How Could We Replace Russian Oil and Gas Exports?

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How hard would it be to replace Russian oil and gas exports to Europe and then to Asia? Brad Templeton wrote on Facebook that 50% of Russians get their income from the government, which gets 43% of its revenue from oil and gas and is 1/3rd of the GDP. Putin rules only because Europe keeps sending him money to buy fossil fuel we want to stop burning.

Here is a summary:
* Germany can keep all six of their nuclear reactors running and not need to import 60 TWh per year of energy
* France can increase nuclear electricity exports to Germany which France has done for decades. This could replace half of Germany’s natural gas for electricity needs in 2022 and all of it by 2023.
* The US could increase nuclear energy generation to free up natural gas. This could be used to reduce non-European Liquified natural gas demands. Building up liquified natural gas production facilities and import and export terminals would take some time. But substantial progress could be made by next year.
* 2 out of the 5 million barrels per day of Russian oil exports could be replaced in 2022 and probably 1-2 million barrels per day for each of the next two years.
* there is also some short pipelines that would need to be built to move oil and gas around to new Eastern European locations
* The GDP hit could be minimized to 2-3% and it would be one year and less in 2023. Germany keep running their nuclear reactors. This is 60 TWh/year. The natural gas imports remaining would be 60 TWh/year. 30 TWh/year less than just one month ago and the shutdown of the three nuclear reactors. France increasing electricity would replace the natural gas needed for German electricity. France would need to move around their shutdown for maintenance and refueling schedule to keep more generators online and then during a shutdown they need to perform stretch uprates 2-7% non turbine boosts. Maxing LNG imports as is already being done minimizes disruption. Maybe 10-20% drop in natural gas instead of 40% which is Russia’s share of Europe natural gas. Full recovery next year.
* It would likely end up being global swapping. China would take all of Russias oil and gas. Europe would then shift to its own nuclear energy and US, Canada, Saudi and Qatar oil and natural gas. But Russia would have no more energy leverage in Europe.

What happens if Russia cuts off or is forced to cut off its gas pipelines, and the answer is it would be tough, but Europe would manage. But what if Europe stops paying, not now, but in the spring, when it has 6 months before winter to reconfigure to use imported LNG and others sources, re-boot their shuttered nukes, install more renewables and turn up all the non-Russian fossil fuel it can get its hands on?

European utilities have increased orders of shipped liquefied natural gas cargoes over the Christmas and New Year period. This is mainly from the U.S. and Qatar, which have around 100 cargoes scheduled to arrive in Europe in January alone. Eurasia Group said, citing ship tracking data, that this reflected an increase of roughly 40% from the previous record in March 2021.

Total EU gas demand (October 2020-October 2021): 391.2 bcm
Total EU pipeline imports (October 2020-October 2021): 262.8 bcm
Gas storage utilization (and volume): 74% (73.4 bcm)
40% of the EU imports are from Russia.

The price of oil and gas would rise. The upside is Russia stops having the funds to Syria, Eastern Europe and other locations.

Germany is especially dependent on Russian gas. Germany turned off three nuclear reactors this month. They are still fully operational. They were planning on turning off the three last remaining nuclear reactors. Those last six reactors were some of the largest nuclear reactors. Nuclear reactors get shut down every two years for refueling. It would be technically trivial to restart those three reactors now and to not shut down the last three nuclear reactors. Six months of maintenance and an uprating of the turbines could increase power by 5 to 10%. Nuclear reactors that have been shut down for years would be harder to restart if they have been substantially taken apart. This is not the case for any of the six German reactors. Nuclear power in Germany accounted for 13.3% of the German electricity supply in 2021, generated by six power plants, of which three were switched off in the last 30 days. Keeping the six running and uprating and maintaining during refueling would be 14% of German electricity needs. Germany generated 60 TWh from the nuclear reactors in 2020 and imported 60 TWh of natural gas in 2020. Don’t shut off the nuclear reactors and uprate them to 63 TWh this year or next year and then to 66 TWh by 2024.

France has not been running its nuclear fleet at maximum capacity. The immediate action would be to uprate, maintain and modernize existing nuclear reactors. It would also be to maintain them for their highest operating capability. France is already running current reactors 10% below the power that they generated for most of the past twenty years. Uprates involve higher capacity turbines can be installed in under 12 months during an extended reactor refueling shutdown. Putting in the control systems and planning for maximum safe operating capacity should get France back to the 440 TWh they were average for the past 20 years. This is an extra 40 TWh (aka 40,000 GWh). Uprates over the next 2-3 years could net another 40,000 GWh. France already supplies Germany with electricity. France can supply another 20-40 TWh of electricity that Germany needs by increasing nuclear power operations in 2022. Germany would be down to about a 5% shortfall of electricity by the next winter and would be completely good by the winter afterwards. However, Europe does have more energy needs than just Germann electricity. There is also the usage of natural gas directly used for industrial processes.

