by James Newcomb, via the Rocky Mountain Institute
Electric utilities and policymakers in Japan and Germany have been scrambling for months to find ways to compensate for nuclear power plants shut down in the aftermath of Fukushima.
In both instances, fossil fuels are part of the stopgap solution to offset the declines in nuclear generation in the short term, but longer-term energy policies are shifting definitively toward efficiency and renewables. Now, the unexpected and indefinite shutdown of both units at the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station in Southern California has raised questions about California’s short-term electricity supply options and long-term contingency plans.
Not surprisingly, efficiency, demand response, and renewables could play a key role in helping to diversify and mitigate risks for Southern California’s electricity supply future. The solutions being pioneered in these three markets, while driven by different circumstances, all take advantage new smart grid technologies to manage and integrate distributed resources.
In Japan, only one of the 54 commercial nuclear reactors that supplied 30 percent of the nation’s electric power prior to the Fukushima disaster is currently operating. It, too, is scheduled to shut down for scheduled maintenance on May 5, leaving the country with no power supplies from nuclear plants for the first time in more than four decades.
Japan’s central government is now seeking to win agreement from local authorities in Fukui prefecture to restart two nuclear reactors operated by Kansai Electric Power Co., but whether and when these reactors might actually be allowed restart remains uncertain.
These unprecedented circumstances raise the possibility of economically damaging power shortages as demand increases during Japan’s hot summer months. Kansai Electric, which depended on nuclear for 49 percent of its generating capacity, has warned that its power supply capacity could fall short of peak demand by as much as 18 percent this summer if none of its reactors are allowed to restart. And while Kansai’s service territory is geographically small, its annual economic output is worth more than $1 trillion.
The principal short-term solutions to the crisis have been emergency demand curtailments and heavy use of imported oil and natural gas in existing thermal power plants, a major factor behind Japan’s trade deficit in fiscal 2011, the first in more than three decades. The International Energy Agency projects that in 2012 Japan’s electric utilities will burn 300,000 barrels per day more oil and 23 billion cubic meters more liquefied natural gas to make up the generation deficit if none of the shut down nuclear reactors is allowed to restart.
The upshot of these events is an intensified focus on energy efficiency and renewables, two solutions that hold promise of bridging the supply-demand gap in the years ahead while simultaneously reducing the current heavy reliance on fossil fueled generation. Under its pre-Fukushima energy policy, Japan had set a goal of increasing renewables from 9 percent of power supply in 2008 to 21 percent by 2030. But an assessment released last year by the Ministry of Environment suggested that Japan could shift even more dramatically toward renewables. Already, major Japanese companies—including Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Toshiba, Hitachi, and Softbank—have announced plans to build hundreds of megawatts of new solar and wind projects.
At the same time, new investments in smart grid technologies to manage demand and integrate renewable power supplies into the grid are increasing rapidly. Hitachi, Panasonic, Toshiba, Fuji Electric, and Mitsui are among the major companies working to implement new energy management technologies, including pioneering experiments in integrated neighborhood technologies. Accelerated investment in these technologies by Japan’s most powerful technology companies will have global consequences as new products and service models come to market.
Halfway around the world, Germany’s electric power sector is turning to similar solutions in the aftermath of Fukushima. Within months of the Fukushima disaster, Germany revoked the operating licenses of seven of its 17 nuclear power plants and subsequently voted to exit nuclear power altogether by 2022. Germany now plans to get 35 percent of its power from renewables by 2020 and has committed to reaching 80 percent by 2050. The shift to higher shares of variable renewable generation will require parallel investments in efficiency, demand response, and better grid controls to help integrate high levels of variable renewable supplies.
Already, Germany’s largest electric utilities, EON and RWE, are increasing their investments in solar and wind energy to offset nuclear power supplies. Earlier this year, RWE began operating the first commercial scale virtual power plant, weaving together the operations of dozens of green energy sources in order to be able to bid up to 80 megawatts of power supply into the European Power Exchange. The changes already unfolding in Germany foretell the demise of baseload generation, together with increased needs for flexible, dispatchable supply- and demand-side resources.
Do the events in Japan and Germany have relevance to the United States? The answer is yes, and potentially sooner than almost anyone expected. The San Onofre plant is closed because of unusual and excessive wear in hundreds of tubes in the plants’ steam generator units, raising questions about the integrity of the steam generators installed by Southern California Edison (SCE) in 2009 and 2010.
The problems at the plants raise the possibility that California could face power supply challenges this summer not unlike those facing parts of Japan and Germany. San Onofre plays a critical role in Southern California’s electricity grid, so finding short-term solutions will be challenging. California’s policymakers, utilities, and grid operators are hurrying to create contingency plans to reduce demand and ramp up generation from gas-fired power plants and other interim supply sources to meet peak summer demands. Perhaps more importantly, however, even if the problems with San Onofre’s steam generators are overcome, the current troubles could increase the likelihood that SCE will face difficult challenges to relicensing the plant in 2022 for another 20 years of operation. Could efficiency and renewables make up the difference if San Onofre were to go out of service in 2022?
