Saudi Arabia: Why develop Nuclear energy rather than Solar?
An opinion piece in the June 10 WSJ by Edward J. Markey asks a very good question: Why is Bush Helping Saudi Arabia Build Nukes?
First off, this would seem to have a very real potential for disaster down the road. I'm no expert on Saudi Arabia and the chances of the regime their falling and Islamic radicals taking over. But is that a chance worth taking?
But Markey makes another point that I hadn't thought of before:
Saudi Arabia has poured money into developing its vast reserves of natural gas for domestic electricity production. It continues to invest in a national gas transportation pipeline and stepped-up exploration, building a solid foundation for domestic energy production that could meet its electricity needs for many decades. Nuclear energy, on the other hand, would require enormous investments in new infrastructure by a country with zero expertise in this complex technology.
Have Ms. Rice, Mr. Bush or Saudi leaders looked skyward? The Saudi desert is under almost constant sunshine. If Mr. Bush wanted to help his friends in Riyadh diversify their energy portfolio, he should have offered solar panels, not nuclear plants.
Why would the Saudi's want to develop nuclear energy, instead of solar? If any country could make Solar energy work, you'd think it would be the sun-baked peninsula of Saudi Arabia. To me, this either means that solar energy is much farther away from being economically viable on a large scale than many environmentalists would like us to believe AND/OR Saudi Arabia really isn't interested in only expanding their energy supply and energy diversity. The latter is the conclusion feared by Markey, as he notes that Saudi Arabia is quite possibly thinking ahead to when Iran (their biggest rival in the region) gets a nuke or two.
Labels: international
posted by Thomas R. Stone @ 10:00 PM
2 Comments
Links to this post
2 Comments:
The answer to the question is two folds. With regard to natural gas, the "Gas Initiative" was launched in 2003, and 4 international energy companies were granted concession to explore for gas in the Southeastern desert, however, no significant reserves of gas was discovered since then, and one of the international companies had pulled out in 2006. This raised concerns that there might not be as much gas in the area as was thought before.
The second issue is of course Iran, once Iran develop nuclear capabilities, it would be the only bully on the bloc. Although Pakistan's nuclear bomb is percieved a proxy bomb for Saudi, there is no defense better than having your own nuclear bomb.
"To me, this either means that solar energy is much farther away from being economically viable on a large scale than many environmentalists would like us to believe[...]"
Oh, this is most definetly true. Renewables advocates have a terrible habit of ignoring the fact that a majority of grid costs go into transmission and reliabillity, not into generation of power and the fact that storing electricity is more costly than generating it.
Look at the cost of big solar projects like Nevada Solar one and see what happens when you include a moderate rate of return(e.g. 10% over 20 years). The best CSP projects appear to land around 20 cents/kWh, operational cost not included.
But that doesn't mean CSP is entirely useless. That just means that CSP won't compete against nuclear or coal-fired baseload for a very long time, if ever.
Solar provides all it's power during exactly the part of the day when people need their air conditioning the most and it competes against natural gas, which is quite expensive and poised to get more so when Europe creates a "security of demand" by building one heck of a lot of wind turbines(which are so dependent on natural gas to supply reliable electricity that the financially rational recourse would be to sell them for scrap if ever the natural gas supply ran dry rather than building a continent-wide spider web of HVDC lines + storage).
Post a Comment
Links to this post:
Create a Link
<< Home