Clean Energy Insight - Moving Energy Forward

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With all of the recent state legislation requiring a certain portion of electricity generation to come from “renewable” energy sources, now is a good time to expand nuclear power. With the ever increasing reliance on technology, electricity demand is projected to increase 26 percent from 2007 to 2030. A report by the National Center for Policy Analysis suggests that recycling spent nuclear fuel could provide an almost unlimited supply of nuclear fuel in the USA while also decreasing the nuclear waste issue.

NCPA Report: Nuclear Power Is Safe, Could Answer Energy Mandates

Since many state governments now require a percentage of their electrical power to come from approved “renewable” energy sources, now is a good time for policymakers to allow the United States to expand the use of nuclear power as a reliable form of energy, according to a new report by the National Center for Policy Analysis.

“The demand for electricity is projected to increase 26 percent from 2007 to 2030,” said H. Sterling Burnett,” NCPA senior fellow and co-author of the report. “Nuclear power is one of the safest and most reliable forms of energy available and it emits no greenhouse gases.”

Nuclear power is also sustainable. The NCPA report explains that recycling spent nuclear fuel could provide an almost unlimited supply of nuclear fuel in the U.S.

“Recycling nuclear fuel would definitely decrease the problem of nuclear waste disposal,” said James Franko, NCPA legislative assistant and co-author of the report. “It can also be a boon to local communities and create a significant amount of jobs.”

Nuclear power should also be considered because it is clean and safe, according to the NCPA report. Nuclear power has among the lowest carbon dioxide(CO2) emissions of all energy sources, emitting only 17 tons of CO2 per gigawatt hour. By contrast, coal emits 1,041 tons and natural gas emits 622 tons. In addition, in more than 50 years of experience with nuclear power in the United States, no deaths or negative health effects have been conclusively linked to nuclear plants or recycled fuel.

“Nuclear power is a viable source of energy, and technology exists today for nuclear power to safely provide a larger percentage of America’s energy needs,” Burnett said. “Policymakers need to consider it as a long-term solution to our energy demands and remove barriers that prevent nuclear energy from being fully utilized.”

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HSBC Private Bank has begun recommending clients to invest between 1-5% of their wealth in nuclear power.  According to the head of global strategy for HSBC, Fredrik Nerbrand, nuclear power is the only sustainable means of electricity.  Nerbrand is also recommending to steer clear of other renewable energy stocks such as solar because of their dependence on government subsidies in a time when budgets are stretched.  Advice from financial experts and recent utility stock market performance is helping to rebuke the long standing myth that any company that builds a new nuclear plant will be penalized by Wall Street and investors.

HSBC Private Bank Goes Nuclear

By Chris Vellacott

LONDON (Reuters) - HSBC Private Bank is recommending weightings of 1-5 percent in nuclear power to clients without ethical objections, as subsidy-dependent renewable energy stocks are too exposed to political risk.

Fredrik Nerbrand, head of global strategy at HSBC’s private banking arm, said nuclear power was the “only sustainable” means of electricity generation.

“We are buying nuclear energy in all its forms,” he said, adding he did not favour sectors such as solar energy on account of their dependence on government subsidies at a time when state budgets are stretched, rendering them exposed to political risk.

Nerbrand also has reservations about gold, which has returned more than 21 percent this year to trade above $1,000 an ounce.

“I fail to see the long-term value of gold from an investment perspective,” he said, adding the commodity should be viewed as a hedge against downside risk to dollar-denominated investments.

Nerbrand is advising wealthy clients that the recovery in the world economy is gathering momentum and the time is right to move into “riskier assets” such as corporate credit, hedge funds and emerging markets.

But he remains particular about which emerging markets are worth a punt, favouring China and Brazil over Russia, which is beset with political risk, and India, which he says has overheated.

“Russia is basically related to oil and I’d rather just buy oil,” he said.

The risk of rising consumer prices in the medium term is low because high unemployment rules out a wage-price spiral, but money printing by governments is likely to lead to higher asset prices favouring real estate and commodities, he said.

In contrast, liquid assets and cash are expected to underperform with central banks maintaining interest rates at record lows. “Central banks will talk tough but act soft with regards to inflation,” he said.

