Part 2 - What if we follow Germany's lead on nuclear power

This is part two of the first blog about The Energy Chart.   We left you with looking at the 38.3 quadrillion btus of demand by the Electric Power sector.  The 104 currently permitted nuclear power reactors in the US (see below) produce 22% of the total electrical demand.  Chancellor Angela Murkel of Germany has issued a decree to suspend for three months all nuclear plants built before 1980.  Germany has 17 nuclear power reactors, which generate approximately 25% of its electrical needs.  According to www.world-nuclear.org, six of those plants went into commercial operation prior to 1980, or 30%.  If these six are to be suspended, Germany will reduce electrical power generation by 7.5%.   Where will Germany make up this loss of electrical power generation?  

 

Source: EIA

I reviewed the data from the EIA’s website of all 104 nuclear power plants in the US, of which 31 states have nuclear power plants.  I then took Chancellor Merkel’s suspension criteria and applied it to the US nuclear fleet.  The result is that 43% of our nuclear fleet is older than 1980.  That represents 43,504 net MW(e) or 53 of the 104 nuclear power plants in 21 different states.  If we were to suspend or idle those plants put into commercial operation prior to 1980, we would idle 9.5% of the total US electrical generating capability.  There was another interesting fact that emerged from the data.  Every reactor built before 1980 was constructed and put into commercial production in less than 10 years and on average 6 years.  There is a direct correlation to size of the reactor and length of time from beginning construction to commercial production.  Those reactors built after 1980 took much longer to construct as they were bigger (maxing out at 1.3 net MW(e)).  If we use the criteria of beginning construction versus the commercial operation, then all 104 started construction before 1980.

Where will we make up the difference in electrical generation?  

More next blog.

The Chart That Changed The Energy Picture

As in the 2001 book written by Simon Winchester entitled, "The Map That Changed the World," about William Smith, a British geologist and the first to publish a geological map and descriptions of rock strata for a large geographical portion of the UK (one of the map's first use was to explore for coal in the UK), the EIA has published a chart that could change the picture of energy in the United States.


The chart is the EIA's single best chart, that I know of, that explains the United States sources of energy and its uses of energy.  It is one of those charts from which the Sec. of Energy Chu should be strategizing our energy future.  The EIA analyzes energy supply and demand on an annual basis and publishes a very lengthy annual summary (their website is full of phenomenal data).  This chart summarizes some of that data in a "Big Picture" way.  The EIA measures this energy in quadrillion btus, hence the name of this blog.  The chart is located on http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/aer/pecss_diagram.html and is depicted below in a small format.

As a descriptive example of the chart, let us look at Nuclear Electric Power (lower left of the chart) under the Supply Sources bubbles.  Nuclear Electric Power supplies 8.3 quadrillion btus to the total U.S. energy flow of 94.6 quadrillion btus.  To understand what a quadrillion btus are, think of one quadrillion btus as being equal to 172 million barrels of oil equivalent.  The EIA, 2009, says that the U.S. used 18.8 million barrels per day (looking at the chart - 72% of petroleum energy used goes to the transportation sector for gasoline, primarily, 22% goes to the industrial sector for chemicals, primarily, 5% goes to the residential sector for East Coast heating, primarily, and the final 1% goes to the electric power sector for generators used as backup electrical power producers or other electric generating capacity).  So 1 quadrillion btus, or 172 million barrels per oil equivalent at 18.8 million barrels per day consumed in the U.S., is consumed approximately every 9 days.  Looking again at the nuclear electric power supply source bubble, the 8.3 quadrillion btus used, is consumed in 72 days.  Think about that.

Now, go to the Demand Sector boxes and look at Electric Power (lower right of the chart), demand from electricity is 38.3 quadrillion btus.  One hundred percent of the Nuclear Electric Power (the bubble) supply is used in the Electric Power sector of which nuclear represent 22% of electrical demand.  If we stop permitting on nuclear sites and shut down the nuclear power plants (currently 104 licensed in the US), we will need to make up that 22% from Petroleum, Natural Gas, Coal, or Renewable Energy (see bubbles on the left of the chart).  Think about that.  More on this in the next blog.