My country is going to commit economic suicide ...

[ebastler]

Nuclear is becoming a smaller and smaller portion of the total energy mix pie and this trend will continue

Not according to the chart you posted just below that sentence. It shows the nuclear share as being stable from 2015 onward.

[Kjelt]

Predictions 

[mtdoc]

Yes. Engineers like to talk about nuclear because on paper, it is very enticing.  But in reality, the economic and political hurdles are too great - in part due to safety and long term toxicity issues.  Because of this it is gradually fading out in the West.

But it isn't. BP is simply wrong.

Magical thinking versus facts.

[mtdoc]

Predictions 

"It's difficult to make predictions. especially about the future" 

[ebastler]

Predictions 

Yes. What other kind of data do you expect for a 2020-2040 timeframe?

[mtdoc]

Nuclear is becoming a smaller and smaller portion of the total energy mix pie and this trend will continue

Not according to the chart you posted just below that sentence. It shows the nuclear share as being stable from 2015 onward.

Good point. It looks to be close. I've edited my post to more accurately reflect BPs prediction.  FWIW, I think BP is too optimistic on nuclear and my view is it will be a smaller and smaller portion as time goes on.  But as always, the future is uncertain.

[GeorgeOfTheJungle]

I'd bet that graph above is installed power rather than energy generated, if it is, it says nothing (useful).

[Kjelt]

Yes. What other kind of data do you expect for a 2020-2040 timeframe?

The data used to make the prediction.
I can draw any graph you like based on different datasets.
One must never forget the reason and facts behind the past if you use it for the future.
The near future is very very uncertain IMO esp. for energy since it depends on too many factors that are changing every quarter.

Even the OP in my country is no longer relevant since the government is divided what course to take. The original idea drawn in Q2 is not feasible and we are now in Q3.

Then BP is not an objective 3rd party in this matter so I am very suspicious of any data coming from the old fossile fuel companies.

[Marco]

Until there are billion dollar contractual obligations any nuclear plant is as sure a thing as renewable and co2 reduction targets ... which is to say it's just hot air. The way Hinkley C is going I'm not optimistic for nuclear. If that's what it costs to build nuclear plants in the UK you are better off building off shore windfarms and fossil plants for backup if CO2 reduction is the goal.

[nctnico]

Until there are billion dollar contractual obligations any nuclear plant is as sure a thing as renewable and co2 reduction targets ... which is to say it's just hot air. The way Hinkley C is going I'm not optimistic for nuclear. If that's what it costs to build nuclear plants in the UK you are better off building off shore windfarms and fossil plants for backup if CO2 reduction is the goal.

The problem with the Hinkley plant is that the UK government choose to have it funded privately at an insane interest rate which adds billions to the cost. 

[mtdoc]

Then BP is not an objective 3rd party in this matter so I am very suspicious of any data coming from the old fossile fuel companies.

It’s true that BP is not an objective 3rd party.  However, unlike their Annual Energy Outlook, which is, after all, in part a subjective, speculative look at what the past fortells about the future, their annual Statistical Review of World Energy is considered by the energy industry to be an authoritative, objective and factual data set. It us used by energy analysts around the world, inluding BPs competitors.

What I find fascinating about their subjective predictions contained in their Energy Outlook report is that even they, as a big oil company, admit to the smaller and smaller role for oil.

For a thorough, 3rd party analysis of BPs statistical report and it’s implications, I’d recommend a look at Eight insights based on December 2017 energy data.

From that we have this graph based on the factual historical data.

[GeorgeOfTheJungle]

Fun fact: the energy density (in W/cm²) of a Pentium IV is about the same as that of a nuclear reactor: ~100 W/cm²

[cdev]

Something to consider, volcanic eruptions drastically reduce both solar energy generation and wind, rain and snow melt. They can and do (its been recorded in the geologic and historical records) change the weather in a hemisphere (north or south) or the whole planet if the eruption is near the equator... for years. Solar, hydro, etc. would be significantly reduced for a period of time.

