Solar power in Germany - Impressive start

[jwl]

What they should have done is increased both nuclear and solar and got rid of coal, rather than panicked from some meltdown due to a huge tsunami which is deveztating in its own right.
Nuclear is one of the safest ways of producing energy and coal the least, Fukushima won't change that.

[Sky Captain]

Problem is nuclear power don't mix well with solar and wind, because reactors currently used can't change output quickly to accomodate rapid changes in solar and wind generation. Nuclear reactors also are most cost efficent when run as hard as possible so it don't make economic sense to install also lots of solar and wind when you already have or plan to build mostly nuclear powered grid.

If you go for solar and wind then you need backup generation that can rapidly power up and down like gas turbine and hydro electric plants and more modern coal plants.

[Surlethe]

On the margin, how efficient is nuclear, compared to wind or solar? That is, for a fixed level of capital investment, what is the marginal cost of electricity production for each industry?

[aerius]

Cost breakdown from Forbes
http://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/ ... l-lagging/

This leaves out the cost of grid connections/upgrades and energy storage, which would jack the cost of wind & solar.

[Singular Intellect]

Here's a PDF report on solar power versus nuclear.

Here's the conclusion:

1. Renewable energy is inexhaustible and abundant. The non-renewable energy resources, however will not last forever and have proven to be one of the main sources of our environmental problems. It is clear therefore that in due time renewable energies will dominate the world’s energy system, due to their inherent advantages such as mitigation of climate change, as well as increased energy security and supply including reduction of poverty.
2. Renewable energy and in particular solar energy, is going to be the primary driver of our modern civilization and may provide fresh water from desalination without harming our earth’ life- support systems.
3. The nuclear industry is in near-terminal decline world-wide, following its failure to establish itself as a clean, cheap, safe or reliable energy source. The on-going crises in nuclear waste management, in safety and in economic costs have severely undermined the industry’s credibility. It is currently desperate to find a valid rationale and justification for renewed state support and funding. It is promoting the claim that as nuclear power stations do not emit carbon dioxide, the major greenhouse gas, switching from fossil fuels to nuclear power is the only way to cut Carbon Dioxide (CO2) without radically changing consumption patterns. However, even the most perfunctory examination of the issue shows that nuclear power has no role whatever in tackling global climate change. In fact quite the opposite is true; any resources expended on attempting to advance nuclear power as a viable solution would inevitably detract from genuine measures to reduce the threat of global warming.
4. It is clear that immediate action is needed to halt climate change. Instant cuts in CO2 emissions must be made. Electricity production is a major source of CO2. To tackle global warming, we therefore have to look for ways of producing and using electricity which significantly lessen the CO2 burden. And in deciding how best to tackle global warming, we have to take into account both the cost effectiveness of alternatives to fossil fuels, the cost of their environmental impact
41 4
and their impact on global security.
5. Early hopes of cheap nuclear energy were based on an expectation that whilst nuclear power stations would be more expensive than fossil fuel plants, their running and maintenance costs would be extremely low. Experience has shown that the early optimism was totally misplaced.
6. The cost of nuclear activity at all levels has exceeded those early predictions. In many countries, the construction costs of nuclear power plants have proved to be much higher than first expected. Plants have taken longer to build and there have been many unforeseen technical problems. Running costs have also been much less predictable than was first thought. The costs of increased safety demands and regular equipment breakdowns have been compounded by the expensive question of how to deal with the nuclear waste. In addition, the predicted cost of decommissioning power stations has also escalated.
7. Reliable figures on nuclear generating costs are difficult to obtain. According to a current international study, which examined the cost information provided by nuclear operators, industry figures are frequently dubious or inaccurate. The assumptions on which they are based are often over-optimistic. Alternative options, which are risk-free and less CO2 intensive, are in fact cheaper.
8. In the United States, for example, no new nuclear power stations have been ordered since 1978. This has happened in a country which launched the Pressurized Water Reactor design and which houses many more nuclear reactors than any other country. Construction and operating costs have risen so dramatically, especially since the extra safety demands made after the accident at Three Mile Island, that some companies have faced bankruptcy.
