So, let’s do our first discussion 🙂
The way I’m looking at the energy transition is that we need all technologies to get to zero carbon emissions as soon as possible. However, both in material use and in providing firm power solar and wind are extremely expensive. This in itself will provide a lifeline for nuclear to exist in the coming decades.
The second thing that will provide a new lease of life for nuclear are the many SMR designs now coming to fruition in the next few years. Economically they don’t make sense in high urban areas (like, all of Western Europe), except for the fact that capital costs are much lower. This will enable the industry to build many dozens, maybe hundreds of units in the next few decades.
Beyond 2050, assuming we’ve ‘done it’ and reached a zero emissions economy, and assuming the SMRs take a high rise in builds, this would increase enough confidense in the technology again to see more large units being built again, think APR-1400 (Korea), AP-1000 (Westinghouse) and EPR (EDF). These are mature designs with a load of experience by that point. Just build them.
The reason nuclear will be a ‘logical’ choice then is simple: solar and wind farms have a limited operational lifespan. After 25 to 30 years, they need replacement. For offshore wind, that’s probably 15 years. So, everything we put online today needs replacement by 2050, at least once. A nuclear power plant in contrast can last for up to a century and needs far fewer resources per unit of energy delivered.
In the farther future, it makes sense for fast breeders to take off. If after all we use a lot more uranium, we might (emphasis on might here) run out of proven reserves. Breeders have always been the solution to this problem, providing energy until the sun becomes a red giant, so, forever. The problem for their deployment has always been that there’s just too much damn uranium around.
So, fast breeders might actually be deployed for other reasons: think of burning ‘waste’ (high level waste after all still contains 96% (!) of the uranium and plutonium when it can no longer be used in a traditional reactor), but also using this ‘waste’ to achieve energy independence. Europe could power itself of all needed energy for centuries using this ‘waste’ in fast breeders.
So, fast breeders are really the end game for a large part of the world. The are exceptions though, like China and India which have huge thorium reserves and focus on thermal (slow) breeders for that reason. All in all, I think we won’t see mass adoption of fast breeders before 2100, thermal breeders in places like India will probably arrive sooner as they don’t have a lot of uranium to go around.
So, there, that’s my take on the future of nuclear, what’s yours? 😅
I live in the Netherlands and we are going to build a huge capacity of wind power on the Northsea. Right now we have a capacity of 2,5 GW and that will grow to 21 GW in 2030 and to 70 GW in 2050. That’s a lot for a small country. Next to that the Dutch government wants to build 2 nuclear power stations. And of course we will fase out all coal and gass power stations. But there is a lot of resistance against those two nuclear power stations and on the one hand I understand the objections. The electricity of those two nuclear power stations will be much more expensive that wind and solar energy. Also, the Dutch government wants to invest a lot of money in green hydrogen. Part of the windparks at sea will be used to produce green hydrogen. Also, we will use our natural gas infrastructure and harbors in Rotterdam and Amsterdam to get green LNG form abroad into our networks and into our empty natural gass field for storage.
At first I thought we might need those two nuclear power stations for base load and in case there is no wind and solar for a couple of weeks. But that seems expensive and perhaps it might not be necessary if we succeed in building the green hydrogen infrastructure. But the war in Ukraine changed my opinion. The infrastructure at sea might be vulnerable in case of conflict. What happened to the Nordstream pipeline might happen to our infrastructure in case of conflict with Russia. So now I think it might be wise to build those two nuclear powerstations, just to be safe. How do you people think about this? Is this wise? Is it a real threat, or will it be possible to protect that infrastructure on the Northsea? I am open to all insights. I’m not dogmatic about my opinions. The future is uncertain and we need all good arguments to make up our minds.