Renewables vs. nuclear: surveys offer contrasting picture (EU poll)

[jpak]

http://www.euractiv.com/Article?tcmuri=tcm:29-151929-16&type=News

Close to 80% of EU citizens back renewable energies as their preferred alternative to high-priced oil and gas imports, according to a public opinion survey. Nuclear power scores poorly with 12%.

<more>

[megatherium]

1. Unfortunately,

according to the article: But the survey also shows a majority of people (54%) are not yet ready to pay more for renewable energies, with opposition reaching 66% in EU-10 countries.

What is the perceived sense of urgency in Europe in moving away from fossil fuels and towards other sources?

[jpak]

2. Are they ready to pay through the nose for Russian gas????

That might be curtailed at any time - like this winter????

[megatherium]

3. I think the French have the right idea.

Nuclear.

[Dead_Parrot]

4. Hmmm...

:popcorn:

[jpak]

11. France imports 95% of its NG - and imports have increased since 1993

http://www.cslforum.org/france.htm

Looks like nucular hasn't reduced French gas demand....

[megatherium]

12. More importantly, nuclear hasn't reduced France's demand

for petroleum; which is why (according to your linked article) France imports more than half the energy it consumes. The link says NG is 15% of France's energy budget (all energy, not just electrical). So clearly, France hasn't solved the problem of petroleum, nor has it achieved energy independence. But France opted to go nuclear in the 1970s, and now they produce close to 80% of their electricity from nuclear. They made this decision in the wake of the oil crises of the 1970s to secure their energy supply. I think it is clear that France would be that much more vulnerable to economic extortion if they had not made this choice. Of the 537 billion kilowatt-hours of electricty produced by France last year, only 4.2 were produced using solar/geo/wind/biomass, according to your link. Can you tell me, seriously, that France would be in a position to replace either their nuclear generation capacity, or their remaining fossil-fuel electricity generation, using renewables, in two decade's time? (If I recall, about two decades is what it took them to ramp up their nuclear capacity.)

I fear your elocution has been influenced by our President. I for one do not pay attention to what he has to say nor how he pronounces it; I have formed my pro-nuclear opinion on its own merits.

[jpak]

14. How much of La France's uranium consumption is imported from Africa?????

(clue: most of it)

How does this provide them with "energy independence"????

(clue: Their "secure" African uranium supplies are the result of neocolonial policies with several African countries that gain little from these relationships and suffer the environmental impacts of French uranium mining operations).

http://www.jstor.org/view/0022278x/ap010107/01a00050/0?frame=noframe&userID=[e-mail]/01cc99334100501c60a08&dpi=3&config=jstor

http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=46864&SelectRegion=West_Africa&SelectCountry=NIGER

So La France exploits its former African colonies to import uranium that it uses to export electricity to other EU countries.

How cool is that...

[megatherium]

22. A red herring given that uranium is not yet considered scarce.

France began an expensive project to breed fuel (the SuperPhenix) because they were concerned that a world-wide scarcity of uranium would develop. But they shut down that project in part because uranium is not yet scarce.

Kenneth Deffeyes (Beyond Oil: The View From Hubbert's Peak) investigated the question as to how much uranium ore there is in the world. The question was, was there a certain limited amount of high grade ore, and not much else; or was there a limited amount of high grade ore, but large amounts of lower-quality ore? It turns out there is plenty of low-grade ore out there: geologists expect that when uranium becomes more scarce (when the high grade ore becomes depleted), exploration will quickly find lots of economic ore. (There hasn't been much uranium prospecting for decades.) This means breeding fuel is not expected to be necessary for some time. Nuclear power is more expensive than coal (if one does not factor in the external costs of coal) but the reason it is relatively expensive is not because of the cost of the fuel.

As far as the behavior of the French in their former colonies, that is on their conscience. But I understand that Australia and Canada are the largest sources of uranium in the world.

And you still haven't answered my question: How quickly can we realistically expect renewables to replace nuclear energy, or else a substantial portion of fossil fuels? The problem is that we have plenty of coal. The computer I'm using right now gets its power mainly from coal, and my electric bills are low (they vary from about $40 in the winter to about $120 in the summer). And the news about global warming is very disturbing lately.

