Germany's love of coal
The caterpillar tracks of the towering machine are huge, taller than a man, longer than a car, yet they literally inch forward, so slowly that you take a while to realise they are moving, as the machine carves deep grooves in the sides of a valley built of sticky black mud. 
This is an open cast mine in Germany, near the Polish border.
The machine is not just huge but unlikely, some grounded space station fashioned from the imagination of a mad boy mechanic. It seems to be made of three unrelated sections, all moving in different directions at different speeds, connected by pipes and walkways and ladders. Two long structures like the body of a crane stick out at ungainly angles. At the end of one there's a wheel the size of an elephant, like a giant pastry cutter equipped with sharp scoops tearing up the ground.
The black vale is inhabited by several such machine monsters, related in their ungainly power. I look up at one, a cruise liner on wheels, with a conveyor belt of dustbin-size buckets taking up its load and sending the useless sand and earth spraying out in rejected piles. The coal, brown coal as it is known, despite its colour, is valuable stuff. 
I am in Germany at the Jazaenschwalde mine for the last day's shooting for a Newsnight film, which was so rudely interrupted by Mr Karadzic's arrest in the early summer. About five miles from the valley of black mud is the power station, a collection of towers belching steam into the air. There are plans to expand the mine soon.
When they do they will also put new equipment into the power station to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. Eventually the plan is to tear it down and put in an extensive system of carbon capture.
Germany relies heavily on coal. Despite Christian Democrat unease, the country is still on course to close all nuclear power stations in 13 years' time. While Germany is an enthusiastic backer of the EU's emission targets, they also plan to build nine new power stations which use coal as the fuel. My colleague Roger Harrabin has recently reported on the first pilot scheme to reduce the damage from this dependency.
But as I start to put together the Newsnight report I am still baffled. Can the EU possibly meet its ambitious targets without more and more countries rediscovering the nuclear route? There seems very widespread agreement that while renewable energy and energy-saving can do a lot, they can't be the whole answer.
Is clean coal and carbon capture the answer? And how much coal is left anyway?
I’m Mark Mardell, the BBC's North America editor. These are my reflections on American politics, some thoughts on being a Brit living in the USA, and who knows what else? My 
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While I'm not sure how much coal is left in Germany, vast tracks of the mineral in a low sulphur form exist in Canada yet, and Saskatchewan has started a clean coal project costing the government 1.4B Cnd dollars (925M Euros at the date of this post) as an 'investigative project' at the Estevan power station run by the Crown Corporation Sask Power. Clean coal is one of the many answers to reduction of carbon emissions, and at this point is one of the cheapest forms of energy available. With a price tag this high, I expect Germany could refurbish at least a few of it's reactors and not have any carbon emissions. It's unfortunate that nuclear isn't seen as green yet, as there have been massive technological innovations in the industry in the past decade.
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Nuclear is not the answer for many reasons, but perhaps the most important is cost. Nuclear power stations cost an enormous amount of money (the Olkiluoto reactor in Finland is 2 years over schedule and already costs have doubled). These reactors can only be built if governments promise to subsidise them, leaving taxpayers to foot the enormous bill. Even the costs of construction are overshadowed by the problem of waste disposal. There is no safe and cheap way to dispose of spent fuel, as evidenced by the current scandal in Germany. There are thousands of leaking barrels of nuclear waste in the Asse II storage facility. This problem is going to cost the German government billions of euros to resolve.
Far better that this money is spent on off-shore wind farms, tidal power generators and hydro/geo-thermal stations.
As an aside, there is also no fuel security (Australia has just refused the sale of Uranium to Russia)
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I sort of contradict myself in my previous post, what i meant is the mineral coal is cheap, but the technology isn't. And as to #2, there is alot of controversy here in Canada about wind farms as they are affecting small flying wildlife such as bats and songbirds. The problems facing geo-thermal stations is that subduction of the aquifer layers the steam is taken from has started to appear even on a small scale (ie. house by house) in places, dependant on the geology.
I'm not proclaiming to know the answer to the waste problems facing nuclear, but I'm sure someone does. Fuel security for the lifetime of a nuclear plant can be signed with major uranium producing nations such as Australia and Canada with escape clauses and fines (Lawyers would know more about this than I.)
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#2 nonsense, and unsubstantiated rhetoric. Full costs of nuclear power, including safe waste disposal are comparable to fossil fuels (without including the cost of C02). New generation nuclear power plants are even more efficient, cost effective and safer.
There is fuel security, as MANY countries have resources. With fuel reprocessing Uranium is sufficient to power the world at increasing energy demands for hundreds of years (longer than we have used, and will use, oil for). If you include thorium as a nuclear fuel, there is enough of it to power the world for tens of thousands of years. If you include uranium extraction from water, and say thorium from lower grade resources, we can power our civilisation with nuclear indefinitely.
