Nuclear energy and renewable energy
Renewable revolution or nuclear nightmare?
The rapid diffusion of solar energy in China, India, Africa and Latin America is not driven by subsidies, but by the market. The question is not whether renewable energies will dominate world energy supply, but when.
Shortly after Fukushima’s nuclear disaster, the notorious journalist of The Guardian, George Monbiot, published the most read article in his career. It was titled "Why Fukushima ended with my concerns and why I love nuclear energy". Regardless of what you think of that statement, you must do justice to your sense of the formula, or the paradox. After Fukushima’s disaster, announces in the preamble, ‘I am no longer neutral with respect to nuclear energy. Now support this technology.
British ecologists divided over nuclear energy
Monbiot is not the first environmentalist who sees nuclear energy as the solution to the problem of climate change. However, this article brought an unprecedented fame among his other pro-Nuclear travel companions, such as Mark Lynas (1) and former Greenpeace director Stephen Tindale. While his speech has not yet broken a single atom, he has caused the appearance of deep cracks within the British green movement. Previously, the greens of all areas of life were more or less agreed on one point: climate change was more or less the main global threat to the environment. On the other hand, it was about the question of remedying it that the lack of universal agreement was felt, all agreeing tacitly not awakening the sleeping water.
By compromising so vigorously with nuclear energy, Monbiot was putting an end to this agreement. Suddenly, the Greens were forced to choose their side in the nuclear debate, or uncomfortly influenced between the two, wondering who to trust an increasingly complex debate and sometimes ruthless. By instinct, green have always been against nuclear energy. However, if this is the only viable way for the world to reduce carbon emissions, we have no choice but to accept it. It is better to be right and disgust than being romantic but wrong.
Nuclear energy, useful for climate, really?
The question that arises is, therefore: does the world need nuclear energy to solve the climatic crisis, as Monbiot argues? To borrow another thought, this time by Margaret Thatcher, do we have to accept the fact that there is no alternative? Let’s look at the numbers. In 2010, world demand for primary energy was 12.000 million equivalent tons of oil (MTEP), 87% of which came from oil, gas and coal. Nuclear energy represented around 626 MTEP, or around 5% of the total;As for renewable energies, they represented 935 mtep, or about 8%.
To solve the climate problem, the world should not only reverse the trend of increased carbon emissions in the coming decades, but to take them back below where they are today. Can nuclear energy do this? Assume an annual 2% increase in primary energy demand over the next 35 years. Suppose this demand is doubled to reach 24.000 mtep. If we have nuclear energy to deal with this development and remove 4000 mtep of coal, it will have to produce 16.000 mtep per year. This is equivalent to multiplying by 25 the current level. At present, 440 reactors are in operation worldwide. 25 times this figure, it’s 11.000 reactors. To have this capacity in 35 years, you must build an average of one per day.
When we know that nuclear energy production has stagnated for ten years and that it has fallen drastically, it seems very ambitious. Currently, about 200 new nuclear reactors are projected worldwide, mainly in China, the Middle East and the United States. However, few observers believe that they will really be built. In fact, nuclear energy is economically unattractive for private investors due to high construction costs, very long delivery deadlines, uncertainty in the price of electricity, political risks and long -term debt. Being more realistic, we can count on the construction of a hundred reactors during the next decade, or one every 35-50 days. During this same period, a similar number of existing reactors will reach the end of their life cycle. Therefore, the growth rate will be close to zero.
This does not mean that it is impossible to build 11.000 reactors in 35 years if the world decides to dedicate enough resources. At a construction cost of around $ 10 billion per reactor, about $ 110 billion should be spent. It is about two years of gross world product, not to mention the long -term debt. Before thinking seriously, we have to ask ourselves what a world would be like with 11.000 reactors.
What would a world with 11 be like.000 reactors?
To start, it would be much more radioactive than is today. Radioactive routine emissions, for example of gaseous fission products such as xenon 133, would be 25 times greater. Serious accidents such as Windscale, Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and Fukushima, the last of which almost made Tokyo be uninhabitable for decades, would become common.
To date, the nuclear industry has produced an important radiation release for 3.000 years of reactor operation. Our 11.000 reactors would represent four events of this type per year. A safer reactor design would reduce danger. However, as nuclear energy enters countries where safety standards are less strict than in the United Kingdom, EE. UU., Russia or Japan, and where well -trained personnel are difficult to find, the risk would be inevitable.
And nuclear fuel?