On edit: Please see http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf75.htm for a discussion from the World Nuclear Association about the supply of uranium.

[jpak]

23. Global uranium production peaked in 2001

The international nuclear industry IS concerned about the pending shortfall in uranium production...

http://business.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,9069-1735134,00.html

and Superphenix was shut because it never worked (except to start sodium fires)...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superph%C3%A9nix

[megatherium]

24. Please see the link I just added to my previous post.

It is directly from the World Nuclear Association, September 2005.

[Dead_Parrot]

25. From your link:

Uranium mining production peaked in 2001. Experts believe that it will take more than ten years to open new mines.

Uranium isn't running out, but the supply isn't meeting demand. Slight difference.

[NNadir]

26. And still the world builds nuclear reactors...

As always I wonder why anti-nuclear pro-coal people cry so much if they are confident that the world will run out of uranium. It would seem that the reason for the irrational panic would simply go away.

But instead, what we hear is pontification (usually accompanied by a popular press article) on a subject that they clearly know nothing about.

I suspect is that they have been predicting the death of the nuclear industry with such constancy that even they are concerned about their poor predictive skills.

Here are some reasons that we have been hearing about the impending death of the nuclear industry:

1. Three Mile Island. Wrong. World production of nuclear energy has increased and is now 360%, 6.6 exajoules greater, of what it was in 1980. http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=post&forum=115&topic_id=43055&mesg_id=43275

2. Chernobyl wrong. Nuclear power is now producing 167% as much energy as it was producing in 1986.

3. Economics. Wrong. In many markets nuclear energy has the lowest busbar cost of any form of energy, including coal.

4. Fear of accidents. wrong The absence of an important accident in the nuclear field since 1986 has undermined the accident fear to a large extent. Many people are beginning to fear global climate change more than nuclear accidents (and rightly so.)

5. Uranium shortages. wrong. Not one reactor project anywhere has ever been stopped by a uranium shortage.

6. So called "dangerous nuclear waste." Not one person has ever been killed by the storage of so called "nuclear waste."

In the case prediction that the world would soon run out of uranium date back to the 1950's. They have proved as reliable as the prediction of a solar nirvana.

The increasing hysteria surrounding the anti-nuclear case is a reflection of exactly how unsupportable it is. Mostly it relies now on arguments that have been demonstrably wrong for 20 years.

[jpak]

27. US oil production peaked in 1970

and the US imports most of its petroleum

yet Detroit keeps on building SUVs

yes - I see the similarities here....

[Odin2005]

5. Both must be used.

only certain locations, like Iceland and New Zealand can use renewables exclusively. This paranoia about the danders of nuclear are rediculous, the new power plant models are vurtually meltdown-proof. Chernobyl was a result of shitty design, get over it.

[Dead_Parrot]

8. NZ are still using coal...

just fyi... :D

[Odin2005]

9. More proof that the anti-nuclear people are nuts.

They would rather burn coal than use nuclear. :argh:

[depakid]

6. Here's a strange one

Italy forbids nuclear power plants. France on the other hand, embraces them for much of their energy needs (don't ask what the French do with their waste).

But guess where Italy buys power from? - and how that power is generated?

[Dead_Parrot]

7. LOL - NIMBY deathmatch, tonight at 11:00... nt

[NNadir]

10. Here are the figures for Italian Electricity Imports.

Italy is the only G8 member that does not have nuclear power, having shut all of its nuclear plants as the result of a referendum in 1987. Italy is also a net importer of electricity, the world's largest net importer in fact.

http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/cabs/Italy/Electricity.html

You have to give Italy credit. Rather than talk about shutting nuclear capacity someday they actually did it. Of course they - and the rest of humanity - are living with the consequences of that dubious decision but they are at least not living in some theoretical la-la land that takes place in 2025 or 2050. (The Italian government has inquired about reopening the nuclear power plants but the state owned company that controls them, Sogin, has refused to consider the request on the grounds that the plants have not been maintained.)

