Research Article |
Corresponding author: Oleg V. Marchenko ( marchenko@isem.irk.ru ) Academic editor: Yury Korovin
© 2023 Oleg V. Marchenko, Sergei V. Solomin .
This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Citation:
Marchenko OV, Solomin SV (2023) The development options of nuclear power under carbon dioxide emissions constraints. Nuclear Energy and Technology 9(1): 27-31. https://doi.org/10.3897/nucet.9.100754
|
The aim of the work is forecasting the development of nuclear power in Russia and the world for the period up to 2050 under various scenarios of constraints on carbon dioxide emissions. A brief comparative analysis of the main characteristics of the forecasts of the International Energy Agency (IEA) and the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) has been carried out. Additionally, calculations were performed using the mathematical models of the world energy system GEM and GEM-Dyn developed at the ISEM SB RAS. The optimal ratio of nuclear and non-nuclear energy sources has been determined. It is shown that nuclear power, including nuclear power plants operating on a closed fuel cycle, along with renewable energy sources, is an effective technology that can solve the problem of reducing carbon dioxide emissions. Calculations have shown that in the sustainable development scenario, the capacity of nuclear power plants in Russia in the period from 2020 to 2050 can increase by 2.7 times, and their share in electricity generation can reach 21–25% in 2030 and 26–35% in 2050. The average annual growth rate (for 30 years) of the installed capacity of nuclear power plants in Russia in the sustainable development scenario is 3.1% compared to 2.7% for the world as a whole. In the GEM and GEM-Dyn calculations performed by the authors, the scale of nuclear energy use turned out to be about 30% higher than in the scenarios of the International Energy Agency due to more conservative estimates of the opportunities for improving the performance of renewable energy sources and taking into account the need to back-up their capacity.
Nuclear industry, nuclear power plants, environmental restrictions, efficiency, energy model, forecast
In recent years, many politicians and scientists have been talking about the need to combat global warming. They argue in this regard that measures to combat climate change are urgent, since the consequences of such a change may be worse than previously expected (
The 2015 Paris Climate Accords have set a benchmark to limit global temperature rise to “well below 2 °C”, and ideally to 1.5 °C above pre-industrial levels. Achieving this goal will require a profound transformation of the global energy sector. Since the combustion of fossil fuels increases greenhouse gas emissions, their further use should be limited (
One of the most effective means of reducing the greenhouse gas emissions, primarily carbon dioxide (CO2), is the further development of the nuclear industry (
The purpose of this work is to predict the development of the nuclear industry in Russia and the world for the period up to 2050. The authors consider various scenarios for limiting carbon dioxide emissions, some characteristics of the forecasts of international organizations and the results of calculating the prospects for the development of the energy sector using static (
The mathematical description of the problem of determining the optimal technological structure of the global energy system in a static (quasi-dynamic) formulation is as follows: it is necessary to find the minimum of the objective function
, (1)
where crj is the unit reduced cost, xrj is the installed capacity; indices r and j denote the sets of regions (model nodes) R={1,…, ru} and energy technologies J={1,…,ju}, respectively.
The minimum of the objective function can be found subject to the following constraints: meeting the specified energy needs and peak power as well as balancing the production and consumption of primary, secondary and final energy, financial, environmental and other restrictions. Among the electricity generation technologies, the model describes base and peak power plants using fossil fuels and hydrogen, NPPs with thermal and fast reactors, hydraulic power plants (HPPs), solar power plants (SPPs), wind power plants (WPPs) and geothermal power plants (GeoPPs).
The static model describes the nuclear industry on the assumption that at each time interval the energy structure changes completely (all the existing technologies will be decommissioned and replaced with new ones or completely reconstructed). The continuous development of the nuclear industry is described by the dynamic model, which, when moving to a new time interval, takes into account the existing structure of energy technologies in the regions, timing of the decommissioning of facilities, differences in the service life as well as dynamics of technical and economic indicators of the technologies. The objective function of the problem in the dynamic formulation is written as:
∀ t∈T, ∀ r∈R, ∀ j∈J. (2)
Here, as before, ctrj is the specific reduced cost,xtrj is the installed capacity, and the index t refers to the time intervals tu, into which the entire considered period T={1,…,tu} is divided. In addition to the constraints of the static model, the solution of the problem must satisfy the conditions of continuity at the boundaries of the time intervals. As the experience of applying these two modifications of the global energy system model has shown, when considering a time period of several decades (as in the case of this work, up to 2050), the calculated structures at the end of the period differ insignificantly.
