Global Warming and Nuclear Energy

Al Gore's New Book

2009-11-15T20:03:00.000-08:00

The last month has been bad for the struggle against climate change. The Pew Research Center's recent poll shows that Americans are almost evenly divided between those who think it's a very serious threat, those who think it's a somewhat serious threat, and those who don't think it is a serious threat.

APEC nations announced they would not sign enforceable limits on greenhouse-gas emissions at the Copenhagen meeting coming up in December.

And now we have Al Gore's much-anticipated new book, Our Choice: A Plan to Solve the Climate Crisis.

His first book was supposed to show the science about global warming and climate change, but he got the science wrong and thereby gave ammunition to the denialists. The best-known mistake was the graph that showed the correlation between global average temperature and CO2 concentration over the last 400,000 years. What he may have failed to notice, and certainly didn't point out, was that the temperature changes preceded the CO2 changes by hundreds of years, which contradicted his thesis.

So expectations weren't high when he published this new book, which deals with the solutions. And we were neither disappointed nor pleasantly surprised.

He covers all the important points in the subject. Some of the information no doubt is accurate and valuable. Unfortunately, it's poorly referenced so readers can't distinguish between solid information and his own opinions.

And we see grating inconsistencies. Our interest here is mainly in nuclear energy as an important part of the solution. He shrugs it off, saying only that a very great investment is needed to implement it.

His solution? Besides the usual exhortations to practice efficiency and conservation, he gives us only the usual tired nostrums: wind, solar, and geothermal energy. As we have shown here to the point of tedium, the investment required for wind and solar energy is higher than that for nuclear, and geothermal could at most provide only a few per cent of our electricity requirements. By his logic, nuclear should be at the top of the list of solutions; sadly, his information doesn't carry him to the right and obvious conclusion.

He does get credit for at least considering the problem of intermittency. Here again, alas, he falls down. He proposes that plug-in hybrid car batteries will solve the problem of storing enough energy to get the country through periods of low energy production from wind and solar.

We happen to know how much electricity has to be stored. As we calculated here, the US would have to store between 141 and 386 billion KWH, depending on how much comes from solar and how much from wind, based on current consumption rates. But Toyota's intended battery has a storage capacity of 202 volts x 13 amp-hours, or 2.6 KWH. Each battery costs around $10,000. The number of plug-in batteries required would be 54 billion to 148 billion, in a country with 306 million people. Or, if every person owned one battery and used it only for energy storage, the combined capacity would be only 0.2% to 0.56% of what's needed. For the storage to provide 5% of the amount needed would require technological improvements that aren't even on the horizon.

Ironies abound in the second half of the book. He points out the undeniable fact that the most effective way to limit population growth is to promote economic security in poor countries. "The most powerful contraceptive is the confidence by parents that their children will survive," he quotes Julius K. Nyerere, Tanzania's first Prime Minister and President. But he wants to limit their energy sources to the most expensive and unachievable ones.

He offers us this crucial conclusion: "The only meaningful and effective solutions to the climate crisis involve massive changes in human behavior and thinking." That clearly is true, and it's too bad he doesn't apply it to his own attitudes about nuclear energy.

He refers to the confusion over climate change mentioned at the beginning of this article. He blames the confusion on self-interested political groups that spread misinformation about the subject. They didn't have to prove they were right, they just had to create doubt about the truth. He quotes climate scientist Michael Oppenheimer: "What they've done is try to take scientific understanding and put it on the same level with political opinion." Why can't he grasp the fact that the same thing happened to nuclear energy?

As was the case for the first book, Mr. Gore's errors fortify the arguments of those who oppose his program. For some time, they've been pointing out that if the situation is as dire as he makes it out to be then he should be calling for massive nuclear construction. His demands for solutions that are more popular but less effective undermine his credibility and, it follows, his argument.

So that's the deal on his book. Certainly some of the information has to be good, but it's not referenceable. The pictures are good. If your public library has it, you definitely should read it.

Lobbyists, Cynicism, and Energy Policy

2009-04-23T13:43:00.000-07:00

------UPDATE: EATING WORDS-------

When you're wrong you should say you're wrong. In the article shown below in its original form I complained that President Obama was offering only symbolic gestures in dealing with the important problem of greenhouse-gas emissions. Today, May 19, 2009, he announced important changes in the rules governing CO2 emissions from vehicles. Some plans were in place to limit emissions in 2020, a time so far off in the future as to be meaningless. Under the new rules, auto manufacturers will have to start meeting new fuel efficiency standards beginning in 2012. The rules will be tightened yearly until 2016, when passenger cars will have to achieve 39 mpg and light trucks 30 mpg.

One could protest that the changes are too little and too late. For onlookers who are concerned about the headlong rush to habitat destruction in which humans are engaged, the plan seems over-solicitous of auto executives. But it clearly isn't a symbolic gesture.

I still think that Jon Wellinghoff's comment, discussed in the article below, is cause for alarm. Since the President faces political constraints most of us can't appreciate, though, I suppose we should respect his judgment and look for continuing reforms to the country's energy and environmental policies.

------ORIGINAL ARTICLE------

I haven't added articles for a long time because anything I said would be repetitious. But something has changed so maybe it's right to do another.

When President Obama was running for the office he holds now, he spoke against cynicism. "The era of Scooter Libby justice, and Brownie incompetence, and the Karl Rove politics of fear and cynicism will be over." Spartanburg, SC | November 03, 2007 He promised us.

Soon after taking office, he barred former lobbyists from working for agencies they had lobbied within the past two years and required them to recuse themselves from issues they had handled during that time and barred officials of his administration from lobbying their former colleagues "for as long as I am president." New York Times, January 21, 2009. Pres. Obama set the rule at two years because he isn't one to limit his options.

So how does Pres. Obama deal with the important problem of energy and global warming? He appoints Jon Wellinghoff to be head of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. Chairman Wellinghoff is a lawyer who has made a career of lobbying on behalf of consumer and anti-nuclear political groups. Before joining FERC, he was Nevada’s Consumer Advocate for Customers of Public Utilities. Prior to that, while a lawyer in private practice, he was the primary author of the Nevada Renewable Portfolio Standard (RPS) Act. He spent over thirty years lobbying on behalf of renewable-energy businesses. FERC

So we see the rule against lobbyists only applies to lobbyists who didn't support Candidate Obama. It's okay, though, because of the two-year rule.

What about cynicism? Here's what Chairman Wellinghoff has to say about nuclear energy: "We may not need any, ever." His solution: "Natural gas is going to be there for a while, because it's going to be there to get us through this transition that's going to take 30 or more years." New York Times, April 22, 2009

What this means is that cynicism has taken over energy policy in the Obama administration. Maybe the President and the Chairman are right. The problem of global warming is so daunting, perhaps even insurmountable, that there's no point in trying to solve it. Political considerations preclude ignoring it, especially since it faces us every day in the news, so the only response left is symbolic gestures. We'll put up some wind turbines and solar panels. We'll sprinkle money around university research labs to pretend we take new-age gimmicks seriously. Mainly, we'll follow T. Boone Pickens's plan to burn natural gas until it's all gone.

Obviously, cynicism is no substitute for policy. But it doesn't matter, because the destructive effects of global warming will hit after Pres. Obama retires. See how that works?

The Case for Nuclear Energy

2008-11-24T12:25:00.000-08:00

This article is a brazen plug for a new web page that lays out the argument for nuclear energy, based on several years of debating on the internet. It shows that the opponents' arguments don't stand up to scrutiny.

The page can be found here.

Solar Energy, Wind Power, Intermittency, and Storage

2008-11-15T13:08:00.000-08:00

Download PDF version

In ordinary conversations about renewable energy, the issue of energy storage is often overlooked. Renewable sources generate energy on their own schedules, not customers' schedules. The difference must be met either by backup energy supplies or by energy storage. This article describes some storage calculations in the absence of fossil-fired or nuclear sources. The calculations can be downloaded from here.

This is a plot of electricity generation for the US. This writer doesn't have data for any other countries and wouldn't presume to offer advice if he did.

[DOE]

For the rest of this analysis, the average generation for the years 2003-2007 will constitute the model year.

First, compare the demand curve with the availability of wind energy. Wind energy is approximately proportional to the cube of wind speed. Density is also a factor, and there is considerable mismatch at very high and very low wind speeds, but those differences won't change the conclusions. This analysis is based on wind-speed cubed.

The data show wind speeds for 265 cities. We have deleted cities with low winds or high differences between high-wind and low-wind months. We also have deleted Alaska cities, owing to their unique characteristics and their separation from the US power grid. 244 cities are left.

[NOAA]

Clearly, wind energy doesn't match electricity demand well. Next, compare electricity generation with solar potential. Cities with poor solar characteristics were deleted from the data, leaving 221 out of 238.

[NREL]

So we see that solar energy matches the electricity demand somewhat better. For our first cut we shall calculate the maximum amount of solar energy that can be generated and used within a month, and we find that 80.6% of the yearly demand can be met with solar energy on these terms. Now we can consider the remaining demand after all that solar energy is accounted for.

Now we can compare the remaining demand with available wind energy.

The calculations show that 200 billion KWH of storage is required.

We can do the same calculations for other shares of supply from solar energy, with the results shown here:

Our calculations show that the storage requirement ranges from 141 to 386 billion KWH.

There is no way to store that amount of energy. In fact, we'll have to devise a fictional example to illustrate the problem.

Imagine that a lake exists, named Upper Lake Fead, which is equal in size to Lake Mead. Lower Lake Fead is the same size and is located at the bottom of Foover Dam, which is identical to Hoover Dam. However, all the water in Upper Lake Fead can drain through the water turbines.

Lake Volume = 30,000,000 acre-feet

Average head at dam = 520 feet

If the efficiency were 100%, then


  Energy = volume x pressure = volume x head x weight-density
         = 30,000,000 acre-feet x 43560 sq-ft/acre x 520 feet x 62.4 lb/cu-ft
         = 4.24 x 10^16 ft-lb
         = 16 billion KWH

We'll set the turbine efficiency at 85% and account for pump inefficiency by upsizing where necessary. Thus, Upper Lake Fead is good for 13.6 billion KWH.

So we have calculated that the US would need between 10 and 28 Foover Dams, each with Upper and Lower Lake Feads, depending on how much electricity is generated with solar energy. There are, in fact, no Foover Dams and no locations for building any.

Nuclear Energy Costs

2008-10-30T13:51:00.000-07:00

Every responsible study has shown that nuclear electricity is as cheap as any of the non-fossil alternatives and is competitive with fossil-fired electricity.

For example, the International Energy Agency and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development's Nuclear Energy Agency determined the costs as follows:

Cost per MWH in US Dollars

Discount Rate	5%	10%
Coal	25-50	35-60
Nat Gas	37-60	40-63
Nuclear	21-31	30-50
Wind	35-95	45-140
Micro Hydro	40-80	65-100
Solar PV	~150	200+

The University of Chicago compared several detailed calculations with a range of discount rates and summarized the results thus:

Cost per MWH in US Dollars

Coal	37-49
Nat Gas	56-68
Nuclear (assuming old designs)	65-77
Nuclear (assuming new designs)	36-55
Nuclear (assuming advanced-fuel designs)	57-64
Wind	55-77
Solar PV	202-308
Solar Thermal	158-235

A question that immediately presents itself is, why do the two studies give different numbers? The answer is that every study depends on assumptions, such as interest rates and fuel costs. Both these factors, and other factors such as taxes, pollution controls, and equipment lifetimes vary in time and place. This introduces an opportunity to do mischief, since a motivated commentator can pick-and-choose results to bolster his intended conclusion. These numbers only have significance if they're calculated on equal terms and only if they're read relatively, not absolutely.

A common argument being made now is that nuclear construction costs have risen so fast they have rendered nuclear plants too expensive to build. This argument is anchored on a report about some calculations made by Cambridge Energy Research Associates (CERA) that allegedly show a cost increase of 185% between 2000 and 2007. Imagine, an almost tripling of costs in seven years! However, CERA doesn't publish the results in a public forum; nor does it show the calculations so they can be verified. Indeed, there's no way even to know what methods it used.

It is true, though, that costs have risen strongly since China and India began their notable advances in material progress. These cost rises apply to all kinds of construction and, in particular, apply to alternative energy sources.

