nuclear-news

The News That Matters about the Nuclear Industry Fukushima Chernobyl Mayak Three Mile Island Atomic Testing Radiation Isotope

Implementing storage technologies – necessary in transition from nuclear power

highly-recommendedAs nuclear power plants close, states need to bet big on energy storage Skeptical Science  9 August 2016 by dana1981 Eric Daniel Fournier, Post Doctoral Researcher, Spatial Informatics, University of California, Los Angeles and Alex Ricklefs, Research Analyst in Sustainable Communities, University of California, Los Angeles This article was originally published on The Conversation . Read the original article.

“……due to negative opinion and costly renovations, we are now observing a trend whereby long-running nuclear power plants are shutting down and very few new plants are being scheduled for construction in the United States.

Utilities are moving toward renewable electricity generation, such as solar and wind, partially in response to market forces and partially in response to new regulations that require utilities to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. In California, in particular, the shift toward renewable energy for market and environmental reasons, along with the public’s negative perception of nuclear energy, has caused utilities to abandon nuclear power.

While opponents can view the shutdown of nuclear power plants as a health and environmental success, closing nuclear plants intensifies the challenges faced by utilities to meet electricity consumption demand while simultaneously reducing their carbon footprint. PG&E, for example, has pledged to increase renewable energy sources and energy efficiency efforts, but this alone will not help them supply their customers with electricity around the clock. What can be used to fill the sizable gap left by Diablo Canyon’s closing?

Solar and wind energy sources are desirable as they produce carbon-free electricity without producing toxic and dangerous waste byproducts. However, they also suffer from the drawback of being able to produce electricity only intermittently throughout the day. Solar energy can be utilized only when the sun is out, and wind speeds vary unpredictably.

In order to meet customer electricity demand at all hours, energy storage technologies, alongside more renewable sources and increased energy efficiency, will be needed.

Enter energy storage

Energy storage has long been touted as the panacea for integrating renewable energy into the grid at large scale. Replacing the power generation left by Diablo Canyon’s closing will require expansive additions to wind and solar. However, more renewable energy generation will require more storage.

There are many different energy storage technologies currently available or in the process of commercialization, but each falls into one of four basic categories: chemical storage as in batteries, kinetic storage such as flywheels, thermal storage and magnetic storage.

The different technologies within each of these category can be characterized and compared in terms of their:

  • power rating: how much electrical current produced
  • energy capacity: how much energy can be stored or discharged, and
  • response time: the minimum amount of time needed to deliver energy. [excellent graphs provided here on original]

The key challenge that utilities are now faced with is how to integrate energy storage technologies for specific power delivery applications at specific locations.

This challenge is further complicated by the electric power transmission system and consumer behaviors that have evolved based on a energy supply system dominated by fossil fuels. Additionally, storage technologies are expensive and still developing, which makes fossil fuel generators look more economically beneficial in the short term.

Implementing storage technologies

Currently in California, energy storage is effectively provided by fossil fuel power plants. These natural gas and coal-powered plants provide steady “baseload” power and can ramp up generation to meet peaks in demand, which generally happen in the afternoon and early evening.

A single energy storage device cannot directly replace the capacity potential of these fossil fuel sources, which can generate high rates of power as long as needed.

The inability to perform a like-for-like replacement means that a more diversified portfolio strategy toward energy storage must be adopted in order to make a smooth transition to a lower carbon energy future. Such balanced energy storage portfolio would necessarily consist of some combination of:

  • short-duration energy storage systems that are capable of maintaining power quality by meeting localized spikes in peak demand and buffering short term supply fluctuations. These could include supercapacitors, batteries and flywheels that can supply bursts of power quickly.
  • Lower speed energy storage that can supply a lot of power and store a lot of energy. These systems, such as pumped hydro and thermal storage with concentrated solar power, are capable of shifting the seasonality of solar production and servicing the unique power requirements for large scale or sensitive power users in the commercial and industrial sectors.

