S. Korean firms to build four new PWRs in the UAE

APR-1400 RPV from Doosan brochure

The United Arab Emirates' nuclear initiative has chosen its contractor, a consortium led by the Korean electric utility KEPCO. They have agreed to build four 1,400 MWe PWRs, of a Gen. 3+ design (APR-1400), in a deal worth $20 billion. From various sources:

[Al Jazeera] S Korea to build UAE nuclear plants

[The National] UAE: Korean consortium to build nuclear power stations

[Korea Times] Korea Wins $40 Bil. UAE Nuclear Deal

[Bloomberg] Korean Group Beats GE, Areva in $20 Billion U.A.E. Nuclear Deal

First off, to clarify the different contract values: it is $20 billion for construction, with an additional $20 billion in operating costs over 60 years, hence the alternative '$40 billion' figure. I think the Bloomberg journalists were confused by this. Citing Al Jazeera:

While the contract to build the reactors is worth about $20bn, the consortium expects to earn another $20bn by jointly operating the plants for 60 years.

For some background: there were three competing contractors -- the winning Korean bid, a French consortium led by EdF offering EPRs, and a GE/Westinghouse consortium. Apparently KEPCO won by a huge margin: Al Jazeera writes that

The Korean bid was $16bn lower than the bid submitted by the French group, an industry source said.

Some analysts called this a 'surprise choice', which is odd because it's been public knowledge KEPCO underbid their competitors, e.g. this WSJ article I linked to last month.

The reactor is an APR-1400 (PWR), of which none exist but two are under construction in Korea (at Shin-Kori). The vendor site is: [APR-1400]. There's also a brief history of Korean reactors at WNA.

And this is just the beginning; from Bloomberg,

The order is just part of a “fleet of power plants” the U.A.E. wants to build, Emirates Nuclear Energy Corp. Chief Executive Officer Mohammed al-Hammadi told reporters in Abu Dhabi yesterday. “We will be building more than four and those will be coming in the future.”

In the background are very interesting weapons proliferation politics. The UAE signed a treaty with the US under which both enrichment and reprocessing are banned in the UAE - they are completely dependent on foreign fuel suppliers. It seems most US commentators read this in the context of Iran (e.g.), which of course refuses to abandon domestic enrichment. But I haven't seen any counterpoint from Gen-4 advocates, which they should be making as reprocessing is essential to closed fuel cycles. Does the 123-agreement prohibit e.g., integrated recycling of actinides, as with the Integral Fast Reactor? And should this be considered a proliferation risk? (I don't know.)

The UAE currently gets 98% of its electricity from natural gas.

Update: I've found a very nice PR brochure. It is from one of the consortium members, South Korea's Doosan Heavy Industries, which makes some key components like reactor pressure vessels, steam generators. This copy is hosted by the NEA (French nuclear agency), which isn't quite were I expected to find it.

[PDF file] Doosan Heavy Industries & Construction

Slashdot LiONs, nuclear-powered waterwheels, and the $865 battery car

Another grab-bag of numbers...

In another round of renewable-energy advertisement, Slashdot brings us this "vision":

[Slashdot] Hardware: 'Home Batteries' Power Houses For a Week

"Panasonic has announced plans to create 'home batteries.' They are lithium-ion batteries large enough to power a house for a week, making energy sources such as solar and wind power more feasible. Also, you can buy energy when it is cheapest, and don't need to worry about power outages anymore."

Let's bring in some numbers. From Seeking Alpha, a collection of current industrial Li-battery (both LiON and others) prices; and from the EIA, basic statistics on residential electricity use (from 2001 - slightly dated).

[Seeking Alpha] Lithium-ion Batteries: 9 Years of Price Stagnation

[EIA] Electricity Consumption by End Use in U.S. Households, 2001

“Solar Collector Basics”
J. Richter, J. of Ren. and Sus. Energy

The industry battery price figures range from $660 - $2,018 / kWh(e). (I'm not sure if these are real or effective (usable) storage capacities; I'll conservatively assume they are effective.) Average household electricity consumption is 204 kWh(e)/week per household (2001); thus, $135,000-$408,000 for 1 average week of storage capacity, per average house. Err, $14 to $44 trillion, nationwide. Enough for 3.5-11 TW of nuclear capacity (@ $4/W), or 24-97x more than all residential consumption (at 90% capacity factor). And this isn't even fair - the batteries only last a couple of years.