Also, nuclear fission is vulnerable to the loss of the ultimate heat sink problem, as well as a similar issue with spent fuel (This is what happened several times at Fukushima, illustrating just how big a problem it is with current technology.) This could become a major disaster for humanity.

Considering there is an unknown but for the sake of the argument, lets say better than one in eight chance every decade of a Carrington (1859 event) class solar storm, which could knock out the world's energy grids and cause a cascade of these nuclear meltdowns for that reason. (as if the loss of power wasnt bad enough!) So until we solve that, which is related to the problem of what to do about the spent fuel, fission is not a good option either. The danger of a solar storm followed by widespread grid failure, followed by multiple nuclear meltdowns is a serious one that we must not ignore. This is probably the most dangerous risk that nobody knows about.

Coal is also problematic because of the pollution it creates, some of which (in addition to causing a plethora of other health problems) is truly insidious in the form of elemental mercury. Mercury is present in the environment where it accumulates in trees, etc, and is liberated as mercury vapor when they burn, also tilling - as in agriculture, it turns out is now releasing quite worrisome amounts of gaseous mercury into the atmosphere. What has changed is the amounts recorded have been rising and its clearly due to the burning of lower grades of coal.

Of course this has been happening for a long time but measured amounts of mercury have been rising, and its known to cause a lot of health problem, especially in the form of methylmercury, which is a neurotoxin, but simple elemental mercury is quite dangerous too. Mining and burning of coal has drastically increased the mercury in the atmosphere and soil where it poses a hazard to people and wildlife, especially developing fetuses - its recently been discoverd that pro-oxidant substances - a great many of them are additive in this way, mercury is a strong oxidizer and it can cause birth defects at much lower levels than previously thought. At levels commonly encountered in the environment today. So burning more coal isnt a good solution either. Additionally, its recently been discovered that the supposedly clean fuel, natural gas, is contributing to the greenhouse gas effect much more than they had thought, it may be as bad as coal.

[tautech]

Also, nuclear fission is vulnerable to the loss of the ultimate heat sink problem, as well as a similar issue with spent fuel (This is what happened several times at Fukushima, illustrating just how big a problem it is with current technology.) This could become a major disaster for humanity.

Considering there is an unknown but for the sake of the argument, lets say better than one in eight chance every decade of a Carrington (1859 event) class solar storm, which could knock out the world's energy grids and cause a cascade of these nuclear meltdowns for that reason. (as if the loss of power wasnt bad enough!) So until we solve that, which is related to the problem of what to do about the spent fuel, fission is not a good option either. The danger of a solar storm followed by widespread grid failure, followed by multiple nuclear meltdowns is a serious one that we must not ignore. This is probably the most dangerous risk that nobody knows about.

Are you not aware Fukushima suffered from the backup power supplies being taken out by the Tsunami ?
Nothing at all to do with grid failure.

[Marco]

I don't think solar storms are expensive to defend against, there's just no economic incentive.

[cdev]

I don't get it, could you elaborate?

I don't think solar storms are expensive to defend against, there's just no economic incentive.

That doesn't make sense to me.

[cdev]

Okay, "Lack of cooling ability at a critical time", and you notice that although four reactors were sited there the flooding was not cited as the cause of all the meltdowns, the lack of cooling ability was.

Also, nuclear fission is vulnerable to the loss of the ultimate heat sink problem, as well as a similar issue with spent fuel (This is what happened several times at Fukushima, illustrating just how big a problem it is with current technology.) This could become a major disaster for humanity.

Considering there is an unknown but for the sake of the argument, lets say better than one in eight chance every decade of a Carrington (1859 event) class solar storm, which could knock out the world's energy grids and cause a cascade of these nuclear meltdowns for that reason. (as if the loss of power wasnt bad enough!) So until we solve that, which is related to the problem of what to do about the spent fuel, fission is not a good option either. The danger of a solar storm followed by widespread grid failure, followed by multiple nuclear meltdowns is a serious one that we must not ignore. This is probably the most dangerous risk that nobody knows about.