Here is some information on the cost of windpower construction, which has doubled:

And some data (Oct. 28, 2008) on solar-electric construction. It has essentially held constant, but at US$4700 per KW rated power or over US$20,000 per average KW, it still is hopelessly expensive. What this shows is that the pressure on material prices has kept solar energy from getting cheaper.
Finally, here is some information from Power Engineering International on nuclear construction costs, which shows a cost increase of 125%, not much different from the increase for windpower.

What all these numbers show is what energy analysts have been telling us right along. Nuclear energy is as cost-effective as any non-fossil energy source, even ignoring the intermittency problem of part-time energy sources. But if intermittency is considered, then the comparison widens. There aren't any practical ways to overcome intermittency, as shown here. But if there were some way, the economic and environmental costs would drive the total cost out of sight.

As the world grapples with this issue, one other point has to be considered. A new generation of nuclear power plants is being born. These new plants use passive safety systems so the active systems can be simpler, thereby reducing costs. Furthermore, they operate at higher efficiencies, lowering fuel costs. As shown in the University of Chicago data, these improvements make nuclear energy cheaper than any alternative other than coal.

Energy Fuel Supplies

2008-10-29T20:32:00.000-07:00

When energy is discussed, the subject of fuel reserves often arises. In particular, opponents of nuclear energy point to a few decades of proven reserves as a reason to abandon one of the very few effective countermeasures available against climate change.

The point that needs to be understood is that proven reserves are only a fraction of the resources that really exist. For example, the world has less than a three-years' supply of oil if only proven reserves are considered. No one really believes the world will run out of oil in three years. In comparison, projected resources show over 600 years' supply of oil, maybe a thousand years' supply of coal, and 30,000 years' supply of nuclear fuel. Even if all the world's electricity comes from nuclear energy and the rate of electricity use triples, nuclear fuel will last over a thousand years. Renewable energy and energy efficiency can stretch the supply longer. A thousand years should be enough time to develop other solutions, such as fusion energy and energy storage.

The best available information from the most authoritative sources can be found here.

My Coal Company

2008-07-19T09:46:00.000-07:00

If I owned a coal company, my biggest fear would be that people would learn how much damage I was causing and make me pay for it. My second biggest fear would be that people would demand that power utilities switch from coal to nuclear energy.

What to do, what to do.

I would give money to my allies. All the groups that support renewable energy also support me. It's a simple fact of nature that renewable energy sources generate little or no power for hours or even days at a time and what they do generate is unpredictable. Furthermore, there's no way to save enough energy to hold people over from one power episode to the next. Anyone who does arithmetic can see that for himself. Some examples of the arithmetic can be seen here. That means backup energy supplies always have to be standing by when renewable energy sources are in operation.

In the short run, renewables will displace a few percent of my coal sales. But the economics of renewables make them unacceptable. That's because the backup energy sources required cost almost as much to hold in readiness as they do to operate. The result is that energy consumers pay for the same energy twice: once for the renewable energy and again for the backup. When people catch on to that their support for renewable energy will vanish.

There's also a second benefit. The political groups that pose as defenders of the environment ought to be pursuing me as Public Enemy Number 1. Even in the US, thousands of people die every month from coal pollution, as shown here. Worldwide, the deaths run into the hundreds of thousands every year, to say nothing of debilitating diseases, heavy-metal poisoning, and ocean pollution. But if I fund the political groups then they'll never make more than token objections. What they will do is attack my only competition with hammer and tongs. All the groups like Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth will fall over themselves making up lurid and fantastic warnings against nuclear energy. All because of their infatuation with renewable energy.

That's enough, but for a few dollars more I can hire "consultants" who pretend to be scientists. They'll write articles and publish them in popular magazines that don't believe in peer review. They'll probably get away with it because most editors can't tell science from cotton candy. And in the remote chance some of these fake scientists are unmasked, most people won't hear about it anyway because journalists hate to admit they were wrong.

Yeah, that's the ticket!

Surprising Poll Results

2008-07-06T11:03:00.000-07:00

The Zogby poll for June 6, 2008 offered some surprises. It showed that 67% of Americans favored building nuclear power plants. That's good news for the country, but the same poll showed that 51% favored building new coal-fired plants.

The same surprise came from the Rasmussen poll for July 2, 2008. 52% disagreed with Senator Harry Reid's observation that "Coal makes us sick."

Health experts have been telling us for decades that coal pollution isn't just making us sick, it's killing us. The most authoritative study done, the Abt report, confirms what studies have been showing for decades, that thousands of Americans die every month because of burning coal to generate electricity.

How is it possible that something this important is unknown to most Americans? Clearly, the news media haven't been doing their job. Commentators have complained for as long as I can remember that the news media only cover novel and photogenic stories.

Let's take the accident at Three Mile Island. It received saturation coverage. Ever since, it's been known as The Worst Nuclear Accident in American History. Any time nuclear energy is mentioned in the news, the public is reminded of this stellar fact. What the news stories never mention is that no harm came to anyone because of the accident. See the Kemeny Report for details. Well, the owners of the plant lost big time, but that's not what we're talking about here.

As one would expect, misinformation flowed in to fill the information vacuum. Irresponsible political groups like Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth and their many imitators have fed the appetites of news media for lurid and frightening what-if scenarios. The fact that these scenarios are based on fantasy and not on reality doesn't bother media reporters in the slightest. The misinformation gets stories published and that's all that matters.

Why don't the political groups campaign against coal, since it truly is dangerous? That's more complicated. Greater coal consumption is the inevitable consequence of less nuclear energy. If they publicized the facts about coal, they'd have to admit they were wrong about nuclear energy. We can, however, note with new-found respect that the Sierra Club is intervening to stop the construction of new coal-fired plants. It will be interesting to observe whether or not the Sierra Club breaks ranks with less-credible political groups. Will the Sierra Club ever show the moral courage of environmental heavyweights like James Lovelock and Hugh Montefiore and reverse its position on nuclear energy?

In the meantime, what can be done to overcome the information deficit? The Nuclear Energy Institute does a valiant job of informing the public where it can, even sending spokespersons to public meetings. Anything NEI says, though, will naturally be discounted since its job is to promote a particular viewpoint. One might wonder if spending its budget on a race car really is effective at promoting nuclear energy, but the alternative would be sending out video documentaries no one would watch. One has to hope NEI knows what it's doing.

For the rest of us, the best we can do is inform ourselves as well as possible so we can offer good information whenever the subject comes up around us. This blog is an effort in that direction, as are the blogs recommended in the sidebar. Since the other side is working hard at spreading confusion and misinformation, we just have to hope readers can tell the difference. If people knew the truth about coal, the support for nuclear energy would be much higher than 67%.

The Price-Anderson Act

2008-06-28T22:08:00.000-07:00

Prefatory Note:

A visitor generously suggested ways to improve the accuracy of this article and its present version was written after receiving his comments.

--------------------------

For as long as I can remember, anti-nukes have been claiming that the Price-Anderson Act protects nuclear power plants from liability. The plants are so dangerous, they claim, utilities won't accept responsibility for them.

The facts are very much different. A copy of the law can be found here.

I should say at the outset that I am not an attorney and therefore am not qualified to interpret law or court decisions. That said, when anti-nukes claim that the law protects utilities from liability, they conveniently leave out the fact that the liability limits only apply to federal courts, not to state courts. But don't take my word for it. Here is an excerpt from the US Supreme Court decision in the case of SILKWOOD v. KERR-McGEE CORP., decided January 11, 1984. [source]

"In sum, it is clear that in enacting and amending the Price-Anderson Act, Congress assumed that state-law remedies, in whatever form they might take, were available to those injured by nuclear incidents. This was so even though it was well aware of the NRC’s exclusive authority to regulate safety matters. No doubt there is tension between the conclusion that safety regulation is the exclusive concern of the federal law and the conclusion that a State may nevertheless award damages based on its own law of liability. But as we understand what was done over the years in the legislation concerning nuclear energy, Congress intended to stand by both concepts and to tolerate whatever tension there was between them. We can do no less. It may be that the award of damages based on the state law of negligence or strict liability is regulatory in the sense that a nuclear plant will be threatened with damages liability if it does not conform to state standards, but that regulatory consequence was something that Congress was quite willing to accept."

On the other hand, even this decision accepts the popular view that the original purpose of Price-Anderson was to encourage companies to enter a new field. Since the field is no longer new, one could ask why the law continues to exist. I think the answer lies in the other benefits. One benefit is that it clarifies the US Government’s responsibilities. Every aspect of nuclear energy, including design, construction, and operation, is supervised by the Federal Government. In the case of an accident, and in the absence of legislation, the Government very likely would find itself in the position of defendant. The act clarifies this point: the Government would only be on the hook after all other coverages, from commercial insurance and owners’ assets, have been paid out. A second benefit is that victims of an accident could recover their damages without suing. Under liability law, they would have to determine who was at fault and prove it in court. The process would take years and, even if they won, they’d lose because lawyers would take most of the money. Under Price-Anderson, they’d only have to show they had taken losses and they’d be compensated.

As it is, Price-Anderson is a requirement for anyone doing nuclear work. It doesn’t limit victims’ ability to recover damages. What it does is to guarantee that money will be there to pay them.

A Talk with Al Gore

2008-06-14T16:43:00.000-07:00

I just read Al Gore's book, The Assault on Reason. He's such an intelligent guy, don't you wish you could sit down with him over coffee and talk about global warming? I've got some thoughts on nuclear energy to share with him. He doesn't say much in his An Inconvenient Truth book on the subject, but he appeared at a House of Representatives hearing last year and nuclear energy came up. Imagine what it would be like if we were in on it:

Mr. Gore says (to Mr. Hastert):
You mentioned nuclear. I am sure that will come up again. I
am not an absolutist in being opposed to nuclear. I think it is
likely to play some role. I don't think it is going to play a
major role. But I think it will play some additional role, and
I think the reason it is going to be limited is mainly the
costs. They are so expensive, and they take so long to build,
and at present, they only come in one size: extra large. And
people don't want to make that kind of investment on an
uncertain market for energy demand.

Heck, Al, renewables cost more to build than nuclear plants. Look at this. If we're going to replace all the fossil-fired plants in the US, do you really think size is going to be a problem?

(To Mr. Inglis)
I think that decentralization is the wave of the future.
And also on liquid fuels for road transport, by the way, and
the next generation ethanol the enzymatic hydrolysis stuff that
is coming on line. But on your core choice, I am not opposed to
nuclear. I have deep questions about it. I am concerned about
it. I used to be enthusiastic about it. Back when I represented
Congressman Gordon's district, TVA had 21 nuclear power plants
under construction. And then later, I had represented Oak Ridge
where we were immune to the effects of nuclear radiation so I
was very enthusiastic about it.
But 19 of those 21 plants were canceled. And I am sure Bart
gets the same questions I used to get about whether those
partly finished cooling towers might be used for a grain silo.
But people are upset still that they have to pay for them and
not be able to get any electricity for them.
And I think the stoppage of the nuclear industry was really
less due to 3-mile island and Chernobyl and environmental
concerns and more due to the fact that after the OPEC oil
crisis of 1973 and 1979, the projection for electricity demand
went from 7 percent annualized compounded down to 1 percent.

You're right on that one, Al. Growth of just about everything died when Jimmy Carter was president. Then natural gas drove out all its competition. Clean and cheap; what else could anyone want?

(To Mr. Upton)
I don't recognize the quote that you used as one
of mine. I am not saying it wasn't, but I don't really agree
with the way that was phrased.

[Quote from Nuclear Energy Information Resource Center: "I do not
support any increased reliance on nuclear energy; moreover, I
have disagreed with those who have classified nuclear energy as
clean or renewable."]

Yeah, you can't trust anything anti-nukes say.

I am not a reflexive opponent of nuclear power,
Congressman. I am just a skeptic about nuclear power's
viability in the marketplace. I think that if we let the market
allow the most competitive forms to surface, what we will see
is decentralized generation, widely distributed, we will see an
emphasis on conservation and efficiency and renewable energy.
But where nuclear power is concerned I have expressed my views,
previously, I am not a reflexive opponent, I think there will
be some new nuclear power plants.
But you mention China. Look at their 5-year plan right now.
You are right, they plan 55 new coal fired power plants per
year. Only three nuclear plants per year. Now why? They don't
have any opposition that they can't overcome pretty easily from
Beijing. But they see the same problems just in practical terms
that a lot of our utilities see. These things are expensive and
complicated. They take a long time and the fragility of the
operating regime has already been seen. I have been to
Chernobyl. I have been to Three Mile Island and I don't want to
exaggerate those problems.
I think that we can come up with solutions for the dangers
of operator error. I think we can come up with solutions for
long term storage of waste. I don't think Yucca Mountain is it.
And I think if you don't skate past the real scientific
evidence of what they found at Yucca Mountain. What they found
on the geology there makes it simply wrong to put stuff that is
going to need to be contained for tens of thousands of years in
a place that is really not appropriate for it. Now that is my
reading of what the geological survey has said about that. But
I am not opposed to it as a category.

