There seems to be systemic racism or stupidity in the analysis of the world energy situation. Whenever there is a global analysis of the cost of different energy sources, there is a focus on the cost of energy projects in the USA and Western Europe. The USA and Western Europe have only had about five nuclear reactor projects in the past 30 years. The nuclear construction costs in China are about $2000-2800 per kilowatt. The US and European reactors are 2 to 3 times more expensive. However, all of the energy activity is in China, India, Russia and South Korea. Focusing on US and European energy prices gives an incorrect analysis of global energy prices and global energy decisions.
However, 80-90% of the actual new energy construction action is in Asia and the Middle East.
Over 80% of the reactors under construction are being built by China, India, Russia and South Korea. Those projects are doing fine. They are one-third to one-half of the cost and usually are completed in 4-6 years.
In 2019, China has more energy generation than the US and Western Europe combined. China energy generation will likely double again before 2050. India will be surpassing US power generation in the next decade. China, India and the rest of South Asia are where 90% of the new world energy is being built. The US and Europe are flat in terms of energy construction.
The focus on US and Western Europe energy construction is like focusing on Rolls Royce automobile costs. Almost all of the world’s cars are not Rolls Royce. Who cares how much they cost if they are only a tiny amount of the overall number of global units.
The numbers and the energy activity has been so obvious for the last 15-20 years that the analysis bias seems to be racism, stupidity or laziness.
The analysis of the global energy situation needs to look at the costs and the energy mix being selected in China, India, Russia and South Korea. Russia is building minimally for themselves but Russia exports a lot to build for others.
Various researchers will focus on the Levelized cost of energy from the US EIA (Energy Information Administration). These statistics tend to focus on the cost for energy projects in the USA. Lazard LCOE energy calculations are also often cited by researchers. Again there is a focus on US and Western Europe costs.
There are sources for China’s energy costs. We need to see how energy project costs are playing out in places where the energy is actually being built. The USA and Europe have not built most of the world’s energy for over 40 years.
There is a paper from China on its costs. We see $2700-2800 per kilowatt for nuclear power. This is the price for the forty-five nuclear reactors that China has built over the past 17 years.
China’s Energy Transition in the Power and Transport Sectors from a Substitution Perspective (2017) Shangfeng Han 1,*, Baosheng Zhang 1,*, Xiaoyang Sun 1,*, Song Han 1 and M
Only five out of 52 nuclear reactors are being built in the US or Western Europe. There are also two nuclear reactors in Japan which are facing problems because of the Japanese public irrational response to the Fukushima tsunami.
Most of the nuclear discussions in the USA and Europe focus on the US and Western European nuclear reactor projects. There are two nuclear reactors being built in the USA. There are three being built in Europe using Western European nuclear reactor technology. Two nuclear reactors being built in Japan are also problematic because Japan is scared and delaying the projects.
South Korea is completing four 1400 MW reactors for the UAE. Those reactors are mostly complete. One is completed but the startup has been delayed while the UAE operators are fully trained. The reactors cost about $4 billion per gigawatt.
We need to stop looking and analyzing in places where nothing is happening. The results and conclusions are incorrect and skewed.
Background
Levelized cost of energy tool for solar and wind energy in southeast asia map.
SOURCES – EIA, Lazard, Energies, Wikipedia, World Nuclear Association
Written By Brian Wang, Nextbigfuture.com
Brian Wang is a Futurist Thought Leader and a popular Science blogger with 1 million readers per month. His blog Nextbigfuture.com is ranked #1 Science News Blog. It covers many disruptive technology and trends including Space, Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, Medicine, Anti-aging Biotechnology, and Nanotechnology.
Known for identifying cutting edge technologies, he is currently a Co-Founder of a startup and fundraiser for high potential early-stage companies. He is the Head of Research for Allocations for deep technology investments and an Angel Investor at Space Angels.
A frequent speaker at corporations, he has been a TEDx speaker, a Singularity University speaker and guest at numerous interviews for radio and podcasts. He is open to public speaking and advising engagements.
A bit of stupidity, mostly purposeful ignorance for local political domination. The watermelons in the west ignore the rest of the world because they cannot wield Marxist Lenninist control of their populations like China does. It is all naked pursuit of power. American and European socialists aren’t even trying to hide it very well, using panic as an excuse for why they should be able to take over entire economies.
I think major reason Bill Gates wanted to build in China was, that it takes forever and a day to get a new technology licensed in the US. Look at the cost and the hurdles that New Scale (had) has to jump and that just for a variations of a well understood light water reactor reactor.
As long as the sum total for renewable for the same amount of power is less that the sum total for fossil.
Interesting question, the CO2 for the steel and the footings is known, but how much CO2 are the blades responsible for?
Knowledge of the cause of power addiction. Which we have had for 50 years. Janov. They don’t even realize they are neurotic. Yet.
(edit: the envos have the power of a false truth, the “small world”, which has been drummed into us all.)
Duh. Lol
Footings.
For what? The blades?
Is there any power in standing against the rich and powerful? I doubt it.
It ain’t racism. Cost of nuclear power plants depends on cost of local labor and how many power plants you are building per year. The more you build the cheaper each plant is. Cost of building any kind of power plant will be more expensive in the US than a similar power plant in China. Chinese nuclear power plant while being cheaper to build than American nuclear power plants are more expensive than Chinese coal power plants.