Russia not getting Uranium from Australia is a GOOD THING, because the country is becoming a dictatorship. Similarly Australia will not sell to Iran or North Korea, again a good thing.
New reactor designs will be more expensive to build initially, but if larger number of them were built, the costs would drop. It's like with any small scale technology, it is more expensive. Additionally, costs for nuclear are unnecessarily increased by confused laws and regulation, if those are standard, costs will drop. Nuclear power stations cost a LOT of money, BUT they produce a lot more energy per unit of cost, last a long time, fuel costs are a relatively small fraction of running them. So to say that nuclear is expensive because the power stations are expensive is a lie by omission, as over the long term nuclear power stations work out relatively cheap, even if the start up costs are high.
For a somewhat biased (against nuclear power), but even so still favourable assessment, see: http://www.nature.com/news/2008/080813/full/454816a.html
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To mister_chris_b (2):
You are quite wrong about nuclear power and the situation in Finland on regards of it.
Olkiluoto 3, EPR, is being build by Areva to Teollisuuden Voima (TVO). TVO is a private company owned by many Finnish electricity and industrial companies. TVO as an company was founded by Finnish industry to produce cheap electricity to it. It has operated two nuclear plants in Olkiluoto with success and high profitability. As an private company TVO hasn't ever gotten financing or subsidies from the Finnish government.
The delay in building the third plant in Olkiluoto doesn't cost TVO nor Finnish tax payers anything as the contract is a turn-key project with a fixed price. Areva probably will have to suffer losses due to the project, but then again Olkiluoto 3 was from the beginning a PR-project to Areva. The project will pay itself to Areva when more countries will order a plant from them. It should also be said that there has been quite much speculation that Areva will be building fourth EPR plant to Olkiluoto, which would allow decreased building costs to Areva and a neat way for TVO and Areva to settle reparations for the delay of delivering the plant.
The used fuel is not a problem and is not a financial problem. In almost every country nuclear producers pay either government agency or a fund money from produced electricity that is pointed to be used to dissemble old nuclear plants and to preserve nuclear waste safely. In Finland used low and medium radioactive waste is already disposed to underground cave facilities under Olkiluoto and high radioactive waste will also be disposed there in the future. Also we should remember that high radioactive waste in time become low radioactive was. In 1000 years now generated high radioactive waste will drop to uraniums natural radioactive levels: in other words become safe.
Nuclear fuel security is also not a problem. Finland itself has uranium on ground and in the future if needed it could be mined. Areva already has applied and gotten permits to investigate Finnish soil on regards of uranium deposits. It should also be noted that with current generation nuclear plants fuel security is not an issue as EPR can use reprocessed MOX -fuel.
At the moment the situation in Finland is that the center-right government with the assistance of left will with very high probability give at least one permit for a new nuclear plant. The Finnish conservative party has been discussing and suggesting that the Finnish government should give building permits for all three applicants: TVO, Fortum and Fennovoima (an industrial consortium including E.ON). The current attitude here is that nuclear power is the only way for Finland achieve its objectives on cutting down CO2 -levels and increase energy safety and support the economic growth.
All other solutions to power generation in Europe are more or less dead. Coal will stay dirty and with CO2 capture it will cost very much. Solar power is out of question. Bioenergy will play a niche role and wind power is just too uneconomical and unreliable. When the wind doesn't blow in some European country at all it is very likely that it is not blowing anywhere else in Europe too. We also should remember that Denmark that has the highest rate of wind power has also one of the highest levels of CO2 pollution per capita in Europe even thought they don't have much of heavy industries.
Disclaimer: I'm from and my parents still live in Eurajoki where the EPR is being build. I or my parents or any of my relatives are not working for TVO. Although I have many friends working at TVO and have myself worked there in a summer job. I have the full confidence on our nuclear plants and have seen and heard that people there are doing a good job there. If you ever come to Finland are doubtful about nuclear power then please make trip to Olkiluoto, they arrange visits both to the plants and to the waste disposal tunnels.
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mister_chris_b wrote:
Nuclear is not the answer for many reasons, but perhaps the most important is cost. These reactors can only be built if governments promise to subsidise them, leaving taxpayers to foot the enormous bill.
Far better that this money is spent on off-shore wind farms, tidal power generators and hydro/geo-thermal stations.'
off-shore wind farms, tidal power generators and hydro/geo-thermal stations can provide only 10 - 20% of electricity demand, other options are coal, oil and natural gas or nuclear power . But only nuclear power affords energy independence for Europe
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The coal mine is called Jaenschwalde (or even Jänschwalde), not 'Jazaenschwalde'. Sorry for being picky - I'm from the region originally...