I don't think any of this is wrong, Al. But nobody has suggested an easier way to stave off global warming. Maybe we could ride bicycles and starve like the Chinese did fifty years ago, but I'm guessing that's not going to catch on. If we leave it up to the market to decide we'll just keep on using coal because nothing is cheaper; not nuclear or renewable energy and not even conservation. So to beat global warming we have to start building renewable energy sources and nuclear plants because that's the only way we can grow our construction capacity. The other choice is sitting on our hands and watching the habitat melt away. What do you think?

S. 2191, The Lieberman-Warner Climate Security Act of 2007

2008-06-01T14:44:00.000-07:00

This Senate bill is the main legislation under consideration in the US for dealing with greenhouse-gas emissions.

Cap and Trade
Its most important feature is cap-and-trade covering utilities, industries, and motor fuels. It's aggressive enough, with ambitious goals, but it has so many escape clauses and offramps that its value has to be deeply discounted. Moreover, the emission rights will be auctioned off to support favorite causes, so it is actually a tax. Many analysts believe taxing carbon emissions is the only way to reduce them. Maybe they're right, but if it's a tax it won't fly. That's a given in US politics. People want the services and benefits that come from government largesse, but they won't vote for any politician who makes them pay taxes.

That pretty well makes the rest of the subject moot, but we'll proceed anyway because some other points have to be part of future discussions.

Carbon Sequestration
Another major feature is an emphasis on CO2 sequestration. It seems that CO2 producers will get credit for pumping CO2 into the ground. The bill contains provisions for determining the capacity of storage locations, but not for evaluating whether or not the CO2 will stay in place.

To date, no sequestration site in the world has been tested for leakage. Furthermore, no one knows how to conduct such a test.

On the subject of sequestration, Senator Jeff Bingaman makes this remark: "Currently there are no formal site selection criteria for carbon dioxide injection wells that will be used for carbon storage." He goes on to explain that the EPA has no clue how to set the criteria. That reflects the impossibility of sequestering CO2 with any confidence.

Under the terms of this bill, utilities can pump CO2 into the ground and act as though it never was generated, without any assurance it won't leak into the atmosphere some decades later. If it does leak, utilities will have paid large amounts for this program, all for no purpose.

Energy Supply
The US Energy Information Administration did a
study to compare the effects of the bill, under various scenarios. What the study showed is especially instructive.

The results seem obvious, but prove that nuclear opponents are wrong. Even under the most optimistic conditions, renewables won't provide the energy the country needs. The simple fact is that if nuclear energy isn't developed to its full potential, then the US will depend more on natural gas, a substance in great demand and short supply, and coal. Moreover, some of the coal combustion would have to be subject to carbon sequestration, an untested and dubious concept.

Future
One hesitates to criticize. The world faces an enormous challenge and it's only natural that practical people would turn to easy-sounding solutions such as carbon taxes and sequestration. Sadly, those won't succeed; one is political poison and the other is imaginary.

Instead, we have to commit ourselves to the hard work of reshaping our energy usage. Instead of auctioning off pollution rights, we have to outright ban the installation of fossil-fueled generating plants, either new or replacement capacity. New electricity demand must be met by a combination of renewable and nuclear sources, and offset by efficiency and the curtailment of low-return energy use. Vehicle efficiency has to be raised much more than the feeble changes Congress has mandated. Bureaucratic obstacles to synthetic fuels like Green Freedom should be cleared and, if it's necessary, subsidies that currently go to fossil-fuel producers should be directed toward offsetting the cost difference between petroleum fuel and synthetic fuel.

That's what it will take to beat this problem.

Replacing Fossil Fuels

2008-05-19T13:13:00.000-07:00

If you follow the public debate over global warming, you get the impression that generating electricity is the only problem. Actually, electricity is the easy part of the problem because we can generate all the electricity we need from non-fossil energy sources. Considering the externalized costs of fossil fuels, the non-fossil sources are even cost-effective.

The hard part of the problem is motor fuels. We don't have a good substitute in place. Biofuels won't ever supply a major part of our motor fuels, for reasons we've discussed before. But take heart. Two chemists at Los Alamos National Laboratory have devised a process using current technology that could replace petroleum as as source. F. Jeffrey Martin and William L. Kubic have published Green Freedom: A Concept for Producing Carbon-Neutral Synthetic Fuels and Chemicals (Patent Pending).

A Simple Description

As you can imagine, turning atmospheric CO2 into gasoline takes a huge amount of energy. In this process, the energy inputs are in the form of heat and electricity. Lots of both.

The electricity could come from a number of sources, but the process is most effective if the electricity supply is steady, which effectively limits it to nuclear. That's just as well, though, because the CO2 capture requires spraying a potassium-carbonate solution into an air stream. That requires something very much like a wet cooling tower, so the wet cooling tower for the nuclear plant can do double duty as a CO2 collector.

Once the CO2 is collected, it can be extracted from the solution by an electrolytic process, originated by Martin and Kubic. They claim that this is their chief innovation and that all the other features of the process are standard to the chemical industry. The electrolytic process is more energy-efficient than other means of separating the CO2, and generates hydrogen at the same time, reducing the amount of hydrogen that has to be generated elsewhere.

In their baseline design, Martin and Kubic propose to use water electrolysis for generating the additional hydrogen needed. They chose this because nuclear plants in the US are all capable of providing the electricity needed. As they point out, more-recent technology can improve efficiencies substantially. Steam electrolysis consumes less energy and advanced nuclear reactors can generate hydrogen thermochemically; this last technique can be essentially 100% efficient, since the leftover heat can generate electricity.

Once the hydrogen is generated, commercially-tested processes can be used for converting CO2 and hydrogen into methanol, and for converting methanol into gasoline. Alternatively, hydrogen, CO2, and steam can be combined over catalysts in the Fisher-Tropsch process to produce any kind of hydrocarbon compound, including diesel oil and aviation fuel.

Practicality

As the authors take pains to make clear, the process depends only on equipment in commercial use today. There are no technological barriers to implementing it. There is a cost consideration, however. Their calculations show that the gasoline could be sold at the pump for $4.60 per gallon. Since we're dealing here with known technology they probably are not understating it by much, taking into account that projects of all kinds end up costing more than the planners expected.

But there are ample reasons for believing the actual costs would be lower. As they explain, newer technology will improve efficiencies considerably. Moreover, their analysis assumes their nuclear plant, which comprises the main capital cost, would be dedicated to producing hydrocarbon fuel. In practice, the nuclear plant will sell electricity during times of peak demand, especially when renewable energy is in short supply. This will become more apparent when fossil-fired power plants are phased out and all electricity depends on renewable and nuclear sources. We can look forward to an economy in which nuclear plants produce all our hydrocarbon fuels during off-peak hours. This sharing of costs will greatly reduce the cost of producing liquid fuels.

Looking Ahead

What we can say for sure is that it will take a massive energy investment to free the world from dependence on petrofuels. Straight hydrogen doesn't look promising because of the difficulty of onboard storage and because the inevitable leaks will threaten the ozone layer. Batteries for powering freight-hauling trucks don't seem like a reasonable hope, given the paltry improvements batteries have seen in the last few decades. Biofuels won't do the job, as discussed earlier. Since this process is already practical, it's not much of a stretch to predict that something very similar will be our fuel source in the future.

Are Skeptics Right? Is the World Cooling?

2008-04-26T12:13:00.000-07:00

This is one of those moments when one must suck it up and take a hard look at one's convictions. The data have been showing right along that greenhouse gases have been driving climate change during the last half-century or so. Nothing else could explain why the global-average temperature was rising while solar activity declined after 1990.

But then the climate gremlins struck. Skeptics believed themselves fully vindicated when temperature data showed the global-average temperature to have declined during the last five years, with a very sharp drop in the last year. Here are two plots that show the striking effect.

Since we are determined to follow the science where it goes, not where we want it to go, this startling development demanded a cold-blooded analysis, not defensive handwaving.

The puzzle gains difficulty when we look at the data for the northern and southern hemispheres separately, as shown here. The northern hemisphere is continuing to warm up while the southern hemisphere has cooled a surprising amount. Before we can proceed, we have to understand why the two hemispheres would be so dissimilar. In particular, the skeptics can't claim to be right unless they can explain why the northern hemisphere is warming.

As we look at the data for the two, we see that they agree only in broad strokes. When we look at them in detail, we see that there are notable differences. For example, the southern hemisphere was warming in the 1960s while the northern hemisphere was cooling.

That doesn't help us much to understand what's going on, though. What does help us is the explanation of la Niña events, as given here together with some surface-temperature data, given here. The data show the effects of la Niña events, in which stronger winds over the South Pacific cause ocean water to turn over, bringing cold water to the surface. That explains the cooler average surface temperature over the southern hemisphere. The average temperature seems to be headed down; what actually is happening is that the last el Niño event (a period of relative calm over the South Pacific) was fairly strong and the current la Niña event is especially strong, putting a kink in the curve. It is not the case that the world is cooling off; rather, warm water is being driven down to lower depths and colder water is being raised to the surface.

So that's where we stand. La Niña events explain why the southern hemisphere is showing a cooler average surface temperature. Only global warming due to greenhouse gases explains why the northern hemisphere is warming.

It seems reasonable that global warming could be causing the stronger and more-frequent la Niña events, but that's a question for experts.

A Skeptic with a Degree

2008-04-21T17:20:00.000-07:00

This article is a review of the book, Climate Confusion: How Global Warming Hysteria Leads to Bad Science, Pandering Politicians and Misguided Policies that Hurt the Poor, by Roy W. Spencer.

According to the dust jacket, Dr. Spencer holds a PhD in Meteorology and is a Principal Research Scientist in Climate Science at the University of Alabama. His expressed skepticism about human-caused climate change would, therefore, seem to be the clearest possible vindication of the skeptics' view on that topic.

Since Dr. Spencer is a professional scientist writing about his own specialty, one would expect any book he writes to be jammed with scientific information about this complex subject. But one would be disappointed. In fact, his scientific coverage extends over two pages, from page 80 to 82. In this short passage, he sums up the knowledge about climate change thus:

"First, we know that mankind is producing carbon dioxide as a result of our use of a wide variety of fuels, from coal and petroleum to natural gas and wood."

"A second observation we are certain of is that the carbon dioxide content of the global atmosphere has been slowly increasing. We are now about 40 percent of the way to a doubling of the pre-industrial concentrations of atmospheric carbon dioxide."

"Thirdly, we know that carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas, which means that it traps infrared radiation and so tries to warm the lower troposphere to a higher temperature than if the gas was not there."

"Finally, we are pretty sure that the globally averaged surface temperature of the Earth is at least 1° Fahrenheit warmer now than it was about a century ago."

This is as clear a proof of climate change as could be imagined. Yet, Dr. Spencer demurs from stating the natural and obvious conclusion. Why, you may wonder. He says that he's withholding his conclusion because temperature rise and CO2 concentration rise might occur together only by coincidence. That is, global warming might be due to natural variability.

Natural variability is outside our experience with thermodynamic systems. We know why car engines warm up; it's because of fuel being burned. We know why houses warm up; it's either because the sun is beating on them or because of their furnaces. Our bodies warm up because we're exercising muscles or because the temperature control mechanisms are impaired by illness. But Dr. Spencer thinks it is realistically possible that Earth could just naturally change temperature without any cause. And that possibility prevents him from accepting the prevailing scientific view.

After seeing the subtitle of the book, though, one might wonder if that really is the reason. The other 180 pages could have been transcripted straight from hate-talk shows on AM radio. Environmentalists put the needs of wildlife above those of humans. Governments and philanthropic foundations reward and punish scientists according to their positions on climate change. Europeans prospered 1000 years ago because of unusually-warm conditions. People overreact when cities are wiped out by hurricanes. Scientists don't know as much as they think they do. Global warming is a religion. Politicians are using it as a trick for taking money away from working people. Scientists are milking it like a cow. Reducing emissions will harm the economy. The Precautionary Principle is wrong. Global warming is good for poor people. Left wingers killed millions of people by banning DDT. The United Nations works to make everybody poor.