French President Macron recently announced that the number one priority for his industrial strategy was for France to develop innovative small-scale nuclear reactors by 2030. These are reactors with less than 300 MW of power. This is about 4 to 5.5 times smaller than older nuclear reactor designs. This new build would not matter for about ten years.

The US turned off two of the Indian Point Nuclear reactors in the last 21 months. Indian Point unit 2 was shutdown April 30, 2020, and to close Unit 3 on April 30, 2021. Natural gas use increased by four points to reach 43% of New York’s electricity in 2021 because of the NY shutdown. Indian Point 3 generated over 8000 GWh per year. The two units generated about 15,250 GWh in 2017. The Indian Point generation would be 52 billion cubic feet of natural gas.

The US has nearly 100 nuclear reactors that generate 800 TWH (800,000 GWH per year of power). The US could maximize safe operations and perform uprates. A 5% increase in generation would produce 40,000 GWH/year in one year and another 40,000 GWh/year in two to three years. This could be used to reduce US natural gas needs and at the same time LNG (liquified natural gas) facilities would be increased.

From 1996 to today, in the US about 6.7 GW of nuclear-generating capacity—the equivalent of roughly six new large modern reactors—has been added to the fleet as a result of power uprates. Getting U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) approval for a power uprate is a lengthy and involved process, but it can be worthwhile because it allows owners to increase the maximum power level at which an existing nuclear power plant may operate. Over the past 23 years, the NRC has approved 135 uprates (several units have been uprated more than once), with increases ranging from 0.4% to 20% greater than original license limits.

There are three types of uprates: 1) measurement uncertainty recapture power uprates, 2) stretch power uprates, and 3) extended power uprates.

Measurement uncertainty recapture power uprates increase the licensed power level by less than 2 percent. They are achieved by implementing improved techniques for calculating reactor power. This involves the use of state-of-the-art devices to more precisely measure the feedwater flow used to calculate reactor power. More precise measurements reduce the degree of uncertainty in the power level, helping analysts predict the ability of the reactor to be safely shut down under possible accident conditions.

Stretch power uprates are typically between 2 percent and 7 percent, with the actual increase depending on a plant design’s specific operating margin. Stretch power uprates usually involve changes to instrumentation settings but do not involve major plant modifications.

Extended power uprates (EPU) are greater than stretch power uprates and have been approved for increases as high as 20 percent. Extended power uprates usually require significant modifications to major pieces of non-nuclear equipment such as high-pressure turbines, condensate pumps and motors, main generators, and transformers.

TVA’s Browns Ferry Nuclear Plant (BFN) in Lawrence County, Alabama recently added 465 MW of power in an extended uprate. Browns Ferry replaced the steam dryers with a much more robust design capable of withstanding the higher acoustic loads. Although the acoustic loads increased as a result of higher steam flows, Browns Ferry did not experience any SRV acoustic resonances. The station’s three units were the world’s first boiling water reactors capable of producing more than 1 GW of power each.

A number of other changes were made to each unit as part of the EPU project. Among the more significant modifications were:

■ Feedwater and condensate booster pumps were upgraded from 33% to 50% capacity. Condensate pumps were upgraded from 33% to 40% capacity.
■ Standby liquid control system boron enrichment was increased to improve accident mitigation and greatly reduce transient suppression pool temperature.
■ Visco-elastic dampeners were installed in main steam lines to reduce turbine stop valve vibration and premature failure of stop valve position instrumentation.
■ Main condenser vacuum instrumentation was relocated to provide consistent condenser vacuum indication and protection.

Europe currently has 28 large-scale LNG import terminals which at maximum capacity could replace 43 percent of Europe’s demand. The terminals are mostly concentrated in Western Europe. So it would take longer to make LNG terminals for Poland or take make pipelines to move natural gas within Europe.

Russia exported almost 5 million b/d of crude oil and condensate in 2020. Most of Russia’s crude oil and condensate exports in 2020 went to European countries (48%), particularly Germany, the Netherlands, and Poland. Asia and Oceania accounted for 42% of Russia’s total crude oil and condensate exports, and China was the largest importing country of Russia’s crude oil and condensate, at 31%. About 1% of Russia’s total crude exports in 2020 went to the United State.

