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By Jo Nova
It’s like the West has forgotten how to build things…
The nuclear debate in Australia is 100 years behind the rest of Western Civilization. Like children, we banned nuclear power before we even built one. We could afford to strut in our anti-nuke super-cape because we were swimming in 300 years worth of coal. (Now we want to ban that too.)
Somehow, despite the burden of all that coal, the idea of nuclear has grown legs, but the rest of the world must be laughing at us. The US built the first reactor way back in 1957, and 50 years ago the French built 56 reactors in just 15 years and most of the reactors were built in 6-8 years.
But our experts in the CSIRO think it will take us 14 years to even build a small one.
Even if the nuclear ban was lifted tomorrow and a decision immediately taken to commission a nuclear reactor, CSIRO estimates the first SMR would not be in full operation before 2038, ruling it out of “any major role” in reaching net zero emissions by 2050.
Today we have computer aided design and supercomputers with AI, but […]
By Jo Nova
In a radical move, the French government has quietly dropped their renewables targets from their draft energy bill, risking being seen as unfashionable losers in billionaire ski clubs. The nation that, forty years ago, built 56 nuclear reactors in 15 years has decided they just need to build another 6 to 14 new nuclear plants to reach “Net Zero” by 2050. This puts them in danger of being one of the only nations on Earth that might reach their target.
This, of course, is terrible for the renewables industry as it risks exposing the wanton frivolity and utterly superfluous nature of the wind and solar subsidy farms. If France can do this without the bird chopping, the slave labor and the lithium bombs, so can nearly everywhere else.
It’s a big change from 2014 when France aimed to reduce nuclear power to just 50% by 2025.
As NetZeroWatch says in their email newsletter, this is a win:
France drops renewables targets, prioritises nuclear in new energy bill
The proposed text, which is slated to go before the cabinet early next month and then be submitted to lawmakers, reaffirms France’s commitment to nuclear power to […]
Fifty years of the French Nuclear Industry
By Jo Nova
The dismal, destitution of our national energy debate
You would think our former Chief Scientist would know how to do basic research before commenting in the national news?
Alan Finkel says Australia probably couldn’t build one nuclear plant in less than twenty years, because the UAE took fifteen years. But fifty years ago the French built 56 nuclear plants in just 15 years. Isn’t that relevant and shouldn’t we at least mention that? At the time, the population of France was 51 million — twice what Australia is today. So pro rata, Australia could be aiming for 26 reactors.
If we ask nicely, perhaps we could borrow the old 1973 plans? The Messmer plan was launched in response to the oil crisis and the French started construction on three plants in the same year. The slogan they used was “In France, we do not have oil, but we have ideas.”
In Australia, our slogan it seems, is we don’t have oil, but we buy solar panels from China.
In a similar vein, two weeks ago Sweden announced it would be building 10 new nuclear reactors by 2045. With […]
By Jo Nova
The EU is fracturing over energy, and not a day too soon…
Signs of hope. Just as Germany recently pulled the pin on the EU’s Electric Vehicle mandate, France is now threatening to scupper the EU’s new Renewable Energy Directive unless they include a role for nuclear power. It was supposed to be signed off on Wednesday. Despite nuclear being the only reliable baseload source of “Net Zero” energy, France has had to fight for its inclusion at every step.
France is gathering 16 European nations into a Nuclear Alliance
World Nuclear News:
France’s Minister for Energy Transition, Agnès Pannier-Runacher, brought together her counterparts from member countries of the Nuclear Alliance on 16 May at the Ministry for Energy Transition. A total of 16 countries were represented. In addition to the host country, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Estonia, Finland, Hungary, the Netherlands, Poland, the Czech Republic, Romania, Slovenia, Slovakia and Sweden, plus Italy with observer status, were represented. The UK was present as a guest country.
“Nuclear power may provide up to 150 GW of electricity capacity by 2050 to the European Union (vs roughly 100 GW today),” the […]
By Jo Nova
The government of Italy is planning to build new nuclear power plants. And if it happens, it marks an astonishing turnaround.
