Created by Tomas Kalisz
A critical analysis of economic and technical feasibility of nuclear power industry and its green alternatives and introduction to a couple of new once.
Supporting solar energy exploitation the way which leads to installation of solar panels on fields was definitely a mistake, one of such mistakes which destroy public trust in responsibility and competency of political representation.
For a comparison, in Germany can be solar panels installed on fields basically only in a narrow stripe along highways.
Even in such cases, new solar technlogies might enable parallel agricultural and energetic exploitation of certain areas.
One of alternative, yet unexploited means for solar energy production might be sheltering of huge areas covered by transportation infrastructure - such as roads, streets, railways, parking lots - with "roofs" made of solar cells.
A side economical effect of this means could consist in lowering costs for maintenance of the sheltered infrastructure, due to its limited weathering by snow, rain, frost.
Another positive synergy might consist in lowering environmental damages by deicing road salt as well as improved trafic safety by lowered accident risk thank to avoiding wet or icy road surface.
Still, in a deeper view, solar and wind energy may represent viable alternatives also for Czech Republic.
Should you have any questions, comments or proposals, please tell me:
tomas.kalisz@gmail.com
Interestingly, I have also not registered any critical analysis of governmental assertions yet, although there might be good reasons for an effort in this direction.
For example, I wonder why Czech scientists do not afraid that huge government investments into nuclear power plants will dry out financial resources for anything else, and for science in one of first places.
So far, prevailing opinion in Czech Republic says: Energiewende in Czech Republic is a high risk which we are not willing to undertake.
It appears that not only political opposition believes that governmental assertions about necessity of fixing Czech republic on current nuclear technology are truth.
Majority of public has the same opinion - which, unfortunately, is rather a mere belief without a solid support.
Stake on nuclear technology as a solution for securing future energy supply may be similar to armament for past war.
Arguments of nuclear energy supporters ignore time factor which may be, in fact, decisive in any long-term planning.
In fact, renewable energy is already now cheaper than nuclear energy, and comparison of trends in both areas clearly shows that planned investment in recent nuclear technology will secure rather high costs and technical stagnation than anything else.
Money spent this way may literally petrify Czech Republic as a "nuclear fossil" in a world which develops and changes with an extreme pace.
In fact, any nuclear technology for energy production which is currently commercially available or may become commercially available in a 10-15 year perspective, suffers from severe drawbacks.
Contrary to technical stagnation and rising cost of nuclear technology, technical progress in means for exploitation of renewable energy, e.g. steady increase of solar cell efficiency, is remarkable.
Even more remarkable may be decreasing costs of this technology.
Nuclear reactor is a dangerous toy, and all post-Chernobyl and post-Fukushima efforts to make it safer bring along spiralling costs. Except in safety, no remarkable technical progress has been achieven in commercially available nuclear technology for peaceful use during last 50 years.
In this respect, there are fully justified questions:
1) Isn't nuclear energy in form which was technically progressive 50 years ago already obsolete?
2) If not, can we indeed reasonably expect that it will not become obsolete during next ten years - that is before construction of the planned new power plants really starts - or soon afterwards?
All current reactors for commercial energy production suffer from an intrinsic safety issue consisting in buildup of nuclear waste in fuel.
In case of an insufficient cooling, meltdown of the reactor with disastrous radioactivity release is an unavoidable consequence.
| Only states which developed nuclear weapons can recycle nuclear waste in their facilities which were primarily built for purposes of nuclear armament.
Irrespective of huge investments and no commercial availability of the respective technology, building such facilities in further states does represent a threat for local or global power balance and can start arm races instead of bringing the desired profit. Certainly the "Non proliferation treaty" has lot of issues, particularly the existence of further nuclear powers which do not belong to member states or violate their obligations. On the one hand, there is no goodwill to nuclear disarmament which could open the way to use of existing recycling facilities for peaceful uses of nuclear energy, on the other hand, there seems to be a consensus that for keeping the status quo as it is, it is better to desist from nuclear fuel recycling than to risk an increased potential for further nuclear proliferation. |  |
First, the technology which is currently considered as the safest one - pressurized water reactors - work with maximum temperature of the heater in Carnot cycle about 350 degree Celsius, significantly less than for current fosil fuel facilities.
Second, for political reasons, recycling of spent fuel is practically inavailable; this makes the effective exploitation of natural uranium (which is, similarly as fosil fuels, a non-renewable natural resource) disappointingly low, in a per-mille order of magnitude.
Third, the recent technology produces highly radioactive waste with extremely long lifetime in amounts which are reversely proportionate to the above mentioned negligible uranium exploitation.
It appears that at least in the Czech House of deputies, there is no relevant political force presenting alternatives to governmental plans.
Deputy of Czech House of deputies Mr. Petr Gazdík wrote in his answer to my question:
"..v otázce dostavby dalších jaderných bloků musíme vážit jak názory odborníků, tak politickou odpovědnost vlády, ať už je nebo bude jakákoliv. Zkrátka energetická bezpečnost musí být jedním ze strategických cílů.