Maximizing US (shale oil), Canada (oilsand, shale oil and natural gas), Saudi Arabian oil, Kuwait and others could replace Russia’s 5 million barrels per day but it would take about four years to do it with an all out effort. The depressed industries and regions would be glad to operate all out. A 1 to 2 million barrel per day production increase mainly from Saudi and OPEC members could be achieved this year.

There would need to be a detailed analysis looking at each country to see what logistics and supply chain issues would need to be adjusted or built.

SOURCES: EIA, IEA, Powermag, World Nuclear Association
Written By Brian Wang, Nextbigfuture.com

115 thoughts on “How Could We Replace Russian Oil and Gas Exports?”

  1. the mental illness, that brian repeats, is still noticable all over the globe.

    remark: no one need the opinion of an us citizen, outside of the border of the us. thinking, that some "we" could accept, negotiate or render the result, is the key evidence and is so sick, i couldnt even smile about the pathology.

  2. Actually, a variation on this plan is simply executing mass construction of DCNS' Flexblue underwater nuclear powerplant, based on french submarine reactors. True mass production, distribution to appropriate european offshore sites.

    Or take a page from the russians themselves, and put submarine reactors into barges and park those in every available european port, right next to any gas/oil pipeline landing and any coastal powerplants.

    The french are the only real currently capable european nuclear mass production country as is, and they have both an ongoing need for naval reactors as well as the upcoming push to replace the current french domestic commercial nuclear fleet due to retirements.

  3. Are you thinking of heat to the ground, or light for cells? If heat, I smell a "death ray" burning something. Those towers only have the full blast right near the collector. edit: also, remember that you would be projecting an image of the Sun, not of a point of light, so I would be suspicious of the focus you claim. But I am not the expert.

  5. What about a large adaptive mirror in space made from aluminium foil?

    Rayleigh criterion says that you need the diameter of it to be 1 km only to be able to concentrate sunlight in a 10 cm spot on a surface of the Earth. Aluminium reflects up to 90% of sunlight. Some of it would be dissipated in the atmosphere though…

    Looks like a solar tower power plant but with a mirror far away in space:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_vSz_l7U5r4

  7. Upon reflection, the best way to "export" natural gas from the US, to Europe would be to manufacture ammonia, and ammonium nitrate on the gulf coast, or where ever there is plentiful gas, and ship it to Europe, rather than using natural gas to make it in Europe.

    Anhydrous ammonia can be shipped without refrigeration, in pressure vessels, as is done every day by railroads. Ammonium nitrate can be shipped in bulk carriers. No new ships are needed.

  8. The extra generation Russians had to *adapt* to commie socialism (or is it fascist socialism, I can't tell the difference), has done the trick, destroying them.

  9. What – other than "appearing soft on Russian aggression" – would be wrong with NATO agreeing to negotiate toward permanent Ukrainian neutrality, if Russia immediately pulls troops back from Ukraine's border?

    Negotiations would require Russia to accept Ukraine's independence and sovereignty, including Eastern Ukraine – pulling their support of separatists there.

    Crimea's future could be decided by a UN-supervised referendum after UN peace keepers move in and Russian forces pull out, with Ukraine forces staying out and everyone agreeing to accept the results. Maybe the winning side of that has to agree to buy up the property of anyone wishing to leave Crimea to migrate to the other side.

    Energy issues can then be addressed without the threat of war hanging over everyone's heads.

  10. Hi Europe,

    Getting bloated on too much vodka and borscht? Just finding out your so called Russian friend Putin is really a bully and Stalin wannabee? Here's my 4 step plan to turn your life around:

    • Step 1 – stop buying Russian gas.
    • Step 2 – restart your nuclear power plants
    • Step 3 – stop depending on the US to protect you by spending at least 3% of your GDP on defense. If you really believe in freedom, then how about showing you're willing to fight for it?
    • Step 4 – supply the Ukraine with whatever weapons it needs to defend itself

    Thx,
    America

  11. Actually, no I wouldn't think they would be right back where they started. They'd be worse off. First, they can't sell if for 1/2 because they'd lose money, 2nd they would most likely be required to make some political concessions they can't stomach, and 3rd Putin loses in the long term anyway. If he doesn't gobble up the Ukraine now, he won't ever be likely too. If he can't get Ukraine, then he can't get Belarus, the Baltics, or even the Crimea and the Donbas. He may hold those last two right now, but no one officially recognizes that. Eventually, without NATO acceptance he's going to lose them too. Its' just a matter of time.

  12. It's the normal, shortsighted nonsense that you get from humans. They never think about consequences or morals. "Oh, hey let's buy this cheap gas from Russia. What, you say Putin is another murderous dictator like Hitler? Oh well, who cares? The gas is cheap so let's buy it." That's the story of human civilization. One shortsighted decision after another.