This was the Garigliano Nuclear Power plant in Italy in 1970. They already had the solution to it all, energy wars, Vladimir Putin, and fantasy “climate control” fifty years ago.
How much have we lost? Photo: Demaag
But Italy abandoned nuclear energy thirty years ago. It’s the only major European country to have stopped using nuclear power. (Though Germany is trying to).
Italy had four nuclear plants in the early 1980s but after the Chernobyl accident, they held a referendum on nuclear power, and the voters didn’t want it anymore, so they closed the last two reactors by 1990, (back in the days when voting made a difference). Furthermore, Italy held another referendum in 2011, and 94% of the voters rejected it again, which shows how desperate the situation must be now if an opinion poll like that has shifted so far in 11 years?
The thing is, Italy only makes 25% of its energy itself, and so it is suddenly very attuned to “geopolitical risk”.
Pierre Goselin at NoTricksZone found a news piece […]
By Jo Nova
Fusion reactors will one day be the ultimate in “free energy”, but judging by the latest news of holy grail moments, it won’t be soon. The bonanza of energy that everyone wants was never going to come by catching photons from the sun with a million square kilometer PV net, but from recreating the source of those photons here on Earth. It’s the energy released if we can smack two atoms together and make them fuse which requires extreme temperatures and pressures (a bit like the sun) and do it efficiently, reliably, and millions of times a day.
In the latest nuclear news round, the mini sun experiment at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory California gave back slightly more energy than was directly put in, which seems very exciting, but systemic total costs and energy used to “make this moment” happen are in a Supernova category all by themselves.
UPDATE: Just after publishing this blog post, news came out of a newer experiment just ten days ago:
The US’s National Ignition Facility (NIF) has announced it successfully used a 192-beam laser to turn a tiny amount of hydrogen into enough energy to […]
By Jo Nova
The core baseload of the European grid is in trouble, and there is no back up. If the rest of Europe had enough coal or nuclear power, this wouldn’t be so bad, but they were all too worried about heatwaves in 2100 they forgot…
Half the French Nuclear Fleet will not be back in time for winter and there is no other nation that fill the gap. | Photo by Spiritrespect.
This is bad news for Europe. Half of France’s nuclear power fleet were already out of action and EDF was hoping to bring “all of them” back online for winter. But they’ve just announced that at least four plants they planned to restart will suffer a major delay. France’s electricity prices have hit €1,000 per MWh for January delivery. (Which is a blockbuster $1,500 AUD).
France’s large nuclear fleet is normally a major exporter of electricity, referred to as the “backbone” of the whole European grid. Blackouts are not only being forecast in France, but there is growing recognition that they are now more likely in the UK too. Where else will this spread?
To make matters worse, a week ago, a pipe ruptured […]
Sobering thought for the day: Uganda may get a nuclear power plant before Australia gets one nuclear submarine:
Uganda is set to build East Africa’s first nuclear power plant after acquiring land for the project, according to Bloomberg. The Minister of State for Energy Okasai Sidronius Opolot announced the plans in a statement, but did not reveal where the site will be located.
President Yoweri Kaguta Museveni has said that Uganda and Africa are only interested in nuclear power for energy supplies like electricity, and not for nuclear weapons. “For us, we want that power for electricity, for agriculture and not for nuclear weapons,” he said. President Museveni was speaking at a meeting this week, with the delegation of International Atomic Energy Agency at State House Entebbe.
Would the world be a safer place if Uganda had a new high tech coal plant instead?
The West could make that happen.
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has approved Uganda’s plan to build East Africa’s first nuclear power station.
