European Energy Independence

[Zardnaar]

On nuclear waste, that can be a problem, but it's not like nobody has addressed it. The Finns built a permanent storage facility. France does reprocessing to reduce its amount of nuclear waste, and is actively exploring long-term storage options. I don't expect there to be a solution that everyone loves - a problem oil pipelines also face - but I think the Finns see the wisdom in cleaner energy today addressing the climate change problem, with nuclear storage being tractable. It's also possible that we may only need one more generation of nuclear fission plants to tide us over to a clean and post-nuclear fission future... but burning fossil fuels until that future will make it much more difficult.

On German house heating, I agree. When a family member lived in Germany for a while, I was surprised to learn how fossil-fuel intensive heating is in Germany, and not just natural gas but oil as well. Although given the timescales to switch to electric heating, I think efforts to switch need to begin now. My grandparents' gas furnace lasted over 50 years - it might still be working for all I know - and while it may have been better built than most, any new gas furnaces added today have a decent chance of still being in operation in 2052. Even if they are break-even today or a slight loss today (and with heat pumps, they may still wind up ahead of gas-based electricity), over the course of that 30 years they should wind up being significantly cleaner.



My understanding is this various significantly depending on the locale. I believe that in Europe in general (not uniformly throughout the continent by any means), the rate is higher than in the U.S., but in the U.S., the last I checked, less than 10% of homes used heat pumps. And that is also highly variable by which part of the U.S. you are talking about; New England is the most dependent on natural gas, whereas the Southeast is the area that uses electricity the most for heating homes. Which actually makes a fair amount of sense; even above-ground heat pumps are going to be plenty warm enough in the winter in much of the South.

I was surprised to learn that my current apartment has a heat pump (in addition to a traditional furnace for when it gets really cold); I'd never seen an apartment with one before. But it's a relatively new apartment, so perhaps that shows that they're starting to be added in newer apartments.



I agree, and what surprises me is how many people in the Green Party (or local equivalent) are anti-nuclear as well. I suppose it goes back decades to when "green" was about clean water and not having acid rain, and when the image of nuclear was more flavored by "bomb" and by the most questionable safety record of first-and-second gen reactors (Chernobyl was a mix of first-and-second gen; I believe Three Mile Island was second-gen). But for me, it's increasingly a consideration in who I vote for.

I'll also note that 20 years ago, I was in the anti-nuclear camp. But as I learned more about climate change, the calculus changed for me. Sure, solar-and-hydrogen-storage sounds better. But from a practical standpoint, we aren't going to be able to build enough of that soon enough, but probably could get where we need to go if we also include nuclear.

Germans may be full of crap and/or green washing.

 

[João III]

I suppose it goes back decades to when "green" was about clean water and not having acid rain, and when the image of nuclear was more flavored by "bomb"

I think this is what it primarily comes down to. Generations have spent their entire lives hearing anti-nuclear propaganda and now they refuse to even consider it, despite the severity of climate change.

And on the topic of Three Mile Island, I believe the plant is shutting down. Not because of safety concerns or anything, but because it's not as profitable as natural gas

 

[Arwon]

I was surprised to learn that my current apartment has a heat pump (in addition to a traditional furnace for when it gets really cold); I'd never seen an apartment with one before. But it's a relatively new apartment, so perhaps that shows that they're starting to be added in newer apartments.

In my city pretty much all apartments built in the last 20 or so years have reverse cycle AC, when the temperature gets below 0 and up to 40, you need both things so doing them in one unit is obviously easier.

 

[Arwon]

I think this is what it primarily comes down to. Generations have spent their entire lives hearing anti-nuclear propaganda and now they refuse to even consider it, despite the severity of climate change.

And on the topic of Three Mile Island, I believe the plant is shutting down. Not because of safety concerns or anything, but because it's not as profitable as natural gas

The environmentalist bogeyman was never really what stopped nuclear power from expanding its global share of electricity generation much beyond the 10 to 15 per cent it's been stuck at for ages. It would be odd if they'd been uniquely successful against this one thing while being so bad at influencing the landscape on pretty much any other energy or ecology question.

Blaming stuff like environmentalists or fear campaigns is easy but the simple answer is that the economics of building new nuclear power are terrible, especially if the question is rapid decarbonisation of the electricity sector. If you've got any quantity of spare state funds to put into capital works to decarbonise electricity generation, you're gonna get more bang for your buck and faster, by other means.

