Where will the clean energy come from?

Last week, the president proposed a new push to reduce GHG. It’s not clear how (or if) the Congress will go along, or how much can be legally accomplished without legislative support.

One of the major targets is, as expected, coal generating electricity plants. Obviously the coal miners and the coal-intensive electric companies would try to push back, but again, it’s unknown how successful they will be. It’s also not entirely clear what the point of reducing US coal consumption is, if the entire US consumption is about a billion tons while Chinese demand has risen from 3 to 4 billion tons in only 5 years and India is also increasing coal generation.

That said, if the plan (or some other approach) succeeds in getting rid of US coal plants, where will the replacement electric generating capacity come from?

Hydro is maxed out, and wind and solar can only ramp so quickly. The remaining no-CO2 option is nuclear, but it’s becoming increasingly uneconomic. As the WSJ reported last week:

Nuclear power produces two-thirds of the nation's emission-free electricity, but that industry is in the doldrums now because of slack power prices in deregulated markets and generally low demand for power. The plants also suffer from high fixed costs.
…
Dominion Resources Inc., D +0.60% a big owner of nuclear plants and utilities, shut down its Kewaunee nuclear plant in Wisconsin last month because it can't operate it profitably in the current energy environment. "Longer term, nuclear has to be a major part of the solution," said Tom Farrell, chief executive of Dominion, which is based in Richmond, Va.

Nuclear is plagued by high capital and other fixed costs, despite low variable costs. With natural gas prices plummeting, it’s hard to see how it will ever be cost-competitive again.

Natural gas generates half the carbon emissions of coal plants, but that’s still more than zero. Fixed costs (and nuclear waste) aside, nuclear would be a better GHG solution but one that seems increasingly out of reach.

The Tohoku Earthquake and the future of nuclear power

Both the Mercury-News and the LA Times had articles today on whether the problems of Japanese nuclear plants after the Great Tohoku Quake of 2011 (now upgraded to a 9.0 on the Richter scale) could happen in California. This of course is part of the renewed stirring of the nuclear controversy in the light of this tragic quake.

The Merc story was disappointing. After noting that two plants provide 4.7 GW (12%) of California’s electricity, it quoted PG&E (operator of Diablo Canyon) and Southern California Edison (operator of San Onofre) saying predictable things and opponents saying predictable things. It also (as is want around here) gave undue credence to fringe critics rather than actual experts.

Perhaps the most interesting thing in both articles is the discussion of the seismic fault under Diablo Canyon that was discovered after the plant was built. In particular, the Merc quoted the hometown state senator, Sam Blakeslee, who has a Ph.D. from UCSB and various published papers on seismic issues. It quoted Dr. Blakeslee as asking experts to study fully the safety implications of the new fault.

On the other hand, the LA Times quoted actual independent experts (i.e. university scientists) saying that a 9.0 is not very likely to happen near either plant, with “low 7s” being the largest quake expected at either plant. Big tsunamis won’t happen here either because we don’t have offshore subduction zones.

However, as an engineer, I found troubling two questions that were not directly addressed.

The Great Tohoku Quakeis larger than any in Japan’s recorded history. This reminds me of Katrina, which was a large hurricane than was anticipated — after the fact, the Army Corps of Engineers called it a “400 year” storm, but the city had planned for a “100 year” storm.

The largest earthquake in California’s history is the Fort Tejon quake of 1857 (magnitude 7.9). However, the largest earthquake in US history was the 1964 Alaska quake (9.2) which also caused a tidal wave in California, killing 11.

When it comes to record high and low temperatures, record wind or rain, record earthquake magnitude — these are always a first. If every city plans for a 100 year storm, some will not see that 100 year storm over a 100 years, and others will see the 200 or 400 or 1000 year storm. (And, of course, many cities are over 100 years old.)

This suggests to me that planning for earthquakes — at least when there’s a high safety implication — should be planning for more extreme events. If NorCal doesn’t have a 200 year quake in the 21st century, perhaps SoCal will.

Estimating the size of the largest quake is not a policy — or political question — but a scientific question. Of course, science is so politicized nowadays (particularly due to the impact of groupthink on access to funding) that a purely scientific evaluation may be impossible.

Finally, the biggest lesson of TEPCO plant in Fukushuima — the one that will cause power engineers to rip their plans and start over — is that what happens outside the dome is as important as what happens inside the dome. The engineering failure was not nuclear or structural, but in systems design.