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China is quickly becoming the world’s largest producer of wind energy; however, they are also building coal back-up plants to safeguard against blackouts when the wind doesn’t blow.  Typically, wind mills are producing energy 30-35% of the time.  The author also notes 30% of the wind-power capacity installed in China was not connected to their grid due to the transmission network’s inability to absorb the growth in renewable-energy output.

Other countries that have a combination of rapidly growing energy demand, an old and inflexible grid, a heavy reliance on coal, and ambitious renewable energy expansion plans will face the same problem.  The US currently meets 3 of those 4 requirements.

There are plans in the US to use natural gas combustion plants to supplement our wind energy; however, these plants are subject to high energy price volatility.

China is also leading the way on nuclear power fleet development by rapidly building new nuclear plants that don’t require fossil fuel back-ups.  The plan is to use nuclear plants to offset the need to build coal plants will help China curb their carbon emissions and maintain stable electricity prices.

China’s Wind Farms Come With a Catch: Coal Plants

Wall Street Journal - Sept 28, 2009

SHANGHAI—China’s ambition to create “green cities” powered by huge wind farms comes with a dirty little secret: Dozens of new coal-fired power plants need to be installed as well.

Part of the reason is that wind power depends on, well, the wind. To safeguard against blackouts when conditions are too calm, officials have turned to coal-fired power as a backup.

China wants renewable energy like wind to meet 15% of its energy needs by 2020, double its share in 2005, as it seeks to rein in emissions that have made its cities among the smoggiest on Earth. But experts say the country’s transmission network currently can’t absorb the rate of growth in renewable-energy output. Last year, as much as 30% of wind-power capacity wasn’t connected to the grid. As a result, more coal is being burned in existing plants, and new thermal capacity is being built to cover this shortfall in renewable energy.

In addition, officials want enough new coal-fired capacity in reserve so that they can meet demand whenever the wind doesn’t blow. This is important because wind is less reliable as an energy source than coal, which fuels two-thirds of China’s electricity output. Wind energy ultimately depends on wind strength and direction, unlike coal, which can be stockpiled at generators in advance.

Further complicating matters is poor connectivity between regional transmission networks, which makes it hard for China to move surplus power in one part of the country to cover shortfalls elsewhere.

China may not be alone in having to ramp up thermal power capacity as it develops wind farms. Any country with a combination of rapidly growing energy demand, an old and inflexible grid, an existing reliance on coal for power, and ambitious renewable energy-expansion plans will likely have a similar dilemma. What marks China out as different is the amount of new coal-fired capacity that needs to be added.

The China Greentech Initiative, a group made up of more than 80 mostly large Western companies and organizations with interests in the environmental sector, said in a report earlier this month, “China’s increased focus on renewable energy exerts yet greater demands on China’s electric power infrastructure. Power generation based on renewable energy sources … necessitates greater use of intermittent generation management and storage.”

“China will need to add a substantial amount of coal-fired power capacity by 2020 in line with its expanding economy, and the idea is to bring some of the capacity earlier than necessary in order to facilitate the wind-power transmission,” said Shi Pengfei, vice president of the Chinese Wind Power Association.

Largely due to its reliance on coal, China is the world’s biggest emitter of greenhouse gases in absolute terms. Last year, the country accounted for more than 85% of global growth in coal demand, according to BP PLC’s statistical review of world energy.

Facing pressure from abroad over the pace of China’s emissions growth, President Hu Jintao used a speech to the United Nations last Tuesday to stress his country’s commitment to tackling climate change. He said China will lower energy intensity as the country grows, while raising output of renewable energy and nuclear power. China aims to cut carbon dioxide emissions per unit of gross domestic product by a “notable margin” by 2020, Mr. Hu said, without setting a concrete cap.

The city of Jiuquan, in the flat and arid northwestern province of Gansu, shows the complexities that crop up when implementing such plans. The city is meant to showcase the strides China is making in renewable energy. Wind turbines with a combined capacity of 12.7 gigawatts are due to be installed there by 2015—more than the country’s present nuclear-power capacity.

But the Jiuquan government wants to build 9.2 gigawatts of new coal-fired generating capacity as well, for use when the winds aren’t favorable. That’s equivalent to the entire generating capacity of Hungary.