The models in these formulations are described in most detail in (
Table
Scenarios | Years | |||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
2010 | 2020 | 2030 | 2040 | 2050 | ||
1 | STEPS | 32.3 | 34.2 | 36.3 | 35.3 | 33.9 |
2 | APS | 32.3 | 34.2 | 33.6 | 26.7 | 20.7 |
3 | SDS | 32.3 | 34.2 | 28.5 | 16.4 | 8.2 |
4 | NZE | 32.3 | 34.2 | 21.1 | 6.3 | 0.0 |
The International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) proposed the following two emission scenarios: (1) inertial (35 Gt in 2030 and 33.1 Gt in 2050) and (2) REMAp (24.9 Gt in 2030 and 9.8 Gt) (
Table
2030 | 2050 | |||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Europe / USA | India / China | Russia | Europe / USA | India / China | Russia | |
IEA Model (2021) | ||||||
NPP | 4800/5100 | 2800 | – | 4500 | 2500/2800 | – |
SPP (PVC) | 510/640 | 340/380 | – | 370/440 | 260/330 | – |
WPP | 1390/1280 | 990/1160 | – | 1391/1200 | 960/1090 | – |
Coal | 2000/2100 | 1200/800 | – | 2000/2100 | 1200/800 | – |
Gas | 1000 | 700/560 | – | 1000 | 700/560 | – |
GEM Model (2022) | ||||||
NPP (thermal) | 4800 | 3000 | 3200 | 4500 | 3200 | 3500 |
NPP (FR) | 5200 | 5000 | 3600 | 5000 | 4700 | 3500 |
SPP (PVC) | 850 | 750 | 1000 | 750 | 500 | 800 |
WPP | 1300 | 1050 | 1100 | 1200 | 1000 | 1000 |
HPP | 4100/3950 | 2500/2400 | 2500 | 4100/3950 | 2800/2700 | 2600 |
Coal | 1500 | 1250 | 1400 | 1450 | 1200 | 1350 |
Gas | 1000 | 900 | 1050 | 1000 | 900 | 1100 |
Energy source | Rank | Discounted cost of electricity, cent/kW×h | |
---|---|---|---|
2030 | 2050 | ||
SPP | 1 | 2.0–4.5 | 1.5–4.0 |
WPP | 2 | 3.0–5.5 | 3.0–4.5 |
NPP | 3 | 6.5–12.0 | 6.0–11.5 |
HPP | 4 | 6.0–12.0 | 7.0–12.0 |
Gas | 5 | 6.0–12.0 | 12.5–13.5 |
Coal | 6 | 6.5–14.0 | 12.5–14.0 |
Specific investments are the most important indicators that affect the economic efficiency of the energy source. In addition, the cost of fuel plays an important role and, for renewable energy sources, climatic and meteorological conditions determine the installed capacity utilization factor.
The cost of electricity accumulates all the main technical and economic indicators of the energy source and is generally used for preliminary estimates and pairwise comparisons. The next approximation for evaluating economic efficiency is mathematical modeling, which takes into account the relationship of energy sources with each other and with the environment. This is especially important when considering renewable energy sources operating in an unmanaged mode, since they must be duplicated by other energy sources in order to provide uninterrupted electricity supply to consumers. In particular, in the GEM models, variables describing the renewable energy sources are included not only in energy balances but also in power balances with coefficients that take into account the insecurity of their generation.