This set of storage technologies would have to be linked up in a kind of chain, nested and tiered by end use, location and integration into the grid. Additionally, management systems will be needed to control how the storage technologies interact with the grid.

Currently without sufficient energy storage in place, utilities now use natural gas to fill in the gaps in electricity supply from renewable sources. Utilities use “peaker” plants, which are natural gas-fueled plants that can turn generation up or down to meet electricity demand, such as when solar output dips in the late afternoon and evening, while producing air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions in the process.

With natural gas consumption for electricity generation on the rise, would it be better to keep nuclear power while energy storage technologies mature? Although less polluting than coal, natural gas produces greenhouse gas emissions and has the potential to causeenvironmentally dangerous leaks, as seen in Aliso Canyon.

With nuclear, it is still not clear what to do with nuclear waste, and the disaster at Japan’s Fukushima nuclear power plant in 2011 highlights how catastrophically dangerous nuclear power plants can be.

Regardless of which situation you believe is best, it is clear that energy storage is the major limitation to achieving a carbon-free electricity grid.

California’s commitment to renewable energy sources has helped shift the state to using less fossil fuels and emitting less greenhouse gases. However, careful planning is needed to ensure that energy storage systems are installed to take over the baseline load duties currently held by natural gas and nuclear power, as renewables and energy efficiency may not be able to carry the burden.

August 12, 2016 Posted by | energy storage, USA | Leave a comment

Don’t DELAY Hinkley Point C nuclear project – JUST SCRAP IT!

The Hinkley Point C nuclear reactor shouldn’t be delayed – it should be scrapped Hayden Wood, City AM, 10 Aug 16  Hayden Wood is co-founder of Bulb, a renewable gas and electricity supplier  “……the government should stop agonising and cancel the project. There is no commercial or environmental sense in investing billions into a project that is outdated before construction has even begun.

The UK government agreed a deal with EDF, the French energy company behind the project, which locks in the price of energy at £92.5 per MWh, indexed at 2012 prices for 35 years. This cost is more than 50% higher than the cost of new onshore wind projects at £61.10 per MWh today.

Not only does the deal look bad at today’s prices, but other renewable sources, such as solar, are experiencing such rapid efficiency improvements, they are expected to reach £50-60 per MWh by 2025. As the National Audit Office has stated: “the cost competitiveness of nuclear power is weakening as wind and solar become more established.”

Advocates of Hinkley Point argue the 3.2 GW of power, equivalent to 7% of the UK’s energy requirement, is necessary to manage the intermittency of solar and wind energy. But this reveals a misunderstanding of the rapidly changing energy market. The cost of energy storage has fallen rapidly in recent years.

Today lithium-ion battery prices are around 30% third of what they were in 2010.

By investing in storage technology and renewable energy sources like wind and solar that are cheaper than the large scale nuclear project, not to mention better for the environment, Britain could create an energy market that works better for consumers and the planet.

But the government has to make smarter investments in the future of energy. Hinkley Point C is not the answer. http://www.cityam.com/247271/hinkley-point-nuclear-reactors-shouldnt-delayed-they-should

August 12, 2016 Posted by | general | Leave a comment

New York will regret hasty decision to bail out upstate nuclear facilities

Not everyone is smiling about saving upstate nuclear facilities http://cnycentral.com/news/local/not-everyone-is-smiling-about-saving-upstate-nuclear-facilities BY JUSTIN PAGE THURSDAY, AUGUST 11TH 2016 The Fitzpatrick Nuclear Plant was set to close in January, but Governor Cuomo announced it will stay open as part of a $110 million dollar agreement between current owner Entergy and Exelon – securing more than six hundred jobs.

Governor Cuomo made the announcement yesterday saying everyone in New York should be smiling, but not everyone is happy about the deal.

Jessica Azulay is a program director with the Alliance for a Green Economy and she feels the decision to save Fitzpatrick was made too quickly. “The public and the Public Service Commission never got the chance to look at alternatives and compare different scenarios to see what was in the best interest of all New York’s consumers and communities,” Azulay said.