If one attempts asking people in Czech Republic, including scientists, suppliers of solar pannels and/or politicians for a reasoning for their prevailing opinion about necessity of nuclear energy as a decisive source of electricity in ČR, they declare that they believe the expert (and name Mrs Dana Drábová), or say: "In Germany, the electricity is expensive due to Energiewende, isn't it?"
In absence a thorough public discussion, it is very likely that proposed solutions as well as potential decisions will be motivated rather by particular political interests and/or by particular interests of economical lobbies.
Mr Babiš and his minister Havlíček assert that there is no alternative to building new nuclear power plants if Czech Republic will deploy current coal power plants.
Moreover, current power plants Dukovany and Temelín (overall electric power 4 GW, production capacity 28-30 TWh/year) have estimated lifetime ca 50 years and should thus stop production about ca 2037 and ca 2050.
Should e.g. 10 TWh energy be storaged for winter season in state-of-art lithium batteries having capacity ca 0.2 kWh/kg, it would have required 50 milion tons batteries. At the price 10 Eur/kg, such (still insufficient) storage caparity would cost an exorbitant sum, 500 bilion Eur.
It appears that the key for overturning the current negative attitude to clean energy in Czech Republic (and further steps forward worldwide) may consist in providing an instantly available and easy technical means for cheap storage and transport of vaste amounts of energy.
Remark:
Rather as a necessary condition than as a sufficient condition, definitely.
Psychological barriers, barriers of particular and personal interests, etc., will definitely stay high, and would not be wise to expect that they could be overcome by rational technical and/or economical arguments.
Whereas the opinion that for an "Energiewende" based on solar energy, we would have needed to sacrifice our land, is not shared by more informed public in countries like Germany, even Germany seems to be still seeking the way how to manage the daily and annual fluctuations in solar energy production specifically and in energy production from renewable sources like wind and sun generally.
This orgpage wants to show current weak point of "Energiewende", which is absence of satisfying technical means for economically competitive storage and transport of vaste amounts of energy corresponding e.g. to overall energy consumption of a continent like Europe during winter season.
Liquid ammonia is a possible solution which might replace liquid alkali metals as a medium for energy storage and/or transport in the future.
It can be converted diirectly in electricity in fuel cells, and already now does represent technically and economically more feasible alternative to lithium batteries or hydrogen as for electric vehicles (EVs).
As soon as electrochemists find the way towards direct electrochemical ammonia synthesis from water and nitrogen (reverse reaction to ammonia oxidation in fuel cells), ammonia becomes more advantageous alternative to liquid alkali metals, especially due to higher energy density and likely also due to easier direct conversion into electricity in fuel cells.
Lightweight organic solar cells can weight less than 1 kg / m2, less than one tenth of the weight of conventional inorganic solar cells. Such "solar cell foils" could be thus installed on lightweight constructions not requiring huge investments and could be thus particularly appealing for re-building of transportantion infrastructure into a part of energetic infrastructure.
It appears that perovskite solar cells made by solution processing or vacuum thermal evaporation might combine efficiencies comparable or higher than current solar cells based on inorganic semiconductor technology (silicon, GaAs, CIGS) with low cost and lightweight properties of organic solar cells.
Link to Oxford Photovoltaics webpage
Lightweight solar cells might enable that the fraction of buildings suitable for photovoltaic installations can increase.
This fraction was currently estimated by Mr. Martin kolařík, vendor of conventional silicon panels, to ca 530 000 of overall ca 1.9 milion family hauses in Czech Republic.
At normal temperature, hydrogen must be pressurized to 70 MPa (700 bar) to achieve energy density 1.6 kWh/L. Energy density of liquid hydrogen is not much higher.
Let us assume that for winter season, Czech republic may need 80 TWh hydrogen for "gree" electricity production and at least partially "green" heating.
Corresponding volume of 70 MPa pressure vessels (or cryogenic tanks for liquid hydrogen) would be about 50.106 m3. Should 1 m3of the high pressure tank cost 1000 Kč only, the necessary investment into storage facilities would be an acceptable sum 50.109 Kč, however, the costs for such high-tech tanks would be likely at least ten, maybe more tha hundred times higher.
Storage tanks for cryogenic hydrogen might be cheaper, however, keeping evaporation losses during storage for months in an acceptable range may be a challenge increasing the costs significantly again.
Although water electrolysis can be considered as a relatively mature technology, it does not apply in a scale necessary for conversion of energy production to renewable sources.
Gas distribution network (pipelines) for hydrogen instead of natural gas?
In a longer perspective, water electrolysis combined with existing Haber-Bosch process might perhaps represent an intermediate step between the "alkali metal economy" and future "ammonia economy".
Internal combustion engines driven by hydrogen could produce both electricity as well as heat, however, this decentralized use would require a cheap and efective distribution of hydrogen.