The 40-year-old Japanese reactor containment vessel did its job, holding up to the largest earthquake ever. However, the emergency cooling plans depended on the availability of power from outside the plant, and the infrastructure did not survive the quake well enough to provide power for the cooling pumps. Apparently the backup diesel generators worked, but did not survive the tsunami.

The LA Times article talks about gravity fed emergency cooling reservoirs located onsite at Diablo Canyon and San Onofre. Will those reservoirs (and their piping) survive a direct 8.0 earthquake? Will that onetime supply of water be enough to keep the reactor cooled if there is no electric power for 7 days? 14 days?

Again, these are engineering problems, not political problems — Californians should hope that PG&E and SCE will share their revised emergency plans after the lessons of Fukushima have been fully studied.

To nuke, or not to nuke?

Nuclear power’s disadvantages — technical, economic, social acceptability — will probably prevent it from making much difference in solving climate change problems. Energy, both literal and metaphorical, spent on nuclear power is energy not spent working on other parts of the menu of choices for addressing climate change issues.”
— Lee Clarke, “The Nuclear Option,” in Routledge Handbook of Climate Change and Society

In a countries like France and Japan, the lynchpin of efforts to reduce carbon emissions (and imports of fossil fuels) is electricity generated from nuclear power. Overall, Clarke says that fission reactors generate 14% of the world’s electricity, and 20% of that in the US.

In the US, proponents of nuclear power argue that it’s a proven technology, it substitutes directly for the dirtiest of electric sources (coal), and the greenhouse gas emissions are zero. This option is particularly salient for moderate environmentalists (or at least liberal Republicans) who worry about GHGs but consider the nuclear question long since settled.

Of course, opposition to nuclear power in the US dates back more than three decades. I recall rock concerts and traffic jams in a futile effort to block PG&E from building the 2.2 gigawatt plant in the isolated Diablo Canyon — opening in 1985 as one of the last new nuke plants in the US.

Some of the environmental opposition is dispassionate and logical, focusing on the lack of political will (and technical uncertainties) regarding storage of spent nuclear fuel. Other opposition is hysterical, right up there with the anti-vacinnation campaigners who worry about imagined mercury risks (from vaccines that no longer use mercury as an antibacterial).

Similarly, some of the economic arguments are more sound than others. Nuke plants have huge capital budgets, long approval processes, and require complex and expensive technical and security training to operate safely. As with all economic policy arguments, the arguments against (or for) plants are subject to the usual lies and distortions because no one checks who was right 30 years later.

Some try to combine the approaches. Just as death penalty opponents claim (rightly or wrongly) that death penalty litigation is more expensive than 40 years of room and board, some environmentalists say that whether or not the plants are safe, they put too much of a rate burden on ratepayers.

In his chapter from the Routledge Handbook of Climate Change and Society, sociologist Lee Clarke is openly skeptical of environmentalists (such as Stewart Brand) who believe the threat of global warming is greater than the threat of nuclear power. While not anti-corporate like some authors in this edited volume, he clearly has the same objections to nuclear power today as did leading environmental groups 20 years ago long before IPCC, Kyoto and “An Inconvenient Truth.”

Still, one doesn’t have to agree with the motivations of people like Prof. Clarke to agree with his conclusions. Even if nuclear power is the right solution, is it a feasible one? Even with a major push, given the restrictions on where plants can be placed American voters and regulators are unlikely to approve more than a modest increase in the number of reactors. Another complication is the need to replace 40+ year old reactors as they come up for decommissioning, perhaps (as in Southern California) building them alongside the old ones.

Meanwhile, US (and IAEA) policy is not going to promote putting up fission reactors across South America, Africa, Asia and the Middle East.

If politics is the art of the possible, then the reality is that nuclear power (at best) will make a small difference. While those who want to reduce manmade global warming might want to support any proposed nuclear projects, they can’t be counted on to solve the entire problem.

Meanwhile, from a business standpoint, the stagnant industry already concentrated with four manufacturers consolidated to three: GE Hitachi, Westinghouse and Areva NP of France. What business there is will go to incumbents, not new entrants.

And even these companies recognize the long odds: none are placing all their eggs in a nuclear basket. GE has leveraged its turbine skills to remain (for now) the dominant seller of wind turbines in the US market, one of five major players overall, while Hitachi is concentrating on turbines for the Japanese niche market. It also has a solar business, as does Westinghouse (through its partnership with the company formerly known as Akeena) and Areva (which bought the SV firm Ausra in 2009).