Why is all this right-wing propaganda in a book written by a scientist? Since it takes up the largest part of the book by far, we can in all fairness ask if Dr. Spencer's skepticism is really due to scientific rigor or if his political views have overcome his objectivity.

Tipping Points

2008-03-16T22:02:00.000-07:00

With Speed and Violence: Why Scientists Fear Tipping Points in Climate Change by Fred Pearce is not reassuring or comfortable. It is a scientifically-grounded explanation of climate change/global warming/freaky world changes.

It probably could only have been written by Mr. Pearce. He's been following the global-warming story as a journalist since about 1990 and because of that he was able to interview many of the principal researchers in the ongoing struggle to understand the process.

He presents four topics of interest. First, he explains the mechanics of climate change. If you're a little fuzzy on the ocean conveyor or methane clathrates he'll bring you up to speed. Second, he lays out the limits of knowledge. The parameters cover large ranges and he keeps clear the distinction between what is known and what isn't. Third, he covers the slipperiest part of the whole topic: tipping points; how they work and what happens when we reach them. He also discusses what the consequences of climate change are likely to be, bearing in mind the limits of certainty. We're going to say a little here about tipping points, based on the author's remarks.

Skeptics dismiss the concept of tipping points. You can't prove them, they say. Actually, you can prove some of them but it's not clear what will activate them. Some others aren't understood to the point they can be considered certain. It goes the other way too, though. There's no justification for traveling up the Keeling curve with insouciance. Before we jump into a pot of hot tar, common sense tells us we ought to find out how hot the tar is.

I'll go through the main tipping points the author describes.

* Shrinking ice caps. This one is maybe the most basic. As the ice caps shrink the world is absorbing more energy from the sun. Furthermore, the water released lubricates the glaciers' movements, causing the process to accelerate.

* Clearing of rain forests lowers the amount of rainfall downwind from them, whether it's done on purpose or by natural fires that result from drying out. As the vegetation burns and exposes the soil to sunlight, large amounts of CO2 are released.

* As frozen bogs thaw in the extreme north, rotting tundra releases methane, a terribly effective greenhouse gas.

* CO2 dissolved in the oceans is removed by marine organisms that use it to build structural body parts. If the CO2 level rises too high, ocean water becomes too acidic for the organisms to live and this CO2-removal mechanism disappears.

* Clathrates are layers of methane lying in deep ocean trenches where the pressure and temperature are extreme enough to keep them frozen. If ocean temperatures rise enough to thaw some of the methane then inevitably it will enter the atmosphere. But it could be worse: there are layers of methane gas under the clathrates, kept unfrozen by warmth from the earth. If the ocean melts through spots in the clathrates, large amounts of methane will escape.

* Clouds are a subject of considerable uncertainty. As water evaporates we expect to see more white, fluffy clouds that reflect solar energy. That may be why the world hasn't warmed more than it has. But if the atmosphere gets hot enough we'll see fewer fluffy clouds and more high, thin clouds. They admit more solar energy and intercept energy that otherwise would escape.

* The ocean conveyor is a superlong ocean current; one of the things it does is carry heat from the tropics to the north Atlantic, warming the US coast before it swings over and does the same for northern Europe. As it moves north to the Arctic region it cools and drops down to return under the north-moving stream. What if Greenland's ice melts? If it happens fast enough, a real possibility, the fresh water would cause the saltier and heavier water of the current to short-circuit; it would drop down to the return stream prematurely. Northern Europe would see severely cold conditions. Meanwhile, the tropics would warm up because of losing the Arctic cooling.

The author makes the point that this issue is different from the issues we're used to. Usually, when you learn more about a concern you find that it's not as alarming as you thought before. With global warming, the more you learn the more there is to worry about.

US Presidential Candidates on Global Warming

2008-03-08T21:01:00.000-08:00

Here we offer a comparison of the views of the three major contenders for US President with respect to global warming.

Senator John McCain

Senator McCain has co-sponsored, with Senator Lieberman, legislation that would establish cap-and-trade measures for dealing with greenhouse-gas emissions. He tends to favor technological solutions over behavioral changes. In line with that view he supports federal support for nuclear energy.

Of the three candidates, he may have the most realistic views. At a time when millions of people are driving motor homes, yachts, and private aircraft around for recreation, buying houses bigger than they can afford, and treating flying vacations as a divinely-ordained right, perhaps it's too idealistic to suppose the greatest number would give up such indulgences.

As advocates of nuclear energy, we applaud his support for that technology. On the other hand, the view here is that what the country needs are coherent energy and environmental policies. If fossil fuels weren't subsidized with tax credits and if air-quality standards were reasonable, utilities would pursue nuclear and renewable energy without any federal support. Besides, nukes can't do the whole job, not even with cap-and-trade. The country needs some serious leadership on conservation as well.

Senator Hillary Clinton

Senator Clinton offers what looks more like a wish list than a plan. Cap-and-trade, R&D and subsidies for renewable energy, higher efficiency standards, and something called "home-grown biofuels." In the past she has said nuclear energy has to be kept on the table, but such sentiments don't appear on her website.

From here it looks as though she (or whatever staffer writes her energy positions) doesn't grasp the magnitude of the challenge or the urgency. Perhaps she knows better but doesn't want to offend the bicycling-and-winetasting crowd. We can sympathize, but it's not a point in her favor.

Senator Barack Obama

Senator Obama's positions are so close to Senator Clinton's it's hard to tell them apart. Possibly, the main difference is that he sets out his policies in more detail, so they come together as a plan. He understands the importance of setting stricter clean-air standards. He understands the value and the limitations of renewable energy sources, including biofuels.

He recognizes the importance of nuclear energy, but sets out four issues that must be addressed: public right-to-know, security of nuclear fuel and waste, waste storage, and proliferation. Then he proceeds to describe the measures he will take to address these same four issues. As advocates of nuclear energy, we are convinced that these issues have been addressed successfully and that any administration that looks at them clearly will work hard to develop nuclear energy.

Conclusions

Senator Obama seems to have the most comprehensive plan for dealing with global warming. Senator Clinton's might be as comprehensive, or possibly could be identical, but she doesn't spell it out and she doesn't mention nuclear energy; that's a major omission. Senator McCain is pro-nuclear; that's good but it's not enough.

It's appropriate to point out here the main problems with cap-and-trade, since it's the most important feature in all three candidates' positions. First, there's the ethical problem of letting polluters decide the price of pollution rights. Surely the victims ought to be setting the price. Second there's this political problem: call it what you like, cap-and-trade is a tax. Republicans won't allow it. Democratic politicians facing tough challenges won't vote for it. That means we have to weigh the different plans discounting the cap-and-trade part or any part that depends on it.

If we weigh the plans this way, Sen. McCain has only support for nuclear energy and Sen. Clinton has good intentions. Sen. Obama still has a plan.

How to Solve the United States' Worst Economic and Environmental Problems

2008-03-03T20:40:00.000-08:00

First, the main economic problem is reduced job opportunities. As manufacturing jobs leave the country, middle Americans are watching their job opportunities shrink. They move to poorer-paying jobs that contribute less to society. Instead of providing goods and services that benefit other people, they sell goods and services provided by others. Junk-mail advertising, telephone soliciting, clerking in big-box stores. Data entry work for marketing companies. A nation of people taking in each other's laundry. Or selling each other long-distance phone service.

This problem is compounded by competition from immigrants from countries where people have even fewer opportunities. In this regard, the only plausible solution is for other countries to solve their own economic problems, for which this article is a template.

The second problem is too much cash floating around. Credit has been so easy to acquire that people have reached the saturation point with stuff, even buying houses they can't afford. Furniture, appliances, electronics, sports gear---how much stuff can a person own? The first time a cold economic wind blows, everyone stops shopping. Of course. It's time to conserve cash and pay down debts. Our federal government has come up with an economic stimulus plan so absurd it sounds like a joke. The government will borrow billions of dollars and dole it out to people in the hope they'll spend it on things they don't need. President Bush's biggest fear is that people will behave intelligently and do otherwise.

Now let's look at the environmental problems. Fossil fuels account for nearly all the air-pollution problems and a big part of the water-pollution problems. Even outweighing those is climate change caused mainly by burning fossil fuels.

As the other articles in this blog have shown, the most important solution to these problems is to convert from fossil fuels to renewables, especially windpower, and nuclear energy. What are the barriers to improving this situation? You saw this coming, didn't you? First, there aren't enough trained workers. Second, it takes a lot of capital investment.

So we see that the solution to our environmental problems is also the solution to our economic problems. When people go to work manufacturing the equipment for renewable and nuclear energy sources, or constructing the facilities, they can earn good pay because these are highly productive jobs with a big economic payback. Furthermore, and for the same reason, these are splendid investment opportunities. With the low interest rates presently being paid on investments and the low interest rates charged to borrowers, people have little incentive to save. But given this excellent investment opportunity, people can direct their earnings toward long-term financial security.

Is this sleight of hand? Voodoo economics? Not at all. It's simply the transfer of money away from wasteful consumerism toward long-term investment. It will transform the country in magnificent ways but it's not a magic trick.

The economic pressure driving this change is so powerful it won't be contained; the only point in question is how long it will take to start it. My opinion is that the only thing holding it back is an administration that believes consumerism is the sole engine of wealth. If I'm right, then next January we'll see the beginning of an avalanche of economic drive. All three of the leading candidates understand that prosperity depends on growth, not on spending.

Get ready and hold on.

Construction Times for Nuclear Power Plants

2008-02-11T22:34:00.000-08:00

I had thought we were pretty much done but the kids in the basement came up with another reason why we can't use nuclear energy. Nukes take too long to build! they whined, their lips quivering. It took ten years to build them before. Jim Hansen at NASA says we only have ten years to stop all the greenhouse gases or we're gonna die! We'll build windmills instead.

Now, how could anyone know all that? The estimable Dr. Hansen actually says

"The Energy Department says that we're going to continue to put more and more CO2 in the atmosphere each year--not just additional CO2 but more than we put in the year before. If we do follow that path, even for another ten years, it guarantees that we will have dramatic climate changes that produce what I would call a different planet--one without sea ice in the Arctic; with worldwide, repeated coastal tragedies associated with storms and a continuously rising sea level; and with regional disruptions due to freshwater shortages and shifting climatic zones."

Dr. Hansen goes on to make concrete suggestions, such as a cessation of building new fossil-fired power plants. He offers the possibility that in ten years it might be necessary to bulldoze all the existing ones.

Actually, a better plan would be to replace all the boilers with nuclear reactors. Most of the construction cost and effort is in the generating portion of the plant, anyway, so replacing the boilers will be much cheaper and faster than building new nuclear plants from scratch.

His other recommendations, such as financial incentives and improving the efficiency of buildings and vehicles, agree with the views of just about everyone who's looked at the issue.

But besides oversimplifying Dr. Hansen's remark, the kids are presuming to know more than they do.

We don't know how long it will take to build nuclear plants. In Japan they can build them in less than five years. If other countries got serious and cranked up their capacities for building them they could do it even faster.

The new designs are simpler than the earlier designs. The designers have incorporated features into them that make them inherently safer so that the risk of accident is lower even while the safety systems are less complex. Furthermore, manufacturing and construction technology has advanced in the last few decades. Just as office buildings can be put up faster and cheaper, so can power-plant structures. Computers and laser-guided machine tools have revolutionized the manufacture of heavy machinery. New testing techniques ensure quality control both cheaper and more thorough.

Besides, wind farms take more construction effort than nukes. Consider that a 1000 MW nuke will average over 850,000 KW. A very big (rotor-tip height ~ 450 feet!) wind turbine rated at 1.5 MW will average less than 500 KW. So 1 nuke equals more than 1700 big turbines.

As luck would have it, the British House of Lords studied the question and compiled some comparative data (and you wondered what the lords did!). A good measure of the construction effort is the energy inputs required for manufacturing and construction. What they show is that a 1000 MW nuke takes 6280 terrajoules per average GW, while a 25 MW wind farm takes 20,575, more than three times as much.

This is not an energy comparison, because that's much more complicated. We're only using these numbers to represent the manufacturing and construction effort.

What it shows is that the kids got it wrong. Again. Even if wind could provide full-time power, it still couldn't outpace nuclear in converting away from fossil fuels.

The Linear-No-Threshold Hypothesis

2008-02-10T22:06:00.000-08:00

In a recent article we discussed the BEIR VII report's conclusion with respect to the linear-no-threshold (LNT) hypothesis concerning low-level radiation's possible health effects. It's worthwhile to compare it with other reports' findings, all from professional organizations in the US.

