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Nuclear power has unique capabilities that make it impossible to even consider a low carbon energy future without it being part of the mix, writes Dr Anthonie Cilliers.
I am enjoying the fact that the debate is opening up and that we are having the conversation on what the best solutions for the country’s needs are, as well as how to go about achieving them.
When we talk about being nuclear (or any other energy source) proponents or evangelists I become a little uncomfortable. I am extremely pro nuclear, but not because I work in the industry. I work in the nuclear industry because I cannot see any viable alternative to supply the country with clean energy.
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Maybe I am missing something because I hear about renewable energy (RE) being able to supply all the needs of the country in the news on a daily basis, but when I do the calculations things simply don't add up. Don't get me wrong, the moment those calculations add up I would be very happy because at the moment I am losing sleep over the fact that I believe South Africa, and the world, is promoting a renewable energy promise that simply cannot be delivered upon.
Let me explain (my apologies for all the numbers, but that is the only way I can understand things and I don’t trust common sense):
Based on information from the US Energy Information Administration (eia.gov) the capacity factor for nuclear was 92.2% in 2015 in the US, with wind at 32.5%, photovoltaics (PV) at 28.6% and solar thermal at 22.7%.
This is average data over the entire year for a very large country, so the notion that the wind is always blowing somewhere simply is not true - the wind is blowing on average 32.5% of the time distributed over the entire US wind farm locations (locations selected based on the wind profiles in the country). This means that the revenue producing capital is 70% unavailable.
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To put this data into perspective, we need to calculate how to install a stable megawatt (MW) of electricity from these sources: 1MW installed wind will provide on average 325kW over the entire year, 1MW PV 286kW (kilowatt), thermal solar 227kW and nuclear, 922kW. This also means that for an equivalent wind and nuclear MW, 2.84 times the capacity of wind needs to be installed.
For solar this factor is 3.22 for PV and 4.06 for thermal solar. Since these supplies are still intermittent, an equal amount of storage still need to be installed, these storage mediums are as far as I could gather 80% efficient at best. This brings the factor for wind to 3.408, PV to 3.864 and thermal solar to 4.872.
This is all good and well and still doesn't explain my predicament, some people say: just install more. Well, here is the problem. When comparing cost, we are talking about cost per installed kW. We then have to translate that to kilowatt/hour (kWh) to determine the cost per unit of electricity. From my calculation above, it is clear that installed kW does not translate directly to kWh.
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If we make the assumption that the storage medium costs the same per kW of storage as the generating capacity (terrible assumption - I know), we can see that the cost to install a nuclear equivalent kW of wind will rise to 4.408 times that of the peak capacity installation cost. For PVs this factor is 4.864 and for thermal solar 5.872.
Based on UCT Graduate School of Business Prof Anton Eberhard’s claim that wind energy can be as low as 57c/kWh, the real base load price rises to R2.51kWh. For PVs: R2.77/kWh and solar thermal: R3.35/kWh. This is if I assume all of these sources can provide a kWh at 57c/kWh when available. Unfortunately, reliability has a price tag.
The other argument is that RE can augment gas turbine electricity production. Here the calculation is simpler. If for every 1MW of gas turbine supply we install 1MW of RE, it will simply result in a reduction of your gas bill by 32.5%, 28.6% and 22.7% respectively. Based on the additional capital cost of the installations I do not believe this is viable.
As a practical example of this we can look at the situation in Germany, which is very interesting:
With a total installed base of 39 698 MW of solar PVs in the country (that is massive, making up 21.4% of the total grid capacity), the capacity factor in Germany for PVs is at 14% (they have less sun over there). That results in an average capacity of 5557.72MW over a year. With storage of 6 000 MW being 80% efficient they would have 4446.18 MW of solar base load capacity available.
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Because of this, this massive PV capacity only contributes 6.2% (32.8TWh solar PV sold in 2014) of the consumed kWh in the country despite its 21.4% of the total installed capacity. In 2015 the cost for PVs in Germany was at 1200Euro/kW. That results in a cost of 47 637 600 000 Euros, of course the money was spent over 10 years, in 2006 the cost was at 5000Euro/kW and gradually came down, but to replicate it today this is what the cost would be. So that is the price for 4446.18MW of base load.
In Rand terms of course, this results in R798 882 552 000 without the cost of the storage medium. To recover this capital cost over 20 years and annually selling 32.8TWh of electricity it costs R1.22 per kWh without interest or operational costs included.
I want to be very clear on this. I am not against renewable energy. Not at all, I believe it has a place (it is worth its weight in gold in marketing value alone), but when I hear comments that the uncertainty of the price of nuclear power will prevent us from moving forward, I cannot help but wonder how the other energy sources cost stack up. Be realistic in comparisons, the future of the country and the world is at stake.
The point I want to make is that nuclear power has unique capabilities that make it impossible to even consider a low carbon energy future without it being part of the mix. Once we can agree on that I will sleep better.
I truly want solutions for the country to be real and effective.
* Dr Anthonie Cilliers is an electrical and nuclear engineer and programme manager at North West University, specialising in knowledge management. Views expressed are his own.
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