  13. True. Good point. But why not collapse the Russian economy? It would be easy to then force them out of the Crimea and Donbass. They have no right to be there and we shouldn't have tolerated this state of affairs for as long as we have.

  14. Well, at least we Murican's fight for what we believe in. We fight for freedom. Not just ours, but everyone's. Same goes for democracy. Cowards like the Europeans hide under their beds and hope we come save them. I'd rather be exceptional then a disgusting coward. We should just annex Europe and make it a non voting territory. At least it would start paying for its own defense.

  15. Yeah, I'm not impressed with our so called European allies either. Especially the Germans. So first they commit one crime by invading the USSR in 1941 and now they commit another by basically doing nothing to help the Ukraine. What utter nonsense. And thinking of Europe as a whole, how many of them spend even 3% of their GDP on defense? None of them, except for Britain I think. All those countries ever seem to do is bad mouth America, but they sure do screech for us to defend them when the Russians start invading. They're so weak it makes me sick

  16. Agreed. But either way, removing Russian gas should have been the first priority. The new Russian gas line should not be opened regardless of how this crisis ends. As far as developing gas, they should develop only if it could be done feasibly safe as the first parameter.

  17. Shutting down nuclear was very political, and very dumb. Shutting down coal, much less so, since for years Germany invested billions in wind and solar, and watched its CO2 emissions grow as brown coal displaced gas. Germany produces gas itself, and could produce more, but effectively blocked fracking and by doing so, prevented the development and redevelopment of further domestic gas fields. 
     
    There is a lot of readily available gas in the Netherlands in the world scale Groningen field, but earth tremors from ground subsidence caused building to collapse and has forced the government to prematurely close down production. If that there reversed, then they could rapidly increase production and the pipelines are in place to distribute across the EU and U.K.

  18. In countries like Germany, homes are already pretty well insulated. There’s more opportunity in the U.K., where a lot of housing stock is old and still poorly insulated.

  21. Wow, just wow . I might be sarcastic and condescending about the Germany's decision to phase out nuclear, albeit they have reasons. But here you propose to interfere with third parties. Why do so here, why not ban any gas which didn't come through Ukraine? That would certainly help. Let's for Morocco s pipelines through Ukraine.

  23. The solution isn't always more nuke especially when there is political head wind. Conversation is also a solution. Renewable is cheap and can be built fast. And Heat Pump heating/cooling and water heating can be done quickly. Cheap loans and tax subsidies could make it doable in the short term.

  24. The main point now is that Criswell's Earth to Earth power beaming idea is hot, because of intermittent free energy, ON Earth. As far as LSP goes, it is a simple to understand reference system, without the uncertainties of sats: junk, construction of sats, station keeping, light pollution, and importantly, meaningful scale. 20-200 TWe. A small scale project as you mention is fine. Follow Criswell, do Earth to Earth power beaming first, then see what happens in Space, beyond some reflecting screens.

  26. But, again, minimum viable system. The Criswell system just has to be so much more expensive before the first watt hits the grid.

    A single GEO SPS can serve up uninterrupted power to one ground station, so the investment to get a cash flow is much less. That's important when you're talking to people who aren't converts, who just want a good return on their money without too much risk.

    Once even one SPS is working, the case that Criswell is more cost effective becomes much easier to make. The foot is already in the door, as it were.

    Drive the thin edge of the wedge in first, Dan. Not the thick end.

  27. At this point why would anyone besides Russia or China have anything to do with Venezuela? The only thing it is good for poking the Americans. No one else cares.

  28. More abstractly, the new SPS designs that have cells so efficient that they power the radar directly on the *other* side, as you champion, seem to favor Solar Sats rather than lunar surface LSP. I like L5 station, sure you do too, at scale! But, the core idea of LSP is the screens (that perhaps are pixels???) in the radar. At any rate, they overlap optically as seen from Earth and thus are the same total size as any other L5 system radar would be. So, the problem may be solved by mirrors in lunar orbit that shine sun onto the back side of these screens, rather than cells lying on the ground. I would like to see overall a radar that can absorb the sunlight from both sides.

  29. Commie socialists will own all the means of production. Fascism is the marriage of corporation and state with the corporations wearing the pants.

  31. I do realize that the plants are still running. Once the first 200 MWe rectenna, 1 km dia, or larger if EU plan is followed, is built, who would pay more for just the turbine than the beamed electricity total, which is in a dispatchable form? Now, with load and source real time balancing, worldwide, cislunar wide, it turns out the base load characteristics of many systems are a disadvantage! If no new thermal is suddenly being built because it is so much slower than new power beaming rectennae, hooking to existing intermittent free energy, that is what I call "dead".

