During the anniversary week of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombings Map Monday featured two different nuclear targeting scenarios for the US. It was not only the most popular Map Monday post, but also the most viewed post in the history of this blog. A writer with a bigger ego than me (yes, I’ve heard they exist) might assume that his talent was finally being rewarded. I on the other hand figured that readers’ curiosity about surviving a nuclear cataclysm must have narrowly won out over their impulse to delete yet another Map Monday email notification.
In an attempt to play off that success, I thought I’d feature a map of the peaceful uses of nuclear power. By comparing the views for this post with the nuclear targeting post I’ll also be able to test the psychological postulate that bad news is many times more interesting than good. Yeah it’ll only be anecdotal, no controls for many variables including my writing, but it will amuse me.
Which brings us (finally) to this week’s map, courtesy of the International Nuclear Safety Center, showing the location of the world’s nuclear power plants.
According to the European Nuclear Society (June 2015) there are 438 nuclear reactors operating in 31 countries generating 379GW. That number includes the 43 in Japan (the third largest nuclear power operator) that have been idled or shut down since the earthquake induced accident at the Fukishima nuclear power plant.
Prior to the accident, Japan derived just over 40GW or 30% of it’s electricity needs from nuclear power. One quarter of Hiroshima’s electricity came from nuclear power. Japan recently completed a safety review and created new standards. While older plants are likely to be fully decommissioned the first of the more modern plants ( Sendai ) has been restarted. Whether Japan continues to embrace its former goal of generating 40% of its electricity from nuclear power is unknown.
Outside of Japan and the US, which despite being the largest nuclear power plant operator (99 plants 99GW) hasn’t opened a new plant in decades (although 4 new reactors have been started at existing sites and construction that was suspended in 1988 has resumed on another reactor) there are plans for 50 more plants with 58GW of capacity. By my calculation, that’s enough to send Marty McFly on almost 48 time traveling trips. I don’t know how many trips H.G. Wells traveler could take with that much energy.
For those of you still reading (thanks for your patience – you really should consider getting a hobby) here’s a list of countries dependent on nuclear power for the highest percentage of their overall electricity needs (courtesy of the IAEA).
Top Ten Nuclear Power Countries
- France – 76.9%
- Slovakia – 56.8%
- Hungary – 53.6%
- Ukraine – 49.4%
- Belgium – 47.5%
- Sweden – 41.5%
- Switzerland – 41.5%
- Slovenia – 37.2%
- Czech Republic – 35.8%
- Finland – 34.6%
Switzerland (as well as Germany) plans to phase nuclear power and replace it with fossil fuels and re-newables.
As always thanks for reading.
Armen
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Where was Germany on the list before they started cutting back. US is about 20% and holding pretty steady.
The US is sitting at just under 20% (19.6% was the lta) I don’t know what the peak percentage was in Germany, but according to an AP article in 2010 they were at 22.7% and are now at 15.8%. After Fukishima they permanently shut down 8 of their 17 reactors or ~8.7Gw of capacity. The remaining 9 reactors net them about 12Gw. Germany’s still a net exporter of power, but they’ve got some work ahead of them if they want to complete the phaseout of nuclear by 2022.
I think Japan had 54 reactors before Fukushima (4 gone at Fukushima + 49 idled now + 1 restarted in Sendai??).
The interesting back story is what Japan needed to do when it lost 30% of its power literally overnight.
It’s not like they had 30% spare capacity they could turn on (and the coal or LNG to operate them). Maybe my friend Kenji Takahashi can post a good article about how they managed (cut night time exterior lighting like in famous Ginza district, raised temps in office buildings to reduce a/c loads, shifted from traditional suit and tie to cooler attire, etc.). Big time belt-tightening.
Yeah, a 30% loss is definitely a hard pill to swallow. As for the number of reactors, my number came directly from the European Nuclear Society. I’m not sure why there’s a difference.
It’s interesting that countries would commit to phasing out nuclear power for fossil fuel plants. They should be committing to totally renewable power. I know I was surprised by the percentage of their power needs that Germany gets from solar. I’d think that continuing along those lines would be a better goal for any country.
While I spent a little less than two years in renewables (2nd Generation biofuels) one of the key drivers is their very high cost – more than 5 times the cost/energy unit. I know they’ve improved in the last five years, but they’re still not cost competitive – even with the carbon taxes factored in. Solar and wind have made great strides, but have their own cost, availability, environmental, and social (NIMBY) issues. I’ve always thought that current nuclear power was a reasonable answer in the near term, with better nuclear tech (Thorium?) as a better future solution.
I was just talking with Rick Plotka about LIquid Fluoride Thorium (LIFT) reactors. Rick said that Herbie Hancock, the jazz master and peace activist, recently jumped on the thorium bandwagon – check out this video clip of Herbie –
https://youtu.be/kwbEzEf1lhQ
Here’s a great article by Dr. Hargraves and Dr.Moir on LIFT reactors from the Jul-Aug 2010 American Scientist magazine:
http://www.cs.uml.edu/teams-academy/uploads/Physics4/LIFTReactors.pdf
I was happened to be going through a nuclear physics unit with my high school physics students when the Fukushima/tsunami disaster happened, so we dived much deeper into the topic as a result. We took a trip to see UMass Lowell’s research reactor that year as well (thanks for Dr. Gil Brown at UML). Here’s a page from my wiki from that time frame:
http://www.cs.uml.edu/teams-academy/index.php/Physics4/NuclearReactors
Based on everything I’ve read, I’d have to say I’m a fan of Thorium reactors, too. They’re green, much safer both operationally (accidents and by-products) and they don’t provide a path to weapons. Some articles I read claimed research was abandoned (or not well-funded) precisely because they have no weapons applicability. I guess that’s one of the limitations of military-to-civilian technology transfer. Perhaps the nuclear agreement with Iran should stipulate Thorium…..