Are you not aware Fukushima suffered from the backup power supplies being taken out by the Tsunami ?
Nothing at all to do with grid failure.

And everything to do with "groupthink" - remember the Challenger disaster?

The same kind of denial is occurring with nuclear fission and safety of a system that was built before we truly understood its risks.

And that is very dangerous, with the stakes being a lot higher than a few astronauts lives.

Read up on groupthink, and the ultimate heat sink problem. Not the whitewashes of it.

This is why we need to be investing in fusion research. Fusion may be a lot cleaner.

The solar storm issue could be a disaster for the whole human race. A huge solar flare barely missed Earth just a few years ago. It was measured by a space probe that just so happened to be at one of the Lagrangian points - in its line of fire- when it occurred. That should have been a wake up call for all of us.

[Marco]

That doesn't make sense to me.

There's no profit for any individual electricity company to make its transformers immune to solar storms (ie. put in big switching power supplies which can offset the solar storm induced voltage on circuits during operation). Even if they weren't only interested in short term profit lets say they do implement such protection, but all the other companies do not ... they have added an investment reducing their competitiveness now, but when all the other companies and civilization grinds to a halt for a while they won't really be able to make much profit from it. All the other power companies will be bailed out by government any way, definitely too big to fail.

There's also no political profit in fixing this shit, taking money away from vote generating pork for a black swan event none of your constituents care about is not good for votes. So we muddle on.

Most we can expect is the power companies to at least put in better monitoring so they can disconnect the power before the transformers go, that really costs next to nothing. Of course figuring out how to black start the entire world grid will be a hoot, no one is paying to develop the plans for that either ... so we'll have to figure it out at the time, once the storm is gone.

PS. maybe the renewable systems will be necessary to boot everything else

[Eka]

Protection circuits for the power grid aren't that expensive and there has been gov money in the US and Canada to pay for them in the past. They will shut the line down in an emergency knocking power out, but that is much better than blowing out the huge transformers that can take forever to replace.

[f4eru]

funded privately at an insane interest rate which adds billions to the cost.

That's false.
It does not add billions to the cost. It shows the true cost of nuclear. Privatizing means more economic accountability, not more cost.

Except for the endstorage, which is still a public affair which will cost much much much much much much much much much much much much more.

[cdev]

Removing transformers in the case of a solar storm requires a warning that an EMP pulse is heading our way.

They should also equip nuclear power plants with backup cooling systems that keep their spent fuel pools supplied with water for as long as several years in the case of a long term grid outage from a global CME event like the Carrington event in 1859  / or other widespread grid failure (such as terrorism- like North Korea or similar exploding a single nuclear device high in space). Its not enough to simply remove power transformers from the grid to prevent their damage, although it is an essential thing that always needs to happen. There is an additional need to keep spent fuel stored at the power plants where it was used, cool indefinitely. It continues to generate enough heat to cause a meltdown if the cooling fails.

Protection circuits for the power grid aren't that expensive and there has been gov money in the US and Canada to pay for them in the past. They will shut the line down in an emergency knocking power out, but that is much better than blowing out the huge transformers that can take forever to replace.

We should be switching to more decentralized power generation and renewables as much as possible and DC should be used for most of our household electricity use in more and more homes. During the sunny times of the year sunlight/PV should be used for more and more electricity. Many parts of the globe are sunny enough for the sun to provide most energy for people.

[nctnico]

funded privately at an insane interest rate which adds billions to the cost.

That's false.
It does not add billions to the cost. It shows the true cost of nuclear. Privatizing means more economic accountability, not more cost.

No, the Brittisch government borrowed money at an insane interest rate. That is plain stupid. It has nothing to do with the cost of nuclear. Again: borrowing money at a high interest rate while you can borrow at a much lower interest rate is just stupid. The Wikipedia page about the Hinkley power plant in the UK is perfectly clear about that. Just the interest rate alone makes the electrivity from the power plant twice as expensive than it has to be.

[cdev]

The true cost of nuclear could easily become astronomical if you factor in accidents.