 

[João III]

Blaming stuff like environmentalists or fear campaigns is easy but the simple answer is that the economics of building new nuclear power are terrible, especially if the question is rapid decarbonisation of the electricity sector. If you've got any quantity of spare state funds to put into capital works to decarbonise electricity generation, you're gonna get more bang for your buck and faster, by other means.

Perhaps the decision-makers care about the economics, but if you ask the average person who's against nuclear energy, I suspect it'll be because of a fear campaign and not because they're afraid of how it'll look on a balance sheet

 

[Arwon]

And as we all know, big infrastructure decisions are made by the ordinary person in the street

 

[João III]

And as we all know, big infrastructure decisions are made by the ordinary person in the street

Well if the ordinary person in the street didn't matter, then there wouldn't be so much anti-nuclear propaganda

 

[r16]

the very essence of Russian pipelines aas creating some two way street for the West and East like intermingle , instead of fighting some war fueled by Neocon desires over Middle East whatever . My weird pals in some Turkish language only forum were there .

 

[AmazonQueen]

On nuclear waste, that can be a problem, but it's not like nobody has addressed it. The Finns built a permanent storage facility. France does reprocessing to reduce its amount of nuclear waste, and is actively exploring long-term storage options. I don't expect there to be a solution that everyone loves - a problem oil pipelines also face - but I think the Finns see the wisdom in cleaner energy today addressing the climate change problem, with nuclear storage being tractable. It's also possible that we may only need one more generation of nuclear fission plants to tide us over to a clean and post-nuclear fission future... but burning fossil fuels until that future will make it much more difficult.

I'm just quoting the bit that interests me.
1 country has actually addressed the issue, Finland. I suspect relatively few countries in Europe have areas as relatively devoid of population as parts of Finland are. That makes it a bit easier for Finland.
Actively exploring long-term storage issues is meaningless until you actually start naming the places where you are going to store the waste. Thats when your problems really start.
Its always possible is a very bad premise to base your current plans on. Its also possible that things won't work out as you hope.

I'm not dead set against nuclear power. I just know it has never met the promise claimed for it in the past and created problems that weren't anticipated.

Burning fossil fuels on the current scale isn't an option but atm I only see nuclear power as a backup to wind/solar/hydro as the main sources of power in the future.

 

[Quintillus]

Hydro is great, except that we haven't really added much of any in the past several decades. I know part of the reason is concern over aquatic life, as well as navigation on some rivers. I would be interested to see a study of how much hydro could be expanded, and what the impacts of that would be. But as far as I'm aware, in most geographies it doesn't have the ability to scale as well as nuclear.

Although that does remind me of geothermal as another possible baseline option. Which is really where I foresee nuclear having a role - wind and solar are great, but what do you do if you have a few very low wind, overcast days in a row in the middle of winter when everyone wants to heat their houses? A larger grid can mitigate the chances of that, and storage technologies are improving, but it's the medium term - 10 to 80 years - where I think a predictable baseline would really help, and help retire fossil fuel plants more quickly.

I think this is what it primarily comes down to. Generations have spent their entire lives hearing anti-nuclear propaganda and now they refuse to even consider it, despite the severity of climate change.

And on the topic of Three Mile Island, I believe the plant is shutting down. Not because of safety concerns or anything, but because it's not as profitable as natural gas

The profitability aspect is an interesting and relevant one. Where I live (next door to Pennsylvania), the policymakers decided to subsidize our existing nuclear plants so they can keep operating. Which wasn't really that controversial until it was revealed that the power company had provided illegal kickbacks to various lawmakers. The subsequent campaign to overturn the legislation has centered around the bribery more than the nuclear aspect.

It appears you are right about Three Mile Island; it shut down in 2019.

Longer-term though, it points to the question of how do you reduce fossil fuel use if fossil fuels are really cheap, as some of them are? Which affects both the climate question, and the geostrategic dependency question.

 

[r16]

fusion . ı was told in 2013 or 14 that ı would turn purple when Lockmart would finish theirs in 2019 .

 

[Samson]

With regards nuclear power, if you really think it is a practical answer there are some serious questions one needs to answer. The general economics look awful, I wrote this post about where the money is coming from in the UK, it really does not look like anyone is investing because they think it is a good bet despite being guaranteed prices of nearly 3 times the going rate. Summary in graph below.

Another thing is the availability of the uranium. I am sure Ferocitus posted a good document about all the things we would need that we have not got, but the uranium is only enough for about 5 years of global energy use? And I think using it to heat our homes is terribly wasteful, the most concentrated "low entropy" source on earth, being used for the most "high entropy" use, heating homes. How much will our children regret the use of both fossil fuels and older energy sources such as uranium for such profligate uses.

