In some very important ways, “nuclear waste” is the best type of energy-related waste.
First let’s be crystal clear on what we’re talking about: the irradiated fuel discharged from conventional nuclear reactors, the long assemblies of metal-clad ceramic pellets that have generated heat to raise steam to drive big generators for years of steady bulk electricity — without direct greenhouse gas emissions. Not cold war military waste. Not contamination from accidents. We’re talking about used fuel from properly operating reactors because it’s by far the hottest, bulkiest stuff that the industry has to deal with.
The EU Commission’s Joint Research Centre recently concluded that nuclear energy is as sustainable as other technologies already considered…
The IEA has been endorsed as the foremost forum on world energy by participating nations, and its leadership on aggressive clean energy progress and climate action has been sought by many stakeholders.
The recently released NZE special report was hailed as an ambitious roadmap towards rapid phaseout of unmitigated fossil fuel consumption and a future dominated by renewable energy sources.
Many celebrating the envisaged clean energy future may not necessarily have been so enthusiastic about the asserted need to more than double worldwide nuclear energy output, if it were presented in isolation. Perhaps this merely belies the value of addressing the climate challenge with an all of the above clean energy approach, albeit in this case with the weight of ambition placed squarely on solar and wind.
Ambition shouldn’t be scorned. To…
We really need to talk about scale.
In Australia we’re seeing no deceleration in additions of solar- and wind-based capacity, which is steadily displacing fossil fuelled generation on our grids.
Rooftop solar aside — since it serves a rather unique role, with its own emergent challenges — what we have seen in recent years is a small handful of impressively large projects come online each year, while considerably more are built at the 100 megawatt (or lower) scale. The latter tend to be constructed fast, and integrate into the market with little issue, contributing to the largest renewable electricity share ever in Australia. …
‘It was becoming clear that nuclear energy would never be the same and that the industry needed a different approach.’
For the last few years, GE Hitachi have been quietly working away at a reactor design that might blow its competitors out the water — including natural gas.
Jon Ball, Executive Vice President at GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy, last year talked about the birth of GE’s BWRX-300 small modular reactor back in February 2017:
The team explained their idea. They had started by evaluating Generation IV technologies to drive a cost-competitive solution, but they learned that customers wanted a technology that was licensable and ready in the near-term, prior to 2030. Considering this input, the three innovators shifted to determine…
This is the brief, simple story of two major clean energy projects, and how one exposes the double standards suffered by the other.
The projects are the recently-announced artificial wind energy island for the North Sea off Denmark’s coast, and the second pair of modern EPR nuclear units planned for the existing Sizewell site in Suffolk, England.
Both projects:
- are 3 gigawatts or more of nameplate capacity
- use existing technology
- will produce substantial volumes of practically zero-emissions electricity that’s safe for our climate
- have practically no land-use impacts.
Additionally, they’ll both:
- take more than a decade to start up
- benefit from government support.
There’s no hint that these are points against Denmark’s ambitious offshore wind development. Yet…
The latest edition of a cost study from the IEA and the OECD NEA examines how the value to the overall supply system affects the costs of different electrical energy sources.
The result of IEA’s value adjusted LCOE metric show… that the system value of variable renewables such as wind and solar decreases as their share in the power supply increases.
This conclusion won’t be surprising to studious practitioners of energy economics, who will nevertheless realise the general value of displacing considerable amounts of fossil fuel consumption through adding affordable renewable capacity to emissions-intensive power grids.
The surprise, to some, is more likely to be the result of a wide survey of contemporary nuclear project costs. Remember, capital intensive energy technologies that feature low operating costs are particularly sensitive to…
It’s regularly said that Australia’s overall contribution to the climate challenge is small. However, this elides the unique situation the country occupies geographically and culturally, as a developed western nation somewhat surrounded by Asian and African economies that are still rapidly developing. The leadership that Australia can potentially demonstrate regarding high quality of life with sustainably low climate impacts could underpin its twenty-first century legacy.
Australia isn’t there yet. The Renewable Energy Target has been met, and replaced with political divisions instead of new, comprehensive policy. Individual states have 2050 Net Zero Carbon ambitions, but the details are generally as…
For goodness’ sake, consider what a 2050 Net Zero target would mean.
In the absence of holistic energy/climate policy, Australia’s federal government has launched a technology investment roadmap. Despite “aiming to steer the nation’s transition to reducing carbon emissions”, one thing it doesn’t do is commit to net zero emissions by 2050 (such as promised by the opposition).
I was immediately reminded of a visualisation employed by Professor Roger Pielke Jr to put what would be needed into some sort of context.
We’re going to do something similar for Australia. First, we need to clearly state our assumptions:
- Emissions and energy data is from Australia’s emissions projections 2019 and Australian…
Those demanding we limit our options to renewable-energy-only have tacitly diminished the bulk of AEMO’s Integrated System Plan.
To briefly remind ourselves about what the ISP is, the Australian Energy Council wrote:
Recommendation 5.1 of the Finkel Review was for AEMO to prepare an ISP “to facilitate the efficient development and connection of renewable energy zones across the National Electricity Market”. The ISP effectively replaces the National Transmission Network Development Plan (NTNDP) which performed a similar, “independent, strategic view of the efficient development of the NEM transmission grid over a 20-year planning horizon”. Unlike the restricted focus of state-based transmission planners, the ISP (as the NTNDP did before it) seeks to assess the NEM’s needs holistically.
The ISP…
So we have this existential crisis, this looming climate disruption which threatens the habitability of Earth for humans and our fellow species.
We also need to expand access to modern energy supplies across the world to end energy poverty and promote prosperity.
So it’s fortunate we have various alternatives to fossil fuels that don’t emit greenhouse gases when we use them — zero carbon, if you like.
But calling any sort of nuclear energy zero carbon will invariably attract a protest. Mining, milling, fuel fabrication, enrichment, reactor construction, decommissioning and waste management¹ are all listed off as aspects of the full lifecycle which consume energy, often from fossil fuels (mining equipment, grid electricity, etc).
Obviously, many if not most of…
Oscar Archer
Eco-modernism, clean energy abundance and enhanced opportunity for future generations.
