Everything is Nuclear Powered!
Today the Ontario provincial government announced plans to build two additional reactors at the Darlington generating station, 80 km east of Toronto. Currently, there are four units on site, CANDU 9s with a combined 3800 MW capacity. The Globe and Mail reports that bids will be considered from AECL, the Canadian company behind the CANDU reactor design, Westinghouse, one of the original developers of the PWR design, and Areva Group of France. The announcement was predictably met with moaning from finance critics about the projected $26 billion price tag, and with the environmentalists with their tired old statement that nuclear is unnecessary because you can do it all with wind, solar, and tidal power.
The later argument particularly irks me because wind, solar, and tidal are part of the solution, but not the panacea some would have you believe. Let's take solar for an example. The energy of the Sun at the Earth's surface has an average intensity of 1366 W/m2. Consider that solar panels are, at best, 6% efficient. So we get 82 W per square meter of solar panels deployed. To replace Ontario's existing 11 400 MW of nuclear power capacity, you would require:
11 400 000 000 W / 82 W/m2 = 139 024 390 m2 or a little over 139 000 square km, 15% of Ontario's total land mass, and it only works during the day. Just to come up with the the equivalent of the proposed plant, around 1000 MW, that's over 12 000 square km. Wind is inconsistent but is great for peaking load. The record holder for power production by a wind turbine is 6 MW, and 1900 of those (to replace installed nuclear capacity) makes for one big wind farm. Tidal power is at such an early stage of development that I cannot even speculate.
In short, nuclear power is a key part of the energy mix we'll need as fossil fuels become increasingly scarce and unattractive, weather you like it or not. We should also remember that solar and wind energy both result from a nuclear reaction taking place within the sun, and fossil fuels are simply the condensed results of ancient plant and animal growth which likewise used the Sun's energy. So at a basic level, tidal power is unique in being the only source of energy I know of that is completely non-nuclear.
The later argument particularly irks me because wind, solar, and tidal are part of the solution, but not the panacea some would have you believe. Let's take solar for an example. The energy of the Sun at the Earth's surface has an average intensity of 1366 W/m2. Consider that solar panels are, at best, 6% efficient. So we get 82 W per square meter of solar panels deployed. To replace Ontario's existing 11 400 MW of nuclear power capacity, you would require:
11 400 000 000 W / 82 W/m2 = 139 024 390 m2 or a little over 139 000 square km, 15% of Ontario's total land mass, and it only works during the day. Just to come up with the the equivalent of the proposed plant, around 1000 MW, that's over 12 000 square km. Wind is inconsistent but is great for peaking load. The record holder for power production by a wind turbine is 6 MW, and 1900 of those (to replace installed nuclear capacity) makes for one big wind farm. Tidal power is at such an early stage of development that I cannot even speculate.
In short, nuclear power is a key part of the energy mix we'll need as fossil fuels become increasingly scarce and unattractive, weather you like it or not. We should also remember that solar and wind energy both result from a nuclear reaction taking place within the sun, and fossil fuels are simply the condensed results of ancient plant and animal growth which likewise used the Sun's energy. So at a basic level, tidal power is unique in being the only source of energy I know of that is completely non-nuclear.
Labels: ask an engineer, energy, nuclear power
posted by Colin at
8:21 p.m.
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