I really think our low hanging fruit is insulation. Both household (eg. put cling film over your windows in the winter) and personal (eg. put in a jumper before turning up the heat).

 

[Colon]

- Add more dockyard and pipeline facilities for importing natural gas from the U.S. and Canada (as well as other, more distant suppliers).
- Build more natural gas storage facilities. The E.U. has announced energy suppliers will be required to fill their existing storage tanks this summer, but that obviously suggests that more could be built to increase resiliency.
...
- Increase efficiency standards. This is a gradual one, but could add up over time.

All of these have already been done under the impetus of the EU.

 

[Colon]

How will Europe cope if Russia cuts off its gas?
Better than you might think

EVERY FOUR years the European Network of Transmission System Operators for Gas is required to carry out a simulation of disaster scenarios. In the most recent such exercise last year the ENTSOG boffins considered 20 shades of disaster, and concluded that “European gas infrastructure provides sufficient flexibility for the EU Member States to…ensure security of gas supply.” Cheering words. But the gasmen did not examine the spectre now haunting Europe. What happens if Vladimir Putin invades Ukraine again, the West hits Russia with sanctions, and Mr Putin retaliates by shutting down all the pipelines carrying Russian gas to the West?

The conventional wisdom used to be that a complete shutdown of piped gas from Russia, which makes up roughly a third of the gas burned in Europe, was unthinkable. Thane Gustafson, author of “Klimat”, a thoughtful book on Russian energy, observes that even at the height of the cold war, the Soviet Union did not shut off gas exports. And during Russia’s fiercest dispute over gas with Ukraine, in 2009, only the gas flowing through that country was disrupted, and then only fleetingly.

But a shutdown is no longer unthinkable. Mr Gustafson now says: “I don’t think it is unlikely at all that Putin would actually reach for the gas tap over Ukraine.” Unlike his Soviet predecessors, the Russian president can afford the cost of a brief energy shock. Jaime Concha of Energy Intelligence, an industry publisher, has crunched the numbers. Not counting any penalties and assuming the average daily price seen in the fourth quarter of 2021, he reckons a complete cut-off of piped gas to Europe would cost Gazprom between $203m and $228m a day in lost revenues. So if such an embargo lasted three months (Mr Putin’s leverage fades in spring, when gas demand drops to just 60% of that in January), lost sales would add up to about $20bn.

A loss of that size would have been devastating for the rickety Soviet economy, which relied heavily on hard currency earned by selling gas to the West. But Russia today has some $600bn sitting in its central-bank reserves and could easily handle such a blow. And it could even come out ahead financially, in the short term at least. Mere sabre-rattling over Ukraine has already sent prices soaring for gas and oil (the latter accounts for most of Russia’s energy revenues, not gas). Without a war, JPMorgan Chase, a bank, forecasts that higher prices will lead to Gazprom making over $90bn in gross operating profit this year, up from $20bn in 2019.

If Russia does wield the gas weapon, how much would it hurt the West? If the interruption were limited to gas passing through Ukraine, as in 2009, the rest of Europe would manage fine. For one thing, Gazprom has already slashed the flow of gas through Ukraine. Citigroup, a bank, reckons it is half the level seen last year and a quarter of that in 2019.

What if Mr Putin cuts off all gas to Europe? Some immediate disruption would be inevitable. This would be felt most acutely in Slovakia, Austria and parts of Italy (see chart), reckons David Victor of the University of California, San Diego. Of the big European countries, Germany is the most vulnerable. Because of its climate-motivated push to retire coal-fired power stations and its rash decision, taken in the wake of Japan’s Fukushima disaster, to shut down its nuclear plants, it remains more reliant on natural gas than it need be. It is Europe’s largest consumer of gas, which accounts for roughly a quarter of its total energy consumption, with Russia supplying over half of its imports.

The good news is that Europe’s energy system is more resilient than it was during the crisis of 2009. Andreas Goldthau of the University of Erfurt in Potsdam points to some useful changes. Pro-competition measures (like a ban on “destination clauses” that forbid the resale of gas) have weakened Gazprom’s grip. A dense web of gas interconnectors now links previously isolated countries (see map).

Another source of cheer is liquefied natural gas (LNG). Heavy investments in regasification plants mean that Europe has plenty of idle capacity. Citigroup estimates that with historical utilisation rates for those plants running at 50% of capacity or less, the region can in theory handle enough to replace nearly two-thirds of Russian piped gas imports. So the limiting factor is not regasification capacity, but the available supply of LNG. Since it takes a long time to expand new production and export capacity, Europe’s best hope would be to get hold of existing LNG cargoes originally destined for elsewhere.