9. Since the oil crisis of the 1970s, several renewable energy forms of electrical power (solar, wind, hydroelectric, photovoltaic, land-fill gas and biomass) generation have emerged, and of these a handful are now considered mature and bankable. This means that they are considered to be reliable and durable power production systems and are therefore able to secure private investment. Many of these technologies are therefore coming into main-stream use, with hundreds of megawatts installed each year. On the other hand it has become clear that nuclear power is not bankable. In particular by the World Bank
10 The true cost of any power source must include external costs which do not appear on the operators balance sheets and are therefore hidden. The external (or social) costs reported by Pearce(1992) is shown Figure 14.
Figure 14. The external (or social) costs reported by Pearce (1992)
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11. The nuclear industry’s disingenuous claims to a role in alleviating climate change must be rejected for what they are: dangerous and self-serving fantasies which would create a serious legacy of deadly radioactive waste increase the risks of catastrophic nuclear accidents and also vastly increase the threat of nuclear weapons proliferation. To conclude, nuclear energy in comparison with clean renewable energy is uneconomical, hazardous and not considered to be part of clean development mechanism (CDM). Renewable energy sources can clearly be more effective as non-CO2 emitting energy sources than nuclear power. However, there are also a number of environmental problems associated with nuclear power which go beyond direct quantification as “externalities”. These make nuclear power unacceptable from an environmental perspective.
12. Radioactive Waste: The Problem with No Solution: It is often said that nuclear power is now a mature technology as it has been operating for over 40 years. Despite this, there is still no environmentally appropriate program of dealing with any form of radioactive waste. This problem is made worse on a daily basis by the continual production of radioactive waste.
Nuclear waste is produced at every stage of the nuclear fuel cycle, from uranium mining to the reprocessing of spent nuclear. Much of this waste will remain hazardous for thousands of years, leaving a deadly radioactive legacy to future generations.
13. The horror of nuclear accidents: In the former Soviet Union at least 9 million people have been affected by the Chernobyl disaster; 2.5 million in Belarus; 3.5 million in Ukraine; and 3 million in Russia (http://archive.greenpeace.org/comms/no. ... ml#f16#f16). In total over 160,000 km2 of land is contaminated in the three republics.
14. Although the nuclear industry continues to refute evidence on the widespread health effects and prevalence of diseases resulting from Chernobyl, it is now widely accepted that the accident has resulted in a massive increase in thyroid cancers in some countries. The President of the European Thyroid Cancer Association, Dilwyn Williams, has stated that thousands of children exposed to radiation will contract thyroid cancer in the next 30 years, Pearce (1992).
11. The nuclear industry’s disingenuous claims to a role in alleviating climate change must be rejected for what they are: dangerous and self-serving fantasies which would create a serious legacy of deadly radioactive waste increase the risks of catastrophic nuclear accidents and also vastly increase the threat of nuclear weapons proliferation. To conclude, nuclear energy in comparison with clean renewable energy is uneconomical, hazardous and not considered to be part of clean development mechanism (CDM). Renewable energy sources can clearly be more effective as non-CO2 emitting energy sources than nuclear power. However, there are also a number of environmental problems associated with nuclear power which go beyond direct quantification as “externalities”. These make nuclear power unacceptable from an environmental perspective.
12. Radioactive Waste: The Problem with No Solution: It is often said that nuclear power is now a mature technology as it has been operating for over 40 years. Despite this, there is still no environmentally appropriate program of dealing with any form of radioactive waste. This problem is made worse on a daily basis by the continual production of radioactive waste.
43 4
Nuclear waste is produced at every stage of the nuclear fuel cycle, from uranium mining to the reprocessing of spent nuclear. Much of this waste will remain hazardous for thousands of years, leaving a deadly radioactive legacy to future generations.
13. The horror of nuclear accidents: In the former Soviet Union at least 9 million people have been affected by the Chernobyl disaster; 2.5 million in Belarus; 3.5 million in Ukraine; and 3 million in Russia (http://archive.greenpeace.org/comms/no. ... ml#f16#f16). In total over 160,000 km2 of land is contaminated in the three republics.
14. Although the nuclear industry continues to refute evidence on the widespread health effects and prevalence of diseases resulting from Chernobyl, it is now widely accepted that the accident has resulted in a massive increase in thyroid cancers in some countries. The President of the European Thyroid Cancer Association, Dilwyn Williams, has stated that thousands of children exposed to radiation will contract thyroid cancer in the next 30 years, Pearce (1992).
15. An initiative on the advancement of sustainability in science, education and training. The best young minds need to be motivated to engage in interdisciplinary problem-solving, based on ever enhanced transdisciplinary excellence

In summary, nuclear is a dead stick and a loser.

