Japan to cut fossil fuels & up renewables

 From a Twitter feed by Stephen Stapczynski, a Bloomberg business reporter

Japan revises its 2030 power mix targets, cutting fossil fuels and raising renewables in a bid to reduce pollution

The biggest loser? LNG

Under the draft plan, annual LNG power generation is slated to fall roughly 50% by the end of the decade. That's more than coal.  

This is a surprising shift for Japan, the world's top LNG importer that pioneered the industry.

Japan will require less LNG in 2030 than its previous plan, posing a potential dilemma for its suppliers from Qatar to Australia.  

Nuclear power's role in Japan's energy mix remains unchanged from the previous plan: 20-22% of power generation by 2030.  Japan will require 27 of its remaining 36 reactors to resume operations to hit this target.  That won't be easy. only 10 have restarted.

The renewable energy target is just as ambitious.  Japan wants renewables (solar, wind, hydro) to make up 36-38% of the power mix by 2030. That's nearly double current levels and will require solar panels on millions of rooftops. The old target was 22-24%

Japan aims for hydrogen and ammonia-fired power generation to make up 1% of the 2030 power mix.  That's a new addition to the nation’s energy plan. Over the long-term, utilities aim to shift to green hydrogen/ammonia to meet 2050 net-zero goals.

So why is Japan revising its power mix targets?

It is all about its Paris deal commitments.  Earlier this year, Japan strengthened its 2030 Paris goals, raising its target to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to 46% by 2030 from 2013 levels.

Looking further out, Japan will need to significantly reduce its dependence on fossil fuels to hit its 2050 net-zero pledge

That means they must:

> Build a whole lot of offshore wind

> Consume a ton of green hydrogen/ammonia

> Boost energy efficiency

There is no doubt that Japan's revised 2030 energy targets are ambitious. It's unclear if they will be able to meet them.  But the new plan does indicate that the government is shifting its view on LNG, which for a very long time it touted as a cleaner alternative to other fuels.

The 20% nuclear target is incredibly challenging to meet, said Woodmac’s Whitworth, who sees atomic generation only hitting 9% in 2030.  “Over-optimism on nuclear makes the plan look unrealistic and could undermine plans to reduce coal and gas share”

Great analysis from

@BloombergNEF

on Japan's revised 2030 power mix targets BNEF analysts expect gas to make up just 15% (!) of the power mix by 2030, well below coal. Japan seen missing nuclear target, and that gap will be filled with coal (not LNG)

A few thoughts about this plan:

• Is it plausible that the nuclear power stations will be restarted?  It's true that the marginal (operating) cost of nuclear is much lower than those of coal and gas, even if the cost of new-build nuclear is much higher.  But after Fukushima ......?
• Stanczynski talks about rooftop solar.  Surely utility-scale solar will play at least as important a part.   Net solar additions have slowed .  Even at current growth rates, the percentage of solar will more than double by 2030.  At 15% per annum, solar's contribution could exceed 30%.
• Growth in wind power in Japan has been low over the decade.   If the growth rate doubles to 15% p.a., then wind's contribution will reach 8% up from 2% now.  
• A price on carbon will accelerate these shifts.  With the EU introducing carbon border tariffs, Japan, like other countries, will have to decide whether to pay taxes on its exports to the EU, or to levy its own taxes which will be  returned to itself.  It's obvious what makes sense, and indeed the country is cautiously supportive of the EU's carbon border tax.
• None of this is good news for LNG/coal  exporters such as Australia.

Fukushima just doesn't get any better

 From Climate News Network

The Japanese government has an unsolvable problem: what to do with more than a million tonnes of water contaminated with radioactive tritium, in store since the Fukushima disaster and growing at more than 150 tonnes a day.

The water, contained in a thousand giant tanks, has been steadily accumulating since the nuclear accident in 2011. It has been used to cool the three reactors that suffered a meltdown as a result of the tsunami that hit the coast.

Tritium is a radioactive element produced as a by-product by nuclear reactors under normal operation, and is present everywhere in the fabric of the reactor buildings, so water used for cooling them is bound to be contaminated by it.

To avoid another potentially catastrophic meltdown in the remaining fuel the cooling has to continue indefinitely, so the problem continues to worsen. The government has been told that Japan will run out of storage tanks by 2022.

The issue is further complicated because the Fukushima wastewater contains a number of other radionuclides, not in such high quantities, but sufficient to cause damage. Ian Fairlie, an independent consultant on radioactivity in the environment, is extremely concerned about Japan’s plans and the health of the local people.

In a detailed assessment of the situation he says other highly dangerous radioactive substances, including caesium-137 and strontium-90, are also in the water stored at Fukushima.

The government has not yet responded though, because officially it is still considering what to do. However, it is likely to argue that pumping the contaminated water into the sea is acceptable because it will be diluted millions of times, and anyway seawater does already contain minute quantities of tritium.

Dr Fairlie is among many who think this is too dangerous, but he admits there are no easy solutions.

He says: “Barring a miraculous technical discovery which is unlikely, I think TEPCO/Japanese Gov’t [TEPCO is the Tokyo Electric Power Company, owner of the Fukushima Daiichi plant]  will have to buy more land and keep on building more holding tanks to allow for tritium decay to take place. Ten half-lives for tritium is 123 years: that’s how long these tanks will have to last – at least.

“This will allow time not only for tritium to decay, but also for politicians to reflect on the wisdom of their support for nuclear power.” 

Nuclear waste defies disposal

Source: The Ecologist

There are many who argue that the only way to de-carbonise our economies is to go nuclear.  But there are problems.

