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France and Italy: is nuclear power the way for energy independence?
Posted by Ugo Bardi on March 25, 2008 - 9:58am in The Oil Drum: Europe
Topic: Alternative energy
Tags: nuclear, nuclear energy [list all tags]
This is a guest post by Eugenio Saraceno, member of ASPO-Italy and consultant for energy sources management.
France's nuclear power plants produce almost 80% of the nation's electricity. In contrast, nearby Italy has no nuclear plant in operation.
One of the main arguments of the present debate on energy is whether a nuclear energy program should be restarted or not. We can use the cases of Italy and France as a way for evaluating whether it is a good idea for a non nuclear country to get nuclear plants.
Italy is probably the only country in the world that has dismantled by law the existing nuclear plants. It was the result of a referendum against nuclear power that was held twenty years ago and that led to the stopping of all nuclear energy activities in the country. The only nuclear plant that was under construction at the time, Montalto di Castro on the Tyrrenian coast, was converted to natural gas. In the following years, the Italian government shut down the remaining nuclear plants even though it this was not required by the results of the referendum, probably due to economic and security considerations.
So, nuclear power was completely abandoned in Italy in the 1980s and the country focused on hydrocarbons for the generation of electricity. Years of low oil prices helped this trend but, after 2000, with rising oil prices the debate on nuclear power restarted. Nuclear supporters say now that stopping the Italian nuclear program was a mistake and that new nuclear plants will have to be built because of the very low price per kWh produced. The debate is ongoing in the Italian TV and in the press and, recently, the leading candidate for the right wing party for the coming April elections, Mr. Berlusconi, has stated that, if elected, his government will restart the Italian nuclear program.
In contrast to the case of Italy, France is engaged in the most ambitious nuclear program in the whole world, achieving the maximum ratio of nuclear energy to total electric power production, near 80%. France has 63 GWe of installed nuclear power, 58 reactors over 19 sites.
For a comparison, first of all let's see some data about the energy consumption in both countries.
All data in the table are for the year 2005. Look at the yellow boxes for a quick assessment of the relevant differences and similarities between the two systems. Coal consumption is nearly the same for France and Italy, while oil consumption is larger for France, especially for the transport and household sectors. However, natural gas consumption is lower in France by nearly 30 Mtep. Italians have to burn about 26 Mtep of natural gas in order to generate electric power. This is the relevant advantage of nuclear power: without nuclear, the French would have needed 75 Mtep extra of natural gas.
However, it is also clear that nuclear energy cannot satisfy all energy needs of a country. So, even though France has nuclear power, the country still has to import coal and hydrocarbons (natural gas and oil derived fuels) whose prices are not influenced by the presence of atomic power. So in 2005 the energy imports bill for France and Italy was nearly the same, 37,5 G€ for France and 38,5 for Italy.
We can also compare energy prices in France and Italy. Here are the relevant data.
Note how oil products have nearly the same price in both countries. Natural gas prices for both France and Italy are very similar and lower than the EU-15 mean. The real advantage for France is the low cost of electricity, lower than the EU-15 average and much lower than in Italy. Again, we see that nuclear energy has an effect on the prices of electricity, but not on other energy sectors.
France is a large net exporter of electric power while Italy is the largest net importer in Europe, mostly from France, directly or via Switzerland. France produces electrical power mainly by nuclear energy and hydropower. Italy mainly burns gas in combined cycles or oil and coal in steam turbine plants. Italy has also a good quota of hydropower and the best geothermal production in Europe. The electricity use table shows consumption in various sectors. This time the yellow boxes are all for France. First, look at the distribution losses and plant services consumption (electricity generation sector). These data describe the efficiency of electricity generation and distribution services processes; this ratio is 11,2% for France and 9,5% for Italy. The scarce attention for efficiency in France is probably due to the abundant and cheap electricity available. Considering final uses, the interesting point is the huge French household and service consumption sectors, nearly twice as large as in Italy.
