A page of energy issues

The recent announcement that Three_Mile_Island_Nuclear_Generating_Station (TMI) may reopen may just represent a tipping point.

Two other US nuclear power plants, Palisades_Nuclear_Generating_Station in Michigan and Duane_Arnold_Energy_Center in Iowa, are being discussed as candidates to reopen. But they are not nearly as significant. And Duane Arnold is a BWR, a reactor type that I don't like anyway. See why on earth did they build the BWR. But Palisades, like Three Mile Island, is a PWR.

The most important thing about the TMI project is that it highlights exactly what nuclear is best at. And it's a growth industry: Data centres. These need lots of 24/7 power.

As do cities, to a lesser but increasing extent. It is said that New York City never sleeps. More and more cities operate 24/7. Some industries have always used electricity 24/7, but this constant consumption is becoming more common. Electrical smelting of steel for example is environmentally desirable and just beginning to look viable. These furnaces operate around the clock.

Electricity is very useful stuff. Affordable, sustainable electricity is essential for most recycling programs to work. Electric vehicles, electric trains, all sorts of low or no carbon transport uses electricity. Its only rival is hydrogen, and the only sustainable source of hydrogen is currently electricity. (The only possible rival it has is high temperature nuclear reactors.) Electricity is needed by people who have yet to own their first computer or refrigerator. And that is most of us.

Most people in the world have good reasons to use more electricity. And however much or little they currently use, most people in the world have good reasons to change the way at least some of the electricity they do use is generated. In 2021, about 60% of the world's electricity was generated from fossil fuel.

Sustainable electricity means solar, wind and nuclear, with minor contributions from existing hydro and geothermal. But mainly solar, wind and nuclear. To depend on any one or two of these three is just plain stupid.   

And in particular, to reject nuclear power on environmental grounds is and always was bizarre. And that penny may finally be about to drop.

The next time a nuclear power plant is closed prematurely, will we have Greenpeace and the Friends of the Earth protesting loudly that it should stay open, as they always should have been? It is not beyond possibility. If they fail to do so, they risk losing all relevance. And Greenpeace is a great idea. It's worth saving.

Or that may be hypothetical. If we have indeed reached that tipping point, perhaps there will be no more premature closures. Countries such as Sweden which have flirted with closing their nuclear power plants are looking less and less likely to do so.

And even countries such as Italy and Spain, which once had nuclear power but closed it down, may think again. Or even Germany. But it's more likely that Germany and Italy will continue to quietly buy nuclear electricity from France. Italy has already quietly financed one power reactor in France. This would be a logical way out for Germany too.

We live in interesting times.