The first is the cost.  According to Lazard's calculations, the average cost of electricity from a new nuclear plant in the US would be $150/MWh, and that does not the cost of decommissioning, the benefit of Federal loan guarantees, or the cost of government insurance, as nuclear plants can't get private insurance because of the "fat-tail" risks.  Meanwhile, the average cost of wind is $42.5/MWh and of utility-scale solar is $41/MWh.  So nuclear is 3.6 times as expensive as wind or solar and that's after all the implicit subsidies.  Second is build-out time.  Nuclear power plants take more than a decade to complete.  Most plants in the West (where safety standards are high) are several years behind schedule and multiples of the original cost estimates over budget.

We need to de-carbonise our economies as fast as possible.  In the time taken to build a nuclear power stations we can build 3 or 4 comparable wind or solar farms.  For the same cost*.  Adding 12 hours of storage to "firm" variable output from renewables will within 5 years add just $11/MWh to the cost of wind or solar.

And finally, of course, there's the problem of toxic waste.  And that problem isn't going away:

The nuclear industry, and governments across the world, have yet to find a solution to the nuclear waste legacy, the highly dangerous radioactive remains that are piling up in unsafe stores in many countries.

A report commissioned by Greenpeace France says there is now a serious threat of a major accident or terrorist attack in several of the countries most heavily reliant on nuclear power, including the US, France and the UK.

The report fears for what may be to come: “When the stability of nations is measured in years and perhaps decades into the future, what will be the viability of states over the thousands-of-year timeframes required to manage nuclear waste?”

The estimates of costs for dealing with the waste in the future are compiled by government experts but vary widely from country to country, and all figures are just official guesswork. All are measured in billions of dollars.

To give an example of actual annual costs for one waste site in the UK, Sellafield in north-west England, the budget just for keeping it safe is £3 bn (US$3.9 bn) a year.

It is estimated that disposing of the waste at Sellafield would cost £80 bn, but that is at best an informed guess since no way of disposing of it has been found.

The report details the waste from the whole nuclear cycle. This begins with the billions of tons of mildly radioactive uranium mine tailings that are left untended in spoil heaps in more than a dozen countries.

Then there are the stores of thousands of tons of depleted uranium left over after producing nuclear fuel and weapons. Last, there is the highly radioactive fuel removed from the reactors, some of it reprocessed to obtain plutonium, leaving behind extremely dangerous liquid waste.

Hundreds of ageing nuclear power stations now have dry stores or deep ponds full of old used fuel, known as spent fuel, from decades of refuelling reactors.

The old fuel has to be cooled for 30 years or more to prevent it spontaneously catching fire and sending a deadly plume of radioactivity hundreds of miles downwind.

Some idea of the dangerous radiation involved is the fact that standing one metre away from a spent fuel assembly removed from a reactor a year previously could kill you in about one minute, the Greenpeace report says.

Although the environmental damage from uranium mining is massive, the major danger comes from fires or explosions in spent fuel stores, which need constant cooling to prevent “catastrophic releases” of radioactivity into urban areas.

There are now an estimated quarter of a million tons of spent fuel stored at dozens of power stations in 14 nuclear countries.

The report concentrates on Belgium, Finland, France, Japan, Sweden, the UK and the US. What happens in Russia and China is not open to public scrutiny.

All countries have severe problems, but those with the most reactors that have also gone in for reprocessing spent fuel to extract plutonium for nuclear weapons face the worst.

The report says of France, which has 58 reactors, a number of which are soon to be retired: “There is currently no credible solution for long-term disposal of nuclear waste in France; the urgent matter is reducing risks from existing waste, including spent fuel.”

In the 60 years since the nuclear industry began producing highly dangerous waste, some of it has been dumped in the sea or vented into the atmosphere, but most has been stored, waiting for someone to come up with the technology to neutralise it or a safe way of disposing of it.

[Read more here]

If nuclear were feasible, I would grit my teeth and support it, because unrestrained global warming will be so catastrophic for the world.  But I just don't think it is.  It's uneconomic; it would take too long to build; and it's horribly unsafe.


* Within 5 years, adding 12 hours of storage to make  variable output from renewables "firm" will  add just $11/MWh to the cost of wind or solar, if the batteries are added while the wind or solar farm is constructed.

Fukushima just keeps on giving

(Source)

From CleanTechnica:

Plans to remove spent nuclear fuel have been delayed again, this time until fiscal year 2018 at the earliest; new fuel leaks continue to be discovered; cleanup cost estimates continue to rise; 300 tons of radioactive water are still pouring into the Pacific Ocean every day; and cleanup robots are still being destroyed by extremely high radiation levels. 

With regard to cleanup robots being destroyed by extremely high radiation levels, that’s in reference to one recently being sent into the Unit 2 reactor for the first time (since the 2011 earthquake and tsunami). The radiation inside the reactor is still high enough that it destroyed the robot’s camera, apparently, after less than 2 hours. 

The cleanup robot was apparently being exposed to an estimated 650 Sieverts per hour while in the reactor. For context, one Sievert of cumulative radiation exposure is the maximum lifetime limit for NASA astronauts, and short duration exposure to 4–5 Sieverts imparts a roughly 50% chance of dying within 30 days (often gruesomely). Higher doses will kill much faster. As an example, after being exposed to 36 Sieverts of radiation over a short period of time in 1958, Cecil Kelley died within 35 hours. 

Read more here.

Sorry, guys. I'm not persuaded that nuclear is safe or viable. Yes, we need to do something about global warming.  And we can and we will. But nuclear is not the solution.  Not when we have solar and wind, which are in any case much cheaper than nuclear and can be deployed far more quickly.