Perspective Matters, Dallas based Public Broadcasting station.
Description:
Joining host Jim Falk to talk about European concerns, from France, is Dr. Paul Dorfman, an Associate Fellow, with the Science Policy Research Unit at the University of Sussex.
Dr. Dorfman is Chair of the Nuclear Consulting Group, which brings together leading academics and experts in the fields of renewable energy technology, economics, and the environment.
And in our Dallas studio, Mark Nelson, Founder and Managing Director of the Radiant Energy Group, a Chicago-based consulting group advising corporations and organizations on clean energy strategies.
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I’ve followed Dorfman for years, he has a good feed, and is well spoken here. The other guy I’ve seen on a lot of media interviews, seems to be the go-to guy of the moment for nuclear.
UPDATE: Laudably, the station realized that the half hour above barely scratched the surface, and produced a half hour extension to the discussion, below.
‘By their fruits ye shall know them’.
Dorfman advised the Irish government (ban on nuclear power since 1999), and the French government, back when Hollande’s Socialists, and their Green allies, wanted to cut nuclear from ~75% of power generation to 50% – a goal set in law.
Ireland is described by renewables advocates as ‘the Saudi Arabia of Wind’ (they’re reticent on the solar potential.) Despite all the wind turbines they’ve built (nearly as much as Denmark, which has a similar population), Ireland imports three times as much power as it exports, and has the highest emissions per kilowatt/hour west of Germany. Power imports are from the United Kingdom, which also has a lot of wind power, but also nuclear, and which unlike Ireland has manages to eliminate coal power.
France’s nuclear safety authority, Autorité de sûreté nucléaire, takes pride in shutting down reactors over any safety concerns, no matter the economic effect. Cracks discovered in a particular pipe junction in the emergency safety system, on some newer reactors (older ones turned out to be exempt) led the ASN to order over half of France’s nuclear fleet to shut down simultaneously. Normally maintenance is staggered between plants, and timed for low-demand periods in Spring and Autumn. As a result, in 2022 France’s average emissions went up by 50% – to an average of 93 grams CO2 equivalent per kilowatt hour, only a fifth of Germany’s average, instead of a seventh. For that year, Germany was a net exporter to France, mostly of coal power when neither France nor Germany’s wind and solar wasn’t working. By 2024 most of the reactors were repaired, France’s emissions dropped to their previous level, and the power import/export balance with Germany swung back to 7 to one in France’s favour (France > Germany 14.41 TWh, Germany France 2.03 TWh) https://energy-charts.info/charts/import_export/chart.htm?l=en&c=FR&flow=scheduled_commercial_exchanges_all
Mark Nelson has been campaigning against the closure of nuclear plants worldwide. His efforts with German allies failed to save 4 GW of the most efficient reactors in the world, but others, for example in California and round Chicago, were spared at the eleventh hour. The two remaining reactors at Diablo Canyon make nearly as much power as California’s 5,500 wind turbines, but much more dependably. Chicago’s six reactors give it power nearly as clean as Toronto’s.
‘Twas brillig, and the slithy toves Did gyre and gimble in the wabe…
“…takes pride in shutting down reactors over any safety concerns, no matter the economic effect…. on some newer reactors (older ones turned out to be exempt)”
So they take pride not so much in being safe or ecological, which they seem not to give a shit about, but in doing the least possible good they can do without actually breaking the law. OK. Jolly good show, boys.
How many times does reality have to be explained & their lies pointed out before the denying delayalists & ARFs just stop? Just fucking stop.
Germany has been the biggest net electricity exporter in the world for many of the last 20 years, including to France, outside the collapse. Even after years of slow-walking of renewables by a conservative government, they are now well over 50% renewable. So no, not mostly coal.
Mostly renewable.
And increasing all the time. Wind was half the renewable leccy so far this year, solar 1/4, in the 3rd hardest country in the world to renewablize, according to the Sky’s the Limit study. Also, about the least sunny of all the major economies, (remember that Faux News attack?) with very little hydro.
