That was my suggested headline for my latest opinion piece, which ran in Australian online magazine Crikey under the sub-editors (blander IMO) choice of “We don’t need a nuclear renaissance. We need a solid plan on renewables”
The idea of the piece was to respond to Exhibit A in the case for nuclear power, the successful French construction program of the 1970s and 1980s, under the Messmer Plan. I’ve previously written about the way this program depended on the power of the French state at the time, which can’t easily be replicated today. A little while ago, I was suddenly struck by the thought that the Messmer Plan would have been much more effective if it were applied to solar and wind energy rather than nuclear. It’s over the fold (I’ve removed the lead, linking to current Australian politics)
Nuclear industry has gone nowhere in the past 20 years, with old plants closing as fast as new ones opened. But nuclear advocates’ hopes remain undimmed. Central to their faith is the example of the French nuclear build in the 1970s and ’80s. From a standing start, France built 56 power stations in 15 years, most of which still operate today.
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But nuclear advocates have drawn the wrong lesson from the French experience. The crucial factor was not the merits of nuclear technology, but the strength of the French state and the determination of Prime Minister Pierre Messmer, embodied in the “Messmer plan”.
What we need today is not a nuclear renaissance but an Australian Messmer plan for solar photovoltaic (PV) and wind.
The Messmer plan had its origins in the immediate aftermath of the OPEC oil shock of October 1973. Less than six months later, on March 6, 1974, Messmer announced that France would go “all electric, all nuclear” to free itself from dependence on fuel imports.
The speed with which the plan was implemented seems unbelievable now. There was no debate in Parliament and scientific critics were brushed aside. By November 1974, the first concrete was being poured at three power stations. There was no time for environmental impact statements, community consultation or economic analysis. The project was undertaken entirely within the public sector, with access to low-cost finance and unpriced resources.
The Messmer plan eventually ran out of steam. Escalating costs of power plant construction and a decline in the price of oil meant that the “all electric” part of the plan never happened. But at least in electricity, France remains a standout case of a rapid energy transition driven by government action.
The critical point is that the success of the Messmer plan didn’t depend in any way on the fact that the chosen technology was nuclear power. Even with the power of the French state to override obstacles, nuclear plants still took an average of six years to build. By contrast, once the lengthy permitting phase is over, a wind turbine project can be completed in six or seven months. Under favourable conditions, solar PV can be installed even faster.
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An Australian Messmer plan would override all the obstacles that prevent a rapid transition to carbon-free energy. The complexities of the national electricity market and its pricing schemes would be swept away. Nimby objections to the appearance of wind turbines and claims about undetectable health effects would be ignored. Transmission lines would be built where and when they were needed, with no need to consult landowners.
The original Messmer plan failed to electrify transport, but that would be much easier today. Importing internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicles would be banned, and existing vehicles would be subjected to increasingly stringent requirements. Industry would similarly be pushed to electrify as fast as possible.
Obviously nothing like this is going to happen in the Australia of 2023. We have environmental impact assessments and community consultation for good reasons, and that isn’t going to change. Concerns about public debt still limit the scope of public investment. And since the departure of Kevin Rudd (whose announcement of the NBN was almost as abrupt as that of the Messmer plan), there is no-one on the national political scene with anything like the drive of Messmer.
Still, it is important to understand that all these processes come at a cost. Every day the world delays decarbonisation, the climate gets hotter and resulting catastrophes get worse. When the now-inevitable catastrophes of flood and fire return this summer or next, we should consider whether the France of the 1970s has something to teach us about energy transitions.
{ 15 comments }
Brett 09.19.23 at 4:30 pm
The difference there would be the scale of override required. It’s true that you could possibly also do a massive solar or wind buildout if you have the kind of political authority to override local opposition, but since the footprint of those technologies on land is significantly larger than nuclear plants you’d have to do a lot more of it.
Martha 09.19.23 at 6:04 pm
Absolutely agree, and I lean pretty heavily towards property rights. In the States, we can’t electrify anything if we don’t expand the grid. Getting a simple substation expansion (not even a new one) can take 2 years in Massachusetts. Transmission lines take longer and everyone throws up crazy ideas to stop them…
John Q 09.20.23 at 1:32 am
Brett, that’s true as far as the physical footprint goes. But the the plume exposure pathway EPZ extends about 10 miles in radius around a nuclear plant (an area of around 300 sq miles). That represents the area where evacuation might be required in the event of an accident under US rules. In Chernobyl, the radius for permanent evacuation was 30km. That’s one reason new greenfield nuclear proposals are so rare outside dictatorships.