Surely electricity is cheap in France, but what is the real cost of the nuclear kWh? As a first approximation let's consider the whole French production as if it was all nuclear. Then consider that electricity consumption of France is partitioned into two nearly equal parts, industrial (at an average price of 54,1 €/MWh) and domestic (at an average price of 92,1 €/MWh), so the average income for producers is 73 €/MWh. This cost is the maximum possible cost for nuclear energy; otherwise operators couldn't make a profit. The value fits well with IEA World Energy Outlook 2005 that estimates costs between 60-70 €/MWh for nuclear electricity. This value is very far from values of 20-30 €/MWh reported from some optimistic sources. These values could be justified only by means of unrealistic assumptions, such as plant lifespan over 35 years, medium plant availability over 7500 hours per year, interest rate under 5%, building time time less than 5 years, building cost less than 2000 €/kW and others.
It appears that electricity prices in France remain low thanks to the huge past investments in nuclear power. French Families and small firms pay for electricity very low rates, nearly half than what Italians have to pay. On the other hand, they enjoy so much these good rates that household and services consumption of electric power is double than in Italy. So, in the end, French and Italian people spend the same in terms of their electricity bill. Evidently, Jevons's paradox is valid also for nuclear power: if you have something cheap, you tend to waste it.
As a last relevant point, let us consider the problem of nuclear fuel availability in the coming years. See below some data in the figure
Produceable uranium at various extraction costs (reasonably assured resources and inferred resource)
EDF (Electricité de France), the Franch nuclear utility, estimates that there exist economically exploitable uranium reserves for 60 years of present consumption (67 kT/year). This fits well with the on uranium by energy watch group (EWG). And then? And what if many countries step up their nuclear energy production? A research effort is ongoing on new nuclear technologies such as fast neutron reactors and more efficent uranium mining methods, even from seawater. But concrete results on these issues seem to be very far, Commercial fast neutron reactors are expected to be on the market in 2040; perhaps too late to have an effect on the scarcity of mineral uranium. Uranium from seawater was experimentally obtained in small quantities, of the order of kilograms. We do not see a program for commercial exploitation of the industrial quantities that would be needed, of the order of ktons. Moving to mineral uranium very low concentrations (<0,1%) is possible, but there is a minimum value of the concentration that can be exploited because the energy required for mining it would exceed electric energy that could be obtained from it. The EWG reports that this limit is 0,01%, others report lower values but it is clear that today we have a strong uncertainty on the availability of mineral uranium and, as a consequence, on the role of nuclear energy in the future. This could be the real reasons for the modest growth of the nuclear sector in the last few years.
In the end, we see that complete independence in energy production with nuclear power was not reached by France, nor Italy could hope to reach it by revamping its old nuclear program at this point. To reach the French level of nuclear energy production, Italy would have to build almost 20 GWe of nuclear power, spend over 40 G€ and this would take some 10-20 years. Doing so, Italy couldn't hope to become independent from hydrocarbon imports since we see that France couldn't do that, either, despite all her nuclear reactors.
Energy independence for countries that have (or plan to build) nuclear energy could be obtained increasing the cost of electricity costs in order to avoid wasting power and using the extra incomes for financing energy efficiency and substituting hydrocarbons using plug-in hybrid or all electric veichles in urban areas and heat pumps for household and services. Obviously, this has not been done in France: in no country of the world politicians become popular by raising prices of utilities. So, France has not attained energy independence, despite the huge effort made on nuclear power. Whether the return to nuclear energy planned by Italy and other countries can do that, is all to be seen.
References
Several resources have been utilized for the preparation of this paper. Statistics on the energy use in France and Italy have been derived from the Eurostat site
http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/portal/page?_pageid=0,1136239,0_4557144...
Specific data about italy have been obtained from
www.terna.it
www.mercatoelettrico.org/GmeWebInglese/Default.aspx
www.snamretegas.it (Italian gas utility)
www.autorita.energia.it
Specific data about France came from
www.rte-france.com
www.edf.com
www.gazdefrance.com
www.areva.com (French nuclear utility)
www.prix-carburants.gouv.fr/index.php?module=dbgestion&action=search
Data about uranium production and costs have been obtained from
www.world-nuclear.org/info/uprod.html World uranium production
www.uxc.com/review/uxc_Prices.aspx Uranium prices
The study by the energy watch group cited in the text can be found at
www.energywatchgroup.org/fileadmin/global/pdf/EWG_Uraniumreport_12-2006....