One investor notes that when European prices shot up threefold between October and December last year “an armada of LNG” sailed to Europe as cargoes were diverted from Asia. This inflow offset a decline in Russian gas imports (see chart 2). Market rumours suggest that a new armada is coming. Chinese state-owned energy firms, envisaging quick profits from high European gas prices, are hoping to sell dozens of LNG shipments. Massimo Di Odoardo of Wood Mackenzie, a consultancy, adds that because the journey from America to Europe is shorter than the one to Asia, LNG tankers can complete more trips—squeezing an extra 10% or so in export capacity to Europe. All told, he thinks extra LNG could fill 15% of the shortfall that would result from a complete Russian cut-off.

Another source of resilience is the amount of gas held in storage. Last year’s bitter winter, along with Gazprom’s reluctance to fill storage units it controls in Europe, left gas storage at levels below the five-year norm. Even so, Rystad, an energy research firm, calculates that a continuation of normal weather this winter would leave enough gas in storage by spring to make up for two months of lost Russian gas exports. Some analysts believe the excess might even cover four months of a cut-off, though a cold snap would reduce this buffer quickly.

Europe also has a secret weapon. Mr Di Odoardo points to its massive but little-discussed stores of “cushion gas”. For technical and safety reasons, regulators insist that storage units like salt caverns and aquifers maintain a huge amount of gas that is not normally available to put on the market. The analysts at Wood Mackenzie reckon that up to a tenth of this cushion can be used without causing problems. If regulators gave permission, as they might in a war-induced crisis, that would amount to well over a month’s-worth of Russian imports.

In sum, Europe will suffer if Russia cuts off the gas; but that price will be paid from the wallet rather than through physical suffering. That cost will be exacerbated, predicts Jonathan Elkind of Columbia University, because “Europe is not starting from calm, but from a market on edge.” The continent’s energy markets have only just been through an early-winter price shock, and the price outlook for all energy commodities is ugly. JPMorgan Chase predicts that, even without a Russian gas cut-off, Europe will spend some $1trn on energy this year, up from $500bn in 2019. If the region were forced to consume its gas stocks to survive a Russian cut-off, it would then have to spend even more during summer frantically rebuilding its reserves to avoid an energy crisis next winter.

That is an unpleasant prospect. But a bigger price would be paid by Russia over the longer term. One source notes that Gazprom would face “massive” commercial fallout, ranging from penalties payable to customers to a halt in dollars flowing to Russia for contract payments. Gazprom would find it difficult to secure any long-term contracts in Europe after such a display of aggressive unreliability. And the Nord Stream 2 pipeline so cherished by Mr Putin would surely bite the dust. A shutdown might even persuade China, now cautiously importing more Russian gas, that its long-standing concerns about Russian reliability are well founded.

Mr Victor argues that such a brazen use of the energy weapon would probably lead Europe to try much harder to cut its dependence on Russian exports of gas “less because they are insecure and more because the revenue…is what funds Russian bad behaviour.” As Mr Gustafson pithily puts it: “If Putin wanted to destroy Gazprom’s business in Europe, he couldn’t go about it in a better way.”

 

[Kyriakos]

Maybe allow protectorate Greece to extract natural gas, like non-protectorate Cyprus does.

 

[r16]

bomb lran was a famous song but ı don't think ı evrr heard of it . Now if ı can ever remember clajms of having an affair with any singers , ı should have a song written , to be called bomb the pipelines .

 

[Kyriakos]

Come on, with so much debt blown up by the Eu and other scammers, we need some source of money and the natural gas could be that
It might have worked to use it along with Turkey, but not at some ridiculous half and half. Anyway, that is for another universe now...

 

[r16]

don't rush me , am trying to remember the singers ı had affairs with .

 

[TheMeInTeam]

I'm not dead set against nuclear power. I just know it has never met the promise claimed for it in the past and created problems that weren't anticipated.

this is true for other energy solutions as well, however. is nuclear actually worse than alternatives, if you can manage to iron out the stigma against it?

realistically, it should have been our near term solution for some time now IMO, likely better than burning more coal/oil

 

[Samson]

realistically, it should have been our near term solution for some time now IMO, likely better than burning more coal/oil

Which tech? Single pass gives us about 5 years of uranium, breeder reactors gives everyone nukes.