TM 09.20.23 at 7:11 am
The US already has far more solar than nuclear power capacity installed (142 GW compared to 95, https://ornatesolar.com/blog/the-top-5-solar-countries-in-the-world and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_the_United_States).
Global solar installation is on track to reach 392 GW in 2023. Germany, which has far less space available than the US or Australia, has already installed 9 GW in 2023, more than compensating for the recent decommissioning of nuclear power plants.
Get real, renewable power buildup is not a hypothetical, it’s happening.
https://about.bnef.com/blog/3q-2023-global-pv-market-outlook/, https://www.solarpowereurope.org/insights/market-outlooks/global-market-outlook-for-solar-power-2023-2027-1
Seekonk 09.20.23 at 2:40 pm
“The [French] project was undertaken entirely within the public sector … Obviously nothing like this is going to happen in the Australia of 2023.
Indeed.
Public policy-making has been captured by the same interests that have privatized the world’s resources. Someone said that it is easier to imagine the end of the world than to imagine the end of capitalism.
DCA 09.21.23 at 7:10 pm
Agree with the argument, plus “a glowing nuclear renaissance” sounds like just what we might get.
Thomas Jørgensen 09.24.23 at 6:17 pm
It isn’t just the Messmer Plan. Though, to be clear, I am very much in favor of cutting down a bunch of the regulatory obstacles. The environmental impact of replacing a coal plant with a reactor damn well does not need 3 years of evaluating. The coal plant is an ongoing disaster in need of immediate stopping.
OL3 – which is everyones go-to example of “This proves nuclear is too slow” did more to clean up Finlands grid than the total efforts of Denmark in the wind and solar sector during… any comparable time span.
John Q 09.24.23 at 8:02 pm
Thomas J @7 Can you spell this out? My initial check suggests that Finland and Denmark have decarbonized electricity fairly completely since 2005 (start of OL3), with Denmark starting later, on solar in particular.
More relevantly, any forward looking projection suggests that additions of solar and wind will be much faster and cheaper than new nuclear almost everywhere.
Thomas Jørgensen 09.24.23 at 9:07 pm
Solar is a complete mal-investment in DK due to latitude. The solar resource is poor, land is really expensive and production is a horrible mis-match with demand (No air con. Lots of heating needs).
The wind program is far more economic, but both Denmark and Finland had huge net imports of electricity in 2000.
Denmark still does, Finland does not. And this is because per capita, building OL3 added a fourth more MWHs per annum than the Danish efforts, before counting the windmills Finland also built.
And also because imports from the Swedish and Norvegian dams are an absolute necessity to balance out the intermittency problem. So are imports of mindboggling quantities of wood.
Denmark has a reputation for being green, but cutting down other peoples forests to polish your green credentials makes a mockery of the entire concept.
And DK spent quite a lot of money. Finland has – and will continue to have – quite considerably cheaper power than Denmark. Because those solar mis investments and those dead forests cost money. Yes. More money than OL3.
Intermittency is very, very expensive.
J-D 09.24.23 at 11:39 pm
People say lots of things!
Some of them turn out to be true; some of them turn out not to be true.
KT2 09.25.23 at 10:16 pm
Thomas Jørgensen said; “balance out the intermittency problem.” But impeded by nuclear. In policy, capital, implementation and infrastructure.
Renew Economy says (nuclear has it’s own idiosyncrasies)
“but also the impediment to stable generation levels caused by nuclear power. … “For example, according to Reid, Denmark “consistently meets 85% of its weekly energy needs from renewables. However, on particularly windy days … Denmark’s strong interconnections with neighbouring countries enable it to export up to 50% of excess power…more
RenewEconomy below
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Nordic nations – one electricity market.
“The Nordic countries have cooperated regarding electricity market issues since the 1990s and Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden have shared a common electricity market since 2000.
…
“The Nordic electricity market stakeholders and relevant policy agents are strongly engaged in seeing the new Vision come to fruition through active and close collaboration.
