NEI Nuclear Notes

We mentioned in an earlier post that we didn’t think Germany was a notably good locale for solar power. This snap judgment came due to our visits to Germany, where the sun was, at best, a fickle friend. But let Germany’s Economics and Technology Ministry tell you. Maybe we were wrong : The solar industry is a new industrial sector in Germany which has seen enormous growth over the last number of years thanks to state support through the EEG. German solar technology turnover has risen within the last six years from around 450 million euros to some 4.9 billion euros. Okay. But then, this gave a us a bit of pause The number of people employed directly and indirectly in the industry had risen to around 50,000 in 2006 (source: German Federal Association of the Solar Industry (BSW), as of April 2007). That seems rather low - Germany has about 82 million people - and here, they kind of agree with our first assessment, though for considerably less dumb reasons: Although G...

Here’s one way of looking at Germany’s decision to accelerate the retirement of nuclear energy facilities: Shares in German power utilities E.ON and RWE AG fell sharply Monday after the government last night said it will accelerate the gradual phase-out of all nuclear power production by 2022 and keep a tax on nuclear fuel rods. Though a drastic u-turn from a previous German policy settled in 2010, the 2022 phase-out was largely expected given the strong anti-nuclear shift in German politics after Fukushima. However, the decision to keep the nuclear tax in place and not give relief to the utilities was noteworthy after comments last week from some politicians that suggested the Germany might withdraw the tax. Especially as the tax was considered an exchange for not closing the nuclear facilities early. But if there is a loss, there is a gain: Meanwhile, shares in solar energy and wind power equipment makers gained sharply as investors anticipated the accelerated nuclear phase-out wil...

Nuclear energy isn’t a trap for the unwary. When a country decides to invest in nuclear energy, it does so knowing the risks and benefits. If it invests heavily in nuclear energy – think France, Germany, Russia, China, The U.S. - it has done a good deal of study over many years to determine the value of the decision. Public support for nuclear energy certainly took a significant hit after the accident at  Japans’ Fukushima Daiichi plant, but even that has begun to moderate. Public support for nuclear power appears to have bounced back in the UK after falling sharply in the aftermath of the Fukushima disaster, a survey showed today. The Ipsos MORI poll of almost 1,000 adults across Britain revealed half of those questioned (50%) supported the building of new nuclear plants in the UK to replace the current generation of reactors which are being shut down. That’s what makes Germany’s decision to close its nuclear energy facilities so fascinating. Of course, you’d expect nuclear ener...

EDITOR'S NOTE : This post was originally published on February 4, 2015. Senator Alexander's remarks have been appended to the bottom of the article. From 2010 : And nuclear plants occupy a fraction of the land required for wind or solar. For example, 20 percent of U.S. electricity comes from 104 nuclear reactors on about 100 square miles. Producing the same amount of power from wind would require covering an area the size of West Virginia with 183,000 50-story turbines as well as building 19,000 miles of new transmission lines through scenic areas and suburban backyards. Nuclear fuel is available in the United States and is virtually unlimited. We don’t have to drill for it. We don’t have to mine it nearly as much as we do for coal. And thanks to technology, we can safely recycle “nuclear waste” and turn most of it into more fuel. After recycling, the French are able to store all of their final waste—from producing 80 percent of their electricity for 30 years—in one room ...

In an article about the counterintuitive nature of closing nuclear facilities, this bit stuck out : Nuclear plants would likely be replaced by natural gas or ( shudder) coal plants , which would drive up carbon dioxide emissions. It’s happening in Germany, where the government decided to abandon nuclear power after the March 2011 catastrophe at Fukushima. In Vermont, where a 600-megawatt plant closed in December, carbon-free nuclear power is being replaced largely by fossil-powered electricity from the grid. Germany, ah, Deutschland. We had a good run. At its height, nuclear energy supplied about 20 percent of the country’s electricity – in the same range as in the United States - but as the article indicates, the accident in Japan flipped Prime Minister Angela Merkel from support to opposition for nuclear energy and she decided to close the remaining plants by 2022. At the same time, Germany would change over to all, or nearly all, renewable energy. Germany tends to be an al...