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The topic of Power Generation and the alternative uses was flooged to death on this blog with Mark's Blog Entry "France builds nuclear future" Mark Mardell 15 Jul 08, 06:00 AM
The UK is sitting on so much coal that it is possibly the one source of fuel that the UK can never run out of.
If the UK bit the bullet and adopted the building of "Clean" or "Pollution-free" Coal-fired Power Stations (such as the one in Kent that the green activists innocently damaged a couple of weeks back) the UK could be self-sufficient and even be able to export power on a massive scale using the UK's coal reserves.
At the same time, the now almost defunct former major industry of coal mining could be revived inthe UK and jobs galore created. Arthur Scargill was never wrong to defend the Miners - he was just out of time and Greenpeace put a nail in the Coal Industries coffin (I'm not forgetting that Margaret Thatcher did for mining but the Greens have almost killed off the rump of the industry!).
Technology has moved on since the death knell was sounded for Britain's coal industry by the green activists fighting coal-fired power stations due to the old output levels of toxic and carbon emmissions - the problem is that the green activists cannot keep up with the new technology that can effectively cap carbon and toxic emmission and simply think "coal = carbon = carbon emissions" - the Germans are simply being sensible and making a positive choice to use their coal effectively . . . . . . meanwhile back in good old Blighty the Greens are still ruling the roost and being Luddites when it comes to the use of coal to produce cleaner coal-fired power.
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Regulars will be pleased to learn that I do not have an opinion on coal :-)
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LOL bbc deleted my message for having a link to Nature... in a science debate... I'm not going to continue then.
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threnodio @ #9
Talking about energy!
Mark has come back from his war combat course invigorated with renewed blogging zeal.
The speed of delivery and variety of his topics in the past 3 days means you only have to wait until tomorrow and Mark will probably come up with something for you to get to get your teeth into. :o)
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We have been sold the vision of nuclear generation because ' we should not be reliant on foreign fuel supplies' . Where in the UK do we mine Uranium ? All our nuclear fuel is imported so we would be totally dependant upon someone else . And the band played ' believe it if you want' . Coal has had a bad press but I am sure that technologically and economically it can be brought up to date - the problem is political will and vested interests. After all Thatcher didn't bring the country to its knees just to see the miners resurgence...
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I am a big proponent of coal. Each of my 15 nieces and nephews receive a lump each Christmas.
More seriously, considering that coal is indeed still very abundant it would be nice to be able to continue to use it in an environmently friendly and cost-effective manner. I'm sure my nephews and nieces would agree.
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#11 - Menedemus
I am slightly worried about that and the subliminal messages coming through. 'Hostile Environments' hot on the heels of 'How to spot the English'?
You don't think he meant through a telescopic sight, do you?
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Coal maybe the best way out of our dependence on oil ... there are many members of Nato that have vast reserves of coal and some like the USA have vast reserves of low sulphur coal.
Unfortunately coal is a four letter word to environmentalist and regardless of new technologies which may make coal a reasonable bridge to something better .. chances are its just not PC enough right now.
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threnodio @ #14
Actually I thought the clever link was the Blog Entry "Any Witches or Warlocks followed by the next Entry "Bulldozing and Bullying" which had a photograph of the UK Foreign Minister David Milliband.
Now that, I thought at the time, was clever subliminal messaging - not that even I think Mark has any political bias!
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Geothermal power - that's the green future. An unlimited and totally clean energy supply, which would make places like Iceland and other volcanic regions the energy capitals of the world!
With room temperature superconductors, power could be transmitted all over the planet - much as the ubiquitous internet transfers information.
Thirty years ago, the internet was merely a geeks dream - now its a reality, though it cost about $ 1 trillion dollars to set up. So why not set up a global "powernet" to save the Earth from climatic catastrophe - now!
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May be Germany does not have so many coal reserves but it has huge and efficient machines to extract whatever is left in their region.Till the time they do not drill out coal by all manners,they will not stop.I think Germany is heavily dependant on coal and this may backfire as from this report it seems that not much coal is left in Germany.
The question is how will Germany get out of this thermal power dependency..
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... GOOGLE "Nature Electricity without carbon", "thorium nuclear", "liquid fluoride reactor". Nuclear is cheap, already available, will last tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of years... maybe effectively for ever if lower grade fuel sources are exploited. New reactor designs exist that will not produce long term waste. Start up costs are high, but because the power plants produce a LOT of electricity and last a LONG time, the cost of nuclear energy is low over the long term, for new reactor designs comparable or lower than fossil fuels (including waste management and decmissioning). Fuel is supplied by stable countries like Australia, and most countries have some fuel resources even if they are not using them, and long term fuel supplied can be stored so energy supply can not be cut off.