John distorts the word “reliable”, misusing it so vaguely it means nothing & s/he can claim anything s/he wants. (It is NOT, for example, capacity factor.) In fact renewables increasingly rescue increasingly unreliable nukes & fossils from the blackouts the fuels cause. Wind, solar, & other renewables increase grid reliability as they’re added, as shown in Texas, Germany, Iowa vs. Michigan, & many other places. Germany (57% RE) & Denmark (66% RE including 52% wind) have about the most reliable grids in the world, as well as the most democratic. That’s reliable as in its actual precise actual meaning: grid downtime per year, lower for Germany (15 minutes/yr), than say, the US (144 minutes/yr) or France.
Germany has high CO2 emissions because they’re saddled with coal, & thus coal state politics very much like the US’s that just put the fascist party in power, likely permanently. Gas is as bad as coal for climate, but it’s bad with methane leaks, not coal burner CO2, so it’s left out of many accountings—including the far right’s relentless harping.
France’s massive emergency nuclear safety failure in the middle of an energy crisis left an opening for lobbying & corruption by the fossil fuel industries, further expanding their use, infrastructure, future stranded assets, & climate & other horrific cumulative damage. Jolly good show, boys.
Renewable energy, EVs, heat pumps, & induction cookers would have completely replaced all fossil fuels by now, but the lunatic fossil-fueled right wing has relentlessly lied, cheated, manipulated, denied & attacked science & scientists, bribed (see that $30 million Ohio thing?), bullied, smeared, threatened, intimidated (see that Steven Donziger thing? that Michael Mann thing? that Julian Assange thing? that Kavanaugh thing? that attempt-to-violently-take-over-the-government thing?), abused power (see that Kavanaugh thing? see all those free speech-destroying anti-protest laws—even allowing vehicular homicide against progressive protestors?), destroyed democracy through gerrymandering, voter suppression, control of media, etc., abetted millions of felony murders & depraved heart murders, spread despair, race hatred, xenophobia, misogyny…& worse…fighting viciously to endlessly delay every effective solution to climate catastrophe, the most dire & urgent crisis in human history—especially the building of renewable-energy-with-EVs.
For their trolls to now whine that there’s not enough renewable energy, because the insane people—the exact same insane people—have spent tens of billions of dollars making sure there’s not, is absolutely vomit-inducing, head-explodingly unforgivable.
Like we need more of that this morning.
To further claim nuclear reactors & the entire fuel chain are clean is Through the Looking-Glass level nonsense.
“German coal use continues downward trend in 2024”
Julian Wettengel, 30 Oct 2024
As does electricity use, down more than 8% since 2021 despite growing population, economy, & electrification of primary energy there. France’s is up.
btw, French downtime/year = 60 minutes.
‘France overtook Sweden to be the biggest net exporter of power in Europe, while Germany moved from exporter to importer during the first half of this year. The report describes the value of imports and exports in Europe during the first six months of 2023… Meanwhile, in Germany, the closure of nuclear power plants was the main reason why the energy balance flipped from export in the first quarter to import in the second quarter. These closures meant that Germany sourced additional power from other countries in periods of low renewable generation, as other markets provided power at lower prices than unused generation assets in Germany.’ The ‘unused generation assets’ are lignite with a carbon price, and gas turbines mostly burning liquefied natural gas, shipped from US or the Middle East – ie French nuclear is saving Germans money, as well as reducing their emissions. As shown above, export/import balance in 2024 has been 7 to 1 in France’s favour – and their exports to Italy and the UK are even larger and more one-sided.
Germany reducing its energy use is because citizens can’t afford their power bills, and industry is closing or moving overseas. ‘Germany was the worst performing major economy last year, with gross domestic product contracting by 0.3%, and it came close to recession at the start of 2024’ (Reuters). The German ‘Traffic Light’ government (Greens, red Socialists and orange Free Democrats) just collapsed, and it’s likely the Christian Democrats will win power in the next election, and try to revive at least the last three reactors shut down in 2022.
https://energy-charts.info/charts/import_export/chart.htm?l=en&c=FR&flow=scheduled_commercial_exchanges_all&year=2024
No, to increase nuke output they have to increase mining & thus extremely damaging footprint for as long as the energy is used, with millennias-long harmful effects there & down the chain. (More processing, more waste, more insecurity risk, inequality, anti-democracy… ) Renewables can, are, & should be using household, commercial & government rooftops & offshore areas; where they’re not it’s because of less rational decisions by corporations & corporate-owned government.