“The new Vision and Roadmap can be accessed online here. [Link]
…
https://www.nordicenergy.org/article/press-release-new-2030-vision-and-roadmap-for-the-nordic-electricity-market/
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“Danish investment to boost Finland’s wind power output by one-third
By Pekka Vanttinen
Thu May 25 2023
“Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners and Finnish wind energy company Myrsky Energia announced a partnership Wednesday (24 May) that aims to generate some 1.8 gigawatts (GW) of onshore wind power over the next decade in Finland, a move that would increase the country’s current output by a third.
…
https://www.euractiv.com/section/politics/news/danish-investment-to-increase-finlands-wind-power-output-by-one-third/
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“This is nuts:” European power prices go negative as springtime renewables soar
…
“Energy analyst Gerard Reid has been highlighting these trends stemming not only from increased renewables and favourable weather conditions, but also the impediment to stable generation levels caused by nuclear power.
“For example, according to Reid, Denmark “consistently meets 85% of its weekly energy needs from renewables. However, on particularly windy days … Denmark’s strong interconnections with neighbouring countries enable it to export up to 50% of excess power…more
…
RenewEconomy Joshua S Hill
31 May 2023
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Compare power PPP’s
“Purchasing power parities and international volume and price comparison”
https://m.statbank.dk/TableInfo/PPP?lang=en
EU price and volume comparison
[Graph, Table. Interactive]
“Purchasing power?parities and?international volume?and price comparison
Unit: Price level indices?(Index EU-27 (without the?United Kingdom) = 100) |?Commodity group: Actual? individual consumption |?Time: 2021:
https://www.dst.dk/en/Statistik/emner/oekonomi/prisindeks/eu-pris-og-maengdesammenligning
lurker 09.26.23 at 6:41 am
@KT2, 11
Impeded by nuclear how, exactly?
As you can see here:
https://www.fingrid.fi/en/electricity-market/power-system/
Finnish nuclear is currently producing less than wind. They are taking advantage of the seasonal high winds and low low prices to do maintenance on the reactors. Balancing is not impossibly hard, to the extent that things are predictable.
KT2 09.27.23 at 2:22 am
Lurker @12… asks me “Impeded by nuclear how, exactly?”
(^1.) “.. while meeting the safety requirements imposed on NPPs.” Imposed on… edit to – necessary to prevent disaster.
(^3.) “Nuclear, he argues, “wants to operate as much as possible, while solar and wind want to be dispatched all the time, for the simple reason that they have a near-zero marginal cost and outprice everything else on the market. Put those two together and you have the following situation: as soon as you reach modest levels of variable renewables in the mix, one of two things starts happening: either solar and wind start pushing out the nuclear, or nuclear starts pushing out the solar and wind. Like oil and water,”
Ironic that nuclear power plants NEED external power. And from, in this instance, wind;
Lurker said “They are taking advantage of the seasonal high winds and low low prices to do maintenance on the reactors.”
Gulp. I hope the wind keeps blowing!
Rotating mass in coal or gas generation is a minor concern compared to rotating nuclear, as nuclear power plants – NPP’s – need cooling always on, and especially for maintainable or worse, “as well as rely on it [the grid] to receive power for crucial safety operations, especially during emergency conditions.” (^1.)
At least I am able to stop shoveling coal or turn off the gas.
The choice of grid, redundancy, placement and type of transmission AC, DC, VHVoltage or local transmission voltage, synchronizing storage, etc etc. If renewable as 1st priority it wouldn’t be Impeded. But renewables, storage, redundancy and then trying to accommodate npp’s makes grid choices etc much more difficult. Not to mention politics and NIMBY’s
While trying to answer your question succinctly, results returned by WN org & IEA dominated, and provided detailed answers… all from nuclear’s pov… “”Where generating plants can be located close to load centres, these are less important than where the plants are remote, as with many hydroelectric plants and wind farms.”. (^2 )
Reads like we will just stick npp’s at the outskirts of every population center.
The coursework assignment below has the two top referenced papers and a couple more and is brief.
Not an exoert. Any better responses appreciated.
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^1.
“Interfacing Nuclear Power Plants with Electric Grids
Lita Yang
April 18, 2016
…
“The complexity of interfacing NPPs and electric transmission grids is a result of several factors.
