atw - International Journal for Nuclear Power | 10.2020

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atw Vol. 65 (2020) | Issue 10 ı October ENVIRONMENT AND SAFETY 490 * The average wind speeds indicated on this map are modelderived estimates that may not represent the true wind resource at any given location. Small terrain features, vegetation, buildings, and atmospheric effects may cause the wind speed to depart from the map estimates. Expert advice should be sought in placing wind turbines and estimating their energy production. | Fig. 2. A map of wind resources in the United States clearly showing Tornado Alley where capacity factors for wind exceed 45 %. Al other areas average about 30 %. Tornado Alley is so windy even migratory birds avoid I completely. NREL WINDExchamge Source: Wind resource estimates developed by AWS Truepower, LLC.* We haven’t been idle in the last 30 years. Nuclear can also be sited anywhere, especially in areas where other renewables are not efficient or possible. p follow the new plan by the National Hydropower Association and the Department of Energy, to double hydropower over the 20 years, adding 60 GW by 2030, without building a single new dam. As it turns out, only 3 % of American dams generate electricity, so electrifying existing dams that presently do not produce power, uprating the others to produce more power, and emplacing pumped- hydro storage will do a lot (Figure 4). p secure sources of Li, Co, Fe and other metals needed to build the alternatives, especially to build the batteries for enough fully electric vehicles to replace oil. Material needs are critical. Wind and solar take an extraordinary amount of steel per MW installed (Figure 5). p build a fleet of 200 million fully electric vehicles by 2040 that will significantly reduce our use of oil – much fewer will not sufficiently drop our consumption – and place 100,000 charging stations along all roadways that will be necessary to service such a national fleet. p streamline the process to site and approve high-voltage transmission lines. We cannot install this much renewables without them. And make the grid “smart.” Simple but costly. In America, this plan will require 500,000 additional MW wind turbines, 200 new nuclear reactors (or 2,000 small modular reactors that are especially ideal for load-following renewables and providing baseload power), 800 billion kWhs/year from new solar, and 600 billion kWhs/year from new hydro. For the World, it would take 4,000,000 new MW of wind turbines (13 trillion kWhs/year), 1,400,000 MW new nuclear reactors (11 trillion kWhs/year), 2,200,000 MW of new solar (7 trillion kWhs/ year), and 1,100,000 new MW of hydro while properly maintaining | Fig. 3. A map of solar resources in the United States. Capacity factors for solar exceed 30 % in areas in red and orange. All other areas average less than 30 % and as low as 10%. Alaska is blue to green and Hawaii is yellow to red. The National Solar Radiation Data Base (NSRDB) existing hydro (9 trillion kWhs/yr). Of course, physiographic issues need to be addressed to site appropriate sources with locations, just like in the United States. If you’re country does not have steep enough rivers you won’t have much hydro. We should certainly pursue other alternatives like tidal and wave energy as fast as possible but they will not be developed enough to contribute much by 2040. We will need to keep those natural gas plants that have been built after 2000 as they are needed for flexibility until we build enough nuclear and hydro. But we need to stop building new gas plants. This is probably the most difficult thing to achieve because regulators, state legislators, and banks love them. Natural gas has long been touted as a bridge fuel to a non-fossil future beyond this century. But that is nonsense. We don’t have a century. And if so many new gas plants are built, especially to load-follow wind and solar, then we lock ourselves into gas for a long, long time. No one is ** Note: This map has been generalized for cartographic purposes and some streams associated with non-powered dams are not displayed. | Fig. 4. The locations of dams in the United States that do not produce electricity. These can be powered, which would double our hydropower generation without building a single new dam. ORNL ** | Fig. 5. Materials needed to install energy systems are highly variable with source. Renewables require many times the amount of steel and/or concrete than thermal sources. Wind requires the most of everything. Data from DOE and UC Berkeley normalized to capacity factor. Data from UC Berkeley. Environment and Safety Any Green New Deal Needs Nuclear Energy ı James Conca and Judith Wright