Even the most ridiculous, optimistic industry "targets" cited ($150-$250/kWh(e)) don't alter the conclusion one iota.

This of course is implicitly playing along with the assumption that "1 week of storage" is sufficient. It's not unusual for wind outages to last a week at a time - see e.g. graphs of Irish wind performance in David MacKay's book. And there's the seasonal variation: if generation is nonzero but still fractional, averaged over timescales of weeks, 1-week storage doesn't solve the problem. Here's indicative (?) graphs of seasonal variation for wind and solar (figures on right side).

Lu, McElroy, and Kiviluoma (PNAS 2009)

The solar flux is from a paper by J. Richter, excerpted in part 8 of the lecture notes (very interesting, by the way) of Prof. Eric Switzer at Univ. of Chicago (see also, the NREL maps); the wind graph is from a paper in PNAS.

Also in battery news is announcment of the $865 American EV, via AutoBlog and Discovery News. Once again, marketing experts are trying to rebrand the classic golf cart as a "green car". Top speed of this death trap is 25 mph, which compares it unfavorably to Stephenson's Rocket. Also, the real price is actually $10,600; as with solar panels, 90% of the cost is being subsidized by taxes (well, only in Oklahoma).

On another story, some very green ideas in Japan:

[Denki Shimbun] Mini-hydropower generation at nuclear power plant

A seaside nuclear plant pumps in ocean water through a small channel, at about 130 m^3/s. Some clever fellow noticed the obvious potential for renewable energy. Now there is a waterwheel in this coolant channel. It is powering an electronic sign which advertises the waterwheel. The plant is planning to charge an electric car with the waterwheel. No word on if they are planning to power the coolant pumps themselves with waterwheels - that would be quite a savings.

On a tangent; North Pacific seawater contains 3.2 ppb dissolved uranium. At 130 m^3/s, the Sendai plant coolant channels therefore have a throughput of 0.4 grams U/s. The two Sendai reactors are 900 MWe, for 1,800 MWe or (my estimate) maybe 5,400 MWt heat production, a ratio of 24 m^3/s seawater per GWt. In a completely closed plutonium fuel cycle, such as the IFR, the energy potential of the 3.2 mg U/m^3 is 258 MJ (using 199 MeV/fission, 239 grams/nucleus), or 6.2 GJ potential for every GJ of waste heat. The bizarre conclusion is that a seaside IFR, capturing only 1/6th of its coolant's uranium (with adsorbant polymers), could be entirely self-sufficient in fuel! (If in fact 15% U separation is viable).

How's that for a crazy idea - zero-mining, seawater-powered nuclear fission.

A few news stories I noticed:

Europe's last Soviet RBMK in Lithuania is turning off next week. It is being replaced by a new natural gas plant in 2012, and two 1,150 MWe Russian PWRs in 2016, and possibly a proposed nuclear plant on the same site as Ignalina.

Molten salt reactors have been featured in Wired.

China starts construction of a 1,700 MWe PWR, bringing the number of new Chinese reactors this year to eight. France's PM Fillon showed up in person (the reactor is a French-Chinese collaboration).

(Update) - I almost missed this, in Japan a 912 MWe PWR just started commercial operation this Tuesday.

IEEE Spectrum considers spent fuel

[IEEE Spectrum] Finland's Nuclear Waste Solution

Here, though, 500 years is hardly a heartbeat. In as little as 20 000 years, Finland may enter an ice age, and advancing ice sheets kilometers thick could carve out the rock and force more water into its fractured depths. The liquid may then diffuse through the bentonite barrier, eat through the copper, and carry off still-hot radionuclides. No one can be sure.