[aerius]

It's kinda hard to take that paper seriously when it has shit like the following:

Ontario town 'symbolizes the wickedness of the nuclear fuel cycle', November 17, 2010

An anti-nuclear activist who suggests the entire population of Port Hope, Ont., should be moved
because of radioactive soil contamination took her message to residents on Tuesday. "In a way,
your town symbolizes the wickedness of the nuclear fuel cycle, and it's not your fault," Helen
Caldicott told about 300 people. "You should be compensated. "Helen Caldicott has suggested
residents of Port Hope, Ont., should be moved because of radioactive soil contamination. Helen
Caldicott has suggested residents of Port Hope, Ont., should be moved because of radioactive soil
contamination. (CBC)

Radioactive soil dating back to the 1930s was spread over the town before stricter regulations were
brought into place.

Yeah, ok. They're going to blame that on the Canadian nuclear power industry? Which didn't exist back then and wouldn't exist for another 20 years or so? Really?

Also note that this was a paper written for and presented at the International Conference for Renewable and Alternative Energy. Specifically, it's a paper which covers energy policy for the Arab world. Funnily enough, the UAE has gone on a nuke buying binge.

And for those who actually read the paper, you will note that they mention the cost of solar is $3/W of installed capacity. Which by the way is slightly more than the price they quote for nuclear. Sounds great? Well, no. Nuclear has a capacity factor of around 85-90%, solar is about 1/3 of that, even in a nice sunny desert. Guess what that means for the cost per kWh?

[Singular Intellect]

And for those who actually read the paper, you will note that they mention the cost of solar is $3/W of installed capacity. Which by the way is slightly more than the price they quote for nuclear. Sounds great? Well, no. Nuclear has a capacity factor of around 85-90%, solar is about 1/3 of that, even in a nice sunny desert. Guess what that means for the cost per kWh?

Good thing actual average cost of solar is $0.64/W and expected to hit $0.55/W later this year.

Even pro solar assessments are behind the times and cannot keep up with the cost reductions and efficiency increases in solar, hence their very conservative figures and projections.

[aerius]

Once again, you fail to read and understand your own links and articles. 64 cents/W is the cost of the raw solar cell modules, not the final cost of a fully assembled solar panel, and certainly not the cost of an assembled and installed panel. In other words, even if solar cells were free it would still be more expensive than nukes.

[Singular Intellect]

In other words, even if solar cells were free it would still be more expensive than nukes.

Even if we were to take your absolute nonsense at face value, all we need to do is sit back and watch as nuclear gets more expensive and public opinion continues to shit all over it, while solar continues to routinely install gigawatts of increasingly cheap power with the blessings of public support.

And even if we ridiculously assumed solar could never be as cheap and cheaper than nuclear, public opinion seems to indicate it would rather pay a little more for truly clean energy than nuclear.

Of course, solar is already cost competitive and every indication is it will be cheaper than nuclear very shortly, if that already isn't the case. Not to mention it'll be completely subsidy free and the fastest method of replacing and expanding energy consumption.

But I get the impression solar could be 100% subsidy free, ten times cheaper, laughing at nuclear installation times, the public loves it and you'd still be bitching about how nuclear is the superior option. Guess we'll see within five years what your excuses will be for nuclear at that point. *shrug*

[aerius]

You can't do math can you? Solar cell module cost is only 20% or so of the final installed cost.
Run the fucking math yourself. Oh yeah, that's right, you can't.

So let me help you out. $3/W - 60 cents = $2.40/W for the final installed panel. The article claims $2972/kW installed for nukes, installed. Solar would be $2400/kW, installed. Even in a desert, the capacity factor is around 30% at best whereas nuclear is up to 90%. In dollars/kWh which is what counts because that's how electricity is metered and sold, it's still about 2.5 times more expensive.

Bottom line? I'm arguing with a fucking idiot who doesn't know the difference between a raw solar cell module and a completed & installed solar panel, and who can't or refuses to do elementary school math.