And again, if the insane right wing in the US, Germany, & internationally hadn’t slowed renewable building for decades, we’d already be 100% powered by them. There wouldn’t be any downtimes, which just like France’s exports, is not a function of the energy source but of how much of it there is! Germany’s progressives want to build more of the most benign energy ever invented; you want them to stop & build more Chernobyls, Fukushimas, Kyshtyms, Tokaimuras, Hanfords, TMIs, Brown’s Ferries, & worse.
The government did not collapse. It’s done the most important work in the world by hugely speeding up renewables, efficiency, & electrification, & if it’s fanatically opposed by far right disinformers & saboteurs, that’s just par for the course. There’s far less poverty & inequality in Germany than in say, the lunatic US, where fascists just took over by lying & creating fear of black & brown people, renewable energy, & bizarrely, government, which when not ruled by the far right is a force for good. They used the wealth created in large part by concentrated energy sources to spread those/these lies.
The low cost for renewable electricity in Germany has fees & taxes added to pay for things like help for seniors, etc. who can thus pay for the energy they need, & to encourage efficiency, bringing it up to about the European average, while France subsidizes its expensive nuke electricity by taking taxes from people &, insanely, lowering the price of energy use. (That creates externalities.) Both countries run much more rationally than the US but with a clear difference between helping (Germany’s progressives) & hurting (Germany’s & France’s corporate & right wing factions & coal state insanity.)
Excellent videos. I’ll have to admit that Dr. Dorfman seems a lot more lucid and articulate than he does on Twitter (X), but his arguments still ring hollow. Nelson refutes him at every turn. A couple of little known points that Nelson brought up where that Chernobyl managed to keep generating nuclear electricity for 14 years after the accident. It even managed to set records for a few years.
One aspect of nuclear’s small footprint is that you can increase your output by adding more reactors to the same site. For wind and solar, to double your output you have to find an equal area of land which will almost certainly be harder and more expensive than the original sprawling site.
New generation geothermal seems to be coming up roses.
It provides reliable power 24/7/365, can be site in a wide range of places, leverages an existing workforce (well drillers from the oil&gas industry), has low water use requirements and Fervo Energy’s proof of concept plant (funded by Google) took about two years from contract to putting electricity on the grid. The full scale Cape Station project in Utah, started in September 2023, is expected to produce starting in 2026 and be at 400 MW by 2028, and the learning curve is just getting started.
Not bad for the new kid on the block.
France has had a system called ‘ARENH’ under which EdF had to sell about a quarter of its output to competitors at 42 Eu/MWh, ‘to encourage competition’. At times this was actually below cost – and when demand fell during Covid, the competing companies, who mainly use gas and wind for their own supply, were able to return the allocation they’d contracted for, and for which EdF had had to make provision, at no charge. This will now end, and nuclear will sell at a set price of 70 Euros. That should allow EdF to make enough to expand its nuclear generation.
‘For household consumers in the EU (defined for the purpose of this article as medium-sized consumers with an annual consumption between 2 500 Kilowatt hours (KWh) and 5 000 KWh), electricity prices in the first half of 2024 were highest in Germany (€0.3951 per KWh), Ireland (€0.3736 per KWh), Denmark (€0.37078 per KWh) .’ Surprise – all three have banned nuclear, and spent billions of Euros trying to accommodate wind and solar on their grids. Ireland also had the highest price in the EU for non-houshold users. (Eurostat)
Your vague implications are unhelpful. Yes, it’s costing a lot—trillions, in fact—to replace an energy system in a few decades that cost many trillions to create over more than a century. But as I’ve pointed out several times, & should be obvious to start with, the final price of electricity often has little to do with the cost to produce it.
Nukes are the most expensive energy, & the difference is even bigger than LCOE shows because of their enormous subsidies & externalities. Grids have to be tailored to nukes, too; most of the pumped storage in the US was built to make up for nukes’ inflexibility, even at its tiny contribution to the US energy supply (about 5%)
Mr. Nelson mentioned the small size of nuclear power plants (presumably in contrast with solar and wind farms). FWIW:
Geothermal projects are considered small – their footprint uses 1-8 acres per megawatt (MW) versus 5-10 acres per MW for nuclear-operations and 19 acres per MW for coal power plants.
I meant to quote that “FWIW” from https://www.smu.edu/dedman/academics/departments/earth-sciences/research/geothermallab/labresearch/oilandgas/whyusegeothermalenergy