Nuclear creates high tech and well paid jobs.
As for those supporting coal... coal is concentrated plant matter, and after it is burnt, the things that are not burnt are concentrated even more. THIS INCLUDES uranium, and other radioactive materials. THE FUNNY thing is that burning coal concentrates and releases directly into the environment MORE uranium than from a nuclear power plant!!! ... and the coal slag is not disposed of inside mountains, but just lies around. In fact some people proposed to use burnt coal residues as a source of uranium for nuclear power plants.
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William_Hastings #17, Geothermal power production is not as straightforward as you suggest, it has its own problems and is quite limited at the more efficient end of the scale. See the article I linked in my earlier post.
As for you question: why not set up a world power grid? It requires a general answer that applies to MANY power generation technologies just the same.
The answer is: the solution requires a non-existent, unproven, or untested technology. You CAN NOT rely on something that may turn out to be impossible, or too expensive. In the future when this changes, new technologies become available, you may need to reassess, but you do not have a crystal ball to predict which technologies will work out. In the here and now you go with what works or can be clearly adapted to work (at the higher practical risk end of the scale).
The second part of it is COST. You are supposed to provide a safe and clean source of energy at the LOWEST POSSIBLE COST. The reason is simple, if cost of energy is too high, it affects everything downstream, from transportation to food supply and starvation. The lowest cost will provide the greatest benefits to everybody. So, while there are MANY ways to produce energy for use, some are more, and sometimes much more, expensive. If constructing a world power grid, and distributing geothermal energy will produce electricity at a cost several times greater than nuclear, WHY SHOULD WE DO THAT? For the above reasons... the same applies to Solar and the Sahara plan, to large scale wind, etc.
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The German brown coal deposits are also found in Poland which is 97% dependent on coal for electricity generation. Renewable sources here are poorly developed as wind farms are far from ocean winds and construction blocked by the ecologists or environmentalists as is water power (due to changing the natural landscape :nature 2000 limitations). Solar power is a no go. Poland has massive coal deposits (about 300 years worth) and the biggest brown coal deposits in Europe but again the ecologists are blocking extraction due to landscape impact. As to nuclear power stations, a majority of the poplation is now in favour provided Russian technology is NOT used (very bad memories of Chernobyl and its effects here), but guess what , the environmental lobbies are dead against it! Gas and oil imports (dependence on Russia) is unacceptable. What to do???????Go back to the Stone Age????
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Mikewarsaw #21... have to laugh at Chernobyl/Russian reference :) True, do not buy Russian reactors.
Poland should probably buy the latest French designs. I would call myself an enviromentalist and a greenie, and yet I support nuclear power.
The same in Poland as elsewhere to varying degrees, nuclear power has a very bad image... often based on untruths, lies, or simple ignorance. Nuclear power needs an information campaign explaining that safe nuclear power is possible, nuclear reactor designs that CAN NOT explode or meltdown or leak like Chernobyl exist, it is possible to construct fuel cycles that produce no or tiny amounts of waste, it is possible to store nuclear waste safely, nuclear power can be produced safely, with the right EXISTING AND PROVEN technologies there is enough nuclear fuel for tens or hundreds of thousands of years, etc... It is a big job, but I suspect that even the other greenies can be convinced in the end.
Technical and safety problems of nuclear have been solved now or are being worked out with the new generation of nuclear power plants.
The proliferation risks of nuclear power are much harder to resolve. There are nuclear power plant designs that make it much harder to construct weapons from the fuel or waste products... but unfortunately no design for a nuclear reactor exists that makes it 100% impossible. To me this is the bigger problem with nuclear power. The counter argument is that there are easier ways to make nuclear weapons than to redirect resources from civilian power generation... so those that want them, will not bother anyway, and just build weapon program sepcific reactors/programs, etc.
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Rob_Hob @ #19
You wrote: "As for those supporting coal... coal is concentrated plant matter, and after it is burnt, the things that are not burnt are concentrated even more. THIS INCLUDES uranium, and other radioactive materials. THE FUNNY thing is that burning coal concentrates and releases directly into the environment MORE uranium than from a nuclear power plant!!! "
Somewhat alarmist and very disingenous if I may say so.
Yes, the old (and yet still in use) coal-fired powers stations do emit unburned carbon, carbon in the form of ash and all sorts of toxic residue (including radioactive emitters) but the whole idea of the cleaner more modern coal-fired pooer stations is that the output flumes are captured and cleansed of pollutants.