[Sky Captain]

One application where solar power could be cost effective is to run air conditioning in hot climates. AC load is highest typically when it is sunny and hot so it coincides well with highest solar output. Panels can be placed on the same buildings that need cooling so there is little need for additional expensive infrastructure and in the same time load on the power grid is reduced when AC devices run on power generated on site.
Solar energy is most useful when it can be generated and used locally. If you have to build giant solar farms in deserts thousands of km away, run multi GW power lines across the continent and build enormous energy storage systems that adwantage goes out of the window.

[jwl]

This might not be relevent to solar energy, but anyone thinking about Chernobyl needs to look at this: http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg2 ... power.html
Specifically, this bit:

Again solar might be even less, but nuclear is an awful lot better than fossil fuels in terms of safety.

[Iron Bridge]

What they should have done is increased both nuclear and solar and got rid of coal, rather than panicked from some meltdown due to a huge tsunami which is deveztating in its own right.
Nuclear is one of the safest ways of producing energy and coal the least, Fukushima won't change that.

To be fair, the German coal plan pre-dated Fukushima and the nuclear shut-down. Coal is just cheaper than nuclear, at least if you price carbon dioxide at zero, which is exactly what Germany did by exempting the new plants from the EU emissions trading scheme.

On the margin, how efficient is nuclear, compared to wind or solar? That is, for a fixed level of capital investment, what is the marginal cost of electricity production for each industry?

It changes at different levels of grid penetration.

At low levels, you don't need to time-shift energy because the existing fossil fuel backup (grid is not build with maximum capacity only just above the maximum demand, but rather with ~20% leeway) can handle it. As grid penetration of intermittent renewables increases, the amount of energy that needs to be time-shifted increases and fossil fuel backup is displaced. You then have to add the cost of time-shifting. In Denmark, this means buying excess fossil generation from other countries. For a large country, it means building a backup fossil grid that is mostly idled, or building a huge amount of batteries/fly wheels/pumped storage if you want to stay carbon neutral.

Nuclear, on the other hand, has a fixed price until very high levels of grid penetration, where high capital costs start to make it not as cost effective to load match (since almost all the cost is building the plant, rather than refueling it, the marginal cost goes up a lot if you idle the plant).

At present, there is no known way to make a time-shifted intermittent renewables grid for a sensible price. I therefore regard the investment in intermittent renewables as mainly politically motivated: it is much less effective or more expensive in the long run, but in the short run, it is both much cheaper to subsidise a very small grid % of renewables than a large nuclear roll-out, and much less unpopular.

Without cost of mitigating time-shifting, the wholesale cost of electricity generation roughly goes: solar >>> oil >> nuclear > wind > coal/gas (depends on location). Wind looks especially good for politicians because it's actually pretty comparable to fossil generation at the margin. Nuclear probably wouldn't exist without subsidy. Oil is not used to generate electricity. Solar is currently rubbish, but the intermittency problem is not as bad as wind because the troughs are shorter and more predictable.

To my mind the real question is: "What is the cheapest we can build a semi-infinitely scalable grid after discounting a realistic carbon price?" I have no doubt that the carbon price pushes all the fossils above nuclear. I have no doubt that 'scalable' (ie. solving intermittency) pushes wind above nuclear.

[Iron Bridge]

Here's a PDF report on solar power versus nuclear.

Just because something is saved in pdf format doesn't make it authoritative. Especially as this seems to be a Microsoft Word document that was converted to pdf. That is not a format even a half-baked journal would accept.

[jwl]

He's one thing: what's cheaper, solar or carbon capture and storage? Because if they aren't prepared to go nuclear, wouldn't CCS be a better way of lowering emmisions?

[Iron Bridge]

CCS, according to the projections, but CCS has never been demonstrated with a large powerplant so it's not entirely known. There have been large scale implementations that could be regarded as prototypes, but only at resource extraction sites. That simplifies things a lot because often the waste gases can be pumped right back down into the cavities the resources were extracted from, in some cases even increasing production by doing so.

I think the prospective ideal grid would be nuclear baseload with gas-CCS load matching (alongside pumped storage where it's already viable, but like hydro, the good places are taken already and the not-so-good run hard into diminishing returns). Gas is preferable for load matching because it has very low capital costs.