  32. Certainly Earth to Earth beaming needs no Physics demo. The test you propose for atmos effects is of a scale that is a working system. Do it! The beam will be same no matter the collection or generation tech. Think Helion. Criswell economics uses the most conservative beam densities, 20% down to 2% sol if needed. Military or EU may decide to go much higher! The demos are Arecebo etc radar. Now, as to where the energy comes from, once the rectennae are up, they can be used for any beaming source. The various Solar Sat designs can go at it. Do the Earth to Earth NOW.

  33. "Criswell in the 90s was against wasting time on a demonstration."

    Insisting on embarking on a multi-trillion dollar project without any feasibility testing or demonstration project is the mark of a crank, Dan. At the very least we need confirmation that there are no unanticipated issues with transmitting gigawatts of power through the ionosphere; It might prove necessary to transmit the power in the form of monochromatic light to matched PV panels, rather than microwaves, for example, if there are unanticipated interactions.

    And, simply from the standpoint of raising capital and getting regulatory approvals, testing and demonstration scale projects will be necessary.

    As I've stated before, geosynchronous SPS's have the edge in terms of minimum viable system, and thus will prove easier to finance. Once they prove out, if the case for Criswell is genuinely persuasive, the funding will be available.

  34. Assuming that to be true, how does that translate to thermal electricity being "dead", rather than simply "mortal"? Things don't happen instantly, even if everything goes well, and everything never goes well.

  35. "they have plenty of PV and the sun is very reliable."
    You are not clear about who 'they' is. If you mean Germany I would dispute that.
    The sun is reliably available during the *day* in places not too far from the equator, but in Europe 'not too far from the equator' is south of the Alps.
    In winter north of the Alps you get very little sunshine.

  36. Criswell in the 90s was against wasting time on a demonstration. Scale up is trivial for this particular thing, by the Physics. It makes the focus easier! The problem has never been the Physics, just the launch costs. We are talking simple, phased array radar. Do it. Now that intermittent free energy is suddenly here on Earth, the launch is not needed, except for reflecting screens. Do not waste any effort on thermal electricity. Esp if fossil or nuke needing upgrade. See 2:10 for costs of transmission:

    https://youtu.be/WohkSJmCvKI

  37. It's always easy to assume a technology is trivial before you've tried it at scale. "In theory there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice, there is." Tests are when you find out the details you hadn't anticipated. So I wouldn't assume that it's guaranteed to work, tests are in order.

    I would absolutely support those tests being done, I just don't think we should bet the farm on nothing going wrong. The nukes we KNOW work, there's a lot to be said for relying on what is already proven.

  38. Power lines cannot go as far, so they do not go from sunny to nite as much, where power beaming works for using free intermittent energy. They are fixed in place, so the load cannot be dispatched to where needed, as power beaming can. They cannot get energy from anywhere, as rectennae can. They are solar storm destroyed, unlike power beams of photons. Yes, there is dumber here somewhere. Smell it?

  40. They are both neurotic power addicts, exactly the same. See history for any sort of example you can imagine. To be libertarian, you join a truce. Until others do, you can protect yourself from them. Using their belief in countries to manage their insanity is a good idea. The countries themselves are a figment.

  41. It's certainly the most interesting application of renewable energy and could really upend the cart if enough infrastructure can be built.

    But at the same time their is so much wasted power from currently generated daytime solar on land – achieving cheap grid storage to negate those losses would be a huge win for renewables.

  44. Getting a bit ahead of yourself, I think. Thermal electricity will probably be a niche application on Earth a century from now, but the switch over to space solar would take decades even in the best case.

  45. Back in Michigan I'd routinely "block" my windows during the winter. In a properly insulated house, the windows are responsible for almost all the heat loss. (With most of the remainder being air changes; Counter current heat exchangers can cope with that.)

  46. And there I was thinking the goal was to stop Russia invading Ukraine.
    Russia is free to make a living the same as anyone else, but Europe's dependence on Russian gas creates political paralysis that should never have been allowed to happen. It gives Putin massive leverage to force Europe to stay out of anything he does in Ukraine or any other direction he might want to expand in.

  48. Yes.

    One commits genocide based on race and one commits genocide based on class.

    Countries are administrative borders drawn somewhat arbitrarily on a map, but they are very real. Aportioning off one plot of land from another allows experimentation with the rules under which that society functions. Without borders nothing would ever be learned and it would just be one big murderous mess.