First, here's the pertinent statement in BEIR VII

"At doses of 100 mSv or less, statistical limitations make it difficult to evaluate cancer risk in humans. A comprehensive review of available biological and biophysical data led the committee to conclude that the risk would continue in a linear fashion at lower doses without a threshold and that the smallest dose has the potential to cause a small increase in risk to humans." [A typical person in the US receives 3 milliSieverts per year.]

That's a tepid justification for retaining LNT, but compare that with the statement from the National Institutes of Health:

"It is very difficult to detect biologic effects in animals or people who are exposed to small doses of radiation. Based on studies in animals and in people exposed to large doses of radiation such as the atomic bomb survivors, scientists have made conservative estimates of what might be the largest doses that would be reasonably safe for a person over a lifetime. But these calculations are estimates only, based on mathematical models. Low-level exposures received by the general public have shown no link to cancer induction. Even so, the U.S. Government uses these estimates to set the limits on all potential exposures to radiation for workers in jobs that expose them to ionizing radiation. International experts and various scientific committees have, over the years, examined the massive body of knowledge about radiation effects in developing and refining radiation protection standards."

And with the statement from the Health Physics Society"

"There is substantial and convincing scientific evidence for health risks following high-dose exposures. However, below 5–10 rem (which includes occupational and environmental exposures), risks of health effects are either too small to be observed or are nonexistent."

"In view of the above, the Society has concluded that estimates of risk should be limited to individuals receiving a dose of 5 rem in one year or a lifetime dose of 10 rem in addition to natural background." [5 rems would be 50 milliSieverts.]

Professor Bernard Cohen goes on to estimate what would be the health effects of low-level exposures and compares them with other health risks, using the LNT model even though he shows in his analyses that it overstates the adverse effects and probably understates the beneficial (hormesis) effects of low-level radiation.

As an exercise we'll do something simple here. The BEIR report says ten million mSv would cause 1140 deaths. And it says that, on average, 304 million Americans receive 3 mSv per year, so the total would be 912 million mSv. So all of the radiation-induced deaths add up to 104,000 per year. Of that number, according to the report, 0.2% are due to nuclear energy, the rest mainly being due to natural radiation. If the LNT hypothesis is right, 208 deaths per year can be attributed to nuclear energy.

In comparison, every study done shows that tens of thousands of Americans die every year from the pollution generated by coal-fired power plants. The most comprehensive study done so far puts the range between 33,000 and 121,000 per year, just counting adults over 25. In 2006, according to DOE, coal generated 1930 billion KWH of electricity and nuclear generated 787 billion KWH, so if nuclear replaced coal an additional 510 deaths would take place, but at least 50,000 lives would be saved.

And all of the radiation-related deaths depend on a hypothesis that hasn't been proved and which specialized professionals don't believe.

Here's the kicker: Coal plants emit more than ten times as much radioactivity as nuclear power plants. If the LNT hypothesis were true, 5000 of the coal-related deaths would be avoided by converting to nuclear energy just because of reducing radioactive emissions.

If some form of renewable energy could provide full-time power, this might be a harder decision to make. As we saw in an earlier article, though, there aren't any that could.

So those are the two options. We can let over 50,000 Americans die every year from coal or we can switch to nuclear energy and start cleaning up the environment while minimizing the threat of global warming. What to do, what to do.

The Latest on Biofuels

2008-02-09T23:05:00.000-08:00

This week's Science Magazine (or Science Lite as it's sometimes called) includes a story that's got a lot of press coverage (way to go, guys!) but really just fills out the picture slightly.

The authors make the point that if you increase plant cultivation for biofuels, you either have to displace existing crops or clear additional land. But if you displace existing crops then the demand for food leads to the clearing of additional land, anyway. And it's the clearing of additional land that causes the problem. This seems obvious if the clearing is done in forests, as it usually is. A mature forest contains decades' worth of accumulated carbon so if the forest is burned then most of that carbon goes into the atmosphere as CO2. It's not as obvious but, according to the authors, plowing up grassland to grow biomass also releases more CO2 than it saves.[LA Times]

It's been known for a long time that ethanol is a loser.[source] It takes as much fuel to produce it as the process yields. So, in the US at least, it's always been a boondoggle aimed at making farmers rich. Still, some researcher think switchgrass can offer a better payoff ratio.

There's been some hope that oil-bearing crops could produce biodiesel, but so far the results aren't much more promising.[source]

So that seems like a daunting challenge by itself. But then we look at the land requirements and the prospects are even more dismaying. As we showed in another article, there isn't enough arable land available to grow the amount of biomass that would be required.

Maybe all this attention will do some good. Most people whose knowledge of enviromental subjects comes mainly from popular media have the idea that biofuels are a practical solution. A closer look shows that, by themselves, biofuels can at best be only an expensive non-solution, an illusory exercise that benefits a few people financially but only aggravates the problem.

As we face this bleak outlook, there's only one thing going for us. Hydrogen can increase biofuel yields by a factor of three. Then, biofuels can function mostly as a medium for hydrogen. They provide an imperfect means for onboard storage of hydrogen fuel for motor vehicles.

The most efficient way to convert water to hydrogen is with high-temperature processes, at temperatures nuclear reactors can provide. The nominal efficiency is over 45%.[source] But the heat left over from the conversion can be used to generate electricity, so the hydrogen production is effectively 100% efficient.

If we're lucky, a better way of storing hydrogen will be invented so biofuels won't be required. Either way, hydrogen is going to be the fuel of the future. The best way to produce hydrogen is with nuclear energy.[source]

Bernard L. Cohen

2008-02-08T22:14:00.000-08:00

This is the easiest to write of the articles on this blog. The only important part is a link to Prof. Bernard L. Cohen's website, THE NUCLEAR ENERGY OPTION. Here you'll find the most authoritative treatment anywhere of all aspects of nuclear energy as it relates to the public, and it's written clearly enough that any reasonably well-educated person can understand it perfectly.

This article could end right here, but maybe it's worthwhile to offer one example of his explanations. Since safety is the one place where most people's knowledge of nuclear energy is dodgy, what follows makes a good sample.

RISKS OF NUCLEAR ENERGY IN PERSPECTIVE

With the benefit of this perspective, we now turn to the risks of nuclear energy, and evaluate them as if a large fraction of the electricity now used in the United States were generated from nuclear power. The calculations are explained in the Chapter 8 Appendix, but here we will only quote the results.

According to the Reactor Safety Study by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) discussed in Chapter 6, the risk of reactor accidents would reduce our life expectancy by 0.012 days, or 18 minutes, whereas the antinuclear power organization Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) estimate is 1.5 days. Since our LLE from being killed in accidents is now 400 days, this risk would be increased by 0.003% according to NRC, or by 0.3% according to UCS. This makes nuclear accidents tens of thousands of times less dangerous than moving from the Northeast to the West (where accident rates are much higher), an action taken in the last few decades by millions of Americans with no consideration given to the added risk. Yet nuclear accidents are what a great many people are worrying about.

The only other comparably large health hazard due to radiation from the nuclear industry is from radioactivity releases into the environment during routine operation (see Chapter 12). Typical estimates are that, with a full nuclear power program, this might eventually result in average annual exposures of 0.2 mrem (it is now less than one-tenth that large), which would reduce our life expectancy by another 37 minutes (see Chapter 8 Appendix). This brings the total from nuclear power to about 1 hour (with this 37 minutes added, the UCS estimate is still about 1.5 days).

If we compare these risks with some of those listed in Table 1, we see that having a full nuclear power program in this country would present the same added health risk (UCS estimates in brackets) as a regular smoker indulging in one extra cigarette every 15 years [every 3 months], or as an overweight person increasing her weight by 0.012 [0.8] ounces, or as in raising the U.S. highway speed limit from 55 miles per hour to 55.006 [55.4] miles per hour, and it is 2,000 [30] times less of a danger than switching from midsize to small cars. Note that these figures are not controversial, because I have given not only the estimates of Establishment scientists but also those of the leading nuclear power opposition group in this country, UCS.

I have been presenting these risk comparisons at every opportunity for several years, but I get the impression that they are interpreted as the opinion of a nuclear advocate. Media reports have said "Dr. Cohen claims . . ." But there is no personal opinion involved here. Deriving these comparisons is simple and straightforward mathematics which no one can question. I have published them in scientific journals, and no scientist has objected to them. I have quoted them in debates with three different UCS leaders and they have never denied them. If anyone has any reason to believe that these comparisons are not valid, they have been awfully quiet about it.

BEIR VII

2008-02-07T22:42:00.000-08:00

Maybe the National Academy of Sciences has a perverse sense of humor. Otherwise, I can't explain its 2005 report, Biologic Effects of Ionizing Radiation (BEIR VII: HEALTH RISKS FROM EXPOSURE TO
LOW LEVELS OF IONIZING RADIATION).

In the very first paragraph of the summary brief, is this sentence:

"A comprehensive review of available biological and biophysical data supports a “linear-no-threshold” (LNT) risk model—--that the risk of cancer proceeds in a linear fashion at lower doses without a threshold and that the smallest dose has the potential to cause a small increase in risk to humans."

This is a statement that could warm the heart of the most discouraged anti-nuke. NIRS jumped into this like a kid into a pond. Let's compare how NIRS represents the report with what the report says when you get past the first paragraph.

NIRS: "There is no safe level or threshold of ionizing radiation exposure."

BEIR: "At doses of 100 mSv or less, statistical limitations make it difficult to evaluate cancer risk in humans. A comprehensive review of available biological and biophysical data led the committee to conclude that the risk would continue in a linear fashion at lower doses without a threshold and that the smallest dose has the potential to cause a small increase in risk to humans." [A typical person in the US receives 3 milliSieverts per year.]

This is quite a different statement. The report admits the data don't support the view that the risk continues all the way down to zero exposure, but concludes that it does anyway. This is the conundrum radiation safety analysts have struggled with for as long as there have been radiation safety analysts. The only way to be sure is to assume the worst case, so that's what we'll keep on doing.

The BEIR report gives anti-nukes what they want most, a solid-gold slogan, and then says something different in the explanation.

NIRS: "Radiation causes other health effects such as heart disease and stroke, and further study is needed to predict the doses that result in these non-cancer health effects."

BEIR: "Radiation exposure has been demonstrated to increase the risk of diseases other than cancer, particularly cardiovascular disease, in persons exposed to high therapeutic doses and also in A-bomb survivors exposed to more modest doses. However, there is no direct evidence of increased risk of non-cancer diseases at low doses, and data are inadequate to quantify this risk if it exists. Radiation exposure has also been shown to increase risks of some benign tumors, but data are inadequate to quantify this risk."

In this case NIRS turns the BEIR report upside down, attaching a conclusion for high-level radiation to low-level.

NIRS: "It is possible that children born to parents that have been exposed to radiation could be affected by those exposures."

BEIR: "Studies of 30,000 children of exposed A-bomb survivors show a lack of significant adverse genetic effects."

What does NIRS mean by "possible?" Is it possible in the sense that our atoms could all rearrange themselves and each of us could turn into linoleum flooring? The evidence says it hasn't happened, but it's still possible? That certainly isn't what BEIR says.

What is especially significant is what the anti-nukes don't say about the BEIR report. The report shows that of all the radiation a typical person receives, less than 0.2% comes from all of the nuclear fuel cycle. In comparison he gets sixteen times as much radiation from consumer products.

The report already has told us nothing can be concluded about doses under 100 mSv and at the end of it we learn what is needed:

Continued research is needed to further increase our understanding of the health risks of low levels of ionizing radiation. BEIR VII identifies the following top research needs:
• Determination of the level of various molecular markers of DNA damage as a function of low dose
ionizing radiation.
• Determination of DNA repair fidelity, especially double and multiple strand breaks at low doses, and whether repair capacity is independent of dose.
• Evaluation of the relevance of adaptation, low-dose hypersensitivity, bystander effect, hormesis, and genomic instability for radiation carcinogenesis.
• Identification of molecular mechanisms for postulated hormetic effects at low doses.
• Reduction of current uncertainties on the specific role of radiation in how tumors form.
• Studies on the genetic factors that influence radiation response and cancer risk.
• Studies on the heritable genetic effects of radiation.
• Continued medical radiation and occupational radiation studies.
• Continued follow-up health studies of the Japanese atomic-bomb survivors, 45% of whom were still alive in 2000.
• Epidemiologic studies to supplement studies of atomic-bomb survivors, for example studies of nuclear industry workers and persons exposed in countries of the former Soviet Union.

