Carnival of Nuclear Energy 175

The Carnival of Nuclear Energy 175 is up Deregulate the Atom

ANS Nuclear Cafe – Are Nuclear Plant Closures Due to Market Manipulation and Decommissioning Fund Rules?

Many are having a hard time understanding Entergy’s decision to schedule the closing of the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant next year. Jim Hopf examines the issues, as well as policy adjustments that could help prevent a similar situation in the future.

Changes are being made to rules governing power grids that seem to be deliberately designed to harm the profitability of baseload (i.e., coal and nuclear) power plants. John Wellinghoff, the head of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (which is involved with issues related to power grids and markets), has often proclaimed that baseload power is a thing of the past that is no longer needed. Well, it seems like his vision may be coming true, some of this likely due to the policy changes discussed above. These changes will act to reduce the role of coal and nuclear baseload plants and replace them with “flexible” gas generation capacity.

Canadian Energy Issues compares Ontario and Germany’s energy. Whose energy is cleaner ? Steve Aplin of Canadian Energy Issues crunches the numbers and compares Ontario real time data with Germany pre-nuclear phaseout. His results will disappoint and perhaps outrage those who think that Germany is a paragon of clean electricity.

Germany’s electricity has nearly five times as much high carbon versus the electricity of Ontario, Canada.

But wait! Is not Germany Regarded as the paragon of green energy policies? Germany Is not building more wind turbines and solar panels than every other country? Germany did decide to close down all of its nuclear reactors and replace them with wind and solar generator?

Yes, yes, and yes. And look at the numbers above. Ontario, Which rarely gets Mentioned as a clean energy jurisdiction, is more than three times cleaner than Germany, Which gets all the press.

And guess what. The 672-gram CIPK (CO2 intensity per kilowatt-hour) for Germany is an old number: it is from to from Ecometrica Technical Paper August 2011 . In 2011, much of Germany’s nuclear fleet which stopped generating electricity, the panic-driven nuclear phaseout had not been fully Implemented. And nuclear generation Emits zero CO 2.

But Germany is closing its nuclear plants. This Means That the CIPK of German electricity is going to rise, likely to well above 700 grams, possibly above 800

Germany is not a paragon of clean energy policy. It is a cautionary tale for Those Who really want to reduce carbon emissions instead of just bragging about it.

Ontario is a much better example. And the best example of all is France. France’s CIPK is around 70 grams

Nextbigfuture – LEADIR-PS100 was presented by Ralph Hart at TEAC5 (Thorium Energy Alliance Conference) in May, 2013. Ralph Hart is Northern Nuclear chief engineer.

LEAD‐cooled Integral Reactor ‐ Passively Safe is being developed for the Canadian oilsand market.

LEADIR‐PS100 has an output of 100 MWth
• Initial market focus is the Canadian Arctic and Western Canadian Oilsands.
• The small LEADIR‐PS100s, while meeting market demands, will serve as demonstration plants.
• The creep, crawl, walk,run approach is adopted.
• Future LEADIR‐PS reactors may have larger capacity, higher temperature capability, operate on a Thorium fuel cycle.

Nextbigfuture – load following thorium molten salt nuclear reactors could stabilize the energy grid against the variability of a lot of solar and wind energy.

Nextbigfuture – The Asia-Pacific region is scheduled to install around 103 nuclear reactors by 2025, in order to both meet rising power demands and lower carbon emissions, according to the latest forecast from research and consulting firm GlobalData.

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