Belgian brownout, German emergency, British plan

I recently chanced upon a report about the plans that Belgium has put in place to deal with its impending electricity crisis, brought about by the shutdown of several of its nuclear reactors. It seems that the country is to be divided into six zones, which will each take their turn to be switched off when the grid is about to be overwhelmed. A more detailed version of the plan, released last week, shows who will be affected, right down to street level.

We knew about the Belgian energy crisis already, but somehow seeing the brownout plans up close brings the whole thing home.

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Salt for the Earth

Over at the Telegraph, Ambrose Evans-Pritchard is extolling the virtues of molten salt nuclear reactors, suggesting that these represent the future and could be cheaper and safer than the pressurised water reactors that are currently in vogue.

The Alvin Weinberg Foundation in London is tracking seven proposals across the world for molten salt reactors (MSRs) rather than relying on solid uranium fuel. Unlike conventional reactors, these operate at atmospheric pressure. They do not need vast reinforced domes. There is no risk of blowing off the top.

The reactors are more efficient. They burn up 30 times as much of the nuclear fuel and can run off spent fuel. The molten salt is inert so that even if there is a leak, it cools and solidifies. The fission process stops automatically in an accident. There can be no chain-reaction, and therefore no possible disaster along the lines of Chernobyl or Fukushima. That at least is the claim.

It's an idea, anyway.

Nuclear brouhaha

It looks as though there's a bit of a kerfuffle developing over Friends of the Earth and their stance on nuclear power. It seems that the Today programme (via Roger Harrabin, I think) has reported that FoE is in the process of reversing its stance of complete opposition. FoE staff are furiously tweeting that it is not true.

I haven't heard the Today segment, so I can't comment either way. I'll update if I hear anything.

Update on Sep 10, 2014 by Bishop Hill

Roger Harrabin tweets:

FoE spokesman says "no new policy" but the group does NOT want to shut the UK #nuclear industry. It opposes new-build mainly on cost.

Blackouts inch closer

The Telegraph is reporting that the nuclear plants in Lancashire that EDF closed a few weeks ago will not now reopen until December at the earliest.

On Thursday [EDF] announced that the reactors, which produce enough power to meet more than 4pc of winter demand, would only be returned to service gradually between the end of October and late December.

“Dates for returning the stations to service depend on the findings and completion of the inspections,” EDF Energy said.

The delay leaves Britain facing the first months of winter with significantly less power capacity than had been expected to help keep the lights on.

Renewables cannot sustain civilisation

The other day we were considering the concept of EROI, the amount of energy you get out of a given technology for the amount you have to put in. Specifically we were looking at the figures for solar PV in Spain.

With splendid timing, the Energy Collective has published a post considering EROI for the full gamut of energy technologies. At first glance the story looks not too bad, with wind and solar PV (so long as it's in a desert) above the minimum level of 7 that the article says is needed to sustain a modern society (breakeven EROI of 1 is not really worth the bother). The problem arises when you have to start storing all energy from renewables, which as their adherents suggest is the key to having them compete with fossil fuels.

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Belgium asks "Can I borrow your power cable?"

Reader "Wellers" writes with an update from Belgium on the energy crisis there.

Yesterday there was more bad news regarding the two 1GW power stations already shut down in Belgium. They are probably shut down for good.

Predictably, the Energy Minister has come on air to try to allay the public’s fears. He appears to have a “cunning plan”, as Baldrick would say. Here is a quick translation I made from today’s De Standaard newspaper:

“There is an extra power station, but the cable is missing”

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Belgium shows us the way

In the comments to the previous thread, reader Wellers points us to a story from Belgium that looks very much as if it will presage the situation in the UK over the next year or two.

Belgian energy company Electrabel said its Doel 4 nuclear reactor would stay offline at least until the end of this year after major damage to its turbine, with the cause confirmed as sabotage.

Unfortunately, several other Belgian reactors have been shut down for maintenance in recent months due to what may be a generic flaw in the design - this seems to be the same issue that affected  nuclear plant in the UK last week. The loss of Doel 4 therefore means that fully half of the country's nuclear capacity is offline. Doel 4 could be out for months, so guess what is going to happen.

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Expert commission

I'm back at my desk for a couple of days...

The Scottish Government has published the findings of an expert commission into how the energy market north of the border would work post-independence. Unlikely as that result might seem at the present time, the report makes for amusing reading.

The commission itself seems to be one of those bodies like the Russell or Stern reviews that was put together to lend credence to a pre-ordained result. If you take a look at the panel members you can see what I mean:

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Wind and solar are worst

The venerable (and somewhat woolly liberal) Brookings Institution in Washington DC has published a working paper on the most cost-effective way to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. Commendably, the paper eschews the dishonest levelised-cost (LCOE) approach used by DECC and its colleagues in the green movement. 

The author, Charles Frank, concludes that solar and wind power are the worst possible approach to the problem:

...nuclear, hydro, and natural gas combined cycle have far more net benefits than either wind or solar. This is the case because solar and wind facilities suffer from a very high capacity cost per megawatt, very low capacity factors and low reliability, which result in low avoided emissions and low avoided energy cost per dollar invested.

