One thing missing from Livermore’s graphic, and energy analyses in general, is the prime energy requirements for each end use. For instance, electricity generation by any means* requires the extraction and refining of a natural resource (fissionable material, coal, oil, gas), and the transportation to the generating plant. Presumably, those energy costs are hidden in the “Industrial” and “Transportation” boxes of Livermore’s graphic. Thus, it is missing the important feedback loop that connects “Energy Services” to all the boxes on the left-hand side. The requirements for this box are not independent of the means of energy generation, nor is the efficiency of prime energy conversion to useful output (i.e., the magnitude of Rejected Energy).
A proper accounting of the energy budget under a new regime requires consideration of these factors. If all electric generation were from nuclear fission, how would those prime energy costs compare and how would they be met? Would there be electric-powered uranium mining?
*renewables such as wind and hydro being the trivial exceptions, though solar definitely requires mining and most require batteries (which require mining and manufacturing).
I agree that closing that circle is important for any detailed analysis of energy production and consumption. I have seen plausible arguments that if you consider the entire materials, fabrication, maintenance, and eventual disposal costs over their entire lifespan, neither photovoltaic panels nor wind turbines are net energy producers. In the case of nuclear power, accounting for the long-term storage of nuclear waste is difficult, since how does one discount land use and maintenance costs centuries in the future?
On the mining and refining costs for nuclear fuel, I think the assumption by the authors that transportation energy would be scored as 4× the fossil fuel contribution on the assumption that all of it would be provided by synthetic fuels with electricity as the energy input provides a conservative estimate. Also, the million-to-one energy density advantage over chemical combustion fuels provides for a margin of error in assumptions.
Since I don’t believe we’re faced with an “immediate existential climate crisis”, I’d argue for exploration of new generation versions of these technologies, proceeding from research reactor to pilot plant to first commercial deployments, much as was envisioned for the Integral fast reactor, which began development in 1984 and was cancelled in 1994, three years before completion. I’m sure this decades-old design can be improved upon, but just restarting the effort would begin to collect information on how viable and scalable this path was as a primary power source.
Since we are on this topic – one of the rationales given for ignoring nuclear fission is that – Hey! There is no need for risky nuclear fission; safe nuclear fusion is just around the corner! (As if generating the temperature of the Sun on the face of the Earth were incontestably “safe”). In that regard, there is an interesting video by Sabine Hossenfelder: How close is nuclear fusion power? - YouTube
Ms. Hossenfelder’s concern is that the proponents of nuclear fusion are being disingenuous. I would describe it as lying by omission. The history of nuclear fusion has been one of decades of disappointments, but now the proponents of super-expensive ITER (International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor, being built in France) claim the device will produce 10 times as much energy as is put into it – which sounds great!
What Ms. Hossenfelder points out is that this factor of 10 applies only to a small part of the power generation process – energy used to create the plasma in the reactor compared to the heat generated by the created plasma. But much larger amounts of energy also have to be used to create the required very strong containment magnetic fields and run the reactor. Plus the heat generated in the plasma then has to be converted to something useful, probably electric power, with an efficiency of perhaps 50%. Put it all together, and ITER – if successful – may generate little more than half the input power required to run the plant. ITER will be an energy sink, not an energy source.
So let’s not wait for nuclear fusion. The broader question is why academia has become so corrupt? Was it worth sacrificing their technical integrity to access the honeypot of big budgets?
Very interesting post and comments, and clearly, fission is the logical choice. But, the arguments and policy surrounding this issue are typically not scientific or logical in nature. As with most other facets of our civilization’s technical progress, the Left has coopted the very institutions able to ferret out correct data and thus realistic and successful energy policy. The arguments will not be won by the very best analyses we have to offer, as other efforts have shown, notably the third-rail social “progress” in our culture. What will take the place of our irrefutable data, graphs, and pie-charts that show the correct answers? Maybe Bill Whittle or Daily Wire’s god-king Boreing need to create credible stories to elucidate sound choices. Realizing that I’m not adding any data-driven value with this post, maybe a separate thread about the convolution aspects of science vs. art is needed?
Well, I’ve been running a series here, “Fusion Friday”, presenting talks by ITER sub-project leaders about aspects of the machine, which explain the goals of the project and why it was designed that way.
ITER is an energy sink, but it was designed to be one from the outset. In fact, part of the installation is a large farm of coolers intended to dissipate the energy produced by fusion in the machine if and when it finally generates it. But the purpose of ITER is not to generate energy for the grid, but rather to demonstrate stable, steady-state, and long-term fusion energy production with all of the requirements of a power production reactor including removing the helium “ash” from the plasma as it is produced, introducing new deuterium and tritium fuel during the burn, breeding tritium in a “blanket” of lithium surrounding the plasma chamber from excess neutrons from the fusion reactions, efficiently converting the kinetic energy of the alpha particles and neutrons produced by fusion into heat, and extracting that heat from the reactor in a form from which electrical power could be generated.
Previous fusion experiments produced pulses of power (generally less than input power to heat and confine the plasma), but did not achieve ignition, steady state burn, or have any of the requirements to sustain the burn.
If ITER works, it will have demonstrated every component of a power production reactor, and it will then be a “simple matter of engineering” to scale up the design into a pilot plant to demonstrate net power production. The pilot plant will probably be much simpler than ITER, since ITER is a research machine with massive instrumentation to understand what is going on inside the plasma chamber and the ability to reconfigure its operation to explore alternatives to achieve the assorted goals. These will not be needed in a production reactor.
