Nuclear power is a dead end as a climate solution

Many Climate ‘Solutions’ Are Dead Ends Or Niches & Should Be Ignored

Michael Barnard, Climate futurist advising multi-billion dollar funds and firms.

Money, power and influence. The low-carbon transformation that we have started is the path to immense amounts of money, power and influence. Non-solutions and even major problems are being pitched hard as climate wins. Nuclear energy, carbon capture, hydrogen for energy and synthetic fuels should be ignored by most policy makers and serious investors.

Let’s start with nuclear power. Up front, there are a lot of things to like about the technology. It’s low-carbon, low-pollution and safe. Personally, I’m pleased with every nuclear reactor that actually gets attached to the grid. If there weren’t alternatives and serious downsides, I would be all in on the power generation technology.

But there are serious problems for nuclear in the vast majority of countries in the world, and we have to power every country. Wind, solar, transmission and storage are viable in every country, hence their dominance in the short list of climate actions that will work.

Countries have to have some very specific conditions for success for nuclear generation build out, and almost none do in the 21st Century. They have to be at heightened risk of major conflict. They have to have a nuclear weapons strategic requirement, whether a program to build them as with the USA and France historically, or the ability to build them quickly should they become needed as with South Korea. They have to be a big, rich country.

Commercial nuclear generation has to be a national strategy. Federal purse strings have to open wide, and federal governments must have the ability to override local opposition and regulatory hurdles. The federal government has to satisfy 28 major requirements with the International Atomic Energy Agency and establish overlapping circles of physical and cyber defense on the full length of the nuclear fuel supply, use and waste chain.

A single technology and design has to be selected and required for every reactor to enable regulatory, technical and human processes to gain learning experience and more quickly deploy the technology. The nuclear design has to be large, typically gigawatt scale. And the deployment must run its course in 20 to 30 years so that the experienced teams don’t retire, losing their hard-won knowledge.

Every successful deployment of nuclear generation historically has had those characteristics. Without them, nuclear cost and schedule overruns are massive, and the time to approve and build a nuclear power plant is a decade or longer. As global megaproject expert Bent Flyvbjerg’s data set of over 16,000 projects greater than a billion dollars in cost shows, nuclear energy is close to the worst type for cost and schedule overruns, 23rd of 25 categories, with only the Olympics and nuclear waste repositories being worse.

Even then, nuclear power plants are inflexible and so only suitable for 40% or less of annual demand without running into significant challenges. France’s fleet is actually 13% of Europe’s electrical generation and the country trades terawatt hours in all directions annually. Without massive transmission in and out of the country, their cost of electricity and challenges with operations would multiply.

Jurisdictions that can’t commit to dozens of nuclear reactors at the national level and can’t enforce a single reactor design should ignore nuclear entirely.

China is a good natural experiment to consider regarding scaling of nuclear energy versus renewables. It’s had a national strategic nuclear generation program since the 1990s, and wind and solar programs since the mid-2000s. Despite its more centralized planning and authority, renewables have scaled vastly more quickly and are increasing exponentially, while the nuclear program peaked in 2018 and has been slower since.

If China can’t scale nuclear energy as rapidly as wind, solar, transmission and storage, no country can. Equivalent wind and solar generation can be built in a fifth the time for a third the cost with much greater budget and schedule certainty.

Small modular reactors are even worse. They lose the economies of physical size and won’t be able to build enough to achieve economies of manufacturing scale. They are unproven, and first of a kind projects are the highest risk. They require all of the same conditions for success as large scale nuclear. There is no reason to believe claims related to them.

Mechanical carbon capture and sequestration is mostly another subsidy for the fossil fuel industry. Globally, only oil and gas heavy countries are considering it as a reasonable carbon drawdown strategy, and that’s not because it is one. Looking around the world, the majority of countries are sensibly leaning into nature-based drawdown strategies because they scale and work……………………………………………………………….

Hydrogen for energy is another dead end. At present we manufacture about 120 million tons of it, and the process creates as much greenhouse gasses as the entire aviation industry globally. That must be cleaned up. ……………………………… any process which manufactures hydrogen requires a lot of energy

………………………………………. There are powerful and well-funded organizations and individuals attempting to bend our decarbonization journey to their ineffective technologies. They are slowing progress. They are working to create profits for themself at the expense of the planet. Many individuals are well meaning, but simply deluded about the benefits of their favored technology.

Ignore them. The climate crisis and the opportunity are both too great to waste time on clearly poor solutions.

As a reminder, here’s the short list of climate actions that will work:

• Electrify everything
• Overbuild renewable generation
• Build continent-scale electrical grids and markets
• Build pumped hydro and other storage
• Plant a lot of trees
• Change agricultural practices
• Fix concrete, steel and industrial processes
• Price carbon aggressively
• Shut down coal and gas generation aggressively
• Stop financing and subsidies for fossil fuel
• Eliminate HFCs in refrigeration
• Ignore distractions
• Pay attention to motivations

Michael Barnard spends his time projecting scenarios for decarbonization 80 years into the future, and assisting his clients — executives, Boards and investors on several continents — to pick wisely today. ………… mohttps://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelbarnard/2023/10/16/many-climate-solutions-are-dead-ends-or-niches–should-be-ignored/?sh=3eb5ba803987 #nuclear #antinuclear #nuclearfree #NoNukes

August 20, 2024 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | Reference, spinbuster