A general discussion on the cost of nuclear energy (in italian) can be found at http://www.aspoitalia.net/images/stories/coiante/coiantecostonucleare.pd... http://www.aspoitalia.net/images/stories/coiante/coiantenucleare2.pdf
How much of its uranium does France import? I'm just interested to know how much energy independence France actually has.
75% from Niger I hear. Just like Saddam was supposed to. Don't know the amounts.
As a former French colony, I suppose France thinks Niger is a fairly safe bet but it's hardly energy independence. I keep reading this (energy independence) about France's nuclear project but it just doesn't ring true if they have to import most or all of their fuel source. I suppose they have their fingers crossed that unrestricted global trade will go on for some time.
Iraq, Egypt and Nigeria used to be British colonies, Venezuela a Spanish colony, Libya Italian, and... yet...
If I'm building a reactor that I expect to last 30-50 years, I want to make sure I've got fuel for it for that long. Or at least half that long.
Occasional "visits' by the French Foreign Legion keep Chad, Niger, etc. more French than most former colonies.
In addition, one can store a LOT of urabium in a small volume (and I suspect that France has several years worth stored) and France is reprocessing (successfully) limited amounts of spent fuel, another source of reactor fuel.
Alan
According to this paper, Canada is the number one source, Niger second.
http://www.uic.com.au/nip28.htm
The author and editor of the original article have not addressed the point that their comparison of France and Italy ignores a 21% variance.
France's GDP is 21% larger than Italy.
So using similar amounts of coal or other energy is ignoring that France has 21% more GDP to support.
The overall level of nuclear as part of overall energy is represented by that 21% of GDP.
Sounds like Italy should import nuclear electricity from France since conservation would give the French some to spare. We don't know which is going to go up in price the most in the next 20 years, fossil fuel or nuclear.
Since I didn't catch the relative population numbers I'd like to see projected average household costs in euros under a range of assumptions. These could include extrapolated per capita energy usage, conservation/electric transportation modified usage and with different fuel price scenarios.
Italy does import electricity from France.
It's pretty funny to be boasting of being nuclear free when you import the electricity from nuclear reactors in the next country.
Yes, it is true that "80%" of electricity isn't 80% of energy. Even assuming a lithium-ion vehicle fleet, electrified railway system, and electric heaters & factories, they would need to at least double the number of plants. Especially if France remains the largest electricity exporter in Europe.
If Italy tries to catch up, hopefully they'll build several dozen at a time, and they'll be fast reactors. The Super Phenix was producing power at less than twice that of thermal neutron reactors, and that cost is expected to drop with Gen-IV Fast Reactors:
pg. 14:
http://www.ne.doe.gov/pdfFiles/genIvFastReactorRptToCongressDec2006.pdf
France already has enough depleted uranium lying around to power those for thousands of years.
It will be interesting to see how things play out, but either way nuclear is much more promising than wind. The biggest issue, it would appear, is just building the plants fast enough.
I'm not at all sure why you would hope for this. All experience with fast reactors to date show a more expensive fuel cycle, inherently less safety, larger capital costs and larger maintenance costs. Not to mention they're entirely unnecissary given the vast amount of uranium availaible.
If we pursue breeder reactors, liquid fluoride thermal reactors with the thorium fuel cycle offer a much more plausible fuel cycle. If we absolutely need hard spectra reactors, liquid chloride reactors are far more reasonable.
I'm not talking about fast breeders. Rather, fast-burners:
http://www.nationalcenter.org/NPA378.html
http://www.ans.org/pi/ps/docs/ps74.pdf
All fast neutron reactors suffer from the same problems, weather they're burning light water reactor fuel or breeding their own.
Theres no future in any liquid metal fast neutron reactor. Any of the problems they adress, fluid fuel reactors do much better.
If they are such brilliant technical solutions, then why is nobody building them? Can you give an example of an experimental reactor based on this approach?