The idea that Diesel engines could be fuelled with alkali metals developed among others most systematically - in a series of patent application - an American inventor Stephen Skala, an example from publicky accessible EPO patent database Espa@cenet is available here.
Hydrogen is often touted as an ultimative solution for clean energy storage and transport, however, it in fact suffers from several serious drawbacks, especially from low volumetric energy density of gaseous hydrogen combined with its difficult conversion into liquid form requiring cryogenic temperatures and difficult handling of cryogenic hydrogen.
As a result, hydrogen still does not look like an instantly available technical solution for storage of huge amounts of renewable energy.
Two basic arguments against "Energiewende" are (i) alleged lack of renewable resources and (ii) lack fo effective means for matching energy production from renewable sources with its consumption.
Head of Czech national authority for nuclear (facilities) supervision Ms Dana Drábová epressed in an interview her opinion that there is free space for solar facilities in Czech Republic. She thinks that "solar pannels had to be installed instead of fields, forests, remains of free countryside, cities, villages, national parks" and it appears that everybody takes it for truth.
In fact, more than 1300 square kilometers of the CR area is covered by buildings, communications, parking lots etc.
Let's assume that 1 square kilometer covered in Czech Republic with solar cells having efficiency 10 % is able to produce 0.1 GW peak power, and, in accordance with estimations made by Mr Martin Kolařík, seller of small private solar facilities for family houses, annual electricity production from such 1 km2 facility would have accounted 0.1 TWh. For annual electricity consumption 100 TWh, we thus still would not needed to sacrifice our fields and forrests, because it would have been in fact sufficient to cover about 1000 square kilometers, still less than the area which is already occupied by buildings, streets, roads, railways and like.
One of key parameters of any energetic policy should be an analysis of investments into transmission infrastructure, level of energy losses during transmission, and role of both these technical and ecomomical parameters in overall economical balance of any energetic policy.
According to an overview prepared by Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy (Freiburg, Germany, version of October 14, 2019), Chapter 24.8 (page 84), transmission losses may account for up to 13 % of brutto energy production in Germany.
Definitely, capacity of transmission lines has to be taken into account. So far, we might be quite sure that if 15 TWh could be transmitted out from CR, the same amount could be safely transmitted also in.
Investments into enhancement of transmission capacity could well pay off, if it enables that e.g. an interim electricity excess from German wind power plants can be consumed or storaged in Czech Republic.
And, vice versa, the same might apply e.g. for interim electricity ecess from solar power plants in southern EU countries.
Costs for building new north-south electricity transmission lines in Germany, across the Europe or even on longer distances (e.g. for bringing photovoltaic electricity from Africa to Europe) might become limiting for transmission of very high power on very high distances.
A benchmark for rough estimy of such costs might be 1.5-2 bilion Euro planned for 1400 MW 623 km long cable NordLink.
Perhaps, there are some hints that energy from abroad must be necessarily much more expensive than energy produced in planned power plants.
It would be nice to see some reasoning for such assumption.
If we can export electric energy, there is a question why we, perhaps, could not consider electricity import as an alternative to planned investments?
So far, it appears that, for an unknown reason, this question does not come into account.
An interesting feature of the yet absent public discussion about the planned huge investment is a common acceptance of the axiom that CR needs to be "energetically independent".
It sounds somewhat strange in the situation when CR is no way in a situation of war or enemy blockade, oppositely, it is a EU member with very good relationships with all neighbour countries.
First of all, although Czech republic consumed a record amount of electricity in the last year (2018), namely 73.9 TWh, it produced 88 TWh in the same year. The excess 14 TWh was exported:
Public announcement of Energetic Regulatory Office of Czech Republic
Economically, CR is among EU countries with highest ratio between energy consumption and GDP (gross domestic product)
The biggest electricity producer in CR (ČEZ) is a company with the state as a majority owner, its influence on state energy policy, political parties and particular politicians needs to be seriously taken into account.
In fact, mantras repeated in public with respect to public policies deserve a thorough look, especially if there are investments as high as hundreds bilions CZK in outlook.
The stakes are high.
It appears that present announcements of necessity of replacement of deployed coal energy plants completely ignores the fact that CR exports about one sixth of its annual electricity production.
Arbitrarily assuming that renewable energy resources cannot supply CR with needed energy in a technically and economically feasible manner, the government and majority of public in accordance with each other suppose that we need new nuclear power plants.
Dissent opinions consist rather in doubts if we need to decrease CO2 production at all than in an effort to develop and spread alternative solutions.
orange links: technical relationships
dark blue links: objective or implicitly present economical / societal relationships
turqueois links: curent understanding, common opinion, personal relationships
khaki links: dispute, discussion
violet links: vision
ochre line: root cause of the problem as perceived by the author (Tk)
simple arrow: existing relationship, consequence
double arrow: belief, irrational / heavily distorted communication / propaganda
full triangle: economical interest, lobbying
empty triangle: insufficient or mising communication, missing understanding, a desirable consideration yet missing
the-hydrogen-economy.pdf