  49. First, Germany needs to retrofit its natural gas electric power plants to use methanol. This can be done rapidly and relatively cheaply. 
Secondly, they need to import methanol from the US. The US has abundant natural gas supplies that can easily be converted into methanol. And methanol is already shipped by tankers around the world. 
Third, the natural gas power plants in Germany need to be modified to cryo-capture the CO2 from the flu gas. The captured CO2 can then be utilized to make more methanol when synthesized with hydrogen. Green hydrogen can be produced from nuclear, wind, hydro, and solar. 
Germany could end its domestic nuclear program but still produce hydrogen from nuclear power by deploying floating nuclear reactors to remote EEZ areas controlled by the EU. Carbon neutral methanol could then be imported to power its modified natural gas power plants and to supply carbon neutral gasoline to automobiles. Methanol can easily be converted into gasoline.

  51. Earth to Earth power beaming takes advantage of the intermittency (storage problem) you mention, to make renewables even cheaper. Do it NOW.

  54. He should fear being eternal Icon of Power Addiction, but he is ignorant, for now.

    edit: grasping at straws double talk, all neurotics are the same: "“If our western partners push Kyiv to sabotage the Minsk agreements,
    something that Ukraine is … willingly doing, then that might end in
    the absolute worst way for Ukraine,” Nebenzya said. “And not because
    somebody has destroyed it, but because it would have destroyed itself
    and Russia has absolutely nothing to do with this.”"

    edit: Some are starting to use him as an example of mental problems. That would be uncomfortable, wouldn't it?:

    https://www.heraldmailmedia.com/story/opinion/2022/01/30/putin-predictable-child-whose-brother-getting-attention/9240556002/

  55. All thermal electricity is dead. Solar, esp Space Solar, is the future. Do Earth to Earth power beaming NOW.

  57. Solar is already cheaper than boiled water, even if the energy is free. Earth to Earth power beaming takes advantage of the intermittency. Space solar seals the deal.

  58. Boomers being let into and walking around respecting the velvet ropes in the capital? An insurrection where nobody thought to bring a gun? Jan 6th is a joke.

  60. I think that's sort of a misunderstanding of just how stupid the situation is in Germany. Wind and solar are fossil gas saving devices. There is not anywhere enough storage for them to be independent sources of energy; they are joined at the hip to gas. Russian gas is not something Germany is trying to phase out; it is something they are continuing to phase in; they're doing this in order to phase out coal and nuclear.

    They are on Amory Lovin's gas-bridge to nowhere.

  61. Right now, 1/2 a Billion people are facing starvation because of the current lack of fossil fuel fertilizer.

    This year's African harvest is projected to be 100 million tons short. Asia, S. America and Eastern Europe will be in the same boat.

    And, next year's harvest will be worse!

  62. I don't think it is ideal to up-rate all the reactors. We need longevity out of our reactors. It is like overclocking your CPU…it can shorten the life. When the pumps run faster, that erodes the pipes faster. I want to see reactors last 120 years. Every time there is a shutdown for significant repairs, that is one more chance the NIMBYs and anti-nukes might kill it with legal nonsense.
    What we need are more and larger nuclear power plants. I also want to see more development of supercritical CO2 turbines, and more waste heat recovery.

    And I want to see the conversion or replacement of all the simple cycle natural gas power plants with combined cycle natural gas power plants. Combined cycle can be over 60% efficient, simple cycle is around 35-40%. It makes no sense to use these clunkers. Not much better than burning oil. No one is talking about these. People either like natural gas or they hate it, but being practical means some differentiation is warranted.

    Also neglected is geothermal. Geothermal is an ideal complement to wind and solar in California. It does not have the same issues in earthquakes that nuclear reactors have. Those issues means that reactors are much more expensive to build, as they must be able to endure the earthquakes. Reactors are also a very hard sell in California. Geothermal is reliable baseload power, just like nuclear. With a 50-50 mix of solar + wind, and geothermal, overprovision and storage can be reduced dramatically.

  65. My hope for gas powered cars as well. The proliferation of large trucks and suvs has gotten out of hand. It needs to stop.

  67. I would say that the cure for high gas prices are high gas prices. If the gas is projected to remain expensive for the force-able future there will be a huge demand destruction. All the efforts will be taken to switch to alternative means and reduce the usage. In short term, higher prices are very lucrative for Gazprom , but Gazrpom knows too well that the high prices will not last for long, once the panic settles.

    However, what will happen is that Germany will agree to certify Nord-stream II and get their sweet gas directly from Russia.

  68. Please tell me the difference between a fascist socialist and a commie socialist. I hereby define "socialist" as one who "believes in or advocates the initiation of force or fraud to achieve political or social ends".