atw Vol. 65 (2020) | Issue 10 ı October going to decommission or destroy a relatively new gas plant. On the other hand, gas plants can be refurbished to small modular reactors relatively easily, just as coal plants can be refurbished to gas plants relatively easily. It should be noted that we have more natural gas than any country in the world, and gas plants are so easy to build and maintain. For that matter, we have more oil and coal than any country in the world, which makes any plan to eliminate fossil fuels extremely difficult from a sociopolitical standpoint. Unfortunately, the hurdles to new nuclear power, and to nuclear waste disposal, are all political and ideological, and stem from intentional misrepresentations over 50 years. New nuclear designs, like NuScale’s SMR out of Oregon, are as safe as one can make any generator, even wind. And we know what to do with nuclear waste, we just aren’t allowed to do it (Conca, 2017). In the 1970s and 80s, incorrect predictions of energy needs in the following decades, cost overruns from continual changes in regulatory and manufacturing requirements as well as subcontractors, the inability to standardize reactor designs (except for France), warped market forces from the deregulation of most energy markets, and the rise of anti-nuclear ideologies, all led to the halt of new nuclear builds in America and the world. Even though nuclear has been the overwhelming source of clean power for the last 40 years and has the lowest deathprint of any energy source, even renewables (Table 1). It comes down to a sociopolitical decision In order to achieve a successful Green New Deal, the public has to decide what they fear most - the anti-nuclear mythology or the existential threat of global warming. Scientists can only lead the public to potential solutions, we can’t make them think. The amount of wind and solar required by this plan needs to be put into perspective. We presently have about 90,000 MW of wind turbines that generate about 260 billion kWhs per year, and we have been building them as fast as possible for over ten years. To build 500,000 more MW of turbines over the next 10 to 20 years in just the U.S., is really pushing our manufacturing side and will take more steel than we could possible produce Energy Source over that time frame. Wind turbines take 450 tons of steel per MW. Solar takes about 360 tons of steel per MW. To emplace the amount of wind and solar in the Green New Deal described above, would take 1.6 billion tons of steel (Figure 5). It would take 11 billion tons for the world to achieve a similar decarbo nization. Since the total annual global output of steel is only 1.6 billion tons, we would be very dependent on China, India and Japan for that much steel, and would require them to either produce many times as much as they do now, or use less than half of what they use now. Either way, it will take substantial global economic agreements to be accepted by all nations Our track record with huge global economic agreements has not been good. It needs to be better or we will fail. Links Links are listed in order of appearance in the text and active as of September 14, 2020 | https://energyeducation.ca/encyclopedia/ | https://www.eenews.net/stories/1060120029/print | https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/5729035/Green- New-Deal-FAQ.pdf | https://ocasio-cortez.house.gov/sites/ocasio-cortez.house.gov/ files/Resolution%20on%20a%20Green%20New%20Deal.pdf | http://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar5/wg3/ | https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2015/12/15/pariscop21-and-the-urgent-need-for-more-nuclear-energy/ #32febc9ae384 | https://www-legacy.dge.carnegiescience.edu/labs/caldeiralab/ MediaAlertParis.html | https://www.ucsusa.org/nuclear-power/cost-nuclear-power/ retirements#.XAAs0a3MxGX | https://www.investopedia.com/terms/n/new-deal.asp | https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2018/06/27/ ans-all-energy-forum-brings-a-sobering-analysis-to-energyand-climate-plans/#5d7cf4ec3953 | https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2019/01/16/u-sco2-emissions-rise-as-nuclear-power-plants-close/ #3f5237d97034 | https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2014/07/19/ wind-turbines-could-rule-tornado-alley/#648178abcd3e Mortality Rate (deaths per trillion kWh) Coal – global average 100,000 (41 % of global electricity) Coal – China 170,000 (75 % of China’s electricity) Coal – U.S. 10,000 (32 % of U.S. electricity) Oil – global average 36,000 (33 % of global energy, 4 % of global electricity) Natural Gas – global average 4,000 (22 % of global electricity) Biofuel/Biomass – global average 24,000 (21 % of global energy) Solar – global average 440 (
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atw - International Journal for Nuclear Power | 10.2020

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