First, the sheer size and highly controlled and dynamic interconnectivity of the electric grid is an incredible engineering achievement on its own. When coupled with NPPs, the system needs to balance electric supply and consumption throughout the grid at all times while meeting the safety requirements imposed on NPPs. The inherent symbiotic relationship NPPs have with electric grids makes the interfacing problem even more complex and difficult to maintain. NPPs are both electricity generators and customers of the electric grid: they supply large amounts of energy to the grid as well as rely on it to receive power for crucial safety operations, especially during emergency conditions.”
References
[1] O. Glöckler, “Interfacing Nuclear Power Plants With the Electric Grid: The Need for Reliability Amid Complexity,” International Atomic Energy Agency, June 2009.
[2] J. H. Bickel, “Grid Stability and Safety Issues Associated with Nuclear Power Plants,” Evergreen Safety and Reliability Technologies, 14 May 01.
[3] B. Kirby et. al., “Nuclear Generating Stations and Transmission Grid Reliability,” Proc. 39th North American Power Symposium, NAPS ’07, IEEE4402323, 30 Sep 07.
[4] S. Ashok et. al., “Load-Management Applications For the Industrial Sector,” Appl. Energy , 105 (2000).
http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2016/ph241/yang2/
^2.
“Electricity Transmission Systems
…
“Where generating plants can be located close to load centres, these are less important than where the plants are remote, as with many hydroelectric plants and wind farms.”
…
https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/current-and-future-generation/electricity-transmission-grids.aspx
^3. Well referenced.
“Why Nuclear Power and Renewables Don’t Mix
by Paul Hockenos
24 Nov 2022
…
“Even the SMRs that the IAEA touts, says Couture, do not ramp up and down easily. “Nuclear is inherently inflexible, and to accommodate the variability of wind and solar output, what we ultimately need is both flexible sources of supply, and greater flexibility of demand. The presence of nuclear actively hinders both.”
“Couture explains that they compete against each other rather than working together. Nuclear, he argues, “wants to operate as much as possible, while solar and wind want to be dispatched all the time, for the simple reason that they have a near-zero marginal cost and outprice everything else on the market. Put those two together and you have the following situation: as soon as you reach modest levels of variable renewables in the mix, one of two things starts happening: either solar and wind start pushing out the nuclear, or nuclear starts pushing out the solar and wind. Like oil and water,” he says.
“And Couture is not alone in his analysis. A University of Sussex Business School study concludes that nuclear and renewable energy programs do not tend to co-exist well together in low-carbon energy systems but instead crowd each other out and limit effectiveness.
“Beleaguered France and its nuclear developer EDF, Couture underscores, is a case and point. “What many nuclear engineers, and much of EDF management, seem to have failed to appreciate is that power systems in the future need one thing, and lots of it, and that’s flexibility.” And flexibility, he says, is one thing that nuclear is ill-equipped to provide. “People who work in power markets know this,” says Couture, “but it merits underscoring: nuclear is the least flexible power source on the grid.”
…
https://energytransition.org/2022/11/why-nuclear-power-and-renewables-dont-mix/
Thomas Jørgensen 09.27.23 at 6:34 pm
It is also inherently a wrongheaded concern to have.
Solar and wind are not ends in and of themselves.
Civilization is the end. Clean power is the means, solar and wind are at most a proposed method.
If having a bunch of reactors gets you clean power and also prevents the building of solar and wind capacity..
Then that is not a problem.
Because you have clean power. And thus don’t need the wind and solar.
It is, of course, also erroneous as to fact. Solar and wind must be backed by dispatchable power. This is fossil fuels in almost all current grids. It’s hydro in Scandinavia.
It is entirely possible to use nuclear for it. Because nuclear reactors don’t produce electricity. They produce heat. It is orders of magnitude cheaper to store heat than it is electricity, especially at very large scales. You can therefore use a nuclear core to keep an immense tank of something cheap (Sodium, NaOH, Lead, various salts) hot. When the weather fails you, you run turbines by draining the tank into a cooler tank, draining it much faster than the reactor core can re-fill it with hot stuff.. and producing more power than the reactor core could sustain in a non-buffered setup. Which makes this setup a nuclear powered peaker plant.. that does not ever have to throttle the nuclear core except for refueling.
TM 10.02.23 at 8:59 am
13: “It is orders of magnitude cheaper to store heat than it is electricity, especially at very large scales… Which makes this setup a nuclear powered peaker plant.. that does not ever have to throttle the nuclear core except for refueling.”
If this is so easy and cheap to do, why is nobody doing it?
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