He added that land had been acquired to build a 2GW facility, although he did not say where. The project would be part of Uganda’s […]
The election horse that mysteriously got away
With virtually no public campaign at all, out of the starting gates, 53% of Australians thought nuclear power was good idea. Only 23% were against it. This was a survey done in April. Scott Morrison could have played the brave man-of-action card — (solving the climate wars with a 50 year old tried and true technology!). It would have been an easy sell once Australians found out there were 440 nuclear power plants in the world, and that even Armenia has one. And so does Belarus. Mexico has two, Hungary has four, and the Czech Republic has six. They’re everywhere.
Prime Minister Morrison may have even had these survey results in the lead up to the election? So why didn’t he play that card? Was it really fear of “the anti nuclear” green hippies, or something else…?
The conservative government missed the chance to sell a big vision, and nobble “Climate” witchcraft
Most Australians want nuclear power to reduce emissions from coal-fired plants – but the Greens will never let it happen
Daily Mail
Most Australians want a nuclear power industry to reduce emissions by […]
Once, when the West could build things, problems got solved
Back in 2007 at least a few people still remembered that golden era. Here’s Dr Ziggy Switkowski, who at the time was head of the Prime Minister’s nuclear task force:
The French in 15 years went from zero reactors to 59 reactors and 80% of their electricity is nuclear. — ABC
Now we don’t even dream of success. If we had started in 2007, Australia could have had ten plants finished already.
Back in the 1970s and 80’s eh? Wow look at that take off…
The first nuclear plant in France was built by the EDF in 1962. Then the 1972 oil crisis put a rocket under the industry. So Prime Minister Pierre Messmer came up with a plan to build an unbelievable 170 nuclear plants by 2000.
Theanphibian https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Electricity_in_France.svg
By the mid 1980s it was clear that would not happen, but not for the reasons you might think. The problem was not that they weren’t building plants fast enough, but that they were building them too fast. Demand wasn’t rising fast enough to keep up. The plants are most efficient running at 80-90% but by […]
Strategically, this seems like it matters.
The French nuclear power plants are the backbone of the EU grid, but this winter, just when Europe is trying to not-buy-Russian-Gas, the French might need to import power instead of export it.
France runs off 70% nuclear power — it’s highest proportion in the world, and the second largest fleet — after the USA. For some reason, known only to international bankers or Renewable Gods, Early in Macron’s reign, he decided to reduce the carbon-free reliable nukes to just 50% by 2035 and fill the gap with short-lived, unreliable generators that cost a lot, need storage, backup, rare metals from China and slave labor from the Congo. Perhaps he was afraid (or whoever it was that helped him get elected) that France would show up all the schmuck-countries going to renewables?
But then the gas crisis started in Europe last October, and like clockwork, in November President Macron muttered the words “energy independence” and belatedly announced that it wasn’t such a bad idea to build some new nuclear plants. As things got more serious, in late February the French nuclear safety authority decided to extend the life of the 32 oldest reactors for […]
Nuclear’s suddenly the answer to “Net Zero” — Japan wants to triple its nuclear power by 2030
It’s the third largest economy in the world, and a large but quiet vacuum of global fossil fuels. Right now it’s the second largest importer of gas in the world after China, and the third largest importer of coal (not that Extinction Rebellion seems to care).
Before the Fukushima disaster in 2011, nuclear power generation produced as much as 30% of Japan’s energy mix, but that’s now shrunk to just 6%. Japan has only six operating nuclear reactors left with a total capacity of six gigawatts, down from 54 before the Fukushima incident. Just a few days ago polls showed that that the fear and negativity of nuclear power in Japan has dramatically shifted in the last few months. One little war can change everything. Russia has suddenly given everyone permission to get serious about nuclear power.
Now the Japanese government wants to grow back from 6% to 20% nuclear in just 8 years.
Japan Sees Nuclear Energy As A Vital Piece Of Its Net-Zero Plan
OilPrice.com
Prior to the Fukushima disaster, nuclear power generation accounted for almost 30% […]
With an energy crisis hitting the Northern Hemisphere and China streaking ahead, an atomic renaissance is brewing.