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Reversion to the disreputable

As I noted a few weeks ago, some of our environmentalist friends were on their best behaviour during the public inquiry into Dart Energy's proposed expansion of their coalbed methane operations in Airth, Scotland, with Friends of the Earth's evidence including none of the wild claims that they have made as part of their campaign of scaremongering.

With the hearings for the inquiry now over, normal service seems to have been resumed, with the Herald's Rob Edwards (who else?) reporting the latest batch of more or less bonkers scaremongering.

Evidence submitted to the inquiry by Dart says that “predicted annual discharges” of untreated water from the development could contain up to 1.7 billion becquerels of radioactivity. The radioactivity comes from uranium and thorium deposits deep underground, and is flushed out by mining operations.

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Atherton on Hinkley Point

Peter Atherton of Liberum Capital has written another devastating takedown of coalition energy policy, this time focused on the Hinkley point deal.

Although we have yet to see the full terms of the contract (and we may never do so), based on the disclosure so far this looks likely to be an outstanding deal for Edf and it s partners. Once again, the UK government is taking a massive bet that fossil fuel prices will be extremely high in the future. If that bet proves to be wrong then this contract will look economically insane when HPC commissions. We are frankly staggered that the UK government thinks it is appropriate to take such a bet and under-write the economics of any power station that costs £5m per MW and takes 9 years to build.

Public opinion on shale and energy

Yougov has published a poll of UK public opinion for the Sunday Times, which this time round includes a number of questions about shale gas exploitation and energy policy in general. These are the questions and main responses. The segmented responses can be seen in the original document here.

I'm not sure that it tells us very much, except that the public are a bit mixed up on these questions.

Shale gas is natural gas trapped under sedimentary rock, which is extracted using a method known as hydraulic fracturing, or "fracking". There are large reserves of shale gas in parts of England. Some people think that using shale gas could be a solution to Britain's energy needs. Other people think that fracking is a dangerous technique that risks contaminating ground water and causing minor earthquakes. From what you have seen or heard about the issue, do you think Britain should or should not start extracting shale gas?

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The benefits of radiation

Somewhat off topic for this blog, but I thought this paper by a group calling itself Scientists for the Public Understanding of Radiation was quite interesting and probably rather timely too.

The health and economic prosperity of the human race depend on applications of science in engineering and medicine, and these have involved the outer (or electronic) part of atoms. Use of the inner (or nuclear) part has raised public and political apprehension when used for energy production but less so when used for human health e.g. following the legacy of Marie Curie. The cause of this concern is historical and cultural with no basis in science. Appreciating this misunderstanding in everyday terms is not difficult, but future prospects for world economic prosperity and a sustainable environment depend critically on overcoming these concerns through explanatory education and improved public trust in science. Only then may the known benefits of nuclear technology (access to power, clean water, food preservation, as well as advances in healthcare) be widely accepted and realised.

The full article can be found here.

All that is Goldenberg does not glitter

Suzanne Goldenberg enjoys (if that's the right word) a certain reputation among BH readers and her latest offering will do nothing but enhance (if that's the right word) her position in our estimation.

America's carbon dioxide emissions last year fell to their lowest levels since 1994, according to a new report.

Carbon dioxide emissions fell by 13% in the past five years, because of new energy-saving technologies and a doubling in the take-up of renewable energy, the report compiled by Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF) for the Business Council for Sustainable Energy (BCSE) said.

The reduction in climate pollution – even as Congress failed to act on climate change – brings America more than halfway towards Barack Obama's target of cutting emissions by 17% from 2005 levels over the next decade, the Bloomberg analysts said.

The Bloomberg report is here.  It actually says little about emissions, but as far as I can see it says nothing like what Ms Goldenberg suggests it does on the subject of renewables. try this for example:

The reductions in coal generation, ascendancy of gas, influx of renewables, expansion of CHP and other distributed power forms, adoption of demand-side efficiency technologies, rise of dispatchable demand response, and deployment of advanced vehicles are all contributing to the decline in carbon emissions from the energy sector (including transport), which peaked in 2007 at 6.02Gt and have dropped by an estimated 13% since.

And as the report also makes clear, the big change in the energy mix has been the rise of gas:

Total US installed capacity of natural gas (442GW) plus renewables (187GW) is now at 629GW (58% of the total power generating mix) – up from 605GW (56%) in 2011 and 548GW (54%) in 2007. Between 2008 and 2012, the US nearly doubled its renewables capacity from 44GW to 86GW (excluding hydropower, which itself is the single largest source of renewable power, at 101GW as of 2012).

Less daft

The Scottish Conservatives have announced their new energy policy, which seems, on the face of it, to be not quite as foolish as what has gone before.

Wind farms should be substantially cut and fossil fuels such as shale gas should be exploited, according to a review of Scottish Conservative energy policy.

The shake-up calls for councils to be given the power to halt all wind farm applications for a year and suggests homeowners should be compensated for loss value because of turbines.

They are also advocating construction of new nuclear power stations. However, belying their reputation as a party of small government and free markets they still intend to pump money into renewables.

Could do better.