To explore answers to this question, RMI, in collaboration with Energy and Environmental Economics (E3), is studying long-term scenarios for Southern California’s electricity future using models developed on for the California Public Utilities Commission. These scenarios explore pathways to achieve up to 50 percent renewable electricity supply by 2030 with and without nuclear power in the supply mix. Results of the study will be released in June.
James Newcomb is the Program Director for electricity at the Rocky Mountain Institute.
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The link to the WaPo article describing the reason for the shutdown at San Onofre is broken, so here’s a good link to an LA Times piece. It’s important to note that this is a pretty significant safety issue — leaky pipes carrying radioactive water; the cause is not understood; and the plant recently underwent a $671 million upgrade for which the ratepayers are paying. This is a basic problem with the economics of nuclear power. Huge investments that could be completely lost.
By the way for some mysterious reason I have been banned from commenting for a couple of weeks. Glad to see that has been lifted but I wonder if others have had this problem?
Are we talking about motivation for renewables research here or actual replacement of capacity? Or both.
I agree that the motivation for installing non nuclear renewables is something good that can come out of this, however delaying the newer and safer reactors in Japan from restarting is not advisable and classifying all reactors as similar is completely incorrect.
The San Onofre site has been operating for about 45 years with a maximum output now of about 2,200 megawatts; the plant has a custom cooing system unique to that site.
In Unit 3 Less than 1 percent of the cooling tubes were showing problems of unusually rapid wear and taken out of service (8 percent is allowable) – none of the other safety system are affected and the plant was temporally closed out of a abundance of caution.
I look forward to the report.
However:
More broadly, save the discovery and installation of a radically new technology, it would be impossible to “make up” from increased CO2 from both not having nuclear power and non nuclear renewables in place.
I also feel there are smaller reactor options for decommissioned sites to utilize the abundance of energy in spent fuel and render a majority of the waste less radioactive.
Regardless as is the installation of new nuclear and renewables is woefully inadequate everywhere.
I can understand why Japan and California want to move away from Nuclear energy (or perhaps preferably just move their nuclear electricity generation away from areas prone to earthquakes and tsunamis?) but why on Earth is Germany throwing out the baby with the bathwater?
As is evidenced by the data presented in this article, it is clear that the short-term effects of over-reacting to the Fukushima disaster has been to cause a massive spike in fossil fuel burning for energy generation purposes.
If we are to solve our energy generation shortfall in the long-term, we will either have to reduce our demand, accept nuclear energy as par of the solution, or hope that a a lot of people are killed-off by climate change.
Without nuclear, I am fairly certain that we will never be able to produce enough energy for 10 billion people consuming energy at Western rates.
RMI has a known anti-NPP bias which shows in this piece as well.
(1) San Onofre NPPs have steam generator problems. So sometimes do coal burners but there is no reporting requirement for coal burners.
(2) A recent study determined that for Japan the least cost solution is turning back on the existing Gen II NPPs. As electricity in the vincinity of Tokyo is already in excess of US$0.25/kWh even more might be hard on the economy. [Yes, more solar PV and some wind would probably help but actual geothermal is apparently very risky in the finaqncial sense.]
(3) Germany’s turnoffs are going to cost the Germans quite a bit. They can probably afford it, but it does seem irrational.
“So sometimes do coal burners but there is no reporting requirement for coal burners”
In a PWR, the steam generators are the interface between the more radioactive core coolant loop and the turbine steam loop, so it’s not really analogous to coal-fired boilers.
Getting involved with natural gas without environmental resistance, even “temporally” is a very poor decision.
Likely if nuclear power is shut down before its even is close to being replaced by alternatives the drive to install alternatives will fizzle out and/or meet inevitable resistance from special interests.
It will be replaced permanently by gas, just as has occurred everywhere:
With all this natural gas, who needs oil?
Natural gas has suddenly become almost everyone’s favorite chassis for building an energy independent future. Many people on both sides of the drilling divide view the current abundance of the low-cost fuel as a “global game changer” – an energy source that will help wean the United States off Mideast oil, alter the nation’s foreign policy, spur jobs and boost the economy, and reduce greenhouse gases.
President Obama has pledged to “take every possible action to safely develop this energy.” Mitt Romney calls the domestic gas “a godsend.” Energy tycoon T. Boone Pickens, an early natural gas booster, contends it’s “obvious” that Washington should enact policies to encourage natural gas production and use throughout the economy.