She says alternatives like energy efficiency, wind, and solar are all better options for the environment and your wallet.”When you start comparing the cost of alternatives you can really see how much of a rip off the nuclear bailout really is for consumers if we’re trying to get to clean energy,” she said.

As far as the impact on the environment, Le Moyne Professor of Environmental Science Systems Lawrence Tanner says one issue is nuclear waste, and how to get rid of it.

“That’s the major problem with nuclear energy still, but for plants that have already been built and are operating, they generate electricity without generating any carbon,” Tanner explained.

However, the subsidies that are keeping upstate nuclear facilities in business will only last for 12 years, and aging plants like Fitzpatrick, aren’t built to last forever.

“We think the replacement should be happening now instead of paying a bunch of money to these nuclear operators just to be in the same situation,” Azulay said.

August 12, 2016 Posted by | general | Leave a comment

Hinkley Point and the fading nuclear power dream

The dreams of nuclear power fading with Hinkley Point, CARL MORTISHED, The Globe and Mail, Aug. 10, 2016 The future of nuclear power generation in Europe, North America and most of the developed world is being decided on an English coastal headland called Hinkley Point. Sadly, for the U.K., this is no great British engineering breakthrough; the technology of the new nuclear reactors is French and a third of the money is Chinese. Instead of celebrating a big foreign investment, the new post-Brexit British Prime Minister, Theresa May, has kicked into the long grass a £25-billion project that could deliver more than a tenth of Britain’s electricity for the next six decades.

It’s all gone wrong because of different perceptions of risk – political, financial or public and personal. Hinkley Point is iconic of everything that has gone wrong in the nuclear power industry since the first civil reactor, Calder Hall, began to deliver electrons into the U.K.’s electricity grid in 1956. There was huge excitement when the Queen signalled the start of the “atomic age” and the government promised electricity that would be “too cheap to meter.” Instead, electricity generated by nuclear fission has turned out to be very expensive, and the contract underpinning EDF’s investment in Hinkley Point has been struck at £92.5 per megawatt hour, twice the prevailing market price when the deal was done in 2012.

 That makes it sound like a great deal for French state-owned generator EDF and its Chinese partner, if not for British consumers. Unfortunately, no one at EDF headquarters is grinning. Instead, the company is split down the middle over the merits of a project whose escalating cost is reckoned by some to be potentially ruinous…………..

August 12, 2016 Posted by | general | Leave a comment

Subsidizing Nuclear Will Only Make Our Grid Problems Worse

text-my-money-2Flag-USAhttp://www.forbes.com/sites/ucenergy/2016/08/11/subsidizing-nuclear-will-only-make-our-grid-problems-worse/2/#20c51fcc386e   Steve Cicala,  While low natural gas prices are something to celebrate for consumers, the mood among the owners of America’s nuclear power fleet is not so cheerful as low energy prices threaten their bottom line. In turn, the owners of nuclear plants are threatening to shut down unless the government (and ultimately the ratepayer) steps in to close the shortfall. They have even announced plant closings to show they mean business.

Ordinarily, this kind of thing might be left solely up to markets to sort out. But with nuclear accounting for almost 60% of the carbon-free electricity in the United States, it’s fair to say that losing nuclear plants make it a lot tougher to meet goals to avoid catastrophic climate change. So there is a compelling case that there is a public interest at stake with the potential closure of these plants.

The result: a high-stakes game of chicken is playing out between producers, consumers, and state regulatory commissions in capitols across the country to keep these plants open. New York made history last week when it decided it couldn’t do without nuclear and gave in to providing subsidies. The news came just a couple months after California decided the opposite—putting all its chips into renewables. Illinois continues to wrestle with the very same decision but has yet to place its bet.

 Before celebrating New York’s approach as a template for low-carbon policy, it’s important to ask: Would these plants really shut down in the absence of government support? And supposing they would, if the problem is low prices resulting from an over-supply of power, is there a better solution than a subsidy that encourages more supply?

