Braucht Europa Atomkraft?

Im Energiemix, den die Bundesregierung in ihrem Energiekonzept vorsieht, sollen in Zukunft die erneuerbaren Energien den Hauptanteil übernehmen. Wie muss eine langfristige Strategie für die zukünftige Energieversorgung aussehen, und welche Rolle spielt dabei die Atomkraft? Nach Ansicht von Franz Mayinger, Technische Universität München, ist ein Verzicht auf Kernenergie weder ökologisch sinnvoll noch wirtschaftlich vertretbar. Europa stehe in Wettbewerb mit den aufstrebenden asiatischen Ländern und in zunehmendem Maße auch mit Südamerika und brauche, insbesondere für moderne effiziente Produktionsprozesse, eine zuverlässige und auf Dauer bezahlbare Stromversorgung. Wirtschaftliche Zwänge, aber auch ein angemessener Wohlstand der Bevölkerung erforderten für Europa den Erhalt und den weiteren Ausbau der Kernenergie, insbesondere dann, wenn man den Klimawandel ernst nehme und die CO2-Emissionen vermindern müsse. Für Thomas Hamacher, Technische Universität München, lautet die eigentliche Frage nicht, ob man im Jahr 2050 noch Kernenergie brauchen wird, sondern wie eine Kernenergie aussehen muss, die im Jahr 2050 als wesentlicher Baustein einer nachhaltigen Energiewirtschaft gelten kann, und was heute an Forschungsvorhaben angestoßen werden muss, damit dies in 40–50 Jahren realisiert werden kann. Seiner Meinung nach solle durch weitere intensive Forschung versucht werden, die Kernenergie so weiterzuentwickeln, dass sie mit strengen Kriterien der Nachhaltigkeit vereinbar ist. Fusionskraftwerke versprechen dabei eine Überwindung der oben genannten Nachhaltigkeitsdefizite. Die Brennstoffe stehen in ausreichender Menge zur Verfügung. Die Sicherheit während des Betriebs ist durch die prinzipiellen Eigenschaften – nicht zuletzt die niedrige Leistungsdichte – gewährleistet. Langelebige radioaktive Abfälle entstehen nicht.Kernenergie, Energieversorgung, Regenerative Energie, Klimaschutz, Elektrizitätswirtschaft, Deutschland, EU-Staaten

Optimization-based framework for low-voltage grid reinforcement assessment under various levels of flexibility and coordination

The rapid electrification of residential heating and mobility sectors is expected to drive the existing distribution grid assets beyond their planned operating conditions. This change will also reveal new potentials through sector coupling, flexibilities, and the local exchange of decentralized generation. This paper thus presents an optimization framework for multi-modal energy systems at the low voltage (LV) distribution grid level. In this, we focus on the reinforcement requirements of the grid and the techno-economic assessment of flexibility components and coordination between agents. By employing a multi-level approach, computational complexity is reduced, and various levels of coordination and flexibilities are implemented. We conclude the work with a case study for a representative rural grid in Germany, in which we observe high economic potential in the flexible operation of buildings, majorly thanks to better integration of photovoltaics. Across all paradigms barring a best-case benchmark, grid reinforcement based on a mix of passive and active measures was necessary. A synergy effect is observed between flexibilities and coordination, as their combination reduces the peaks to the extent of completely avoiding grid reinforcement. The presented framework can be applied with a wide range of grid and component types to outline the broad landscape of future LV distribution grids

SPIKE: Secure and Private Investigation of the Kidney Exchange problem

Background: The kidney exchange problem (KEP) addresses the matching of patients in need for a replacement organ with compatible living donors. Ideally many medical institutions should participate in a matching program to increase the chance for successful matches. However, to fulfill legal requirements current systems use complicated policy-based data protection mechanisms that effectively exclude smaller medical facilities to participate. Employing secure multi-party computation (MPC) techniques provides a technical way to satisfy data protection requirements for highly sensitive personal health information while simultaneously reducing the regulatory burdens. Results: We have designed, implemented, and benchmarked SPIKE, a secure MPC-based privacy-preserving KEP which computes a solution by finding matching donor-recipient pairs in a graph structure. SPIKE matches 40 pairs in cycles of length 2 in less than 4 minutes and outperforms the previous state-of-the-art protocol by a factor of 400x in runtime while providing medically more robust solutions. Conclusions: We show how to solve the KEP in a robust and privacy-preserving manner achieving practical performance. The usage of MPC techniques fulfills many data protection requirements on a technical level, allowing smaller health care providers to directly participate in a kidney exchange with reduced legal processes.Comment: 26 pages, 6 figure

Evaluation of Hierarchical, Multi-Agent, Community-Based, Local Energy Markets Based on Key Performance Indicators

In recent years, local energy markets (LEMs) have been introduced to empower end-customers within energy communities at the distribution level of the power system, in order to be able to trade their energy locally in a competitive and fair environment. However, there is still some challenge with regard to the most efficient approach in organising the LEMs for the electricity exchange between consumers and prosumers while ensuring that they are responsible for their electricity-related choices, and concerning which LEM model is suitable for which prosumer or consumer type. This paper presents a hierarchical model for the organisation of agent-based local energy markets. According to the proposed model, prosumers and consumers are enabled to transact electricity within the local energy community and with the grid in a coordinated manner to ensure technical and economic benefits for the LEM’s agents. The model is implemented in a software tool called Grid Singularity Exchange (GSyE), and it is verified in a real German energy community case study. The simulation results demonstrate that trading electricity within the LEM offers economic and technical benefits compared to transacting with the up-stream grid. This can further lead to the decarbonization of the power system sector. Furthermore, we propose two models for LEMs consisting of multi-layer and single-layer hierarchical agent-based structures. According to our study, the multi-layer hierarchical model is more profitable for household prosumers as compared to trading within the single-layer hierarchical LEM. However, the single-layer LEM is more be beneficial for industrial prosumers.© 2022 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).fi=vertaisarvioitu|en=peerReviewed

Multifacility Location Problems with Tree Structure and Finite Dominating Sets

Multifacility location problems arise in many real world applications. Often, the facilities can only be placed in feasible regions such as development or industrial areas. In this paper we show the existence of a finite dominating set (FDS) for the planar multifacility location problem with polyhedral gauges as distance functions, and polyhedral feasible regions, if the interacting facilities form a tree. As application we show how to solve the planar 2-hub location problem in polynomial time. This approach will yield an ε-approximation for the euclidean norm case polynomial in the input data and 1/ε

Stereoscopic space map – semi-immersive configuration of 3Dstereoscopic tours in multi-display environments

Although large-scale stereoscopic 3D environments like CAVEs are a favorable location for group presentations, the perspective projection and stereoscopic optimization usually follows a navigator-centric approach. Therefore, these presentations are usually accompanied by strong side-effects, such as motion sickness which is often caused by a disturbed stereoscopic vision. The reason is that the stereoscopic visualization is usually optimized for the only head-tracked person in the CAVE – the navigator – ignoring the needs of the real target group – the audience. To overcome this misconception, this work proposes an alternative to the head tracking-based stereoscopic effect optimization. By using an interactive virtual overview map in 3D, the pre-tour and on-tour configuration of the stereoscopic effect is provided, partly utilizing our previously published interactive projection plane approach. This Stereoscopic Space Map is visualized by the zSpace 200®, whereas the virtual world is shown on a panoramic 330° CAVE2TM. A pilot expert study with eight participants was conducted using pre-configured tours through 3D models. The comparison of the manual and automatic stereoscopic adjustment showed that the proposed approach is an appropriate alternative to the nowadays commonly used head tracking-based stereoscopic adjustment