They've been prototyped at ORNL in the molten salt breeder reactor experiment. They haven't been pursued basically for reasons of political inertia. Liquid metal fast neutron breeders were first to be developed and swallowed the lions share of the funding. In the halcyon days of the cold war, the dual use nature of LMFBRs for rapid plutonium production may have been attractive as well.
As for why no ones building them today, basically no one needs breeder reactors now. If these reactors are to succeed they need to be more than simply better at fuel utilization and waste production. But capturing the several billion in capital for developing a new reactor along with navigating the minefield of licensing an entirely new design isn't something I see private capital pursuing, at least not in the united states.
http://thoriumenergy.blogspot.com/
I don't think we need a new-fangled molten metal breeder reactor to begin with.
Jimmy Carter commissioned the Shippingport light water breeder reactor in 1977(250 MW), which breeds U-233 out of thorium and a thorium/plutonium MOX starter fuel and it ran until zombie Reagan shut it down in 1982.
Countries like Norway, the US, India and Australia have lots of thorium and you get 50 times the energy per pound in a breeder reactor.
http://www.thoriumpower.com/files/Thorium_Fuel_for_Nuclear_Energy_by_Kaz...
Carter, probably our first Peak Oil president started half a dozen
technologically sucessful mitigation efforts in his few years in office( such as Great Plains Gasification).
Is it technologically possible to maintain our lifestyle with breeder reactors?
It may be(for a couple hundred years).
3% of ALL US energy comes from nukes(3 quads), so we would have to increase the amount of generation 12 times(~36 quads), assuming that 2/3 of the base energy of fossil fuels is lost and we'd covert every thing(electric cars, trains, heaters, etc.) to electricity.
Is it desirable?
Breeder reactors are extremely radioactive as is their waste. Accidents
could contaminate large areas.
They would make excellent terrorist targets and paranoid governments would make our lives (more)miserable.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/cooking_in_the_danger_zone/6638351...
If we chose nukes over renewables we continue on our current wasteful track, but with renewables we will move into a lower energy future, better in balance with nature.
You're severely mistaken in your points. The U.S. gets 8% of its overall energy from nuclear, 20% for electricity. Plants are not vulnerable to terrorist attacks due to their robust containment dome. The fuel supply is 'virtually limitless' using low-grade ores from granite or ocean water in fast neutron reactors. It is more desirable to have hot waste, since it decays quickly. The half-life of strontium-90 is only 28.8 years. The whole point is that you're destroying transuranic actinides, which are the long-lived wastes of LWRs.
If you would like to learn more about nuclear power, I highly recommend the new Cravens book, which was written using expertise from Rip Anderson, one of the most highly regarded nuclear experts in the world.
http://cravenspowertosavetheworld.com/
Severely?
You're correct that it provides 8% of US energy--I didn't count all the energy wasted by nuke-steam generation. The point I was making is that society would save energy by changing to electricity;
40 exajoules of petroleum replaced by 8 XJ of electricity plus 23 XJ of natural gas replaced by 18.4 XJ of electricity(less with heat pumps) plus 22 XJ of coal replaced by 7.3 XJ of electricity plus 2.6 XJ of electricity from nuclear, totaling 36.3XJ of electricity. So we would increase from 2.6 XJ electricity to 36.3 XJ or 14 times. So increasing nukes by 14 times is not that much.
You seem to think that there is plenty of uranium to supply all society's needs using ground up granite or seawater, a few parts per billion or less but that's idiotic based on simple EROEI. If you have to mine 100 times more rock to get the same amount of uranium out of it you end up with an EROEI of well under 1, in other words all the energy would be used up in giant mining and processing operations.
The Energy Watch Group says the world has about 70 years of uranium based on current use rates.
http://www.energywatchgroup.org/fileadmin/global/pdf/EWG_Press_Uranium_2...
Then you say this...
This a very good reason to go with thorium reactors, which is why I posted what I did.
There is (almost) no transuranic actinides with thorium breeder reactors.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_fuel_cycle#Actinides_in_a_thorium_m...
Craven is a green-to-nuke convert like James Lovelock which means that they are likely to overlook the dangers of nuclear power just as you do.
I hope this helps educate you(deuterium) on the advantages of thorium breeder reactors over uranium type reactors.