At this time, with the use of latest technology, this reduces the 100 percent output of the old-fashioned coal-fired flumes to 20 percent with the new "Cleaner" coal-fired power station outputs. And, who is to say what more new technology will not bring in to play as minds are now concentrated upon this idea of "cleaner coal power".
There is of course, the need to dispose of the captured carbon and toxic residues but it is a lot less harmful to store that spent uranium rods . . . . and the beauty of coal is that it creates deep, underground holes that can be filled up after the coal seam has been exhausted.
Thus if one talks of Power Stations on one hand - cleaner coal-fired power is a definite option to consider.
And when considered against to the need to build massive numbers of windfarms, tidal barriers or other cleaner renewable energy resources which are an absolute eyesore and are incredibly expensive and yet, even in large numbers, so much less efficient for producing sufficient output than coal, hydro-electric or nuclear- I know where my head says we should go - a combination of nuclear and coal as diversity is the spice of life.
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To mikewarsaw (21):
The problem with todays environmentalists is that many, I would say majority, of them are naturalist. Naturalists object to the whole concept of our technology and science driven civilization, not just part of it, the whole concept. What they want is to human kind to abandon technology and science and to return humans to be a part of nature and to live with it in harmony. Science and technology are antithesis to these people as they provide humans the means to escape natural boundaries and re-arrange our planet to the benefit of human kind.
I don't think there is no way you can settle with these people. The only right thing to do is to either ignore them or use purely rational argumentation and persuade them to leave their naturalist views. This of course is sometimes very hard because reason and logic seem not to exist in their minds.
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It is remarkable that nobody even mentoned the only real, absolutely clean, safe, unlimited and relaiable source of energy - nuclear fusion. It is siply preposterous to compare the funding of the basic research in that area with what is spent, for example, on the entertaining exercises with wind mills.
Are we simply dealing with an allergy to any advanced science and technology? Isn't the "green" movement simply a sign of the end of the era of enlightment and progress?
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Mendemus, my point about radioactive waste from coal power plants has nothing to do with your point that ash, and other pollutants can be cleaned from the "exhaust".
My point is simply that coal fired power stations emit MORE uranium and radioactivity than is contained in nuclear power stations (I had the links for this, and can dig them up again if you are really interested).
YES, as you say, depending on how the exhaust from a coal power station is treated, how much radioactivity ends up in the air will vary. The point is that some will... and the rest of the radioactive uranium and others will be contained in the ash, slag, filters, etc. The radioactivity WILL STILL be there, to be leached by rain, carried off by wind, absorbed into the food chain by wildlife, etc. Considering the HUGE amounts of radioactivity involved, why are people not worries by this?... probably because they do not even know about it LOL
The point of this example was to show the contradiction of objecting to waste from nuclear power plants which is smaller in amount than from coal plants, separated from the enviornment... and yet coal is much worse in this regard, but not even objected to because people simply do not even know about this aspect of it.
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fragility #25, there is nothing remarkable about ignoring fusion as a power source for the purposes of the current discussion.
What I said in my post at #20 applies to fusion as well. Fusion is an UNPROVEN at producing more power than it uses, UNWORKING, and theoretical in commerical applicatioins. We have no idea about costs, or pollution problems from it (it does produce neutrons and turns parts of the reactor radioactive), or requirements for fuel or rare elements... all because we dont evenhave a working prototype reactor. There is no clear timetable for fusion becoming reality as a wide scale power source. It may be a LONG time... or never (if fission works out well).
As we need solutions NOW, fusion is out of this discussion... for the reasons I mention above and in post #20.
Fusion is one of those things that may happen in the future, not a solution for today.
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More CO2 in the air will mean that plants grow more, not less (CO2 is plant food). Why does everyone blatantly ignore this fact? More carbon emissions = greener planet.
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#jaksap... HOW? If it gets too hot or too dry? Ever been to a desert? Why not much grows there? There is CO2 there as well... In short, a silly argument, concentrating on one thing only, when organisms depend on MANY things.
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To Rob_Hob #27
You are confusing the scales of time and importance.
Strategic scientific research is not a part of the existing economy, and it cannot be discussed in economical terms. Although the timing, or even the probability of creating a new scientific and trchnological breakthrough is uncertain, it is absolutely certain that without (uneconomical) invetsment into basic science any progress in economy in sufficiently large scale of time would be impossible. Greedy pays twice. Spending on basic science always pays, in a right scale of time. Which is beyond the scale of commercial interest. Therefore, it has to be done by the state.
As an example. The most important event of the 19th century, if viewed from the standpoint of our current economy, were Maxwell's equations. It took, however, more than 40 years before it was transformed into a radio device. It is inconceivable to assume that any commercial company would support such a research. The same is true about nuclear reactor, laser, computer.
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Fragility, we are talking about two different things.