Almost since the birth of the Industrial Age, Americans have fixated at one time or another on different answers to the country’s energy needs. Oil has always been the constant, but the splitting of the atom led to talk of a nuclear-powered economy. Coal, because of its abundance, was once a king. In the 1970s, a roster of renewables – solar, geothermal, wind, waves – inspired visions of a post-Mideast, self-sufficient utopia. Now along comes natural gas, oil’s quiet fossil fuel sibling. ( http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/2012/0422/With-all-this-natural-gas-who-needs-oil )
Quite a 7 page read – gas is the selected answer! environmentalists considerer gas a “bridge fuel,” it says, but are slightly concerned about this new “fracking” thing and are watching it carefully (although its not really a problem)!
temporarily – sorries.
I imagine if we are not there already we are about a year or two away from a NG industry that eventuality becomes as strong or stronger than oil AND coal back in the day.
As you know, earthquake in japan is happening frequently. Floating solar panels installation is one of the best solutions for power crisis in Japan. So you have to reduce the vibration to install Floating solar panels. Because, it makes many kinds of problems! The vibration’s caused by wind, waves and external forces. New Floating Body Stabilizer for Floating solar panels installation has been created in South Korea. The Floating Body Stabilizers generate drag force immediately when Floating solar panels are being rolled and pitched on the water. Recently, this Floating Body Stabilizer’s using to reduce the Vibration of Floating Solar Panels in South Korea. You can see New Floating Body Stabilizer videos in YouTube. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=moO–q5B92k, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nA_xFp5ktbU&feature=youtu.be.
@John – what “NG industry” are you talking about? The vast majority of the world’s natural gas is produced by those very same multinational petroleum companies that have been supplying it as a byproduct to oil extraction for the past 150 years. It is not a new fuel, and the industry that supplies it is certainly not new or weak.
ExxonMobil, for example, is currently producing about 50% of its 4 million barrels of oil equivalent per day from natural gas. Most of the other majors are close to that portion.
In the past dozen years, the petroleum industry has invested hundreds of billions of dollars in building out liquified natural gas infrastructure in places like Qatar, the UAE, and off of the coast of Australia. That LNG infrastructure is intended to allow the industry to keep doing what it does best – develop excellent deals with governments (often run by dictators) to extract huge physical quantities of fuel that they then transport efficiently around the globe to addicted customers.
There is a reason why there were so many “clean natural gas” commercials run during the Fukushima Frenzy on outlets like CNN, Fox and MSNBC. The whole idea was to scare people into shifting more of the energy dollars to natural gas.
The ads paid off in spades – Japan’s fuel bill increased by $55 BILLION in the 9 months after the earthquake and tsunami killed 20,000 people and the reactors killed NO ONE.
Rod Adams
Publisher, Atomic Insights
In my opinion, one of the most odious lies of the nuclear junkies is the repeated half-truth that disasters like Fukushima killed ‘no-one’. They know, but cynically refuse to acknowledge, that deaths from nuclear catastrophes generally occur years later from the added burden of disease, principally cancers, caused by nuclear contamination. We as yet have no idea of how much added radioactive pollution Fukushima will release upon Japan and the world, because repair will take decades, but, in the worst case, the collapse of the spent fuel rod pool and the ignition of those rods and the consequent release of scores more radiation than Chernobyl, the result will be catastrophic.
Of course, when later the increased mortality and morbidity in populations is revealed, the atomic apologists even more cynically deny responsibility, or dispute the figures and produce junk science of their own (rather like those other denialists in climate denialism)because the exact causation of cancer is difficult to attribute. All, like the fossil fuel denialists, to protect profits and wealth invested in this inherently deadly dangerous enterprise.
Shut down due to steam pipes is a good reason, and hopefully it is really hard to fix because……
EARTHQUAKES
This particular US plant was built in earthquake country to withstand magnitude 7.0 right under the plant, but remember what “logarithmic scale” means. If the BIG ONE is a 9.0 that will be 100 times stronger.
MEGAFLOODS
It’s happened before, and it will happen again.
A) Prior comment here
B) ARkStorm: California’s Other ‘Big One’>
C) California Superstorm Would Be Costliest US Disaster>
Hope it stays closed.
“Nuclear and coal stations fail about 10-12% of the time, losing a gigawatt in milliseconds, often for weeks or months, and often without warning. This intermittence is far more awkward than the gracefully forecastable variations of a portfolio of photovoltaic or wind generators diversified by type and location.” – Amory Lovins in comments section of recent Economist article on nuclear power
Amory Lovins
But when you lose a nuke or coal plant, you can simply ramp up another one (or fire up your nat. gas peaking units, or tap your hydro).
You can’t “turn on” more wind or solar.
Our current grid has almost perfect “up time.” It has nothing to prove.
We can engineer ways to increase the percentage of renewables in the grid, but it won’t be simply, cheap, or “graceful.”