I think it is cleaner than the current U-235 units and as I mentioned Europe has large reserves of thorium.
As old technology(1977), it probably isn't sufficiently cool for a nuke lover such as yourself but thanks to JC, it has shown to be practical in a light water reactor. Everyone knows liquid metal reactors like Monju too dangerous.
Yet another advantage for thorium is that it burns hotter and so the nuke plant efficiency could be increased a bit.
Of course you forgot to that all thorium is stable Th-232 and therefore
can be converted into fissile U-233 in the reactor where as less than 1% of uranium is fissile U-235, so most of the fuel Th-232 can burnt.
Majorian,
37% of energy consumption in the U.S. is in the form of electricity. 20% of U.S. energy is electric. Do the math. Obviously nothing is 100% efficient, even for coal plants heat is lost. But for electric energy consumption, 20% is from nuclear.
As for your insistence that we will run out of uranium, you need to distinguish between U-235 and U-238. U-238 is 99.3% of uranium, which is important when using low-grade ores. The fissioning of a uranium atom unleashes 210 million electron volts-- 50 million times as much as a carbon atom. So yes, you can yield net energy.
http://www.ans.org/pi/ps/docs/ps74.pdf
My point is that we don't measure nukes in pounds of uranium but in electrical output. Yes, I ignored thermal outputs of nuke reactors for that reason.
As far as U238, I'm glad you understand that uranium from seawater or granite rocks could NEVER be supported by a once-thru, non-breeder program. In fact there is NO FUTURE for a nuke program based on a once-thru non-breeder process given the fact we have 70 years of virgin U-235 left. Once you buy into nukes, you have to buy into breeders and they are an order of magnitude more dangerous that the current nuke technology. Does that make you pause?
There's several misunderstandings here. The 70 years of LWR fuel we have left are based at $130/kg from current mines based on IAEA estimates, not probable resources that are exploitable at say $1000/kg. Uranium prices contribute to less than 1% of the total cost of nuclear power, and the industry can bear the cost of much higher uranium costs. The energy costs of mining as shown from the Rossing mine in Namibia are tiny compared to the output of the produced uranium from even very low grade ores. Future reactor regimes will have to compete on more than just fuel efficiency.
Second, the notion that breeder reactors are an order of magnitude more dangerous is just misinformed. Fast neutron reactors have inherent control problems that require more passive safety because of their high prompt neutron ratio, but there are techniques that in aggrigate can make fast neutron reactors safer than modern LWR regimes. But really, breeder reactors don't require fast neutron reactors at all except to run entirely on transuranics. Thorium breeder regimes can run entirely in the thermal spectrum.
Sodium cooled fast breeders are dangerous as well as expensive. In contrast the LFTR is very safe - safer than LWRs - and potentially less expensive than LWRs.
There appears to be some confusion here. I agree with you that thorium is a promising energy source, and India is pursuing the liquid fluoride salt technology to utilize thorium-232. However, in the case of uranium-238, the decision has been made to use sodium, lead, and helium gas. Liquid fluoride salt is ONLY for thorium, not U-238. See for yourself:
http://www.ne.doe.gov/genIV/neGenIV7.html
Sure, but liquid fluorides aren't the only fluid fuel regime. There's problems with FLiBe with plutonium solubility above various concentrations, but I believe it can handle some Pu load without serious problems.
However liquid chloride reactors offer much better chances of utilizing a hard spectrum than liquid metal reactors.
ORNL ran U233, U235 and Pu239 in the MSRE at the same time.
Thanks. But I am not so sure that molten sodium or lead reactors are all that horrible.
One real problem with liquid metal cooled reactors is their reliance on solid fuel in a reprocessing regime, which entails something that is a necissarily costly fabrication process compared to mined uranium in LWRs or no fabrication at all in the case of fluid fuel reactors.
Lead cooled reactors (or rather lead-bismuth eutectic reactors) are sort of awful because these eutectics are very heavy and hard to pump, corrosive, and the bismuth is highly prone to neutron activation into whats essentially the most radiotoxic substance known, Po-210.
Sodium cooled reactors of course have sodium fires and associated extra capital costs. Theres also the problem that the core is completely opaque to imaging so its hard to see what state the core is in.