YES, fusion should be researched, we may need it for wide scale power generation, or more specific other applications.
MY POINT is that RIGHT NOW we need the sfaest and cleanest and most reliable and most cost effective power source. Fusion IS NOT IT because it is not ready. Nuclear is ready in the HERE AND NOW. You can not propose fusion as a solution to today's problems, because it does not exist today... when it becomes ready and we know the details, the question can be revisited.
You asked why fusion was not mentioned as a solution, I believe the specific question has been answered.
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Rob_Hob @ #26
With regard to your offer of information about the uranium and radio-active emitters that are released form the new cleaner coal-fired power stations would be useful and I would be interested.
I think that the new German and the two new UK Cleaner Coal-fired Power Stations probably have figures for the emissions captured and those released to air. It would be interesting to read the data in comparison as perspective and intent often corrupts the way the data is portrayed.
My reason for interest is that it can be said very glibly that radioactive emitters are released into the air using coal as the power source for power stations BUT if the radioactivity is equal to the luminous hands on my watch - which are radioactive - then some context on stating the actual risk from the emissions is appropriate.
The mention of something being radioactive makes people recoil in horror but if the radioactivity is actually harmless then - so what!
Just making people recoil in horror and to prey upon their fears of radioactivity, as the green Activists do so often for both the planning of new Nuclear and Coal-fired Power Stations, is merely crying wolf to achieve their Luddite objectives!
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Mendemus, I think links are automatically banned... so I will alter them somewhat. Here is some more specific information on radioactivity from coal fired power stations:
[Unsuitable/Broken URL removed by Moderator]
[Unsuitable/Broken URL removed by Moderator]
[Unsuitable/Broken URL removed by Moderator]
Change the space after the first word with a dot, in each link.
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Sigh... Mendemus can't post links because the post gets refered to moderator automatically... stupid system. If the links do not show up...
do the following google searches:
*"Coal Combustion nuclear resource or danger" look for an article at ornl, should come up at the top of the listings.
*"Coal ash is more radioactive than nuclear waste" look for sciam article, Scientific American article
*"Radioactivity from burning coal brief article" at findarticles
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Thank you Rob_Hob,
I passionately believe that the UK's 8 ageing nuclear power stations should be replaced as soon as possible and the EDF purchase of British Energy and immediate commitment to build four new Nuclear Power Stations iin the UK is actually great news for the UK.
My only concern is that power monopolies can control supply and use price to control demand - monopolies in any shape or form are detrimental to the well-being of any economy.
But I suspect in a global economy these types of regional resource monopolies will develop and if GASPROM can monopolise the Russian Power Sector so effectively we maybe need to look kindly upon EDF as if it were more european than a French monopoly.
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I wouldnt buy the French design. The German designs are the best.remember the problems of french stations in recent months?
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... sorry for mis-spelling your handle Menedemus.
Monopolies are a bad thing as for example I learnt from local internet service provider situation. Where I am there is effectively a single main company in the country.
I wish for more designs and options in nuclear and other fields. If other technologies can compete, they should... but we should not be asked to use say wind or solar when they cost more and use more resources, while ignoring coal and nuclear that can be made clean. It will take time to build up nuclear capacity, so coal will have a role for a while...
... ABOVE ALL I want a rational debate on all of this, based on facts.
I think as nuclear develops, more companies will get into it, and there will not be monopolies. The current situation in nuclear is the result of past investment neglect, both in research and industrial capacity and expertise to build nuclear power plants.
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Gheryando # 36. German designs? What are those? I thought Germany has given up on nuclear power, and was closing down its nuclear reactors.
Plus the newer French designs are better, and Generation IV nuclear reactors will be even better... when they are finally developed.
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No 5, thanks for useful insight into Olkiluoto. I believe and hope that the cost overruns are due to first time errors. We might get a better idea as the second EPWR is being started at Flamanville.
If Finland builds another reactor they can export electricity to the baltics and give them some cover against Russian bullying.
The point about clean coal is that it has never been done on a large scale, and there are no cost estimates for capturing the CO2, pressurising it to a liquid, piping it, and injecting it into a hole in the ground.
A couple of other points:
Fusion is the technology of the future, and has been for the last 50 years. The ITER approach is probably a hugely expensive dead end. The design looks too expensive to replicate effectively. They ought to invest a bit more in polywell fusion.
Coal fired plants emit more nuclear waste than nuclear plants? In to the atmosphere certainly, because nuclear plants capture the waste. The newer designs produce substantially less waste than the older designs. The marginal cost of dealing with the extra waste is trivial.
The problem of waste is overstated. Deep disposal is quite safe for the required 3,000 years or so. After all, coal has been undisturbed for 1000s of times longer.