In the period up to 2050, a sharp reduction is expected in the cost of solar power plants based on photovoltaic converters (PVCs). In this regard, nuclear and hydraulic power plants are inferior in terms of the cost of electricity to solar and wind power plants (SPPs and WPPs) (see Table
Given these prerequisites, the global energy structure predicted in the IEA and IRENA scenarios assumes a radical increase in the role of renewable energy sources (RESs). In the REMAp scenario, the share of RESs in global electricity production increases to 86% by 2050. In the IEA scenarios, the same indicator ranges from 42% to 88%, and the share of NPPs decreases from 10% to 8–9% (Table
Electricity generation (thousand TW×h/year) and NPP share in electricity generation (%) in the IEA scenarios
2020 | 2030 | 2040 | 2050 | |
---|---|---|---|---|
World, total | 26.7 | 33.5–37.3 | 40.5–56.5 | 46.7–71.1 |
Including NPP | 2.7 | 3.1–3.8 | 3.5–4.9 | 3.8–5.5 |
NPP share, % | 10.1 | 9.3–10.1 | 8.7–9.4 | 7.7–8.1 |
Russia, total | 1.1 | 1.3 | 1.4 | 1.5 |
Including NPP | 0.2 | 0.2–0.3 | 0.3 | 0.3–0.4 |
NPP share, % | 20.3 | 17.5–20.2 | 18.0–23.5 | 18.5–27.2 |
In this work, for the first three IEA scenarios (see Table
Energy sources | Years | ||||||
2020 | 2030 | 2050 | |||||
Sc. 1 | Sc. 2 | Sc. 3 | Sc. 1 | Sc. 2 | Sc. 3 | ||
IEA scenarios (2021) | |||||||
RES | 195 | 236 | 236 | 332 | 432 | 432 | 867 |
Nuclear energy | 216 | 219 | 219 | 254 | 275 | 275 | 409 |
Fossil fuel | 646 | 798 | 798 | 666 | 780 | 780 | 232 |
Total | 1057 | 1253 | 1253 | 1255 | 1488 | 1488 | 1508 |
Authors’ scenarios (2020) | |||||||
RES | 209 | 270 | 290 | 310 | 410 | 420 | 600 |
Nuclear energy | 216 | 290 | 300 | 330 | 420 | 490 | 540 |
Hydrogen | 0 | 0 | 0 | 20 | 0 | 50 | 130 |
Fossil fuel | 639 | 850 | 760 | 540 | 820 | 640 | 290 |
Total | 1064 | 1410 | 1350 | 1200 | 1650 | 1600 | 1560 |
Energy sources | Years | ||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
2020 | 2030 | 2050 | |||||
Sc. 1 | Sc. 2 | Sc. 3 | Sc. 1 | Sc. 2 | Sc. 3 | ||
IEA scenarios (2021) | |||||||
RES | 18.5 | 18.8 | 18.8 | 26.5 | 29.0 | 29.0 | 57.5 |
Nuclear energy | 20.4 | 17.5 | 17.5 | 20.2 | 18.5 | 18.5 | 27.1 |
Fossil fuel | 61.1 | 63.7 | 63.7 | 53.1 | 52.4 | 52.4 | 15.4 |
Total | 100.0 | 100.0 | 100.0 | 100.0 | 100.0 | 100.0 | 100.0 |
Authors’ scenarios (2020) | |||||||
RES | 19.6 | 19.1 | 21.5 | 25.8 | 24.8 | 26.3 | 38.5 |
Nuclear energy | 20.3 | 20.6 | 22.2 | 27.5 | 25.5 | 30.6 | 34.6 |
Hydrogen | 0.0 | 0.0 | 0.0 | 1.7 | 0.0 | 3.1 | 8.3 |
Fossil fuel | 60.1 | 60.3 | 56.3 | 45.0 | 49.7 | 40.0 | 18.6 |
Total | 100.0 | 100.0 | 100.0 | 100.0 | 100.0 | 100.0 | 100.0 |
As the restrictions on carbon dioxide emissions tighten, the scale of development of the nuclear industry in general increases (in IEA Scenarios 1 and 2, it remains constant). According to the GEM and GEM-Dyn forecasts, the scale of use of nuclear energy in all the scenarios exceeds the IEA forecasts (by about 30% in the sustainable development scenario). This is due to the fact that the calculations include more conservative estimates of the reduction in specific capital investments in SPPs and WPPs, taking into account the need to duplicate their capacity with peak energy sources. At the same time, the calculations show the expediency of a partial transition of the nuclear industry to fast neutron reactors with a closed fuel cycle, which increases their resource base, the efficiency of nuclear fuel use, and makes it possible to solve some problems related to the disposal of radioactive waste. Nuclear power plants in Scenarios 2 and 3 prove to be useful for producing not only electricity but also hydrogen for peak power plants.
The share of NPPs in the total Russian electricity production predicted in the GEM models also significantly exceeds the estimates of the IEA (35% versus 27% in the scenario of sustainable development in 2050) and the forecasts in (
The results of calculating the economic development of installed NPP capacities in the global and Russian energy sectors, which are optimal in terms of economic criteria, are shown in Figs
The average annual growth rate (over 30 years) of installed NPP capacities in Russia, according to the sustainable development scenario, is 3.1% compared to 2.7% for the world as a whole. In the considered scenarios, it will be economically optimal to increase the installed NPP capacities up to 56–72 GW by 2050 (an increase of 1.9–2.5 times compared to 2020).
It should be noted that the high growth rates of nuclear energy in Russia obtained as a result of calculations can hardly be realized, taking into account financial, political and other restrictions, but they reveal a trend in accordance with which it is expedient to develop nuclear energy in the coming decades.
The research was carried out under State Assignment Project (no. FWEU-2021-0001) of the Fundamental Research Program of Russian Federation 2021-2030.