Public perceptions paper

[Andrew Lockley]

"Public perceptions and governance of controversial technologies to tackle climate change":  http://t.co/ekVbGy9

The role carbon emissions play in contributing to climate change makes clear the necessity for a global reconsideration of current modes of energy production. In recent years, as concerns over the threats of climate change (CC) have become more acute, four technologies have notably risen to the forefront of academic and public discourse: nuclear power, carbon capture and storage (CCS), wind power, and geoengineering. The particular interest of these four approaches lies in the fact that they reflect both energy production and climate control technologies, are often socially controversial, and present complex challenges of governance. Nuclear and wind power both deserve an important place among the variety of low-carbon energy options. In countries where public acceptance is evaluated, although, support for nuclear energy appears to be conditional upon simultaneous development of other renewable energies alongside a feasible plan to address the disposal of nuclear waste. The Fukushima accident sharply increased public concern about the safety and vulnerability of nuclear reactors. While wind power receives general public support, issues of accommodation can arise when it comes to siting wind farms. Persistent dependency upon carbon-producing energy has made favorable the option of CCS. However, in addition to technical and geological factors, social resistance to the placement of carbon storage units remains a key obstacle. Geoengineering offers the technological capacity to directly act on the climate should levels of atmospheric CO 2 become dangerously high. Public perception regarding the risk of climate change can be labile, and the alternatives reviewed here share the characteristic that their technical and political dimensions are intertwined. The variety of options for combining and implementing these technologies, coupled with the inherently time-sensitive nature of CC, underscore the complexity of the endeavor. In order to bridge these various levels of analysis and decision making, and to better understand and integrate people's involvement, exercises in risk governance could be developed at both the national and international levels. WIREs Clim Change 2011 DOI: 10.1002/wcc.134

[Stephen Salter]

Hi All

While a nuclear power station is working normally the main CO2 emissions
are the plant operators driving to work or slipping out for a smoke.
However quite a lot of oil is needed for mining, rock-crushing and fuel
production. At present this amounts to about one third of the CO2
release of gas-powered plant but the ratio is strongly driven by the ore
grade and hardness of the over burden. The break-even point with gas
happens when ore grades get to about 100 ppm. At present rates of
consumption this is likely to happen within the life of plant planned
now but it could be sooner if there is a mad dash.

I do not think anyone knows how much carbon will be released during the
final clean up process but I am sure that it will not be zero.

There is an analysis at
http://www.stormsmith.nl/report20050803/Chap_1.pdf

Stephen

Emeritus Professor of Engineering Design
Institute for Energy Systems
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[Oliver Tickell]

Stephen, I was interested to see your recent post, below.

Reading the paper, there is something I am not clear about. A nuclear power station is typically on full blast all the time giving a capacity factor of 1 (except when it has to go off). However a gas plant will modulate its output according to demand, giving I would guess a typical capacity factor of say 0.6 (guess).

So, when the authors compare nuclear power and CCGT emissions, are they forcing the CCGT to have a CF of 1 like nuclear? If so this is to greatly exaggerate the actual CO2 emissions that you would expect from a CCGT.

Another factor to consider is that as we get more intermittent renewables like wind and solar PV on the grid, the effect will be to further reduce the CF of gas plant - since when wind is generating strongly, CCGTs will scale back their output. This will further reduce the CCGT's CO2 emissions

Regards, Oliver.


==========================================

Stephen Salter <S.Sa...@ed.ac.uk> Aug 23 11:58AM +0100 ^

 
Hi All
 
While a nuclear power station is working normally the main CO2 emissions
are the plant operators driving to work or slipping out for a smoke.

However quite a lot of oil is needed for more...

[Stephen Salter]

Oliver

Actual output for nuclear is typically around 0.7 but the carbon debt was all incurred before operation and turning them off does not reduce it.  The carbon for the plant is all released before operation and if this is delayed we may ask if there is a carbon equivalent of interest. 

Let's ask Storm van Leeuwen.

Stephen

Emeritus Professor of Engineering Design
Institute for Energy Systems
School of Engineering
Mayfield Road
University of Edinburgh EH9  3JL
Scotland
Tel +44 131 650 5704
Mobile 07795 203 195
www.see.ed.ac.uk/~shs

[Oliver Tickell]

This CF question is actually quite complex. You can have a CF of 0.7 for a nuke but actually that's because it's working 70% of the time and for 30% it is broken or undergoing maintenance (often for longish periods of days / weeks / months). A CCGT with a CF of 0.7 would most likely be modulating its output to meet actual demand and the 30% of non-generation would mainly represent times of low demand, with routine maintenance timed to take place during low demand periods.

This means that the CCGT is making a far more valuable contribution to electricity supply than the nuke: there are times while the nuke is down when additional fossil supply will be needed to make good the shortfall (adding to the nuke's effective emissions); and there are periods when the nuke is generating when the CCGT would be on standby or shut down for the night (reducing the nuke's effective emissions reductions). So a KWh from a nuke does not directly compare to a KWh from a CCGT either in terms of value, or in terms of CO2 emissions. This needs to be taken into account.

Yes, can you contact the authors for their view? Oliver.

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