Germany had an election this past weekend. How did that go ? The German chancellor, Angela Merkel, has pledged to press ahead with a review of nuclear power's future in Germany after her coalition suffered a "very painful" defeat in a weekend state election dominated by Japan's nuclear crisis. Despite the embarrassment of losing a region held by her party, the Christian Democratic Union, for 58 years, Merkel played down the result's national significance, saying she had no plans to reshuffle her cabinet. That region, Baden-Wuerttemberg, is one of the most conservative in Germany, so it going to the Greens is exceptionally dramatic. It’s the first time the environmental party has won any state election (I believe). This doesn’t mean Merkel and her coalition are out of power, but  for now, this is the rhetoric: Germany could well become the first major industrial power to abandon nuclear energy entirely: likely in the next 10-15 years. But others...

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. ...

Over on Atomic Insights, former NuScale chief Paul Lorenzini takes a look at Germany’s situation and bats away at misconceptions about the nuclear shutdown, one of which we’ve promulgated here . First, the nuclear phase out did not result in an increase in coal plant construction. As noted in this study by Poyre , Germany’s coal construction plans predated the nuclear phase out and, if anything, has been cut back from previous plans. Second, they did not fill the deficit created by shutting down their nuclear plants with fossil fuels. … To summarize, the increased generation from wind (12.9 TWh), solar (14.7 TWh), and hydro/biomass (12.7 TWh) during the period (all together accounting for 40.3 TWh), was roughly equal to entire deficit created by shutting down the eight nuclear plants in 2011 (41.1 TWh). I don’t buy this completely because one can’t really assign a one-to-one correspondence between one kind of energy ramping up and another ramping down – though ...

We promise not to beat the horse until it starts beating us – and we’re probably close to that point – but say, how is that shift to renewable energy going in Germany ? The country’s third-largest aluminum producer, Voerde Aluminium GmbH , filed for bankruptcy amidst trade groups advocating affordable power. Ulrich Grillo, president of Germany’s non-ferrous metals association, views Voerde Aluminium’s insolvency as proof that the metal manufacturing industry in Germany is endangered by high electricity costs, which are no longer competitive on the international level. By point of comparison: Electricity prices for industrial use are 41.7 percent lower in France than in Germany. If similar inefficiencies begin to surface in steel and other critical manufacturing industries, the impact on the German economy will be significant. Let’s be fair: Germany generated (in 2010) about the same amount of electricity via nuclear energy – about 22 percent – as the United States does...

It takes some amount of bravery to admit you need what you do not like and you will suffer it for as long as you need to : The lifespan of Germany's nuclear power plants must be extended "modestly" in order to gradually reach the country's goal of having renewable energy as its main source of energy, German Vice-chancellor and Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle said Wednesday. Which must mean that Germany is very close to that goal, yes? In 2008 the gross electric power generation in Germany totaled 639 billion kWh. A major proportion of the electricity supply is based on lignite (23.5 %), nuclear energy (23.3 %) and hard coal (20.1 %) . Natural gas has a share of 13 %. Renewables (wind, water, biomass) account for 15.1 %. These numbers are – not attractive – if the goal is to shut off 23 percent of the clean air electricity produced in the country when nearly 44 percent – 57 percent when you add in natural gas – emit impressive amounts of carbon ...

The moratorium on nuclear power announced last month by German Chancellor Angela Merkel shortly after the accident at Fukushima Daiichi already is driving up energy prices and raising concern about the reliability of the nation’s electricity supply, according to Bloomberg News. Nuclear energy supplies about one-quarter of the nation’s electricity. Natural gas from Russia is seen as the logical replacement, should Germany follow through on closing out its nuclear plants. The country already imports one-third of its natural gas from Russia. Merkel’s pledge to speed the exit from atomic power after the crisis in Japan is helping push natural-gas prices higher as Germany scrambles to identify energy alternatives. Gas supplied by [Russia's] OAO Gazprom may be the easiest way for her to meet Germany’s climate goals and keep Europe’s largest economy running. The statements from Merkel represent a turnabout, which may relate more to politics than issues related to nuclear safety: Pressur...

Here’s the bottom line on Germany’s drive to switch from nuclear energy to renewables: [T]he lessons learned in Europe prove that the large-scale integration of renewable power does not provide net savings to consumers, but rather a net increase in costs to consumers and other stakeholders. There’s more: Moreover, when not properly assessed in advance, large-scale integration of renewables into the power system ultimately leads to disequilibrium in the power markets, as well as value destruction to both renewable companies and utilities, and their respective investors. This is from a report prepared by energy consulting firm Finadvice (a Finnish company, though its web site and the report are in English) for the Edison Electric Institute and Finadvice’s European clients. Neither EEI nor Finadvice have any particular brief for nuclear energy (in this context) and are interested in studying the transition primarily as a case study in quickly ramping up renewable ...