The only fistible material found in nature, uranium 235, is relatively rare. Therefore, to feed all these reactors, it is necessary. We have two methods: bombarding abundant uranium 238 with neutrons to produce plutonium 239 fisible or thorium 232, also abundant, to manufacture uranium 233 fisible. To use this new fistible material, it must be reprocessed. This complex, expensive, dangerous and polluting process inevitably leads to important radiation releases to the environment. In addition, both plutonium 239 and uranium 233 can be used to make nuclear pumps. Then, the generalized expansion of nuclear energy and the proliferation of production reactors would raise an uncontrollable risk of nuclear weapons proliferation. The world already has 2.000 tons of plutonium and military grade uranium, and its 440 reactors produce 75 tons of plutonium per year. 8 kg of plutonium are enough to make a small nuclear pump. Therefore, it seems unrealistic to limit this proliferation in a world where 11.000 reactors produce enough plutonium every year for hundreds of thousands of bombs.
This world equipped with 11.000 reactors appears, therefore, not only as unlikely, but above all as really unattractive. Knowing this, what alternative should be considered? Apart from nuclear, what other low carbon energy sources can face the challenge? The renewable energies ? Probably not. Most renewable energy production comes from large hydroelectric dams, but the possibilities of expansion are very limited. In 2010, renewable energies other than hydraulics represented only 160 mtep, that is, a lean 1.5% of primary energy needs.
The uncontrollable boom of renewables
On the other hand, the proportion of non -hydraulic renewable energies is booming. In 2010, it reached 15%. Only three energy sources explain most of this growth: wind energy, photovoltaic solar energy and solar hot water. From 2005 to 2010, the global capacity for production of solar water and wind energy grew at a rate of 25% per year. As for the photovoltaic sector, it has registered a growth of more than 50% per year. If these growth rates were maintained for 35 years, wind capacity would multiply by 6.300, from 200 gigawatts (GW) in 2010 to almost 1.25 million GW;The production of solar hot water would increase from 185 GW to 1.15 million GW;Finally, photovoltaic energy would see its multiplied capacity by 40 million,
These numbers are not predictions. Exponential growth will not continue for so long, because the best sites for wind turbines and solar panels will be occupied before and ‘incidentally’, uninterrupted exponential growth is an ecological and physical impossibility, in terms of energy production. renewable as anywhere else, note of the editor. Other technologies, such as concentrated solar energy, will also acquire increasing importance. There are also limitations on the demand side: the 1.600 million GW of projected photovoltaic capacity would produce more than 3.000 million kw / h per year. This would represent a primary energy consumption of about 30 million MTEP, or more than 1000 times the world demand for primary energy projected in 35 years. We wouldn’t even know what to do with all that energy.
Although they do not have predictive value, these figures are eloquent enough on the options to be taken in favor of energy with a low ecological footprint. One of them, nuclear energy, is increasingly expensive. It will be materially impossible to increase its capacity on a sufficient scale to make a real difference in the global climate within a realistic time frame. Worse, if we somehow managed to build these 11.000 reactors, we would face the certainty of recurring catastrophes and the proliferation of nuclear weapons. And that without mentioning the unimaginable sums that would have to spend on dismantling power plants and managing nuclear waste in the long term.
The other option, renewable energy, is already less expensive than fossil fuels in many applications. In fact, the generous subsidies in Germany, Japan and other places have had the effect of lowering prices. Solar electricity is now cheaper than that produced by diesel generators in tropical and subtropical countries. Therefore, the rapid diffusion of solar energy in China, India, Africa and Latin America is not driven by subsidies, but by the market. In addition, its cost price continues to fall. The greatest demand generated by the lowest prices stimulates competition between manufacturers, technological progress and even more price reductions, thus producing a virtuous circle that can only be welcome. The rest,
Investment reserve for renewables
This does not mean that the transition to a world of renewable energy can be done directly and easily. We will have to reconfigure electricity distribution networks to accept high volumes of ‘Integrated Generation’ and stop operating as simple distribution networks. We need to install long -distance electric lines to correct fluctuations in supply and demand. We must develop technologies to convert electricity into liquid fuels for land vehicles and aviation. We must establish ‘Smart Networks’, where the demand for electricity coincides with the offer. We have to find a way to store the surplus for days or weeks without wind or sun. Finally, we must be careful to waste the energy we produce.
All this will require considerable investment in research, development, manufacturing and installation. Fortunately, this will also have the effect of creating millions of jobs. So many reasons not to swallow the limited national capital in the underground well of the subsidies granted to the nuclear industry. In the United Kingdom, 86% of the entire budget of the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) is now allocated to the dismantling of old power plants, including construction. Operations have already cost the country expensive. The more money we invest today in nuclear energy, the more debt will accumulate for us and for future generations.
As for renewable energies, wind, photovoltaic and hot water technologies have already reached the point of no return. The question is not whether renewable energies will dominate world energy supply, but when. By investing wisely in essential technologies for its autonomy, Great Britain is making a considerable contribution in this area. Not only in the United Kingdom, but around the world. To truly impact the global climate while we achieve energy security and abundance for us and the world, we must unconditionally support the revolution of renewable energy. We must end the nuclear nightmare once and for all.
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