The UK is putting more into new nuclear power. France has flipped from shrinking nukes to growing them. The Netherlands had changed its tune. The EU has quietly drafted rules allowing nuclear power to count as “green”.
There are 443 Nuclear Power plants in the world. Another 54 plants are under construction, and more than a third of those are in China. Right now China has about half the capacity of the USA, but within five or ten years China will be the largest nuclear power in the world.
The Green energy experiment is failing to produce cheap reliable energy.
Australia has one third of the world’s known uranium, but has no nuclear power. Why don’t the Coalition do something a tiny bit brave and do what 32 other countries already do.
WANO Member World Map
There is no reason under the sun that the nation with the world’s uranium and the most stable tectonic plates on Earth shouldn’t go nuclear. We’re getting the subs, why not the power?
Nuclear Ban Has To Go
Adam Creighton, The Australian
Amazing what countries too poor to commit to Net Zero get up to
China’s EAST Tokamak Reactor in 2015
China is the fastest growing nuclear power in the world, poised to have the largest fission fleet by 2030. But it has just scored a bit of a leap forward in nuclear fusion:
China’s Artificial Sun Breaks Record by Hitting 120 Million F in Race for Nuclear Fusion
Robert Lea, Newsweek
The team at China’s “artificial sun” fusion facility—the Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (EAST)—have said that on December 30, 2021, they were able to generate 120 million degrees Fahrenheit plasma (around 70 million degrees Celsius) and hold it for 1,056 seconds.
Tokamaks, like the donut-shaped EAST reactor, are often referred to as “artificial suns” as they are devices that replicate the fusion processes that occur within stars.
In the Sun, two hydrogen atoms are bashed together to make one helium atom, plus lots of energy. In stars the temperature only needs to be 60 million F (or 33 million degrees C) for that to be self sustaining, because the pressure is so much higher at the centre of the Sun. Here on Earth, […]
The Greens will not be happy. The push for pointless decarbonization inexorably leads to nuclear power. The UK is not only about to sign deals for 16 small nuclear reactors, they are shortlisting sites for a fusion plant. It’s another unintended consequence the Greens did not see coming.
UK to put nuclear power at heart of net zero emissions strategy
Jim Pickard and Natalie Thomas, Financial Times
U.K. ministers will put nuclear power at the heart of Britain’s strategy to reach net zero carbon emissions by 2050 in government documents expected as early as next week, the Financial Times reported.
Business Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng is to unveil an overarching “Net Zero Strategy” paper as soon as Monday, along with a “Heat and Building Strategy” and a Treasury assessment of the cost of reaching the 2050 goal, the report said.
The main strategy will have a heavy focus on Britain’s nuclear power program. Prime Minister Boris Johnson was expected to give the go-ahead to the documents on Friday, according to the report.
The catch, consumers will have to pay a levy years before they get the electricity:
The […]
The Gösgen Nuclear Power Plant by Pareixk Federi
The global energy crisis is squeezing the green religion to its logical endpoint. As long as we pretend “carbon” is pollution, the only way out of the maze for badgered politicians is nuclear power. The renewables industry may have thought that beating us over the head with climate propaganda was going to make renewables dominant and profitable, but it may just push everyone into nukes instead.
With the gas price crisis, wind drought, and coal shortage, suddenly everyone is talking about nuclear power:
Nations Go Nuclear As Prices Spike & Renewables Fail
Michael Shellenberger
National leaders around the world are announcing big plans to return to nuclear energy now that the cost of natural gas, coal, and petroleum are spiking, and weather-dependent renewables are failing to deliver.
France was reducing nukes from 70% to 50% of its total power generation fleet, but not any more:
“The number one objective is to have innovative small-scale nuclear reactors in France by 2030 along with better waste management,” said French President Emmanuel Macron.