  71. Here , in Canada you have various kits to insulate your windows during the winter. Closing the cracks and stopping the draft can immediately give you a 5 degrees boost.

    Setting the thermostat a few degrees lower and wearing sweaters at home is also an option and can save big $$$ on the heating costs.

  72. You don't get it ,US military is doing some power beaming, a few KW,it would be twenty years before anyone could do it commercially and it would never be cheaper or more secure than fission reactors.

  73. First blow up both Nordstream pipelines, that will make them easier to reason with, and give them incentive to help Urkraine as that will be the only conduit for Russian gas.
    EU gas is six times what it is in the US make it six hundred times and they would use it more carefully, and get more gas from domestic sources, they could cover their landfills and get renewable gas from dairy operations, plus it would decrease their excessive populations.

  74. Right,but they would get less pollution and save money with more nuclear les coal and gas.
    We should destroy Nord stream one and two,Germany needs to only get pipeline gas that came through Urkraine,and we should not sell them or permit any LNG to land there, they have plenty of PV and the sun is very reliable.

  75. The Europeans are so weak and afraid, they have no principles, they are the driver of world pollution by buying from Russia and China ,the Germans are expert in concentration camps and they see Russia and China as brethren.
    We need to rethink priorities when we see them abandon their brothers the Ukrainians just to save a few pennies on petrol, why would we have alliances with such people? The Germans export arms worldwide but since they are a vassal state of Putin they will give no aid to their brothers who need it, in addition they refuse permission for Baltic states to give Urkraine old artillery.

  76. Yes,easy to spot the anti nuclear pro coal crowd,in addition to more pollution you get more mass murder concentration camps with Russian coal gas and oil.

  77. You don't have to displace all of Russian gas, cutting what they export to Europe by half would be sufficiently crippling.

  78. Your question has triggered my understanding a new advantage to LSP!!!!! Because the Moon has the huge problem of a day/nite cycle, which to most is sufficient reason to totally ignore LSP, only half of the system will die in a solar storm! Yet that half will still power the whole planet, half the time.

  79. They are sooooo cheap you just replace them as needed. I use Criswell LSP as a *reference* plan because it has 1) no junk 2) no sat construction, other than the active parts, 3) no light pollution and 4) no station keeping. These are the sort of considerations that scare off investors. His estimates of 1 cent per kWh retail is before Musk rocket prices, and even then could drop by 100* for the owners of the system as it is expanded. Also, right here I was touting Earth To Earth power beaming, where the source is excess energy from intermittent sources or there are emergency needs that require dispatching power. The screens in Space are reflectors, very cheap and as usu there would be replacements ready to roll out already in orbit. You do not want to compare Earth To Earth power beaming with what would happen to long power lines in a big solar storm, unless you don't know, then you should!
    On to LSP, which brought up the redirectors for another reason, the Moon is down a lot, and did not envision the free intermittent energy that is now everywhere. Also, there are other reasons to go to Space, as O'Neill points out. Space Solar is a sufficient but not necessary path. See ppg 12-13:

    http://www.searchanddiscovery.com/pdfz/documents/2009/70070criswell/ndx_criswell.pdf.html

  80. It is worth noting that it is also possible to insulate houses within this time scale.

    Nobody has ever done it, but a program to go down the street and insulate every house is possible.

  83. Disappointing article. What started out as a push to curtail carbon fuel use immediately evolved into a cheerleading infomercial for nuclear power. Getting blue the face saying this. Nuclear is dead.

  85. It seems like your comment does not get the love it deserves from the neocon/neolib imperialist shills on this website that peddles the US narrative.

  87. I suspect it's a combination of being bribed, and ideology.

    Remember, a lot of current German politicians grew up in communist East Germany. They didn't instantly shed their ideology when the wall fell.

  88. Dear M Lanz, what about the degradation of solar panels in space (GEO in case of SBSP)? Annual loss of power due to radiation is 2,4% per year, and a big solar storm can decrease capacity by 5-7% (radiation effect on space-based… Hands et al. 2018). Who would put trillions into such an insecure basket?

  89. putinhead fears a warm water LNG terminal that could supply Europe with western natural gas more than anything else.

  90. Denial is not a river . . . As we go thru the 50th of the Primal Revolution, we are in the end state of the "innocent" times for power addicts. Looking back from the future, these last records of how power addicts are will indeed be precious, as they are made before neurotic power addicts start reacting to the fact that they are *understood*. That people are on to their mental illness. That people know.

  91. The speed of the reactor coolant pumps is fixed. The only way to increase plant output is to increase the output temperature of the reactor. More accurate analyses have routinely supported increased plant output, but at some point the design capacity of the steam turbine and generator become limiting.