Setting out its own limitations makes the report more valuable. And it emphasizes the folly of drawing strong conclusions as NIRS has done.

The final irony is that anti-nukes have succeeded only in forcing the world to use more coal. And coal-fired power plants emit more than ten times as much radioactivity as nuclear power plants.

Nuclear Fuel Reprocessing

2008-02-06T22:21:00.000-08:00

People who've paid any attention to the subject often have some misunderstandings about the relationship between spent fuel and the possibility of weapons proliferation. The source of the misunderstanding is that special production reactors were used in the weapons program and the material produced in them was used in making some kinds of atomic explosives. So we need to cover the difference between the weapons fuel cycle and the energy fuel cycle.

Wikipedia has some good information on reprocessing. For information on the difference between uranium and plutonium bombs, the US DOE has a good page on their history.

The first difference is the length of time the material is in the reactor. As the reaction goes on, some of the U238 turns into Pu239, going through some intermediate steps. If the material stays in much longer, some of the Pu239 turns into Pu240.

Pu240 makes the material unsuitable for weapons because it fissions spontaneously. When the bomb mechanism combines the fissile material into a critical mass, the fission of Pu240 causes it to pre-detonate, causing the material to separate, and the bomb only burbs instead of exploding.

So, in production reactors, the fuel has to be extracted in some short time, months instead of years, and sent to the separation facility. In power reactors, the fuel stays in for years and accumulates a high proportion of Pu240. To make the spent fuel into bomb material requires isotope separation on top of chemical separation. If a country has the resources to separate the plutonium isotopes, it would be better off separating uranium isotopes, because that would save it the trouble of operating a production reactor.

The second difference is the chemical process. For the weapons program, the whole point of processing was to separate out the plutonium. For commercial power, that's not necessary. It's cheaper and easier to keep the plutonium mixed with the leftover uranium.

Most (I think all) of the countries presently reprocessing spent fuel use the acid process, called PUREX, or something similar. In the US, a new facility is being developed at Savannah River, South Carolina, for an entirely different process based on molten salt instead of acid. This other process uses less energy and emits no significant amounts of greenhouse gases. In theory, it's less vulnerable to proliferation due to diversion of spent fuel; as we just saw, though, proliferation with spent fuel from commercial power plants isn't really a concern.

Droughts and Nuclear Power Plants

2008-02-05T22:17:00.000-08:00

Anti-nukes and pro-nukes are stuck in the same muddle. For decades, anti-nukes have been tossing up reasons not to use nuclear energy and pro-nukes have been batting them down. Both sides have run out of things to talk about.

So, Associated Press ran a story that warned nuclear plants could face power decreases or even shutdowns because droughts have lowered some stream flows. That indeed is a concern, and it applies every bit as much to fossil-fired plants. It's just curious that AP chose to mention only nuclear power plants.

Not having much to talk about, anti-nukes crowed that "Water is the nuclear industry’s Achilles’ heel. You need a lot of water to operate nuclear plants. This is becoming a crisis."

This is silly, of course, because there are alternate ways to cool power plants. In most cases, the problem is that stream flows are so low that adding waste heat would raise the stream temperature unacceptably. The solution is to add cooling towers. What's the penalty for doing that? The US Department of Energy did a study of all the thermal (fossil and nuclear) plants in the US. They found that if 100% of the power plants in the US (except in the Southwest) that rely on stream water were retrofitted with wet cooling towers, the energy penalty could be as high as 3%, but only during the hottest 88 hours of the year.

In an extreme situation, stream flows could be so low that wet cooling towers couldn't be used because of the water consumption. In that case, dry cooling towers can be used. Then, the penalty could be as high as 10%, again during the hottest 88 hours of the year. The authors didn't attempt to evaluate conditions for plants that were designed for dry cooling, but acknowledged that the penalty would be lower. Probably, the penalty would be about the same as for the ten percent of plants best suited for retrofit, which is about 1%.

As we look into the future, we can see that as long as new plants are designed to accommodate cooling towers, the penalties will be minimal.

In the meantime, as small as these penalties are, even they can be avoided most of the time. When stream flows are adequate the cooling towers can be bypassed. And when they are operated, it'll be unusual that the plants have to rely entirely on them; the cooling load can be shared between the cooling tower and the stream, or between a wet cooling tower and a dry one.

But the best solution will be to use the waste heat productively, as industrial heat or for heating homes and businesses. The waste heat can even be used for air-conditioning, by use of absorption chillers.

So drought and low stream flows won't be a hindrance to nuclear energy in the future. That means nuclear power plants will be able to provide backup to wind and solar energy.

The Academic Approach to Anti-Nuclearism

2008-02-04T23:05:00.000-08:00

For a long time there's been a belief among anti-nukes that you can prove anything if you write enough. You just have to beat science with statistical analysis and smother it with paper.

This came up again on another blog, which uses a lot of scientific language but is dedicated to the proposition that the laws of nature can be over-ridden if they're inconvenient.

In this case, the writer of the article is determined to show that part-time energy sources can provide full-time power, if you just do enough mathematical manipulations.

First he cites "Supplying Baseload Power and Reducing Transmission Requirements by Interconnecting Wind Farms" by Cristina L. Archer and Mark Z. Jacobson, which argues that if enough wind turbines are interconnected they can provide base-load power. According to the authors, the part of the average output that can be considered 87.5% reliable is between 33% and 47%, depending on how many wind turbines are interconnected. However, the area they studied, centered on the Texas and Oklahoma panhandles, has the most reliable winds in the US and their results don't translate to the country as a whole. Even so, they show that wind farms would have to be oversized by a factor of at least 2. They elect to call it base load, but that's not appropriate. It only can be base load if there is also some form of load-following power.

That's a problem. Without fossil fuel and nuclear energy, load following is limited to whatever hydro and pumped storage can be made available, and at most that can only be a few percent.

The article writer also cites "Improving the Technical, Environmental and Social Performance of Wind Energy Systems Using Biomass-Based Energy Storage" by Paul Denholm, which recognizes that problem and suggests using biofuels for backup. But there are a couple of problems here. One is that nowhere does he consider the fuel required to grow the biomass and convert it into biofuel. Currently, it takes up to a gallon of fuel to produce a gallon of fuel, and certainly a big part of a gallon. It seems unlikely that it will ever take no fuel to produce a gallon of fuel. In the absence of better information, his study has to be considered extremely optimistic.

His optimistic estimate is that it would take 6.9 hectares or .0266 sq mi to produce biofuels that would generate 1000 MWH per year. The US uses 4 billion MWH/year, so the area required would be 106,400 square miles, out of 650,000 square miles of arable land. Suppose wind energy allows us to reduce that in half, which would require a half-million 1.5 MW wind turbines (rotor height = 450 feet!); we still need 53,000 square miles. Since we're using almost all the arable land for food and fiber, it's not clear where the 53,000 square miles will come from. Also, to farm land of this magnitude means using less-productive land. He assumes 11.3 tonnes/hectare yields, which would require prime Iowa land, so the land areas would be much greater and very likely would require irrigation, for which water will not be available. That's enough trouble already, but consider that the need for motor fuels will vastly outweigh the need for bio-electricity, because there is another, better, way to generate electricity but no alternative way to produce non-fossil motor fuels.

So we're still where we've always been. Wind energy doesn't work without a backup, and biofuels won't provide the backup.

As we explained in an earlier article, nuclear energy allows solar and wind to play their maximum part in providing electricity. Further, it allows them to contribute efficiently to the production of hydrogen, by taking some load off the nuclear plants. This is the kind of solution that will minimize global warming. Trying to paper over the limitations of renewable sources with scientific-looking obfuscations, if it's successful, can only keep the world on its present reckless path to self-destruction.

But anti-nukes don't get this. They believe you can change reality by manipulating data. You want windmills to turn when there's no wind? No problem. Just crank out fifteen pages of equations, tables, diagrams, and charts and they'll turn themselves!

Simpler Living

2008-02-03T22:14:00.000-08:00

Simpler Living is the mouse under the feet of battling elephants.

One elephant wants to build nuclear power plants. The other wants to shut down all the nuclear power plants, force everyone to ride bicycles, and run the world with windmills and solar panels.

Lost in the noise and dust is a program that has accomplished wonderful changes by lowering the strain on the world's natural resources and saving huge amounts of energy and allowing people to live fuller, richer lives.

For years, Simpler Living has been saving people from the rat race: too many people work long hours to earn money to spend in the futile hope it will make them happy. It's usually not hard to convince people that a simpler life will do them a lot more good. Simpler Living shows them how to achieve it.

It sounds much like the first three parts of Buddhism: Life is full of suffering; Suffering comes from attachment (in this case, to spending); Freedom comes from giving up attachments. Buddhism then teaches that you have to live like a monk to give up attachments. Simpler Living teaches that you just have to make thoughtful choices.

As in Buddhism, there's a whole discipline involved here. Having spent your adult life spending as though you were cleaning out your pockets, you probably won't change just by announcing to yourself that from now on your spending will be thoughtful.

To do it right, you have to follow the program. It's a little troublesome, but very enlightening. The standard text for this subject is Your Money or Your Life by Joe Dominguez and Vicki Robin. Amazon has it; in line with your new philosophy, see if your public library has it before you buy it.

I'll outline the process here so you'll understand what's involved. Please don't shortcut the process.

	First, you keep track of everything you spend. Actually, you might do this for a long time. JD Rockefeller did it his whole life and claimed it was the reason he became rich.
	Next, you analyze where your money went.
	Then, you redesign your life, imagining how you want it to be.
	After that, you base all your money decisions, even small ones, on how they fit your target.

It doesn't mean that you don't spend money, only that you do it consciously. For most people, their spending shrinks and their carbon footprints shrink along with it.

This is the attitude environmentalists have been advocating for as long as there's been an environmental movement. If the executives who run the organizations will catch onto this, we'll make some real progress. It will reduce environmental damage, including global warming, more than all the pamphlets Greenpeace hands out could ever do.

Carbon Offsets

2008-02-02T22:57:00.000-08:00

Do carbon offsets work? They can work, but won't necessarily. There are companies ready to take your money and grant expiation in return. No doubt some of them are honest, but it's up to you to check them out. There aren't any agencies that regulate them.

Another issue is, what kind of carbon-offset schemes work? Some offer tree planting, maybe in some exotic place. But planting trees won't work, because trees all die eventually and give back all the carbon they've absorbed. It only could work if land was set aside permanently for new forests and if somehow it could be guaranteed that the land would never be cleared. There's no way such a guarantee could be made. At the rate the world population is growing, all the arable land will be needed for growing biofuel, not to mention food. In fact, global warming is likely to reduce land productivity.

But a different scheme could work. Non-fossil energy costs more than fossil energy. That's why we use so much fossil fuel, especially coal. So you could pay your local utility to buy your share of electricity from non-fossil sources, with you paying the difference in cost voluntarily. If this plan were structured properly, nuclear would be one of the non-fossil sources. It never is, though. All or nearly all the energy will come from wind turbines.

If you do that much, why couldn't you pay extra to make up for other CO2 emissions?

Here's some CO2 emission rates you can get from the US EPA's website.

For each KWH of electricity, you generate 1.37 lbs of CO2.
For each gallon of gasoline, you generate 20.4 lbs of CO2.
For each gallon of diesel fuel or heating fuel, you generate 22.3 lbs of CO2.
For each 1000 cubic feet of natural gas, you generate 120.6 lbs of CO2.

The EPA doesn't give this figure, but for commercial air travel, figure 50 passenger miles per gallon, or 1000 / 50 * 20.4 = 408 lbs of CO2 per 1000 passenger miles.

Now you can calculate your footprint in pounds of CO2 per year. If your utility has a green-energy program, ask what the premium per KWH is for green energy. At my utility, the rate is 1.25 cents, so the cost of becoming carbon neutral is 1.25/1.37 = 0.91 cents/pound.

Example:

Electricity	5000 KWH	6850 lbs
Gasoline	1000 gallons	20,400 lbs
	TOTAL	27,250 lbs

Cost of offset = 27,250 * 0.91/100 = $248/year, or $21/month.

So if our example consumer donated $21/month to the green energy program, he'd be carbon neutral, just like former US VP Gore. If your utility doesn't offer such a program, find one of those companies you have confidence in and donate it there. Just don't pay to plant trees.