Italy has some of the most expensive electricity in the EU, 40% the EU average. This has made Italy a paragon of energy efficiency, which is of course a good thing. Italy's carbon dioxide intensity was 0.42 metric tons of carbon dioxide per $1000 (US 2000 dollars) of GDP. This is 70% worse than Japan, but still leaves Italy the 31st best in the world out of more than 220 countries listed.

http://www.eia.doe.gov/pub/international/iealf/tableh1gco2.xls

From the above link, we see that Italy imported 24.9 billion kilowatt-hours from Switzerland, 19.1 billion kilowatt-hours from France, and 5.2 billion kilowatt-hours from Slovenia. Slovenia and Switzerland both generate 40% of their power by nuclear means; France generates more that 75% by nuclear means. Switzerland, like Italy, has huge hydroelectric capacity.

Italy does have some very real renewable potential, most obviously geothermal resources, owing to the many volcanoes in the country. The resource is under exploited. Italy also intends to build additional wind capacity. It is already the 5th largest producer of wind energy in the world.

Italy produces about 3% of its electricity via renewable (other than hydroelectric) means, a success story.

Italy has no real intention to meet its Kyoto commitments and as of 2002 was 16 percent above where it needed to be.

http://www.environmental-expert.com/resulteacharticle4.asp?cid=20220&codi=5924

Italy completed, in 2002, an underground 500 MWe line to Greece, which is a huge producer of coal fired electricity.

http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/cabs/greece.html#elec

Greece is a solar success story, producing 3% of its electricity via solar means. (That 3% represents "success" in itself is telling, but the capacity at least exists.)

The Greek renewable policy, which goes back to 1987 has met some internal resistance:

To meet European Union mandates, renewable electricity generation projects are on the rise in Greece. The Centre for Renewable Energy Sources (CRES), supervised by the Development Ministry, was created in 1987 to promote renewable energy. RAE has approved projects that would expand the installed capacity from renewables by 1,800 MW; however, many of these projects have been stalled as a result of local opposition due to the large amount of land the projects necessitate.

The usual blah-blah-blah says that Greece "could" get x zillion percent from wind and solar, but somehow it doesn't.

In any case, Greece has lots of coal, albeit exceptionally dirty (brown) coal. (Don't worry; be happy.) Greece imports hard coal from South Africa, Venezuela, Russia and Columbia.

Greece also apparently is blowing Kyoto off while talking big about renewables.

Returning to Italy, Italy consumed about 1.1 exajoules of electricity in 2003.

http://www.eia.doe.gov/pub/international/iealf/table62.xls

This represents an average power consumption of 35,000 MW. Thus Italy could produce almost all of its electricity with about 26 ABWR (Advanced Boiling Water Reactors) of the type that have recently been coming on line in Japan. Because of Italy's huge geothermal resources however, which like nuclear can be continuous base load sources, Italy could become greenhouse gas free with respect to electricity with fewer than 26 such nuclear stations.

[jpak]

13. The Peanut Gallery obviously does not like this poll

:evilgrin:

[phantom power]

15. I assume they're free to shut their reactors down at any time.

If they want to obey the will of 88% of the people. I'm not necessarily impressed by polls of any kind. BushCo polled at 90% approval during the fall of 2001. I'm pretty sure that didn't constitute proof that Bush was, in fact, a great president :-)

[NNadir]

18. Good one.

;-)

[Dead_Parrot]

19. According to a recent survey...

100 people were asked "Do you have the time?"

-I can confirm that it is 12:58PM, plus or minus 9 minutes.
-23% of people do NOT have the time, although further research is needed to find out what they don't have the time for.
-8% of people do have the time, if you have the energy.
-6% of people want me to fuck off.

[NickB79]

16. 99% of EU citizens back a rain of diamonds from the sky

But it's not gonna happen.

People can back whatever they like. I back myself winning the lottery. That doesn't mean I should go out and buy the Corvette right now.

[JohnWxy]

17. you would think fully exploiting Wind, given its benign environmental

effects, would be something to pursue first until better data on nuclear safety could be obtained.

[Dead_Parrot]

21. It's not always windy, though

and no-one has yet managed any grid storage of over a few MWhs. (And that's if you have suitable terrain for pumped hydro). It's a massive stumblimg block for a renewables-only model...

[JVS]

20. Unless they're going to pull the renewable energy out of their asses...

they'll get nuclear.