But maybe nobody will be here to care. In 1000, 10 000, or 100 000 years, it might not be unreasonable to think our descendants will have abandoned this toxic land for a cozier alternative, on space pods or newly colonized planets. Where once there were humans, now hermaphroditic fish and finned flamingos may slither through our poisonous landscapes. Or perhaps evolution’s charge will have delivered beings who are healthier, cuter, and more intelligent than the ones designing today’s disposal systems. Or evolution may go in the opposite direction and cockroaches will reign supreme, just as we always suspected they might.

Newsbox

Today's New York Times front-page leader was:

[NYT] Bloomberg Eyes Danish Offshore Wind Farm and Sees New York’s Future

NYC billionaire mayor Michael Bloomberg toured Horns Rev 2 in his helicopter. Certainly the businessman noticed its $1 billion pricetag. For 209 MWe, at ~43% capacity factor (c.f. Horns Rev #1), this is $11/W average. But neither he nor the credulous Times writers deign to discuss any pragmatic failing of these turbines, instead giving us superficial feel-good tripe ("these are pieces of art... pleasing to our minds", chirps Bloomberg). The city is planning a $3 billion installation of art several miles offshore. At 700 MW, it is not particularly "moving".

A while back I ridiculed the Japanese shipping line NYK for decorating their 60,000 ton container ship Auriga Leader with solar panels, which they pretended "powered" the ship (and seemingly professional journalists lapped it up). It appears they are taking the charade a step further:

[WSJ] Shippers Brace for New Tax on Fuel

Japan's NYK Line says it will cut carbon-dioxide emissions by 70% by 2030 and develop a zero-emissions ship by 2050. The ship would use a combination of fuel cells and solar and wind energy, company executives say.

The article goes on to classify nuclear propulsion as a "gimmick"...

Maersk rejects sails, nuclear-powered engines and other innovations as gimmicks, Mr. Andersen says.

Of course we need trite greenwashing now:

Instead, Maersk will reach its target of cutting emissions with measures such as steaming slower and scheduling better to avoid idling, he says. The company also has adopted a few technological innovations, such as using slicker paint on hulls.

A 500 MWe fast reactor is moving towards completion next year, with the installation of the sodium-pool reactor vessel (with attached photo). Unlike the IFR, this reactor uses oxide fuel, hence is rather more difficult to recycle.

[NEI] India's PFBR vessel installed

PFBR at Kalpakkam. Credit NEI magazine

Apparently the cost is barely $750 million, or $1.50/W.

Also in India, a very unusual poisoning attempted involving nuclear waste. Several workers were completely unharmed when a disgruntled employee laced a water cooler with tritiated water. Tritium (H-3) is created in small amounts by neutron capture in deuterium (H-2). Deuterium oxide (heavy water) is the moderator and coolant used in PHWRs, the type of reactors at Kaiga power plant; hence the need for tritium management, the presumable source of this poisoning. (The same tritium issue occurs with CANDU reactors, also PHWRs). The highest exposures were subclinical doses of about 30 mSv (3 rem). Of course Greenpeace is having a field day with this story.

What about the people living in the vicinity who will die subsequently from cancer if their consumption of tritium through the food they eat is never ever measured?”

Tritium is also making the news as a commodity betavoltaic battery is being prototyped by Widetronix. They are intended for tiny microwatt circuits, such as pacemakers. (Earlier pacemakers used radioisotope power sources, but with thermoelectric conversion, like Peltier devices. Whereas this is direct capture of high-energy free electrons, which are spontaneously emitted by tritium.) In particular they are claiming 30% conversion efficiency.

French enrichment plant reduces energy consumption by 98%, saving 3 gigawatts of electricity

The shiny new cascade of centrifuges at Tricastin - worth €3 billion - started spinning on Wednesday:

[WSJ] Areva: Rotation Of First Georges Besse II Centrifuge Cascade

There is a brochure, which prominently advertises a 50-fold reduction in energy consumption, compared to its predecessor. (C.f. the WNA article: typically ~50 kWh/SWU (separative work unit) for centrifuge enrichment, vs. 2500 kWh/SWU for gas diffusion). To appreciate the enormity of this, realize that the existing plant has its own dedicated nuclear reactor - actually four of them!