First, if the amount of the subsidy is tied to how much the operator requests, you should assume that they’re going to ask for more than they need (obvious, I hope).

Second, the companies at the center of these negotiations have multiple plants, so they make decisions on a particular plant keeping in mind the impact of that decision on the rest of its fleet. Closing a plant in one state after being denied subsidies is a way of signaling to regulators in other states that they seriously risk suffering the same fate. This means that companies may close profitable plants (and pay the cost), because it maximizes the total subsidy they will receive across all of their plants. It also means that firms may actually be eager to close plants as a means of driving up the price of electricity that their remaining plants will receive. Thus, their demands are less about unprofitability than about market power.

The final strategic consideration in these negotiations is about option value. Firms should be willing to endure periods of losses if keeping the plant open preserves the ability to make it all back and more when times are good. Thus, a subsidy that covers the operating cost of the plant is paying more than what the plant actually requires to make staying open in its best interest. It’s making the plant profitable in every year, rather than on average from now until the end of its useful life. Firms would love to be profitable every year, but only require the expectation of future profitability to stay open for business.

So should regulators take the industry at its word?

It’s important to note that—in spite of announced or actual “closing” of plants—hardly a screw has been removed from any of the nuclear plants recently “retired.” Decommissioning is a long-term process with many opportunities to change course as long as the operating license remains valid. This makes announcing closure a lot like convincing a child you’ll leave without them if they don’t get in the car: “I’m putting my shoes on….I’m putting my coat on…I’m getting the keys…I really mean it…” Regulators should not be so naïve.

Although pitched as temporary, urgent subsidies to expedite passage, these negotiations should be viewed as setting a long-term policy approach. If, in five years, natural gas prices remain low and renewables continue to expand (as there’s every reason to believe), we’ll be right back at the negotiating table with an industry on proclaimed life support. There are few policies that deliver less innovation than guaranteed payment, no matter the prevailing economics of the industry.

Is there a better approach? Let’s put aside finally putting a price on carbon (the easy way). I’ve crunched some numbers for Illinois’ Clinton Nuclear Power Station, which Exelon EXC -1.14% recently declared will “close.” It appears the root of the problem is less about low natural gas prices or the growth in renewablesthan our woefully inadequate transmission system.

Lack of transmission capacity underlies nuclear’s inability to recover their fixed operating costs in two ways. When demand is high, a congested system prevents distant nuclear generators from delivering power to profitable markets, leaving them on the sidelines upstate instead of making money in the city (note that it’s security, not economics that threatens to close the Indian Point plant in downstate New York).

 Nuclear plants are also hurt by insufficient transmission when demand is low. This is because renewables generators receive $23 per megawatt-hour inproduction credits regardless of the market price of electricity. With low demand and nowhere for the wind’s energy to go, it drives the price lower and lower—until it turns negative and plants start actually being fined for their output. Nuclear plants are not built to respond to fluctuations like this, meaning that a -$22 per megawatt-hour fine means a $3 profit for a standard 3 megawatt wind turbine, and a $22,000 loss every hour for a gigawatt nuclear plant.

The Clinton plant is an example of what nuclear has to look forward to without transmission capacity to deliver wind power to market. In the chart above, I plot the congestion loss at Clinton against hourly wind generation in 2015 (controlling for demand). In other words, this is by how many dollars per megawatt-hour Clinton is earning below the broader Illinois market, and how it varies with the amount of wind being generated on the wider Midwest system. A future with increased wind generation is not a bright one for the Midwestern nuclear fleet.

Of course, transmission infrastructure is not free—but regulators should be deciding between those one-time costs remedying the cause of a $70 million shortfall per year at Clinton alone, or writing a check every year for the foreseeable future to paper over the real problem.

Want to learn more?  Listen to my Off the Charts podcast. And, follow me at@SteveCicala.

August 12, 2016 Posted by | business and costs, ENERGY, USA | Leave a comment

    Next Entries »