Now that you're guilt free, let's discuss this sensibly. The only reason carbon offsets work is that we generate electricity in the most stupid way possible. As we move toward non-fossil energy sources, this system will break down. If all the electricity came from nuclear power plants and windfarms, there'd be no way to offset motor and aviation fuels. That means the world has to shift toward hydrogen, battery-powered cars, and electrified rail transit.

Gwyneth Cravens

2008-02-01T22:42:00.001-08:00

Gwyneth Cravens was like a lot of people. She knew something about nuclear energy and she was against it.

But she happened to make the acquaintance of D. Richard Anderson, who was thoroughly plugged into nuclear technology. It turned out that he was something of a major force in nuclear safety and he was able to open doors for her. Fortunately, Ms. Cravens is an intelligent, curious person who took advantage of an opportunity to track down all the facts. To make it better, she also is a skilled writer, able to present information accurately and clearly. Thanks to her gifts we are able to go on her Nuclear America Tour.

She and we see it all. Research laboratories, power plants, mines, waste isolation sites, everything that has to do with nuclear energy. But there's even more: she's able to talk with experts, people who've worked in these places for years.

And she lays it all out: facts and figures. The good and the bad. And she compares the alternatives. It's about as complete a reference as you're likely to find.

She describes herself going into it this way: "I lacked a clear sense of what radiation actually was, didn't know much about its sources, didn't distinguish between low-dose radiation and high-dose radiation, and was foggy about the difference between exposure and dose and about radioactive decay. I had no idea how a nuclear plant worked."

Near the end, she quotes a remark made by Anderson:

"One day God could say to us: I gave you the brainiest men and women in human history to come up with an understanding of the atom and its nucleus. I gave you enough uranium and thorium to last you for thousands of years. I gave you an understanding of how when uranium decays it releases energy. You didn't need to invent anything else. You had everything you needed to provide energy for yourselves and your descendants without harming the environment. What else did you want?"

Cravens, Gwyneth. Power to Save the World: The Truth About Nuclear Energy. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2007

GNEP

2008-01-31T21:58:00.000-08:00

The discussion so far shows that the world has to move toward nuclear energy, along with other initiatives, to minimize global warming. The Global Nuclear Energy Partnership is a plan for making this an option for countries that presently rely on fossil fuels while preventing bomb proliferation.

The details of the plan are still under review while countries decide to join the partnership. But the general outline is understood well enough to describe here.

First we need to establish an important aspect of proliferation. Nuclear power plants aren't necessary for producing weapon material. The surest way to make bomb material is by enriching natural uranium to weapons grade. If an independent nation has a source of uranium, no other nation has the legal right to interfere with its weapons ambitions. At most, other nations can apply diplomatic and economic pressure on it, as many nations now are doing with no apparent effect on Iran.

There has been so much talk about diversion of spent fuel being a problem, you may wonder why it is that spent fuel isn't a necessary ingredient. The reason is that it's more difficult to make a successful bomb from spent fuel than from uranium ore. It's instructive to look at the history of the Manhattan Project that led to the first atomic bombs. In short, spent fuel contains transuranic actinides that cause the bomb to pre-detonate so the result is a burp instead of a bang.

All this means that the problem of proliferation is irrelevant to the issue of nuclear energy. But GNEP provides a formula by which the partners can offer safe and cost-efficient nuclear energy on the premise that the subscriber nations will prefer the GNEP fuel system over developing their own. The fuel processing and enrichment will be done by nations that already possess that capability.

So GNEP cannot stop any nation from acquiring a bomb. What it can do is offer nations a way to employ nuclear energy without building a capability for fuel processing and enrichment.

Coal Wastes

2008-01-30T22:24:00.000-08:00

We've discussed before the mortality that results from coal. The best study done so far for the US puts the range between 33,000 and 121,000 per year, just counting adults over 25. But anti-nukes keep hammering at nuclear wastes as though they are such a huge environmental problem that the world should shut down all the nuclear plants as soon as enough windmills can be built to take their place.

But as we showed in an earlier article, The Dimensions of the Challenge, windmills and other part-time energy sources will never take the place of coal. Since nuclear is the only energy source that can, it's fair to compare the effects of both kinds of waste.

Nuclear opponents can't point to a single incident in which nuclear power wastes have caused harm to any person or any thing. So let's consider coal wastes, in comparison.

Jeff Goodell's book, Big Coal: The Dirty Secret Behind America's Energy Future (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2006) makes grim reading. He recounts how coal companies have kept their operating costs down by poisoning the environment. On page 41 he describes the effects of the wastes of one coal mine in West Virginia and how they affect the local residents' water.

In this excerpt, "Massey" refers to Massey Energy Company. Don Blankenship is the CEO.

"A few years ago, Dr. Diane Shafer, a busy orthopedic surgeon in Williamson, the Mingo County seat, noticed that a surprising number of her patients in their fifties were afflicted with early-onset dementia. In addition, she was hearing more and more complaints about kidney stones, thyroid problems, and gastrointestinal problems such as bellyaches and diarrhea. Incidents of cancer and birth defects seemed to be rising, too. She had no formal studies to back her up, but she had been practicing medicine in the Williamson area for more than thirty years, and she knew that many people who lived in the hills beyond the reach of the municipal water supply had problems with their water: black water would sometimes pour out of their pipes, ruining their clothes and staining porcelain fixtures. Many people had to switch to plastic fixtures because steel ones would be eaten up in a year or two. The worst water problems were in the town of Rawl, near Massey's Sprouse Creek slurry impoundment pond, where millions of gallons of black, sludgy water is backed up. Were the health problems in the area related to the pollutants leaching into the water supply from the slurry pond? Dr. Sharer suspected they were.

"Dr. Sharer is the lone physician on the Mingo County Board of Health. Despite her urgings, she could get no one at an official level to take much interest in the water problems in the area. So at her recommendation, a group of concerned citizens contacted Ben Stout, a well-known professor of biology at Wheeling Jesuit University and an expert on the impact of coal mining on Appalachian streams, to study the water quality in the area. Stout tested the water in fifteen local wells, most of them within a few miles of the Sprouse Creek impoundment and one just a short distance from Blankenship's home. Stout found that the wells were indeed contaminated with heavy metals, including lead, arsenic, beryllium, and selenium. In several cases, the levels exceeded federal drinking water standards by as much as 500 percent. Of the fifteen wells tested, only five met federal standards. Stout says that the metals found in the water samples were consistent with the metals in the slurry pond and the most logical explanation for how those metals got into the Williamson drinking water was that the impoundment pond was leaking into the aquifer. He also pointed out that coal companies often dispose of excess coal slurry by injecting it directly into abandoned underground mines, where it can easily migrate into the drinking water.

What if coal wastes had been handled as conscientiously as nuclear-energy wastes have been? It's a pointless question. Coal wastes can't be isolated from the environment because of their massive quantities. Here's what the US Department of Energy says about it:

"Nuclear power produces around 2,000 metric tonnes/per annum of spent fuel. This amounts to 0.006 lbs/MWh. If a typical nuclear power plant is 1000 MWe in capacity and operates 91% of the time, waste production would be 45,758 lbs./annum or slightly less than 23 tons. The solid waste from a nuclear power plant is thus not the volume of the waste, which is very small, but the special handling required for satisfactory disposal. A similar amount of electricity from coal would yield over 300,000 tons of ash, assuming 10% ash content in the coal. Processes (specifically scrubbing) for removing ash from coal plant emissions are generally highly successful but result in greater volumes of limestone solid wastes (plus water) than the volume of ash removed."

There clearly is no environmentally-sound way to dispose of 300,000 tons of ash (or more if the flue gas is scrubbed) at every power plant, every year. As long as we keep on burning coal we'll keep on polluting the groundwater.

Nuclear Accidents

2008-01-29T22:32:00.000-08:00

There have been two serious accidents involving nuclear power reactors and it's right that they have received very much attention. They are at the heart of the debate over whether or not to expand nuclear energy to minimize global warming.

The reactor at Chernobyl was different from all the other power reactors outside the Soviet Union: it was inherently unstable, meaning that the reactivity in the core went up when it got hotter so that once the operators lost control there was no way to get it back.

The accident happened this way[source]. The night crew was told to perform a test to see if the reactor could sustain a sudden disconnection from the power grid. It happened that the night crew was inexperienced (presumably because of seniority rules), though that probably wouldn't have made any difference. What was supposed to happen was that the flywheel inertia of the turbine blades in the electrical generators would give enough power to run the coolant pump until the diesel-powered generators could start and power up.

The crew didn't know that the reactor was operating at an abnormal condition, having run at full power all day and then being cut back to part load, but that probably wouldn't have made any difference, either.

It's not clear why, but the coolant pumps were run at their maximum flow. Possibly the crew thought they were increasing the safety margin. But the resulting cooler temperatures lowered the steam pressure and water filled more of the reactor's internals. Water absorbs neutrons more than steam does, so the control rods had to be withdrawn to maintain power.

The automatic controls would ordinarily have shut down the reactor under these conditions, so the crew disabled the emergency cooling system and the emergency shutdown rods (usually called SCRAM rods).

The crew disconnected the plant from the power grid. But the pump power from the turbine blades wasn't sufficient so the reactor started heating up. Because of the instability this reactor had, the higher temperature raised the reactivity rate, causing more heating, etc. At that point the reactor was out of control. Steam drove water out of the core, and reactivity increased more. Once the crew realized something was wrong, they inserted the control rods. But the control rods inserted slowly, not quickly as the shutdown rods would have. To make matters worse, the tips of the control rods were made of graphite instead of boron. Graphite raised the reactivity rate instead of lowering it as boron would have done. The rods jammed when they were partly inserted.

The reactor continued to heat up. A steam explosion drove some parts out through the sheet-metal roof that kept rain off the reactor. Finally, the reactor body, which was made of graphite, reached its ignition point. The hole in the roof allowed air to enter and the reactor caught fire.

After the accident, the World Health Organization did an extensive investigation and continual followup; its findings were that actual deaths have numbered about 50 and theoretically there could be as many as 4000 fatal cancers in the future.[source] As tragic as that is, it doesn't approach the death rate due to burning coal. Even in the US, tens of thousands of people die every year just from the pollution from generating electricity with fossil fuels.[Abt Associates Report, Exhibit 6-4]

What's interesting is that a big part of the region around Chernobyl now is healthier than before the accident. The chemical refineries and coal-burning plants caused terrible health problems. Now that they're shut down, the air is clean. Some people have moved back into the parts which officially are quarantined but where radiation isn't especially high. They eat vegetables from their gardens and drink water from their wells, and take eggs from their bug-eating chickens, and they're doing just fine. Wildlife have flourished in the area, including the hot spots. Wildlife biologists are studying the animals and plants and even after all these years they're not finding any radiation-related health problems. There's a superb book on Chernobyl's aftermath: Wormwood forest : a natural history of chernobyl by Mary Mycio.

So what are the differences between Chernobyl-style Soviet reactors and all the power reactors in the rest of the world? There are too many differences to list here, but we'll tick off the major differences that led to the accident.

1. The reactor was unstable.
2. The reactor had no containment structure.
3. The reactor was made of graphite, protected only with a sheet-metal shed. Outside the Soviet Union, power reactors have multiple layers of steel and concrete protection.
4. The crew hadn't been trained for the test it was performing.
5. The crew was working without supervision and went against plant operating regulations.

To understand why the reactor was built and operated so unsafely, you'd have to understand how the Soviet system worked. I'm not qualified to explain it, but if you read some Solzhenitzyn you'll get the idea. The accident did, however, prove that anti-nukes had vastly overstated the harm such an accident could cause. It turned out that the consequences, serious as they were, were of the same scale as disasters that happen every year.

More important, the accident at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania in 1979 totally destroyed the reactor but resulted in no adverse health effects, which validated the defense-in-depth designs used in all US power reactors.[source]

Hugh Montefiore: One of the World's Great Minds

2008-01-28T22:06:00.000-08:00

Hugh Montefiore was an Anglican Bishop in the United Kingdom. Outspoken and remarkably radical on theological questions and environmental issues, he was elevated to Bishop over the objections of the Queen. He served on the Friends of the Earth's board for twenty years and as President of the board for six of them. Not long before he died, he changed his mind about nuclear energy and published an article in the Tablet. The Tablet is a religious journal and probably the article would not have attracted much attention, but the Friends of the Earth executives forced him off the board, so the incident gained some notoriety.