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germans love coal because it isn't owned by gazprom.
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To alext (39):
The situation currently in Finland is that we import 13,9% of our electricity need from other Nordic countries and from Russia. With fossils fuels we generate 26,6% of our electricity. Nuclear country is responsible for generating 24,9% of electricity need. In last 10 years our electricity consumption has increased by 28,6%. If we look at the future, it is very probable that our current consumption will increase. If in the next decade we are going to move away from using fossil fuels in transportation, then our electricity consumption will explode.
The way I see the situation is that we need to build besides the new plant in Olkiluoto at least three equal sized nuclear plants just to stop importing energy, to stop using coal and to overall decrease usage of oil and gas in electricity generation and heating. If a technological brake through happens with electric car, we need even more new nuclear plants.
Of course Finland building more nuclear power does ease somewhat the situation in Baltic states, but then again Sweden is not building new nuclear capacity and overall the energy consumption is just growing. The responsible thing for Sweden and Baltic states would be to start building new nuclear capacity.
Frankly I have to add that I really think that its our responsibility to future generations and to people living in developing world to be the firsts to start decreasing our CO2 -levels. To me risks that are associated with global warming are just too high for us to continue at our current path. If we don't act now and start to move to nuclear and other CO2 clean energy sources, we may cause the climate change go over the tipping point after which we can't stop it. To me that's enough good reason to go on with nuclear.
About cost overruns in Olkiluoto. They are mostly because Areva hadn't the experience that is required in a project as big as this. In France it has been the EDF that was in charge. It also seems that Areva hasn't had a humble attitude towards the project, what I have heard from engineers working for TVO, many people that came to guide and inform and answer questions about the new plants came unprepared and couldn't in many times give any answers to what was asked. To some it has seemed that many from Areva have had the image that this is just a easy holiday project in some backward European country, where nobody would care too much nor ask too hard questions. Hopefully that attitude has changed.
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alext, coal fired power stations produce more uranium and thorium in the ash than is contained in all US reactors taken togther... by a factor of many times. Check the links I gave.
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Germany is a typical double face country: on the facade an ecological politic, but in reality an aggressive energy policy based on the cost and "easier way to do it" rather on the ecological aspect of the issue. Needless to say, in Germany there is no policy on the reduction of the energy cost to both build the house and make ecological cars, which it is though to be the main two problems of the increase of greenhouse gas. The opening of the coal mines is just an exemple of this country is not ready yet to to have an international role.
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mindFifi, would you care to substantiate your almost unintelligible comments?
Besides Denmark it has by far the highest proportion of wind power in spite of not having much coastline at all.
Germany has some very strict policies on energy use, in particular for private houses (thermal insulation, energy-efficient lighting) and has had them for the last 20+ years.
I saw more energy-saving lightbulbs in the basars in Yemen (probably donated as developmental aid) than in the whole UK, until recently. The idea of insulating homes and draught-proofing windows doesn't seem to have been taken up much either, yet.
Saving energy is by far the best approach we can take - but we will still need to generate power somehow, and we can't do without nuclear for now.
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This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the House Rules.
#9: Who cares.
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What scientific illiterate wrote this rubbish about clean coal and carbon capture? Clean coal IS carbon: that is what the phrase means.
Germany will have to rethink its anti-nuclear stance or change its way of life. Not that we live healthily or happily nowadays, but it is good to enact change by educated consensus rather than be forced to do it.
It is unproven that manmade carbon dioxide is responsible for global warming, and (despite much rhetoric) there is no scientific consensus. The theoretical models connecting the two are roughly as complex as economic models, and we know how well those predicted the current crash.
I agree with global warming panickers thatr we should cut our dependence on oil, but for a different reason: most of the oil we use lies beneath people who hate us.
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Emission free electricity produced by coal fired power stations can be achieved by the use of pulse combustion powered thermoacoustic refrigeration of the exhaust gases from the power station.
This can result in liquefied greenhouse gases for less than 2 euros per tonne for 100+% capture as part of the ambient greenhouse gases are also captured.
Amine capture achieves 85% capture of CO2 for around 25 euros per tonne, some 13 times dearer.
We must clean up our atmosphere as the Beijing games demonstrated, as if the UK needed it.
By European co-operation, the liquefied greenhouse gases can be transferred by pipeline and stored, indefinitely, under the silts in the ocean at 3,300 metres depth, say in the Bay of Biscay. This would accord with the recommendations of the National Academy of Sciences of USA.
Coal should have a great future, if this route is followed and we need it as those electric vehicles are not far away.
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As a child, I've seen one of these for real. The size is just staggering. But apart from the pollution caused by burning brown coal, the impact on the landscape is immense.
