China going nuclear for its power generation, while possibly controversial, actually makes a lot of sense, as I think Pablo also concluded. James Lovelock, a renowned green Ecologist, and early advocate of the need to combat Global Warming, is surprisingly very much in favor of nuclear power. While Fusion Power may be the ultimate solution, today we have to make do with Fission. But, he concludes it is still a much more efficient power generator with LESS cost to the environment than Fossil Fuels. Here are a few startling facts from James Lovelock’s “Revenge of Gaia”: Our population today burns 27 billion tons of CO2 yearly. If it were possible to capture all this gas and keep it from escaping into the atmosphere, it would require a mountainlike container almost 1 mile high and 12 miles in circumference at the base – EVERY YEAR to store it. The same amount of energy generated by nuclear fission produces 2 million times LESS WASTE, and would fit into a cube only 16 meters in volume.

http://www.energystate.org

1 book says it all: http://www.amazon.com/Harnessing-Wheelwork-Nature-Teslas-Science/dp/1931882045

One of the reasons I write my blog is to learn from commentators such as yourself.

Wind O&M: 0.34-0.90 cents/kwh
Nuclear O&M : 2.75-1.15 cents/kwh

These W&D management are not so often considered when evaluating one marginal power plant, rather it is an ‘infrastructure country investment’ not included in Business cases.

Nevertheless, China is leading the nuclear investment, building 5 nuclear plants inland and 2 in Taiwan(China). India is as well building 7 Nuclear in 2007, while France is building 1. Personally, I believe that Nuclear is a good option for energy security in these high GDP economies, and perhaps the option to go nuclear is the only way to assure sufficient energy to keep growing, but it will not replace the actual generation matrix.

Note: approximated values in US Dollars, and for US markets
Sources: http://www.world-nuclear.org/sym/1997/whitf.htm and http://climateprotectioncampaign.typepad.com/cpc/2006/03/cost_of_wind_vs.html

Cheers

Wind, (PV), wave, tidal and many others new technologies are considered as intermittent. (The in/out line does not depend on the operation, rather on atmospheric situations). This is not a minor concern. Since grid networks should assure power regardless climatically conditions, intermittent technologies should not be in exceed of 20% of the whole country wide matrix capacity. Another concern is that the power factor (maximum amount of energy produced within the year in regard of the installed capacity) is no more than 49% (in best cases: Germany, Argentina, India). In other worlds, 1mw of installed wind energy would produce 490kwh.

There is not a short/mid term solution. On one hand, even though china starts deploying a vast nuclear infrastructure, with GDP’s of two digits, the increase on demand in energy supply is marvellous, therefore very difficult to catch-up AND replace current matrix. On the other hand, if the cost of energy production goes up, annual growth will go down carrying with it many china-dependent economies. The migration should be progressive (30-50 years)

Cheers.