Future lies with fusion power
Sunday, 11 November, 2012
SCMP
I refer to Peter Schwartz's excellent article ("Up in smoke", October 26) on the current revolution transforming the world's energy landscape.
Coincidentally, I too touched upon some of the energy and climate change issues raised therein in my lecture, "The Engineer Leading the Future", at the Hong Kong Institution of Engineers on October 24. A few observations may be relevant.
Shale gas is rapidly replacing coal for power generation in the United States.
Its most significant benefit is that it releases up to 50 per cent less CO2, thus effectively cutting down carbon emissions, besides being the cheapest energy source.
Based on data from the US Energy Information Agency, for the first five months of 2012, this year's emissions in the US are expected to decline by 14 per cent from their peak in 2007 because of the unprecedented switch from coal to natural gas.
As a result, the US carbon emissions have dropped by 400 to 500 megatonnes (Mt) a year, that is, 20 per cent per capita - to the lowest level since 1961.
Against this, the annual reduction from America's 30,000 wind turbines account for 50 Mt, biofuels 10 Mt and solar panels 3 Mt. These are heavily subsidised and expensive renewables. Besides, the needed reduction in CO2 from switching to gas is for free. And, though not a panacea, if the gas rage spreads further, as in the US, this, along with a judicious mix of renewables and nuclear, will radically reduce our carbon emissions to the desired levels and the 21st century could be the century of gas.
However, in the longer term, it will be nuclear fusion that will sustain us. This is the same process that powers our sun and other stars and can give us a near-limitless, pollution-free, cheap source of energy.
Hopefully, it will come to fruition before long.
Recently, Professor Stephen Hawking , the world's most famous living scientist, when asked to name the most pressing scientific challenge facing humanity, answered: producing electricity from fusion power. Significantly, the famous National Ignition Facility in Livermore, California (which I once visited), recently reached a critical milestone in its quest for fusion power, achieving some record-breaking results. And once fusion power, for which the world has been waiting for more than five decades, comes into being, it will be the world's greatest bounty.
B. S. Makhija, The Peak
China boasts of 'world-class' uranium deposit discovery, but experts wary
Nuclear industry experts remain wary of China's grand claims for the Inner Mongolia reserve, saying there have been exaggerations in the past
Tuesday, 06 November, 2012
Stephen Chen binglin.chen@scmp.com
The Qinshan nuclear plant in Haiyan, Zhejiang.
China announced the discovery of a "world-class" uranium deposit in Inner Mongolia yesterday but kept its exact size a secret.
Some nuclear industry experts said the secrecy could be a deliberate government strategy to add to its bargaining power in negotiations to buy uranium mines in other countries.
The reserve, although the largest of its kind in China, could be small by world standards and insufficient to meet the country's growing demand for uranium given that it is building the world's largest network of nuclear power plants, they said.
Xinhua said it was found in the Daying area, in central Inner Mongolia.
"It is a world-class reserve. It will significantly help the increase of domestic, independent supply," the report, quoting the Ministry of Land and Resources, said. But Professor Jiao Yangquan , the chief scientist of the project, from China University of Geosciences in Wuhan , refused to confirm the "world-class" claim.
"I am not allowed to discuss the size of the reserve," he said.
Jiao led a research team on the site and reported the estimated size of the reserve to senior land ministry officials in July, the university's website said.
Neither the ministry nor its Central Geological Exploration Fund, which funded the project, responded to inquiries.
Some foreign and domestic experts doubted the "world-class" claim, saying China was known as a country with low uranium reserves and that status was not going to be changed by the discovery of a few uncertain sites.
A sales manager with a major foreign uranium trading company in Beijing said the last time China announced the discovery of a "world-class" and "mega-sized" deposit, in Yili in Xinjiang , the actual reserve turned out to be only about 10,000 tonnes.
"I don't think the find in Inner Mongolia will be much bigger this time, partly because the government has a record of exaggeration," he said.
According to the World Nuclear Association, China had reserves of 171,000 tonnes in 2009, only a tenth of Australia's and three per cent of the world total.
It produced 1,500 tonnes last year, while Kazakhstan produced almost 20,000 tonnes. Gu Zhongmao , the deputy director of the China Institute of Atomic Energy's scientific board, said there had been embarrassing exaggerations of uranium reserves in the past with "over-optimistic" claims.
"Most of the uranium reserves that have been nailed with certainty in China are small, of low quality and costly to excavate," Gu said. "That's why Chinese companies are actively seeking to buy uranium mines all over the world. Uranium is [a] non-recoverable resource and the more we can import the better. I don't think that policy will change.
"But any news of large domestic reserves will certainly help as leverage in buyout bargaining."
German power exports to France increasing
2012 Feb 6
Switch to renewables
renewablesinternational
The current cold spell in Europe is having an effect on international power exports. On the one hand, demand for heat has skyrocketed, but the clear skies also ensure that photovoltaics reaches relatively high peaks for the winter around noon.
Though the day is short, PV power production is still peaking at an impressive level during the current cold spell in Germany. Source: EEX
As Renewables International has reported, the switching off of Germany's nuclear power plants last spring has led to a sort of stress test for the German grid.
But as the country's neighbors to the east complain about unexpected power flows, something else is happening to the West between France and Germany.
Because France has so much nuclear power, the country has an inordinate number of electric heating systems. And because France has not added on enough additional capacity over the past decade, the country's current nuclear plants are starting to have trouble meeting demand, especially when it gets very cold in the winter.
As a result, power exports from Germany to France reached 4 to 5 gigawatts – the equivalent of around four nuclear power plants – last Friday morning according to German journalist Bernward Janzing. It was not exactly a time of low consumption in Germany either at 70 gigawatts around noon on Friday, but Janzing nonetheless reports that the grid operators said everything was under control, and the country's emergency reserves were not being tapped. On the contrary, he reports that a spokesperson for transit grid operator Amprion told him that "photovoltaics in southern Germany is currently helping us a lot."
Janzing also points out that prices on the power exchange indicated that there was indeed no shortage of power, with the price of a kilowatt-hour peaking at 11.3 cents in the evening, but only reaching 7.7 cents around noon.
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One reason might be that the clear skies are ensuring a fairly strong performance for solar arrays. As the chart on the left from the EEX power exchange shows, solar power production has been peaking at around 10 gigawatts at noon over the past few days, such as here on Sunday.
Germany currently has around 25 gigawatts of PV installed, so 10 gigawatts means the country's solar capacity is peaking at around 40 percent – not bad for early February. On the other hand, Germany also has some 27 gigawatts of wind power capacity installed, and the current cold spell has not produced a lot of wind power.
At the same time, Janzing reports that power prices on the French power exchange were up to 50 percent higher, and power consumers in Brittany were called on to reduce power consumption.
(Craig Morris)
Power exports peak, despite nuclear phase-out
11/11/2012 Germany
http://q.gs/2Ytxp