[Surlethe]

1. Renewable energy is inexhaustible and abundant. The non-renewable energy resources, however will not last forever and have proven to be one of the main sources of our environmental problems. It is clear therefore that in due time renewable energies will dominate the world’s energy system, due to their inherent advantages such as mitigation of climate change, as well as increased energy security and supply including reduction of poverty.

This is a great example of something that says absolutely nothing without seeming to. All of these statements are strictly true, but they're just not at all relevant to the question of comparing the costs of nuclear and renewable on various margins. Really, they're almost vacantly true. Of course renewable energy is inexhaustible and abundant (by definition). The non-renewable sources won't last forever (again by definition) and are one of the main sources of environmental problems (well, duh - especially because they account for the vast majority of energy generated). In due time renewable energies will dominate the world's energy system (of course: there's only a limited supply of coal, methane, oil, and uranium in the Earth's crust, so if civilization persists beyond their extraction we will by definition be using renewable energy, i.e., extracting energy from the sun). The last two clauses just throw in some nice-sounding buzzwords.

But there's nothing at all useful in this paragraph. No quantification, no costs, no modeling the relevant variables like relative prices, interest rates, rates of industrialization, rates of extraction, relative scarcity, technological barriers. There's nothing there at all except a few blank-eyed truisms.

[aerius]

For even more fun. Renewables are only good till the sun expands into a red giant and renders the Earth uninhabitable in 5 billion years. Sooner actually, I think it's only 1 to 1.5 billion years until the sun gets hot enough to boil away all the water on our planet. So basically we have a billion years to get our shit sorted out and either get off this planet or die.

On that timescale, nukes with full reprocessing can be considered as a renewable since we ain't gonna run out of fuel, in fact we have something like 5 billion years worth of uranium if we filter it out of the ocean and run breeder reactors with fuel reprocessing. And that's not counting thorium. I can thus claim that nuclear fission is a sustainable source of energy for as long as it matters. It might not be around in 6 billion years, but neither will the Earth or the Sun so you ain't gonna be getting any solar or wind power either.
http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/progress/cohen.html

[Surlethe]

Well, we'll be getting solar. The sun's luminosity as a red giant will be higher than now.

[aerius]

Yeah, in 5 billion years we'll be inside the Sun. After that it's a white dwarf and the Earth will be extra crispy crunchy and drifting into space.

[Napoleon the Clown]

I'm gonna be a killjoy and point out that the materials we use to build solar farms, wind farms, etc. are finite in capacity. And as far as renewables go, solar is basically the best bet for even being able to provide enough power for a city. Wind is worse than solar in most every way, except for how much light is coming down. But the wind isn't always gonna be strong enough to generate meaningful power. Oh, and heavy winds can make them basically explode. So there's that.

How much land will be we need to cover with solar farms just to keep up with an expanding population? Even if people reduce per person power use there's still population growth. People aren't gonna just go "Oh, well, we'll cut back our energy usage dramatically and stop making so many babies just so that solar panel production can keep up." They'll just demand a better way of getting energy. Because rate of production (and how abundant the materials needed are) is a major thing to look at. Just because the sun will keep putting out energy for as long as Earth can support life doesn't mean we'll be able to gather it that long.

[jwl]

For even more fun. Renewables are only good till the sun expands into a red giant and renders the Earth uninhabitable in 5 billion years. Sooner actually, I think it's only 1 to 1.5 billion years until the sun gets hot enough to boil away all the water on our planet. So basically we have a billion years to get our shit sorted out and either get off this planet or die.

On that timescale, nukes with full reprocessing can be considered as a renewable since we ain't gonna run out of fuel, in fact we have something like 5 billion years worth of uranium if we filter it out of the ocean and run breeder reactors with fuel reprocessing. And that's not counting thorium. I can thus claim that nuclear fission is a sustainable source of energy for as long as it matters. It might not be around in 6 billion years, but neither will the Earth or the Sun so you ain't gonna be getting any solar or wind power either.
http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/progress/cohen.html

Plus the fact that by then, the rock cycle will have produced us a nice new crust to dig uranium out of. Although with a half-life of 4.5 billion years, half the uranium will be gone by then due to radioactive decay.