I am not a “fan” of Big Fusion, and I agree that over its history there has been a great deal of academics feeding from the trough of taxpayer money. But in the grand scheme of things, the amount of money is small compared to things like a high speed railway to nowhere in California, and the potential payoff is very large, so given where we are, ITER seems a reasonable next step.
One of the little details about deuterium-tritium fusion that fusion boosters don’t like to talk about is that every fusion reaction emits a 14.1 MeV neutron which, as a neutral particle, cannot be confined or steered by the magnetic field containing the plasma and just flies out in any old random direction. This must be absorbed in the “blanket” and its kinetic energy converted to heat which is extracted to generate power. (Here is a talk I posted earlier in Fusion Friday about the blanket.)
But this intense neutron flux causes neutron activation in any material upon which it impinges, and can convert many elements into radioactive isotopes that remain radioactive when the machine is shut down. It also embrittles or otherwise damages metals, which means that the many tonnes of fusion reactor vessel become dangerously radioactive and must eventually be disposed of as low-level radioactive waste, just like the waste from a fission reactor.
This is why most plasma fusion experiments use deuterium only, which does not undergo neutronic fusion. Once you introduce tritium, the machine becomes “hot” and difficult and expensive to work upon. Under current plans, ITER will start testing with deuterium in 2025, but is not planned to begin experiments including tritium until 2035, when they’re confident they’ve got it right, because it is hideously difficult and expensive to change things once the guts of the machine have become radioactive.
Good points – but Ms. Hossenfelder’s good point also stands: the proponents of fusion power are misleading the public about how close fusion is to being a practical source of power for humanity.
Suppose it does take “only” until 2035 to demonstrate that ITER is an energy sink, as designed but never adequately conveyed to the public. Then would follow a decades-long process of modifying the design so that an ITER-like system could generate useful power, and deal with all the related issues of operating safety and equipment disposal at the end of its working life. That would have to be followed by more decades of scaling up the power plant to useful levels, and then yet more decades of actually building out the thousands of fusion plants which would be required to supply the human race with power.
Fusion proponents are facing a century or more – maybe two human lifetimes – before they could supply a significant part of human energy needs. Yet that fact is not being conveyed to the public – resulting in people rejecting nuclear fission which is available today in favor of nuclear fusion which (even in the most optimistic case) cannot be a meaningful source of power within their lifetimes.
In my humble opinion, the most hopeful and practical directive on Nuclear Energy, came from President Eisenhower in 1953 (see link below).
Generations since have dropped the ball. The idea that we could have increased energy costs since the invention of nuclear energy, clearly demonstrates epic human failure.
A safe energy system that uses nuclear fission can work economically, but we must have the will to do it – and may have to launch many in the legal profession to Mars first!
When I think of the fear the public has about nuclear, I think how people are so easily manipulated.
We have bio labs that contain biological substances that pose threats that are orders of magnitude larger than nuclear power.
It amazes me that there has been no world wide demand that bio labs be terminated. Even if COVID was not lab made, the simple fact that it or something much worse could be released should have resulted in public outrage that would make nuclear fear look like a turd.
Labs in a shit hole like Ukraine, regardless of purpose, are asinine.
Analysis of power plant data from GlobalData, Energy Monitor‘s parent company, shows the enormous scale of China’s nuclear ambitions, which encompass both the new 150-reactor plan as well as existing plans. The country has 19 reactors under construction, 43 reactors awaiting permits, and a massive 166 reactors that have been announced. The combined capacity of these 228 reactors is 246GW, more than the entire electricity generation capacity of Germany (225GW). It is a figure close to the 289GW of new nuclear capacity the rest of the world has in the pipeline.
China is also investing heavily in coal-fired power plants, in a bid to expand electric power supply substantially. This goes along with China investing in multiple Electric Vehicle companies – which will require a big increase in the electric power supply. It is almost like someone in the Chinese government is, you know, thinking!
We in the West made a huge mistake. We outsourced manufacturing to China. Instead, we should have outsourced our governments to China.
In our eyes and to any objective observer, the failure to build lots more nuclear generating capacity is indeed, a failure. The heart of the problem though, is that to our “elite leaders”, it is a resounding success, along with their hoped-for $10/gallon gasoline. It is their intentionally assisting suicide of the West which is the problem. This is just part of their strategy.
Any hypothesis on why our “elite leaders” are so intent on doing the West down? Destroying the West unintentionally because of their stupidity, ignorance, arrogance, & incompetence would be quite plausible. But what would be their rationale for deliberately destroying the greasy pole after spending their lives precariously clambering up it?
For the avoidance of doubt, if our elite leaders do indeed intend deliberately to destroy the West, they are doing an excellent job of it. It is simply difficult to see what is in the destruction for them personally.
As I see it, as part of the globalist agenda, they believe we have it too good. Since they are incapable of elevating those less fortunate (they can’t even do that here - despite spending a score or so trillions of dollars on “anti-poverty” programs since “The Great Society” farce). Elevation of populations is not in the socialist/Marxist repertoire. They can, however, lower our standard of living. That’s my best guess as to why they are bringing us down - especially those of us who have - through merit - enjoyed some success and security.
What better way to rule the world than to burn down all existing institutions (potential competitors) and replace them with institutions under your control? This is the intended result of the WEF’s “great reset,” which is just a massive central planning scheme. Their primary aim, as I see it, is the consolidation of power.
