< cont >

We currently average between 35 and 40GW average electrical load. Our generation is typically split 40:40:15:5 between gas, coal, nuclear and a mix, including about 2% hydro and 1.5% wind. Power generation contributes about 40% of total carbon output (188 million tonnes from 475). Other major contributors are transport (120), industry/business (73), residential cooking and heating (78), public and other (17). We've undertaken to deliver an 80% cut by 2050, so get to around 100 million tonnes. Using a rule of thumb approach, producing 1GW from fossil fuel seems to result in about (188/(.8*40)) million tonnes of CO2 per year. Close enough if we call it 6 million tonnes as equivalent to 1GW running for one year.

The thermal efficiency of power plant is slightly better than IC engines, so allowing from transmission losses, so we can probably assume the two sectors to be similarly carbon intensive. if we use EVs, plug in hybrids and eletrified rail for most personal transportation, we can probably get to 65% decarbonisation. That leaves us putting out about 40 Million tonnes, but adds (0.65*120 = 80Million tonnes) to our equivalent electrical CO2 ouput = equal to about 13GW of continually running capacity. Let's assume we can move all the other demands 80% onto electricity (In practice, we can get pretty much to 1:1 replacement by the use of heat-pumps and similar approaches - here are a raft of othe efficiency improvements available, too). At the moment, that's (73+78+ 17) = 158 million tonnes - so 80% of that is 126 million tonnes - or, 21 GW equivalent. That leaves us putting out about 32 million tonnes.

SO, I'm now up to needing to decarbonise my (considerably greater) electricity production. I need to make all of my current 40GW, plus 13GW for transport, plus 21GW for the other uses. That's 74GW. There will also be some growth in demand, no matter how careful we are. UK average is about 2 to 2 1/2%. Let's assume I can get that down to 1.5%, by being reasonably aggressive about energy efficiency. <cont>

<cont>

That puts my 2050 demand at about 125GW. And to get to my overall target of limiting output to 100 million tonnes, I have to make that 125GW with less than 32 million tonnes of CO2 output.

Let's start by assuming I can do something like France does at the moment - 80% of total electrical production is nuclear. 0.8*125 = 100GW.

Is it feasible to build and run 100GW of reactors?

Well, and EPR is 1600MW, and an ESBWR 1500, plus there's a probable stretch of the AP1000 to 1400MW in the pipeline - so, let's assume standard units of 1500MW. That means I need 66 of them. Allow for an 85% capacity factor, and that's 78. Could a nation like the UK build 78 reactors in 38 years? France built 58 in about 20 years, so it doesn't look infeasible.

OK, how much CO2 is the rest of my fleet going to put out? Well, it seems sensible that the rest of the fleet is used for load-following, if it's reasonably low capital cost. - and it has to be dispatchable, so that rules out intermittent renewables. I can probably build 10GW or so of pumped storage hydro (we've got about 5-6 at the moment, so that's certainly doable). Of course, I need an extra 4-6 nuclear plants to feed them, but that's a minor extension to what I've already got. Let's assume the other 15GW is gas-fired. 40% of current production is gas - and we know it's about half as CO2 intensive as coal. That gives me about 4 million tonnes of CO2 per year per GW of average ouput. So, I'm at 60 million tonnes of CO2 - not good enough. But, decarbonising gas is far less technically demanding that doing it with coal - and doing that for half the fleet doesn't seem infeasible. So, I can get there.

<cont>

Ben Heard takes money from the uranium industry as a consultant for General Atomics / Heathgate, the company that operates the Beverley uranium mine in South Australia. He rarely if ever discloses that financial interest. Heard's claim to be an environmentalist sits extremely uncomfortably with his willingness to take on consulting work for GA/Heathgate, a company that i) supported police brutality against environmentalists at Beverley (and the capsicum-spraying of the 11-year-old grand-daughter of an Adnyamathanha Elder), ii) has been caught spying on environmentalists, iii) has a sub-standard environmental record and iv) is heavily involved the military-industrial complex. Part of Heard's back-story is that he used to be anti-nuclear before he saw the light, but there's not a shred of evidence that he was anti-nuclear - not a single letter to a newspaper, not a single comment on any online forum, etc. Recently Heard has resorted to blatant deceit with his dishonest claim that Friends of the Earth tried to shut down a pro-nuclear public meeting in Adelaide. A critique of Heard's propaganda is posted at http://www.foe.org.au/anti-nuclear/issues/oz/ben-heard-decarbonisesa

I am ploughing through all these comments, after having ploughed through Ben Heard's article, and I do admire Heard's optimism.
But - it's all been a bit much for this peasant to absorb.
I noted Bugsy's comment - I think he's talking about Small Modular Reactors, or IFR's - perhaps they're both the same - no matter.

Bugsy says:
We can't buy them yet.
We can't build them yet.
In fact, noone is actually building them yet.
Even if we built the earlier versions, we don't have anyone trained to build or run them and everything and everyone will have to be imported to start up.
We don't know how much it will cost.
It also seems all the resident climate 'skeptics' love the idea.
Sounds like you're on a winner.

I dunno who you are, Bugsy, but I like your style!
Noel Wauchope

@Jim Green

I work in the nuclear industry and make a good living doing so. However, I do not advocate for the increased use of nuclear energy BECAUSE I work in the industry; the reality is quite the opposite. I work in the industry BECAUSE I believe to the very core of my being that atomic fission is the best available source of heat. Our industrial society is nearly completely powered by heat; either directly or through machinery that converts heat into other useful forms of power - like electricity and motive force.

Fission is superior because it is concentrated - uranium has 2 million times as much energy per unit mass as oil, which happens to be the most concentrated source of heat from chemical combustion. That means we need a lot less material. Uranium mines do not often contain highly concentrated ore, but that is okay, we can do the milling close to the extraction point and just move the good stuff to the customers. In contrast, coal, oil and natural gas need to move massive quantities of material all the way to the burners.

Fission is also superior because the process does not consume oxygen and produces waste that is slightly less massive than the small quantity of input material. (Fission heat is produced by converting a tiny quantity of mass into energy via the well known formulation of E-mc^2, where c is the speed of light; a very large number.) Virtually none of the waste products have ever entered the environment; they are all well contained, inventoried and monitored. I cannot find any evidence, despite years of searching, of a documented case of someone being harmed by exposure to the waste products of a commercial nuclear power plant.

Nuclear fission is also superior because it eliminates the notion of fuel scarcity; there is enough uranium and thorium to power an abundant and prosperous human society for thousands of years without running out. That fact scares the established hydrocarbon industry.

Jimbo,

Just because the IFR reactor hasn't been built yet, doesn't mean it can't. Compared to standard reactors it is far more expensive per MW to build. The motivation for these reactors is not cheap power, but the burning of unwanted fissile material.

The skills needed for running this reactor would be almost identical to running any other reactor.