“But the mood has now changed,” the paper writes today. “Macron […]
The irony — the renewables propaganda was so overdone that the EU and UK got caught with their pants down without enough stable fossil fuel powered electricity. European investors were so afraid gas and coal would be stranded assets that they stopped building reliable power generators. Russia supported the “anti-frack” movement in the West in order to sabotage competition, and now wants to squeeze a hot deal on its Big New Pipeline, so it has reduced the gas supply, so gas prices are headed for record highs and businesses are collapsing, food shortages are predicted. In the short run coal is being reinstated — Drax is thinking of keeping coal plants running. But the only long term path out of the Green-Energy-Quicksand without breaking the sacred “anti-carbon-dioxide” jinx is with nuclear power.
So thus, the greedy power grab and profiteering by the renewables industry, the globalists, the Chinese, the Russians and the Greens may force out cheap coal in the long run, but accelerate the dawn of a new era of nuclear power.
Suddenly government love nuclear
Here come the Small Modular Reactors:
Dawning of Britain’s ‘new nuclear age’: Gas crisis prompts ministers to ‘change focus’ with Kwasi Kwarteng poised […]
Next thing you know we might get *one* nuclear power plant?
HMS Ambush
Yesterday the odds of that were “Buckleys”. Wow. Foreign readers might not appreciate how seismic this is. There are 450 nuclear power plants in the world and Australia has none of them (just one little medical research reactor). So even getting a small nuclear plant in an underwater boat is a pretty big deal.
Australia to get nuclear-powered submarines, will scrap $90b program to build French-designed subs
ABC
In 2016, the Turnbull government announced French company Naval Group (then known as DCNS) had been selected for this country’s largest-ever defence contract, to design and build “regionally superior” conventional submarines.
A well-placed military source has told the ABC the Defence Department’s general manager of submarines, Greg Sammut, has called an urgent “clear lower decks” meeting for tomorrow morning to discuss the dramatic development.
Another senior official said “top secret” briefings have been arranged at the Defence Department on Thursday.
We’re still fixing the legacy of Malcom Turnbull’s mistakes.
Australia Goes Nuclear
Breitbart
[…]
The global nuclear industry has put in fifteen applications to display exhibits at the up-and-coming UN Climate COP26 event in Glasgow. But all fifteen have been rejected in preference for exhibits from industries that appear to solve climate problems but have little effect on actual emissions.
Nuclear power poses an existential threat to the Climate Porn and Fear Industry, potentially causing mass job losses by providing thousands of years of reliable electricity as well as grid scale spinning inertia, FCAS, and reserve capacity too.
President Xi could not be contacted, but has in the past encouraged the rest of the world to keep trying to cut emissions in the most expensive way possible.
…
Imagine what the world would look like if the UNFCCC wanted to solve the climate crisis? (And if there was one?)
hat tip GWPF
UK Govt under fire as nuclear industry claim they have been banned from COP26
The Sunday Telegraph
Up to 15 applications from nuclear-related bodies are understood to have been rejected by Mr Sharma’s COP26 Unit in the Cabinet Office.
They included an application involving the World Nuclear Association, which represents the global nuclear […]
The CCP say that China has to stay with coal, but The West ought pay attention more to the rapid growth of nuclear power. Last September I noted that China was poised to be the largest global nuclear power by 2030, overtaking the USA in the next nine years. In the last twenty years, China has increased its fleet of nuclear power reactors from three to 49, with 17 more plants under construction. That means it will soon surpass France which has 57 reactors. At the rate the USA is closing plants, China may hit the No 1 spot faster than expected.
China has also opened an experimental fusion reactor called the Artificial Sun, while the ITER international consortium keeps delaying the opening of the French fusion experimental reactor.
Rise of Nuclear Power in China.
It is sobering to know that despite the rapid growth of nuclear, it is still only 5% of the total energy supply in China.*
Electricity generation in 2019 increased by 5% compared with the previous year, to 7.3 PWh, according to figures published by the China Electricity Council. That from fossil fuels was 5045 TWh (69%), from hydro 1302 TWh (18%), […]
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