World Nuclear Industry Status Report 2016 shows nuclear build at zero so far this year

New nuclear reactor builds fall to zero in H1 2016: report http://www.reuters.com/article/us-nuclear-industry-decline-idUSKCN0ZT0QS Construction starts for new nuclear reactors fell to zero globally in the first half of 2016 as the atomic industry struggles against falling costs for renewables and a slowdown in Chinese building, a report on the industry showed on Wednesday.

The last time there were no new reactors started over a full year was in 1995, according to the World Nuclear Industry Status Report 2016. The number of reactors under construction is in decline for a third year, with 58 being built by the end of June, down from 67 reactors at the end of 2013, the report said.

The latest figures highlight the struggles the nuclear sector is facing after the Fukushima atomic disaster in Japan five years ago, as higher costs and delays take their toll while other sources of energy become cheaper.

The nuclear industry faces a risk it “will not be easily protected from: the economic and financial risks from nuclear power being irreversibly out-competed by renewable power,” Tomas Kaberger, energy and environment professor at Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden, wrote in a forward in the report.

Kaberger is also a member of the board of state-owned Swedish utility Vattenfall, which owns 10 nuclear reactors, according to its website.

Construction started on six reactors in China in 2015, three times more than the rest of the world, while eight went into operation there last year, out of 10 globally, underlining how the world’s biggest energy user is a bright spot for the nuclear industry.

Three reactors have started up this year in China, with one in South Korea and another in the U.S., Watts Bar 2, which took 43 years to build, according to the report.

But even in China, renewables investment and capacity additions are outstripping nuclear, the report said. Renewables investments totaled $100 billion in China last year, more than five times the amount for new reactors, which was $18 billion.

Wind energy output totaled 185 terawatt hours (TWh) last year in China, compared with 161 TWh for nuclear. Solar power output totaled 39 TWh in 2015, up from 23 TWh the year before.

The report’s lead authors are industry analysts Mycle Schneider, based in Paris, and London-based Antony Froggatt. Both have advised European government bodies on energy and nuclear policy.

The report is available in full at: here

(Reporting by Aaron Sheldrick; Editing by Christian Schmollinger)

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Energy efficiency – theme for July 2019

Energy efficiency represents the single largest potential contributor to global emissions reduction, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA 2017). It should be a key part of the global energy strategy, for several reasons:

It could reduce global electric demand by more than 20 per cent, based on current rates in the U.S. power sector, while maintaining high levels of services such as heating and lighting.
It avoids the need for increased energy, capacity and grid services, making it the least expensive way to decarbonise at scale.
It can reduce carbon dioxide emissions by billions of tonnes.

A dramatic example of the power of energy efficiency is lighting. In 2017 the United States passed the milestone of 1 billion LED and CFL lights installed, avoiding 142 million tonnes a year of carbon dioxide emissions, at a cost of about $7 per ton of avoided carbon dioxide. In contrast, the cumulative installed capacity of rooftop solar reached 8,000 MW in 2017, saving 8 million tonnes a year of carbon dioxide, at a cost of $360 per ton. Lighting efficiency thus yielded almost 18 times the avoided carbon dioxide, at about 2 per cent the cost per ton of rooftop solar.

Google provides another example of the power of energy efficiency. Its data centers now use 50 per cent less energy than the average data center, according to the company. Google also developed an improved chip, the TPU, which performs 83 times better than standard CPUs. The new chip allowed Google to reduce power consumption at its data centers by a factor of 30—far exceeding the effect on Google’s carbon footprint of all of the company’s renewable energy purchases. ” – John Woolard, Eco Business, 10 June 2019

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