March 9th, 2009 | 11:00 am

AREVA Renewable Projects Will Create Green Jobs

by Jarret Adams

But it is not all about nuclear energy. AREVA also believes in the power of renewables to create significant numbers of green jobs, and we are working to expand our business in this sector.

Specifically, AREVA has partnered with Duke Energy to form ADAGE, which is focused on developing advanced biopower (biomass to electricity) plants in the United States. These facilities too will produce significant numbers of green jobs. Each facility will create 400 jobs during construction and about 100 jobs during operation. The goal of ADAGE is to build 10-12 new plants over the next six years—this means thousands of new jobs to say nothing of the additional green power they will produce.

In February, ADAGE signed a preliminary agreement with Energy Northwest to develop biopower plants in the states of Washington, Idaho, Montana and Oregon. The goal is to market the facilities to the 24 member companies of Energy Northwest with the hope of building one or more in the four-state region.

  • http://newpapyrusmagazine.blogspot.com Marcel F. Williams

    Biomass power plants would be much more efficient in producing energy if they used oxygen.

    Oxygen could be supplied to biomass power plants by nuclear power plants during the off-peak or dedicated production of hydrogen. The CO2 from the biomass power plants could be captured and then piped to the nuclear hydrogen production facility for the production of hydrocarbon synfuels (methanol, gasoline, dimethyl ether, diesel fuel, and jet fuel).

    http://newpapyrusmagazine.blogspot.com/2008/08/gasoline-from-nuclear-and-renewable.html

  • http://canadianenergyissues.com/ Steve Aplin

    Marcel, I agree. We could also capture power-plant exhaust and use it for the same thing. In fact, this is about the only practical thing to do with the 2 billion metric tons of CO2 coming from U.S. coal-fired power plants every year. Carbon capture and recycle, instead of carbon capture and storage.

    But it all hinges on lots of cheap hydrogen. I understand there is a Japanese nuclear demonstration plant capable of producing 30 litres per hour using the sulfur-iodine cycle. Are there other nuclear facilities that are dedicated to H production? Can this be done with existing power reactors?

  • http://newpapyrusmagazine.blogspot.com Marcel F. Williams

    Steve, I think the nuclear industry needs to divorce itself entirely from any connection with the fossil fuel industry. In other words, the best way to reduce CO2 pollution from a fossil fuel power plant is to replace it with a nuclear power plant.

    There’s already enough room at existing nuclear sites in the US to more than triple current nuclear capacity. And if the Federal government could build additional nuclear facilities to reprocess spent fuel and then utilize the spent fuel with on site Federal nuclear reactors to produce more power and synthetic fuels, then we could eliminate fossil fuel power plants altogether within the next 20 or 30 years, IMO.

    As far as the cost of hydrogen in relation to producing synthetic hydrocarbon fuels is concerned, I really don’t think it matters if the Federal government simply mandated that a small percentage of all hydrocarbon fuels sold in America contained some carbon neutral fuels (perhaps 5 to 10%). And the best time to include the more expensive synfuels to the mix is when petroleum fuels are the cheapest. And, of course, when petroleum fuels become more expensive then these same synfuels become more competitive.

    Synfuels and the Price of Oil
    http://newpapyrusmagazine.blogspot.com/1999/01/synfuels-and-price-of-oil.html

    The Nuplex Solution
    http://newpapyrusmagazine.blogspot.com/1999/02/nuplex-solution.html

  • Jarret Adams

    Those are some great insights; the folks at ADAGE are focused on the initial design focused on electricity production from the wood waste, but in the future, who knows? I should also point out that nuclear and biomass are powerful tools in helping us address our energy and environmental challenges, but they are not the only solutions. We will still need contributions from other sources.

  • http://canadianenergyissues.com/ Steve Aplin

    Marcel, I agree: your federal government or mine (Canadian) could mandate carbon-neutral sources in hydrocarbon fuels, the way some jurisdictions have mandated ethanol. But to ensure that synfuels enter into truly widespread use, we’ll need a lot of hydrogen, which will of course have to be carbon-neutral, which rules out reformed natural gas.

    Which, until they figure out how to photocatalytically split water on a large scale, leaves water splitting using fission heat. In the current political climate that obviously won’t happen any time soon.

    We’ll also need carbon to make synfuels, and a major source could be captured CO2.

    I am not sure therefore that the nuclear industry should divorce itself entirely from fossil. Fossil fuels are absolutely here to stay, for the foreseeable future. But the fossil fuel that is hurting the chances for bigger and faster uptake of nuclear is gas. That’s because of the wind/solar Trojan Horse.

    I do agree that, for power generation, a general shift toward nuclear, say sixty to seventy percent of the baseload mix, should be the long term aim. Ontario power was 60 percent nuclear in the mid-90s, and power-sector GHG emissions were nearly 10 million metric tons below the (eventual) Kyoto target.

    But the nuclear industries in both Canada and the U.S. face some challenges when it comes to convincing policymakers that that’s the way to go. In Ontario, nuclear capacity is artificially capped, to please the green lobby. Surprise surprise, there’s been a major expansion in gas capacity in recent years. And in the U.S… well, you saw how nuclear fared in the stimulus bill.