jump in Europe,” March 15.]. Just after the Fukushima accident, as Germany announced it was shutting down several nuclear power plants, the FT reported: The cost of electricity in Germany, the European benchmark, immediately rose as utilities ar...

One of the big arguments against nuclear is that it simply costs too much. Well, if the latest reports from Germany are anything to go by, consumers are going to have to pay more without it. As reported here earlier, Germany has decided to phase out nuclear power and is hoping to shut down all of its plants by 2022. What has been the result ? Rising electricity prices. Since the first nuclear power plant was shut down, the price of electricity on the European Energy Exchange in Leipzig has increased by about 12 percent. Not only that, Germany has lost  some energy independence too: Germany has gone from being a net exporter to a net importer of electricity. According to the European Network of Transmission System Operators for Electricity (ENTSOE) in Brussels, Germany now imports several million kilowatt hours of electricity from abroad every day. This wasn’t the way things were supposed to go. "According to our calculations, the cost of a kilowatt ho...

Over the past couple of weeks we’ve updated a large number of stats on our website for the curious public as we normally do every April and May. After updating our stats for a number of years, it’s always been interesting to analyze and see how the latest numbers have changed. For instance, US nuclear plants generated slightly less electricity in 2009 than in 2008 , yet nuclear’s fuel share increased from 19.6% in 2008 to 20.2% in 2009. That’s simply because electricity generation declined by four percent in the US due to that major economic setback we’re finally coming out of. FERC’s latest state of the markets report noted the following (pdf): This [2009] was the greatest decline in a single year in at least 60 years and, with 2008, the only time electricity demand has fallen in consecutive years since 1949. Below are a few summaries of our latest updates as well as links to new stats that you may be interested in. 2009 Production Costs for Coal and Nuclear Tick Up, Gas a...