Enormous areas are converted into great holes of mud. Whole villages have disappeared because of it. So the environmental impact is not just the coal burning, but also the desctruction of a landscape.
But in Germany as anywhere else, environment always loses against economy.
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Mark Mardell says:
"There seems very widespread agreement that while renewable energy and energy-saving can do a lot, they can't be the whole answer".
I hesitate to say the consensus is wrong, because I know this is the classic "Galileo gambit" used by creationists, anti-MMR campaigners and zero-point energy nuts, but I suspect opinions aren't as unanimous on this as your article implies.
For instance, the University of Kassel in Germany, in conjunction with various renewable energy companies and the German federal government, has already successfully demonstrated a renewables-only grid, using wind, solar, biomass and hydro, powering the equivalent of 10,000 homes, which is able to meet peak demand and provide reliable baseload without coal, gas, or nuclear (see www.kombikraftwerk.de for a project summary). No appeals to experimental technology, pseudoscience or persecuted genius required - just normal grid control systems, along with data feeds from weather stations to predict output from each bank of wind turbines or solar panels over the next few hours and instruct hydro and biomass plant to increase or decrease output as required.
Germany is also pioneering the PassivHaus energy efficiency standard. A house for a family of four which meets this standard requires only the equivalent of a one-bar electric heater to keep it warm in winter (10% or less than current average) and can be built at very little extra cost, since you can dispense with conventional central heating. The extra kit (e.g. heat exchangers and ventilation systems) are all on the market in the UK already.
And of course, electrified transport technology is energy- and space-efficient - and mature. Trolley-buses, trams, and trains with regenerative braking are, and batteries are already good enough for the short journeys such as delivery rounds which are not suited to fixed-route vehicles.
There are no technological barriers to any of this, and Europe could easily be zero-carbon by 2050 if it wanted. I would suggest that renewables and energy efficiency can absolutely be "the whole answer".
(Sorry for the long comment.)
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To Peter Barber (50):
You informed us about a demonstration in Germany where they build an complete electric grid with renewable energy sources. The thing is, doing a 100 000 homes is not impressive nor technically hard. The hard part comes on making the system economic. What were the usage and lifetime costs of the network? Even harder thing is to enable the network to deliver enough power to industrial users and most of all to whole nation. The specific problem with scaling the network comes from physical limitations, you only have a limited amount of hydro energy and biofuels at your usage. These kind of projects usually tend to use relatively more hydro and bio capacity that there is available.
The thing that we should remember about our civilization is that it is based completely on energy. The more prosperous and advanced we have come, the more energy we need to fulfill our needs. Decreasing our energy need is a hallucination, the cold reality is that we will use an ever increasing amount of energy in the future. The only way you can meet energy demand now is to use nuclear power and in the future after ITER and DEMO we can start to use fusion. If and when we get cheap fusion working we can forget saving energy and concentrate on using it in creative ways. Just think about, pollution free highly energy source would enable us a new kind of life: common transportation by flying, common housing by building just using glass. That is the way of future.
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"a collection of towers belching STEAM into the air" This is water vapour, is "belching" the right adjective? I would use belching to describe the unfiltered acid smoke which left the UK power stations when I lived in the UK 15 years ago!
I miss the information that there is also no public acceptance for a new coal fired station near Hamburg and that generally the German public geerally dislikes all large construction projects - even clean ones like wind farms!
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Jukka #51, I mostly agree with you that our civilisation is driven by the use of ever increasing amounts of energy, and the more we use, the better our lives should become. I think nuclear energy can even be used to make nitrogen fertiliser for example.
However, just the same, no matter how much energy we use, energy saving and energy efficiency HAS ITS place. Even with cheap energy, wasting it is wrong and a bad idea. Plus designing efficient non-wasteful systems is its own kind of creativity, and science... we learn new things.
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When I attended an Open University Summer School lecture on power systems (an industry I have worked in for 40 years) there was a fundamentalist green attending. Her vocal views on any form of power generation and distribution were so radical they were off the wall, she wanted the immediate closure of all coal, oil, gas and nuclear plants.
Asked where the power for the electric trains she espoused over cars and planes and the power for all her home electrical appliances was to come from, she called us ignorant mysoginistic dinosaurs and stormed out of the room.
I have no time for greens, but I decry and despair over the reluctance of my own industry to invest in flue gas emissions control, and until recently, the head-in-the-sand refusal of our government to build more nuclear plants, overall the least poluting option.
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Theres about 200 years worth at present rate of consumption- thats not a problem at all. Clean coal (carbon capture) is overall a good idear though. We ARE heading for an ice age in the next 10.000 years so I'd like to have a swithch to turn up the heat somewhere when that happens...... provided of course we don't die of heat in the mean time.
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