  92. Generally, a reactor’s output can be increased by reducing the margins on overheating the fuel by using more accurate analyses. For instance, the high temperature reactor trip point is raised. The reactor puts out more energy, increasing steam production which increases the generator’s electrical output. It’s a little more complicated, but simplistically, that is what happens.

    The Europeans got themselves into this mess. I do not see why we should export more natural gas because that raises the price of natural gas in this country. The Europeans can stew in the mess they created. I have no sympathy for their stupidity.

  93. I cannot understand why Europe, principally Germany, has allowed itself to become dependent on a murderous dictatorship. It is absolutely insane.

  95. Actions which make oil and gas more expensive are counterproductive, Russia will always find customers. In fact, you would be strengthening them and those who don't go along. Any compliance would be temporary. China certainly won't cooperate, relatively harming our trade.
    If we want to limit Putin's ability to make war, the US must produce more oil, use less oil, and export a lot of oil. I think we should be exporting 8 million+ barrels of oil a day net.
    I think that is doable. We need to 1. Get the gulf producing. The administration needs to stop fighting the oil lease (but we should break it up into several smaller leases). 2. We need to get small companies back on their feet that got killed when people stopped driving during lock-downs. 107 oil and gas companies went belly up in the US in 2020. We need some sort of escape out of bankruptcy for a significant share of these where government loans would be sufficient to get the fields pumping again (just for fields now idle with plenty of oil still in the ground).
    3. We need to require all new pickups to use natural gas (or electricity) rather than gasoline or oil.
    4. We need to require that all new road tires are low rolling resistance tires.
    5. We need to get 3/4 of freight on rail, and off trucks. Rail is 6x more fuel efficient.
    6. End heating fuel oil. Make it all natural gas/electric heat pumps
    7. Kill NRC, bring back AEC, and build 50 reactors.
    8. Build geothermal sufficient to produce 50% power in Southern California.

  100. If the political will existed to do all of this, the political will would have existed to avoid falling into this trap in the first place. It's not like it couldn't be seen coming!

    Therefor we know that we won't be getting out of it until it is sprung, or after without great political resistance.

  102. You're making a technical point, and he's making an exposing hypocrisy point: Why should Germany get to use neighboring countries' nuclear output after shutting down perfectly good nuclear plants? Let them suffer the consequences of their own idiocy.

    I understand the reasoning, but it would serve better as a negotiating point or ultimatum, than a punishment after the fact.

  103. "global LNG trade infrastructure and transportation" falls for the trap of shipping mass instead of the needed energy, as photons, with Earth to Earth power beaming. This is an especially bad mistake for new stuff!

  107. Lest say, for arguments sake, that everything listed falls in place as needed.
    Russia starts to feel the $ pinch, then says they’re sorry and will sell the EU all of the gas, oil, coal etc that they need for 1/2 the previous price.
    Every country flips like the wind socks they are right back to where they started.
    Russia will NOT sit idly by and watch their gdp dwindle to revolution.

  108. It is also why the solution works. It is just going back to what was safely done for decades as recently as 2019

  109. There is no higher operating temperature. There is increased efficiency turbines and pumps in the extended uprate. The flows increase so more heat is taken away but operating temperature is the same. The other two updates are instrumentation and measurement to allow more precise safety margins

  110. Why? Make more money and jobs internally by paying german nuclear power operators and French nuclear power operators. Why give billions to Russia? Not for cleaner energy. The oil and natural gas are dirtier. I think there are people paid off by Putin to increase dependence

  111. Germany imports France nuclear energy electricity all the time. They were doing it for decades. Thus the capacity and grid is already there

  112. The Germans and other European countries foolishly prioritized shutting down both coal and nuclear before Russian gas in their drive to clean power generation. Both should now go back online as much and as soon as possible. The Europeans should have given much higher priority to developing global LNG trade infrastructure and transportation.

  113. Wow business as usual. Nuclear plants have design characteristics that protect the facility. Upgrading for more power means hotter fuel with higher cooling flows. That's only until you depart nucleate boiling and now you have a catastrophe. Stop trying to steal the Russians energy business. I know the UAE and the US want to provide LNG via boat but do the math. Europe will be a cold miserable place with unaffordable energy if not for the Russian energy sector. Even though their customers are preparing for invasion they continue to provide energy at affordable prices.

  115. No electricity generated by nuclear should be exported to Germany. Anything else is just massive hypocrisy on their part because they don't want nuclear. They can have whatever surplus there is from wind when it happens to be windy in neighboring countries.

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