The above is a published feature article for TEI Energy Outlook magazine in Sep 2014.
In domestic circuits, a solar power-enabled household might still be a distant dream, but the clean-fuel resource is picking up its way on industrial grounds. The alternative power sector is booming with unconventional choices like earth heat, tide current, and wind and solar energy extraction.
A deep space exploration probe – Rosette was recently launched in mid-August to rendezvous with the Comet 67P/Churyomov-Gerasimenko at 375 million miles from the Sun. The European Space Agency launched spacecraft all energised by solar power panels, demonstrating the effectiveness of Solar Energy over its toxic substitute – the nuclear fission cells, in deep space and on Earth.
Speaking of fission, it was almost six decades back in the year 1954 that the US Atomic Energy Commission Chairman, Mr. Lewis Strauss, spoke to the National Association of Science Writers about the dawn of the Atomic era and harnessed electricity “too cheap to meter.” Bound initially as a bridge towards a future governed by controlled fusion reactions, failures have only kept nuclear energy’s progress stalled at the intermediary stages of high toxic producing fission reactors.
Following the extinction curve in the US, a worldwide nuclear recession trend has been observed by the Germany-based Heinrich Boll Foundation. The mid-nineties saw the epitomic rise of nuclear fission-based power generation throughout the globe.
From 17.6% of the total power generated in the world, steady declines in the 2000s brought it down to 10.8% in 2013.
The simple fact that more nuclear power plants are being closed or stalled due to government hurdles than ones being opened and heavy manufacturing costs of civil nuclear power plants can be contributed to the descent in popularity.
Failed Expectations from Nuclear Fission
A declining share of total production can be justified by the rise of alternative cheap power resources and increasing production of conventional power quarters. Still, the total production of continuously rarifying nuclear fuel has also gone unnoticed. In 2006, global nuclear power production peaked at an all-time high of 2,660 Terra Watt-hours (TWh), sufficient to light 239 million homes. Since then, productions have decreased and plummeted to 2,359 TWh by 2013.
The concentration of cultivable nuclear isotopes around thin pockets of the world has also apprehended the cause. Apart from a few appreciated activities in some European countries like France and Russia, the rest of the world is still to catch up on the nuclear race. Most power projects based on nuclear reactors are being delayed on a long-term basis globally. As a result, listed ‘active’ projects, some from the late nineties, are seen to be in the pipeline for ages with no production to show.
In the 2013 report published by German Greens, few cases emerge as significantly important:
- In US, the numbers of “under construction” reactors are increasing. Specially, eight of them have been in the list for more than 20 years, and highly unlikely to be completed. Among them, two only have any chance of getting hooked to the main power grid.
- In India, one particular reactor has been in the construction stage for 12 years and yet to be set for a hook-up date.
- In Taiwan, after 15 years of indefinite delays, construction work in two reactors has been finally stopped this April, due to political opposition.
- China, birthplace of the so-called “nuclear renaissance”, is facing constructional delays ranging from several months to more than two years in 21 of their 28 upcoming nuclear projects.
- Globally, 50 such units enlisted “under construction” have been facing delays ranging from several months to several years, even decades. From the projects which have come online after many years, 17 face doubt in setting up start-up dates and can face cancellations in future.
Renewable Energy – The Next Nuclear Deterrent?
The same German Greens 2013 report adds that wind and solar made a net contribution of 69 gigawatts (GW) to the global power grids, surpassing the outputs of many nuclear plants.
China made a huge leap in this regard. The country added 91 GW in wind power and 18 GW in solar power capacity in 2013 to cross the operational nuclear capacity of the country for the first time. Also, in the same year, the generated electricity output from both wind and solar quarters separately crossed that generated from all the nuclear plants combined.