Construction of these thermal power plants is pending approval by Beijing, an official with the Energy Department under the Jiuquan Development and Reform Bureau said Tuesday.

The heavy reliance on coal-fired power plants to add to the power supply from large wind farms in order to meet minimum power demand is essential to grid safety, said Mr. Shi of the Chinese Wind Power Association.

To be sure, any kilowatt hour of wind power consumed by end users ultimately replaces a kilowatt hour of electricity generated by other, possibly dirty, sources such as coal, and the huge power supply expected from the new wind farms represents a major stride in China’s clean energy push.

In addition to Jiuquan, there are plans for six other wind farms in China with a capacity of more than 10 gigawatts each, mostly in sparsely populated inland regions such as wind-swept Inner Mongolia and Xinjiang.

Several gigawatts of new thermal power capacity will need to be built at these sites as well, Mr. Shi said.

China has plenty of windswept plains and sun-baked deserts like the Gobi which can host turbines or solar panels, but these are often far from cities and existing infrastructure for shipping power. Sebastian Meyer, director of research and advisory services with clean-energy consultancy Azure International, says China needs a more modern and flexible grid if it wants to raise the share of renewable power in its energy mix.

So-called smart-grid technology aims to modernize the power sector by overlaying digital communications onto the grid, enabling utilities to manage supply more efficiently and compensate for any variance. But while the U.S. and many countries in Europe are lining up spending to exploit the technology, China is lagging behind.

State Grid Corp., China’s monopoly power distributor in all but five provinces, says it wants to build a nationwide “strong smart grid.” But while it is investing heavily in grid improvements, its immediate focus is the construction of ultrahigh-voltage lines linking China’s coal production and hydropower centers in inland areas to the densely populated east.

A single such line can carry up to 6.4 gigawatts of power, which makes it even more important that generation at its starting point is stable and reliable.

—Jing Yang

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The ABC affiliate in San Diego is reporting that a replacement project at one nuclear power plant will temporarily employ 1,000 people and could generate business of more than $300 million.  If this is just a temporary project, think what a new plant could do in terms of jobs, external business, and tax revenue!  The news report also states that the $670 million project will save utility users as much as $1 billion in replacement energy!

Nuclear Project To Create SoCal-Area Jobs

SAN ONOFRE, Calif. — A massive construction project to replace integral parts of Southern California’s only nuclear generators will begin this month, Southern California Edison announced Monday.

The main phase of a $670 million project will create more than 1,000 temporary jobs and generate roughly $300 million in spending benefiting Southern California businesses, the utility announced. The two nuclear generators perched on the side of the Pacific Ocean, at the San Diego-Orange county line, will each get two new steam generators inside the containment domes in the project. Each new generator is 65 feet tall, 22 feet in diameter and weighs 640 tons.

The generators absorb heat from the nuclear piles, and transfer it to water, flashing it into steam. That steam is then routed through special pipes to turn massive turbines and generate about 20 percent of the region’s electricity on a normal day.

The four original steam generators are approaching the end of their service life, Edison said. The California Public Utilities Commission in 2005 approved a comprehensive cost-benefit analysis that concluded replacing steam generators would save utility customers as much as $1 billion during the next two decades, when compared to the likely cost of obtaining from other sources the 2,200 megawatts of power the plant generates. Edison has had to take special steps to plan to slice into the containment domes, which are built with concrete that encases cables that were stretched tight to keep the structure intact. Cutting those cables, without jeopardizing the domes, required engineers to practice on a similar dome at a decommissioned power plant near Sacramento. The largest pieces of the new generators arrived via barge at Oceanside last winter, and were creeped up the beaches of Camp Pendleton over a ponderous, months-long effort. SCE plans to replace the two steam generators in the northern unit this fall and those in the southern unit during the fall of 2010. Each generator will be off line about 100 days for the changeovers. The utility said San Onofre is one of the last plants in the U.S. nuclear power fleet to replace its steam generators. The process has been successfully carried out by 49 of the 58 U.S. plants of similar design without a serious safety incident, Edison said. The construction project will be reviewed and monitored by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Edison said.