TerraPower was a hype dream at best. China will still get their Na cooled fast breeder reactor, but they will get it from Russia, or design it internally. Nobody needs Bill Gates’ charity to scale up EBR2. Mention travelling wave all day long, but the foundation of TerraPower’s concept is to burn metallic uranium fuel in EBR2/BN-800 type until 30% of the atoms are split. This would require unobtanium alloy cladding/structure that doesn’t swell, embrittle, or deform asymmetrically when irradiated in gradients. The TerraPower reactor is already built: it is Russia’s BN-800 and it uses oxide fuel pellets and discharges the fuel at slightly higher burn-up than seen in LWR fuel (~56 GWd/TU).
http://scienceandglobalsecurity.org/archive/sgs22kutt.pdf
They are the primary market for Criswell LSP for that reason. Cheap labor to build the rectennae, which are ~80% of the cost.
Test the local environmentalists’ real concern for the future by mentioning O’Neill. The crazy ones will freak. The ones who are looking for a solution will at least listen. The crazy ones see a collapse of their power.
I vote “and”.
This is great. I agree, most nuclear-hating environmentalists are racist and deserve to be called out on it. Michael Shellenberger would agree.
The only thing I can add is that this applies to virtually all debate on any political topic in the US.
Traditional geothermal is a handy resource, in those few regions that sit on active tectonic plate boundaries. Here in New Zealand, the North Island gets as much power from geothermal as from fossil fuels. Over the ditch in Australia, it’s a different story. The continent is a big stable craton, and the 50 million dollars a previous Labour government threw at the ‘hot dry rock’ scenario didn’t even touch the sides. Efforts in Switzerland and South Korea were discontinued after possibly triggering earthquakes.
Nuclear is geothermal power, but about twenty times more efficient in use of uranium, three times more efficient in use of heat, and you can put your power plant where you need the power, instead of where the ground happens to be hot.
That was a microaggressive response.
Racism…say whaaaa…? Im interpreting this as a joke and “in your face” 4chan 4D chess style meme. I do not want NBF to become retarded cesspool of nonsense and antihuman irrationality like all other sites.
I fail to see racism in any of this. Maybe it’s your own views and sensitivities that cause you to see racism where none exists.
I believe the correct term is probably nationalism not racism.
I’ve been watching the Netflix series “Inside Bill’s Brain” about Bill Gates lately. At the end of episode 3, they focus on Terra Power, an advanced nuclear energy company Gates co-founded. The company plans to use current nuclear waste as fuel. Their design is passively safe, meaning if all power is cut off, as in Fukushima, gravity and design will prevent a meltdown. Since China is so much cheaper to build nuclear plants, Terra Energy planned to build their first plants there. It took 9 years of careful negotiation to get Chinese permission to build.
It took just a few months for the Trump Administration to kill the agreement.
Therein lies just about all you need to know about why the U.S. is where it is with regard to anything technological…or just logical. And it wasn’t the Greenies who elected Trump. They are still trying to sell “clean, beautiful coal.”
You’re just racist.
The reason 80 – 90 percent of production is in Asia, is because America and Europe are already well developed. The third world is playing catch-up. In any group of systems, should the focus be on the core or the periphery? I do not see where racism or stupidity enters the equation…
Reads like a woke 17 year old lesbian high school newspaper editor wrote it. Maybe American energy forecasters don’t talk about the price of energy in China because the price of energy in China is not the price of energy in the US. How spun up on addies were you when you wrote this screed?
Why would the U.S. Energy Information Administration or Lazard’s studies focus on energy in China, India, Russia and South Korea? Are their intended audience looking for development/investing opportunities there or in the U.S. or Western Europe? The results and conclusions appear accurate for the intended region.
China having cheaper PV or Nuclear doesn’t help you much if you live in the U.S.
Nuclear is meaningless to the u.s., when thw u.s. decides to build out a lot more power plants it will be co2 egs geothermal fed by natural gas combined cycle power plants. The u.s. can build out more egs geothermal than the world currently consumes in electricity. https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/how-much-renewable-potential-does-the-u-s-have
Nuclear uses less concrete than a comparable amount of wind power.
It is always good to double check figures and numbers.
Anything Brian posts is generally going to be grotesquely skewed towards pro-nuclear.
Median wind is 11g CO2‐eq/kWh for example, not 207. That being said a nuclear plant is probably less than 12g per. It depends on how their fuel was mined and enriched to answer that question, and that has been trending lower CO2 as it is getting more and more efficient. Keep in mind that a nuclear power plant generally will generate like 3x the amount of KWh per nameplate watt than a wind turbine.
Median of 11g source here
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1530-9290.2012.00464.x
Another link with wind at 14g
https://energy.utexas.edu/news/nuclear-and-wind-power-estimated-have-lowest-levelized-co2-emissions
Weird commenting behavior today.
I just find it difficult to accept some of the figures. When you look at the CO2 for nuclear does this allow for the vast amount of concrete etc + manufacturing costs to produce a safe and idiot proof design?
The energy “debate” in the US is meant for domestic purposes only and isn’t usually meant to result in a constructive conclusion so much as the demonization if anyone who disagrees with the preferred outcome (e.g. GND).
So neither racism or stupidity, just politics meant to whip the gullible in to a frenzy.
The lengthy publications, discussions, angry protests and emotional outbursts of the neo-green movement happen mostly where they are allowed to exist. That is, in the West.
Such a ‘movement’ won’t be too successful in China, for example, where disrupting or leading any social movement going against the ruling party wishes implies a very real personal risk.
Or in places where economical development means now having electricity vs not having it, or feeding your family vs starving them. As is the case of the Brazilian farmers that resent being unable to use (and now burn on purpose) parts of their land they need for their livelihood.
The green movement is very much a parochial one, restricted to wherever people free enough to be concerned lives and knows about.
As Brian says, the true action is no longer in the West, but it’s too risky or far away for people to notice (or care).