Nuclear key to Japan's climate plans (incl. hydrogen, efficiency gains)

[Dogmudgeon]

Signs of intelligence and good sense are appearing all over the world.

Also note that the Japanese reactor strategy plans to use "waste" heat to make large amounts of hydrogen. Of course, Japan's mighty industrial corporate infrastructure will continue to produce plenty of photovoltaic solar cells.

Also note₂ that Japan has made significant and measurable progress on energy efficiency, by some 37% since 1973.

Nuclear power is a key element in Japan's climate change mitigation strategy, a United Nations working group heard on 14 May.

Kazuhiko Hombu, deputy director general of Japan's Ministry of Economy Trade and Industry (METI), explained his country's strategy to members of a working group of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).

Hombu said that Japan's energy use per unit of gross domestic product had been reduced by 37% since 1973, while the supply of low-carbon primary energy from nuclear and renewable sources had increased from 6% to 15%. However, the country aims to increase efficiency by 'at least' 30% more by 2030. He identified industry, and in particular the steel industry, as having potential for major efficiency gains.

The methods and technologies METI would expect to make the difference were: Increasing energy efficiency; Clean fossil fuel technology; New technologies such as biomass and solar power; and advanced nuclear power. Hombu said current light-water reactor technology would be used for the 'next generation' of nuclear power plants, while fast breeder reactors are envisaged beyond that. The strategy would see nuclear's share of electricity maintained at 'more than 30-40%' even after 2030.

Japan already has 55 nuclear power reactors, which provide about 30% of electricity. Two more are under construction and 11 are in the planning stage.

Hombu added that hydrogen would be used as an energy carrier in fuel cells. Japan has an advanced program to produce hydrogen on an industrial scale using nuclear heat. By 2015 it is planned to construct a hydrogen production system linked to the existing High-Temperature Test Reactor (HTTR), that would use heat at up to 950 degrees C to produce hydrogen at a rate of around 1000 l/h.

Hombu's comments were made at a round-table discussion on the Ad-hoc Working Group (AWG) on mitigation potentials of policies, measures and technologies. As part of the 13th Conference of Parties (COP-13), taking place in Bonn, Germany, on 15-18 May, the AWG is meant to provide a forum for discussion of the mitigation potential, effectiveness, efficiency, costs and benefits of current and future policies, measures and technologies. The AWG is open to industrialised and certain transition countries taking part in the UNFCCC - the so-called Annex 1 Parties.

Hombu's words echoed the recent conclusions of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which published a report on 4 May listing nuclear as a 'key mitigation technology'.

Further information
United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC)

Source: World Nuclear News -- May 15, 2007
Note to Admins: All material from the World Nuclear News website may be freely reproduced -- click here to see license.

--p!

[bananas]

1. So even in Japan, nuclear won't be much more of a percentage than it is now.

"The strategy would see nuclear's share of electricity maintained at 'more than 30-40%' even after 2030."
"Japan already has 55 nuclear power reactors, which provide about 30% of electricity."

edit to add: Al Gore is right again!

[NickB79]

2. It didn't give an upper limit, it simply said "more than 30-40%"

If, for example, Japan built and maintained enough reactors to generate ALL of their electricity from nuclear, that would indeed be "more than 30-40%", I hope you realize.

[NNadir]

3. Really? I am really amused by your soothsaying.

This would depend on whether we choose to do <em>nothing</em> about climate change.

If we choose to do <em>nothing</em>, it may be true that people will continue to burn fossil fuels for energy. If on the other hand, people choose to <em>act</em> major industrial nations will exceed 30 to 40%.

By the way, I don't know if you have any idea about this over in the reflexive anti-nuclear camp - since none of you seem to have any capability to understand numbers, but 10% (the difference between 30 and 40%) of Japanese electricity is an enormous number. The intellectual laziness of the reflexive anti-nuclear set typically abuses numbers (mostly because the reflexive antinuclear set is simply irrational and must mislead to survive). Part of this use is to typically misuse the word "percent" and to act if it means something it doesn't mean.

For instance, we have lots of reflexive antinuclear dunderheads who love to say "solar power has increased by 50% without acknowledging that it easy to produce 50% of "next to nothing."

Now, let's talk about what 10% of Japan's electricity means in absolute numbers:

Japan produced about 975 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity in 2004. That's 3.5 exajoules of pure electricity.

http://www.eia.doe.gov/pub/international/iealf/table63.xls

I suspect that the only way to be a reflexively antinuclear is to not be able to do math, so I will point out that this means that 0.35 exajoules is thus 10% of Japan's electrical energy output annually. This means that every 10% of Japanese electricity represents 8 more reactors than are run now if Japanese electrical demand stays constant.

(I have referred to large 1500 MWe reactors - which by the way many of Japan's existing reactors are not. Japan could totally phase out fossil fuels with 75 such large reactors.)

Reflexive antinuclear dunderheads just a year or two ago were running around talking about the immanent demise of nuclear power a few years ago, and now they engage in soothsaying saying it will not grow much more. In fact, reflexive antinuclear dunderheads are increasingly clueless and increasingly irrelevant.

In fact, Japan is planning 11 new nuclear reactors and has two under construction.

http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/reactors.html

If these reactors have a typical nuclear capacity utilization of close to 90%, they will produce about 0.5 exajoules of energy.

Now, I'm quite sure you'd rather they burn more coal, but actually the neither the Japanese nor anyone else gives a rat's ass about the "thinking" of the reflexive antinuclear set.

Reflexive antinuclear thinking is widely discredited throughout the world and is moving to the (hopefully methane producing) garbage dump of ideas. I would not be surprised to see Japan adopt the French model. In fact I would not be surprised to see Germany move in that direction. Nuclear phase outs are being dumped throughout the world since reality is sinking in everywhere.