Although Germany has become something of a whipping post on this blog, it’s hard not to look at its energy profile since it decided to close its nuclear facilities and not see something like chaos. But a lot of that chaos is incipient, so there’s time – not a lot, but still some time – to figure out how to proceed. For Germany, one of those ways has been encouraging the uptake of renewable energy. But now, the plummeting price of solar panels has unleashed a new round of, how shall we put it, chaos. Germany plans to reduce government subsidies supporting solar power by up to 30 percent within a year because higher-than-expected demand has made the scheme far more costly than authorities initially expected. At first glance, that seems a boon to the solar business and a vindication of those subsidies – they seeded the market and now the market can proceed on its own. But not so. German companies producing solar panels, already under pressure from stiff competition from n...

A new study from consulting company Capgemini said that Europe may have trouble “keeping the lights on” this winter thanks to the nuclear phase-out in Germany. Following its reactor shutdowns, Germany began to import electricity from its neighbors, including more than 2,000 MW per day from France. During the winter electricity peak, France mainly imports electricity from Germany and this will no longer be possible in coming years. This represents a real threat to some countries “keeping the lights on” for winter 2011/2012 and future winters. The report sums it up well: without German nuclear generation, energy security is down, emissions are up. First, security. The Europeans better cozy up to the Russians because they will be more dependent on them than ever. In 2010, the EU imported 113 bcm of gas by pipeline from Russia, representing 33% of total gas imports. In 2030, gas flowing through Gazprom pipelines is expected to represent 50% of all European gas supplies. ...

The G7 leaders met Monday in Germany to discuss a number of issues, but the one of interest to us is climate change. Not in and of itself, but in terms of what pledges the leaders made to address the threat. The G7 also reaffirmed the goal of limiting global warming in the 21st century to 2 degrees Celsius from pre-industrial levels, first agreed at a 2009 UN climate summit in Copenhagen. "Urgent and concrete action is needed to address climate change," the G7 leaders said in a final statement after a two-day summit in Germany. And that’s not all . First, a deep cut in carbon emissions by 2050 and second, an eventual end to fossil fuel use by 2100. That’s startling. Saying things is easy, especially if you can slow walk it over 85 years. How to do it is the hard part. We can think of a very helpful way, but why not let the G7 have a go at it. Several environmental groups praised the G7 countries for declaring war on carbon, which, they say, will ...

The energy situation in Germany is both depressing and wholly predictable. To replace nuclear energy with renewable power sources was always going to be the heaviest of lifts, because it replaces most baseload energy with intermittent alternatives and because the alternatives are not fully mature,scalable technologies. Beyond this, the cost of pushing wind and solar forward has been mind-bogglingly expensive , which is now being felt by ratepayers. Germany ’s power grid operators boosted the surcharge consumers pay for renewable energy by 18 percent to a record, adding to pressure on Chancellor Angela Merkel ’s government to act against rising electricity bills. It gets worse. As we’ve seen in Japan, these subsidies put an exceptional burden on heavy industry: The total subsidy next year will amount to about 23.6 billion euros ($32 billion), which is added to consumers’ power bills. The fee increase will raise the bill of the average German household with 3,500 kilowat...

Here in the United States, the government has imposed a tax on nuclear facilities to pay for a used fuel repository. But there isn’t one and the courts have made it clear that until one is at least on the drawing boards, no more waste fee. That’s supposed to take effect in May. In Germany, the government has also run afoul of the courts: he Hamburg Financial Court has ordered authorities in Germany to refund German utilities more than EUR2.2bn (USD3bn) in nuclear fuel taxes. The refund is to be paid to five energy companies, including E.ON and RWE. --- Courts in Hamburg and Munich have both opined that they believe the tax to be unconstitutional, and have requested instruction from Germany's Constitutional Court and the European Court of Justice. That last part can lead us to believe that this would have happened even if the nuclear facilities continued to operate. But it does seem like garish exploitation to keep the fee, like getting hospital bills after the pa...