Tricastin nuclear power station, which consists of 4 nuclear reactors that supply electricity to the enrichment plant almost exclusively during peak operations.

[Areva] The Tricastin Site

And a back-of-the-envelope calculation validates this: the WNA's energy-intensity figure of 2500 kWh/SWU for gas diffusion, times the 10,800,000 SWU/yr capacity of Georges Besse I, is 3.08 GW.

Here it is in pictures - the extremely large enrichment plant is in the background, with its four PWRs in the foreground.

Tricastin site - Credit WNA

And on the inside - a very baffling maze of pipes:

Georges Besse I interior - Credit Areva

Section 17

Apparently there's some law in Germany that requires utilities to release raw wind power data. So they do so. And here it is!

Via the University of Kassel comes this list of four links, direct to four major utilities' wind data. Here they are:

• Transpower
• Vattenfall
• RWE
• EnBW

So we have real generation statistics for all German wind power, in 15-minute intervals (except EnBW which reports in 60-minute intervals). As an example here's these four utilities graphed together, for January:

And here's the sum:

As I've linked before, the Spanish national utility also "releases" wind data, however they only do so locked up in online Flash graphics. Obviously Germany's data is very much more useful.

[Red Eléctrica de España] Wind power generation in real time

As I've also linked, there's a similar feature from Ireland (h/t David MacKay). I think it also does not have raw data for download - just online graphs.

[EirGrid] Operations » System Performance Data » Wind Generation

And via Charles Barton, there is also data from the Bonneville Power Administration (US Northwest) which does offer raw data:

[BPA] WIND GENERATION & Total Load in The BPA Balancing Authority

500 times above background

Greenpeace is in Africa rescuing villages. Radio France Internationale reports:

Rianne Teule from Greenpeace told RFI that, “we collected a lot of information and one of things we identified was dangerous levels of radiation in the street of one of the mining towns”.

...

However, as this latest investigation reveals, the problem has not been addressed. Greenpeace measured “500 times more than normal background” radiation.

[RFI] Greenpeace reveals dangerous radiation in Niger

It is interesting to see what this number means:

[Greenpeace] Uranium mines in Niger – radioactivity in the streets of Akokan

The RFI figure implies a dose rate of ~65 uSv/hr (500 * 0.13 uSv/hr). According to Greenpeace's claimed measurements, the highest 1-meter background radiation they found was 3 uSv/hr, over a 2 meter^2 patch. Their 63 uSv/hr measurement occurs in a subset of this patch, at a distance of 2 inches.

Stern rebuke

The all-important discount rate features prominently in an important debate on carbon pricing, as featured in this week's Economist:

[Economist] Is it worth it?

The importance cannot be overstated: different assumptions lead to wildly different conclusions on something as basic as is climate change worth fighting. Some assessments, like the Stern Review and the IPCC reports, assume low discount rates to derive high marginal costs for the emission of CO2. Others like Nordhaus (some links are broken) don't think it is valid to use discount rates that are lower than real-world interest and lending rates.

The Stern review has since been used as an intellectual prop by greenish politicians everywhere. Economists have been more critical, on two grounds. The first concerns the discount rate—the annual rate at which future costs and benefits are discounted. Lord Stern uses a rate close to zero. A higher rate, often the cost of borrowing money, is more common. The higher the rate, the lower the value of future benefits or costs; and vice versa. Lord Stern agrees with Frank Ramsey, an economist who wrote 80 years ago that discounting “later enjoyments in comparison with earlier ones…is ethically indefensible and arises merely from the weakness of the imagination”.

Other economists feel there is nothing wrong with their imaginations but plenty wrong with Lord Stern’s near-zero rate. They think he should have used what William Nordhaus, an economics professor at Yale University, calls “assumptions that are consistent with today’s marketplace real interest rates and savings rates”. In a world of limited resources, they point out, it is not obvious that spending them on future generations rather than on the current one is morally right.

Of course, the present value of anti-CO2 "investments" is very sensitive to small changes in discount rate - it is in the exponents!