Finally theres the inherant safety problems of any critical fast neutron reactor: Delayed neutron component. The delayed neutron component of fast reactors is vanishingly small compared to thermal reactors, such that the reactivity swings are on the order of miliseconds rather than minutes, so scramming the reactor becomes sort of a lost cause in the event of a criticality excursion. I think this can be managed, but fast reactors are allways inherently less safe than thermal reactors.
I was a proponent of the IFR at one point. I've since changed my mind.
Take a closer look at my links. The Integral fast reactor, now Gen-IV, is just as much a burner as a breeder. These reactors offer proliferations resistance. They can consume LWR waste or weapons plutonium, or U-238.
I'm quite familiar with the IFR. Its still far less desirable than LWRs. You have to do offer a significant advantages above the LWR beyond fuel utilization and waste production given these are tiny components of the price of nuclear power production. IFR doesnt adress these issues.
Dezakin,
I agree with you that Sodium reactors have been more expensive than LWRs, and that we should pursue thorium. However, there are high hopes that most of the issues involving industrial sodium have/will be worked out with the Gen-IV program. One of the goals is to make Sodium reactors commercially competitive with LWRs, and several nations envisage them replacing LWRs over the coming decades. So clearly, we have a lot of options. Explore more for LWR fuel, get the cost down for Sodium, Lead, and Helium reactors, or pursue Thorium. All should be done, in my opinion.
This sort of begging the question is a bit ignorant on nuclear fuel supply issues, which have been covered ad nausium multiple times before. The nuclear fuel estimates are made from current mines at $130/kg per the IAEA estimates, and then many outside the industry postulate that the 60 years of supply will be ultimately exhausted at that point. This doesn't take into account that at twice the price there are nearly ten times the exploitable resource base, that nuclear power production is largely immune to uranium price swings (less than 1% of the price of nuclear power is related to uranium ore prices) and there hasn't been much exploration for uranium for the past 50 years simply because there's so much of it.
This really is a strawman argument. No ones arguing that nuclear power alone is capable of displacing fossil fuels simply because the value of fossil fuels more than just electricity production. If you have a magic energy source that requires distribution networks of electric transmission lines and centralized production but is otherwise free, you still would consume hydrocarbons because they are cheaper for the purpose of many fuels.
But obviously if fossil fuels decline, nuclear can meet the demands of industry. Where France is much better positioned than italy is in coping with declining natural gas and oil resources, which is what I thought this site was purported to discuss.
This sort of policy advocacy is venturing nearly into political ideology. Many belive markets can often allocate the resources best and such rationing programs will simply create black markets, inefficiency, corruption, and waste while depriving people of wealth. Perhaps politicians can simply spend the revenue saved on electricity on such programs directly from the coffers of the larger tax base, or perhaps these programs are entirely unnecissary and will find their own place with the gradual rise of hydrocarbon prices.
The type of energy independance the author seems to be refering to is impossible as long as people are rational. No one would pursue X resource independace simply because many resources are distributed unevenly throughout the world and its cheaper to trade for products than not to. This is the case with Frances uranium today as well as fossil fuels throughout the world.
This: This sort of policy advocacy is venturing nearly into political ideology.
Is followed immediately by this:
Many belive markets can often allocate the resources best and such rationing programs will simply create black markets, inefficiency, corruption, and waste while depriving people of wealth.
I would have separated the two with a sentence or so, and the reader might not have noticed.
They're supposed to notice. Its the other side of the ideological coin. The point is that such an argument isn't going to have a right answer while people have political opinions.
Show me one really, truly unregulated free market. Show me one market that isn't influenced by goverment policy in one way or another or that isn't hampered by geological or geopolitical factors. Show me one market that isn't being influenced by industry cartels.
Free markets are a fantasy. They don't exist. Zip. Nada.
Narcotics are pretty much a free market, and the international arms trade is just about free.
The type of energy independance the author seems to be refering to is impossible as long as people are rational.
This is simply an assertion, with no signs of rationale. Costa Rica, Iceland, and the US, for example, each have a high degree of energy independence with respect to their electricity supply.