This is not only because of the solar-storm/loss of the ultimate heat sink risk, its also because of the huge and still unsolved closely related problems of nuclear waste creation, need for cooling of that waste on site at spent fuel ponds, and the still not very well understood problems caused by meltdowns and releases into the environment of nuclear waste.

For example, its not well known but the rate of nuclear decay they were expecting to see at Chernobyl is not occurring. Also the accident caused substantial amounts of contamination all across northern Europe, especially at high altitudes where rain dumped the radiation. In addition to the Ukraine, Belarus and Russia, a great many other European countries still have issues that impact agriculture from the radiation released by the nuclear accident.

The radiation seems to be decaying much more slowly than was expected.

One has to dig a little to find this under the nuclear industry spin but its an ugly fact behind Chernobyl. The waste in the environment is still not at the stage where it decays as they expected. It may not be for an unknown time. they may simply have been wrong. Radiation dynamics in the environment are extremely complex and I am not a soil or atomic scientist.

There is a large risk also posed by forest fires in the affected area. A big fire in the immediate environment to the plant especially could cause a further spreading of contamination.

I could dredge up the reference, but its not easy reading. Also, the nuclear industry is aggressively trying to spin these accidents as less severe than they really were. Not a cause for much confidence in such critical decisionmaking by society.

So the land there may not be safe to reoccupy - live there - farm there, etc, for a very very long time.



If we were to have a 1859 level solar flare hit the Earth like almost happened in 2013, hundreds, perhaps thousands of transformers would pop causing large scale power outages and likely multiple (most certainly dozens, maybe even hundreds) nuclear meltdowns once their ability to keep things cool ended. (This is something we should be working on until its addressed because its fixable to some degree)

Failure to adequately address this problem on a global scale could result in almost the entire world becoming too contaminated to live safely on after another 1859 level solar storm, which is inevitable - we don't know how frequently they occur but the estimates of their incidence now have to rise after the 2013 narrow miss.

Thats a worst case scenario, but not an unlikely one as shown by the huge number of current reactors many of which are in locations where they would be vulnerable to additional risks such as tsunamis or terrorism. Note that after Fukushima multiple reactors at the site there went into meltdown state for somewhat different reasons, all driven by the loss of backup power.

Nuclear fission produces this dangerous nuclear waste which then must be babysat for very long time - stored in some manner which is impervious to the radiation (which makes almost everything degrade over time) and heat.

That and the risk of meltdowns and the potential cleanup costs and so on make it extremely foolish to continue down that path.

Corporations (which were dreamed up as a way for the wealthy to shirk personal responsibility for their business activities) certainly are not responsible enough to handle these kinds of risks.

funded privately at an insane interest rate which adds billions to the cost.

That's false.
It does not add billions to the cost. It shows the true cost of nuclear. Privatizing means more economic accountability, not more cost.

No, the Brittisch government borrowed money at an insane interest rate. That is plain stupid. It has nothing to do with the cost of nuclear. Again: borrowing money at a high interest rate while you can borrow at a much lower interest rate is just stupid. The Wikipedia page about the Hinkley power plant in the UK is perfectly clear about that. Just the interest rate alone makes the electrivity from the power plant twice as expensive than it has to be.

[tggzzz]

The true cost of nuclear could easily become astronomical if you factor in accidents.

The true cost of non-nuclear could easily become astronomical if you factor in global warming.

Provide a way to store large quantities of energy near where it is needed, and a principal advantage of nuclear disappears. Until then...

[GeoffreyF]

Either they've gone full retard, or this is just intentional sabotage of the Dutch economy to the benefit of poorer countries in the EU, as well as part of a small attack on Russia. Disingenuous and downright treasonous. Don't attribute to malice is all fine and well, but this is next level retardation.

Speaking of "full Retard" - you come on here with wild hysterics, no numbers and rude language.  My overall reaction is that you really have not put real thought into your words.  Reasoning involves objective facts, numerical if possible and comparing alternatives, considering their relative merits.  you did none of that.