Like China, Brazil, Germany, and Japan, Spain also joined the elite club of renewable energy generators in 2013, where wind-generated power outpaced that from all other competitors, including conventional sources, for the period of an entire year. Spain is a nuclear-enabled country yet able to generate enough electricity from wind, becoming the first country ever in history. With this feat, renewable energy resources are currently the second largest source for power generation in the European Union.
With newly built projects facing delays, bulging cost run-ups, regulatory burdens, and an uncertain private market to cater to, the slow-to-adapt nuclear industry can only thrive in a controlled environment of expensive government subsidies and a specifically calibrated demand market. Also, the dearth of radioactive fuel spread across isolated pockets adds to the problem.
Major supports favouring renewable energy have also drawn criticism from different quarters for drawing too much attention towards the pricey alternative. One such example is the paper on benefits and costs of renewable energy from Washington economist Charles Frank.
Who Will Fill the Fossil Fuel Void in the Next Century?
A Brookings Institution study uses the arguments in his paper, though with much controversy, to argue that solar and wind power extraction costs outweigh the overall benefits gained from the fuel-free resources. The paper inculcates costs from high maintenance of a renewable energy plant and energy losses during calm periods due to lack of sunshine or wind currents.
The paper proposes detailed research on four carbon-free resources – hydro, solar, wind, nuclear, and low carbon-emitting gases. Compared to fossil fuel plants, the reduced carbon emissions cost around $50 per metric ton. For gases, they cost $16 per million Btu, which still strike higher than conventional power generators.
Nuclear reactors proved the most efficient among the four alternatives – 90%. Hydro turbines showed 25% efficiency while solar generators met a meager 15%. Though it mentions that nuclear generators reduce greenhouse gas emissions four times compared to solar plants, it does not consider the high amount of toxic nuclear residues accumulated over time.
Lacking availability of commercial insurance for unconventional power generators raises expenditures of building such a facility. He takes the example of the Hinkley Point power generator in South Western England, which estimates a total build-up cost of around $27 billion. In the face of these costs, the minuscule amount of $69,000 and $107,000 saved per megawatt capacity for solar and wind power, respectively, according to him, is not worth the risk. Similar statistics for nuclear reactors show a figure of $400,000, which is quite impressive in this regard.
Even when installed, it would take additional fossil power plants to cover for the idle periods, as a power supply in renewable cases mostly depends on weather conditions. The theory has been challenged on many grounds. Technologies available in today’s retail market allow a PV system to recover energy stored over 3 years, even in dark cloudy patches of Europe. Modern wind power plants offer a lifetime payback 50 times more than their predecessors.
In deep space, solar panels have been tested for low light conditions. The resultant technology is the Low-Intensity Low-Temperature Cells, which can generate power at regions where solar luminosity is a fraction (4%) of what is received on the Earth’s surface. Launched in 2004, the space-probe Rosetta was the first to use this advanced technology. Rosetta relied “entirely on the energy provided by its innovative solar panels for all onboard instruments and subsystems,” said ESA.
Its success lays the path for others to come. ESA’s Jupiter Icy Moon Explorer is on the horizon, which will use the same technology, in contrast to NASA’s 1989 Jupiter space mission Galileo, which had a plutonium power core on board. On-board nuclear power reactors have proved hazardous, threatening nuclear fallout in many regions. The 1964 US Satellite crash and the Soviet Cosmos Satellite disintegration in 1978 are a few.
Currently, all satellites, including the International Space Station, are solar-powered.
With a 30+ year life of PV generators, electricity costs can be further reduced on a long-term basis with renewable energy resources. The inevitable fact would have to be brought forward in the debate of nuclear or solar.
The search for alternative power resources started to replace conventional fossil fuels as the latter verge of over-consumption. The scarcity issue remains the same for nuclear fuels too. Though highly powerful, extractable nuclear isotope mines are rare in number and cannot fulfill the planet’s rising energy demands in the coming years.
So, expensive or not, the sun and wind currents will be the only abundant energy providers in the next century. It is time to respect this fact and capitalize on the same.