Here are some excerpts from the article:

Feature Article, 23 October 2004
Why the planet needs nuclear energy

"As a first step towards this goal, our Government has set itself the target of 10 per cent of electricity from "renewables" by 2010, . . ."

"This needs to be rigorously followed up if the 60 per cent reduction of global warming gases is to be achieved in time. So our Government has further set itself the 'aspiration' of 20 per cent of electricity from renewables by 2020. Yet there seems to be little idea how this second target can be achieved."

"This is why nuclear energy is the most viable alternative, but the problem is that it takes several years between a decision to build a nuclear reactor and its commercial operation. If we are to have more nuclear energy soon after 2010 we must plan now. The Government has said that it is keeping open the nuclear option, but the question remains: why aren't our nuclear reactors being replaced as they become obsolete? Nuclear energy, at present supplying 20 per cent of our electricity, provides a reliable, safe, cheap, almost limitless form of pollution-free energy."

"The real reason why the Government has not taken up the nuclear option is because it lacks public acceptance, due to scare stories in the media and the stonewalling opposition of powerful environmental organisations. Most, if not all, of the objections do not stand up to objective assessment. The accidents at Three Mile Island in the United States and at Chernobyl in the Ukraine are usually cited as objections, without much consideration of what happened and what the results were. At Three Mile Island the additional radiation in the surrounding district was less than would be received in one day from natural sources, and no adverse medical effects have been proved."

"The advantages far outweigh any objections, and I can see no practical way of meeting the world's needs without nuclear energy."

Tony Juniper, director of Friends of the Earth, explained the firing this way: "To have us saying one thing and a member of the board of trustees saying the opposite is clearly unworkable in practice. We can't have the organisation saying two things at once."[The Independent (London), Oct 22, 2004 by Michael McCarthy, Environment Editor]

He's right, of course. Party discipline comes first.

The Sayings of Caldicott

2008-01-27T21:59:00.000-08:00

Anti-nukes adore Helen Caldicott. She travels the world to spread the message that nuclear energy is poisoning the planet. People who don't know anything about the subject celebrate her tireless efforts. Movie stars shower her with money.

On the other hand, Ms. Caldicott has had no training in epidemiology or health physics. She never has belonged to professional organizations devoted to these subjects and she never has published in a peer-reviewed journal.

The National Center for Public Policy Research assembled some of her more notable quotes, as follows:

"That's the argument Hitler probably used when he built the gas ovens -- jobs. " - Caldicott quoted in the Sacramento Bee, April 26, 1988, equating support for defense industry jobs with support for the Holocaust

"The support for that massacre (U.S. liberation of Kuwait) was skin-deep. People felt oppressed by their government was doing and the country was lost... That whole ordeal in the gulf was a practice round for nuclear war. It was obscene beyond belief." - Caldicott quoted by Dana Tims of the Oregonian, November 13, 1991

"Scientists who work for nuclear power or nuclear energy have sold their soul to the devil. They are either dumb, stupid, or highly compromised... Free enterprise really means rich people get richer. And they have the freedom to exploit and psychologically rape their fellow human beings in the process... Capitalism is destroying the earth. Cuba is a wonderful country. What Castro's done is superb." - Caldicott quoted by Dixy Lee Ray in her book Trashing the Planet (1990)

"As it is, life in America amounts to a corporate dictatorship." - Caldicott quoted by Dana Tims of the Oregonian , November 13, 1991

"At a Beverly Hills fund-raiser... nuclear arms opponent Helen Caldicott gave a controversial speech in which she likened Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev to Jesus Christ and suggested the Department of Defense be renamed the 'Department of Annihilation.' " - Amy Chance of the Sacramento Bee, April 26, 1988

"Every time you turn on an electric light, you are making another brainless baby." - Caldicott quoted by environmentalist Theodore Roszak in the Oregonian, June 14, 1992

"[Caldicott] said that if principles crystalized during the Nuremberg Trials at the end of World War II were applied to allied prosecution of the Gulf War, hangings of the U.S. military brass would be in order." - Dana Tims quoted in the Oregonian, November 13, 1993, after conducting a telephone interview with Caldicott

Here's the scary part. Ms. Caldicott is a leading light, an intellectual paragon, among anti-nukes.

Pebble-Bed Modular Reactors.

2008-01-26T21:47:00.000-08:00

If nuclear magazines had centerfolds, every month they'd show a picture of a PBMR.
[Source: MIT]

Whatever anyone could want a nuclear power plant to do, these sweethearts deliver.

They can't go out of control and overheat. You can shut off the cooling at full power and they just warm up a little and stop. They're made in modules; you get whatever size you want by assembling modules. You want small? Buy one module. You want big? Buy a bunch. They don't require heavy forgings so they can be mass-produced. They're cheap. They never have to shut down for refueling. They're gas-cooled so water chemistry is never an issue. They can drive hydrogen generators while generating electricity. They are so safe they can be built close in; the leftover heat can be used to heat homes and businesses instead of heating up the outdoors.

How is all this possible, you're wondering. Here's the deal:

The big bugaboo with conventional reactors is that the fuel elements stay in the reactor for a long time, a couple of years or so. During that time they build up fission products that give off heat even when you shut the reactor down. So the challenge is to ensure that cooling is always available to the core, no matter what. You may recall that during the Three-Mile-Island accident the operators deliberately turned off the cooling pumps and, sure enough, the core overheated and melted.

The concept here is to continually refuel. The fuel elements only spend a couple of weeks in the reactor before they are put into storage and the few fission products they hold are allowed to decay away; then they are cycled back through the reactor. Actually, a number of concepts for doing this have been proposed; it happens that the PBMR is the concept going into commercial operation.

How it works is that spherical fuel elements, called pebbles, are fed into the top of the reactor while others are withdrawn at the bottom. The pebbles are mixed graphite and uranium, coated with an abrasion-resistant ceramic. They're like billiard balls.

The design feature of greatest interest is that the reactor has a strongly negative void coefficient, which is a physicist's way of saying the reactivity rate goes down when the temperature goes up. So they don't need control rods or shutdown rods, although some versions have them. You control the power of the reactor by controlling the flow of gas coolant through the pebble bed. If you want less power you cut back the flow of gas; as the temperature rises the reactivity rate drops. If you want no power you shut off the flow; the temperature rises to the shutoff point and the reaction stops.

Could all reactors be this kind? Possibly. The catch is that the world probably will need some advanced-cycle reactors and an advanced-cycle PBMR hasn't been invented yet. So it could be that the future will include a mix of PBMRs and advanced-cycle reactors.

In the meantime, customers in China and South Africa are trying them out.[source]

Yucca Mountain

2008-01-25T22:08:00.000-08:00

A long time ago, one of America's least-successful presidents made a bad decision; he decided that the US would not recycle spent fuel from its nuclear power plants.

The reasoning he offered was like this: if the US recycled its spent fuel, North Korea would make atomic bombs. And if the US didn't recycle its spent fuel, North Korea would not make bombs.

You can quickly see that this argument overlooks a basic fact, that North Korea's bomb-making decisions did not depend in any way on whether or not the US recycled its spent fuel. And it led ineluctably to a solid blockage at the back end of the nuclear fuel cycle.

The plan all along had been to reprocess spent fuel. Reprocessing the wastes separated out the valuable uranium and transuranic actinides to use as fuel. The remaining wastes were only 3% of what was there before and would lose their toxicity in some centuries; five would be sufficient. [chart] Many geologic places, such as caves or abandoned mines, could store those wastes safely.

But the decision by that president changed everything. Suddenly there was no way to deal with the spent fuel. It had to be stored at the reactor plants where it had been generated. Not only did the volume of waste go up by a factor of thirty, it would stay dangerous for many thousands of years, even hundreds of thousands. There was, and is, a federal law that utilities are not allowed to process or even permanently store the spent fuel. That meant that the Department of Energy had to find a geologic location where the waste could be isolated for thousands of years.

It happened that this change transpired at a time of fervent opposition to nuclear energy, and nuclear opponents fomented public protest in all the candidate locations for the permanent repository. Finally, the US Congress decreed in 1987 that the location would be Yucca Mountain, Nevada.[Timeline] Nevadans were not favorable to this decision; Nevada had more vacant jobs than workers in need of them and saw no gain for themselves in such a facility. Nuclear opponents focussed on the area and in no time most state residents believed that Yucca Mountain was the worst possible location for a spent-fuel repository anywhere in North America and knew at least a dozen reasons why.

As the site evaluation proceeded, features were discovered that would raise the cost many times above the initial estimate and also would lengthen the time to do the work by years. But the biggest blow came in 2004, when the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C. ruled that the repository would have to ensure safe storage for at least 300,000 years, as far into the future as Homo rhodesiensis lived in the past.[Timeline]

Almost anti-climactically, word leaked out in 2005 about some casual e-mails between analysts five to seven years earlier. They were chatting about pressure from managers to slant their conclusions, and about filling in software documentation after-the-fact; the sort of private ruminations in which officeworkers engage. Opponents of the project seized on these stories as proof of falsifications in the analysis. Later investigations resulted in no actions being taken against the participants.[source]

Presently, the Energy Department plans to submit its application to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission this year and the review process will take at least three years. It's possible that the repository could go into service as early as 2017.[Timeline] But leading elected national officials have declared their intentions to stop the project.

So that's the story of Yucca Mountain. It all happened because of a bad presidential decision made decades ago. Fortunately, that decision has been reversed and we're going back to the first plan. Not only does it solve the waste problem, but it stretches the supply of uranium.[source]

Bafflegab: Energy Subsidies

2008-01-24T23:31:00.000-08:00

I've tried to keep the articles objective, except where the discussion requires some insights into the thinking of political activists. Even there, we're on reasonably firm ground because nuclear opponents have been staunchly consistent and have always communicated their opinions freely.

But the subject of subsidies is altogether different, and that is the point of this article. I am only covering the US situation; I don't understand what goes on in other countries. I don't fully understand what's going on in the US and I don't think anyone else does, either. But the reason this comes up is that nuclear opponents wish to prove that nuclear energy costs more than its price shows; that if it weren't subsidized it would be hopelessly expensive.

The first murky issue is, what constitutes a subsidy? A subsidy is supposed to be a transfer of money (or possibly property) to an economic entity as a financial benefit. No energy sources get subsidies. But a tax credit is the same thing, so all energy sources get subsidies.

In the current energy plan, the first 6000 MW of new advanced-design nuclear plants can receive up to 1.8¢ per KWH in tax credits for up to 8 years. Up to six new plants could qualify for a subsidy to offset the cost of designing and permitting.[source] Clean renewable sources can receive up to 1.9¢ per KWH for up to 10 years.[source]

So those seem clear enough. But plants are also offered loan guarantees. That clearly benefits the utilities that build them. It also benefits investors. But it only costs taxpayers if the utilities default on the loans. So is that a subsidy? And if it is, how does one evaluate the probability of a default?

Nuclear opponents always cite federal underwriting of nuclear insurance as a subsidy. That could be considered a benefit, but it only costs the taxpayers if there's an accident exceeding 10 billion dollars in damages. In the history of the program, taxpayers have never paid out a cent. Is that a subsidy? And if it is, how does one evaluate the probability of an accident?

Nuclear opponents consider money spent in the past on research and development to be a subsidy. But the R & D money went to make nuclear plants safer, not cheaper. In fact, the research achievements raised the cost to utilities because they had to upgrade their plants when new technology became available. It could be that the superior technology prevented expensive accidents, but the main beneficiaries were members of the public. So, should R & D expenditures be considered a subsidy?

But these considerations don't slow nuclear opponents down for a second. They throw numbers around as if they meant something, and never try to justify them. Here are some examples:

"In the last 50 years, nuclear energy subsidies have totaled close to $145 billion; renewable energy subsidies total close to $5 billion."[prwatch.org]

"Between 1948 and 1998, the federal government spent $111.5 billion on energy research and development programs. Of this amount, 60 percent, or $66 billion, was dedicated to nuclear energy research, and 23 percent, or $26 billion, was directed to fossil fuel research."[PIRG]

"Management Information Services, Inc. (MISI), conducting a study of the cumulative effects of energy subsidies, found that by 1997 Federal subsidies for energy had amounted to $564 billion (1997 dollars) over the last five decades, roughly half of which went to the oil industry in the form of tax expenditures. MISI considered eight categories of Federal activity and quantified subsidies in six. In contrast to other findings, MISI found that subsidies to renewable sources ($90 billion) outpaced those to natural gas ($73 billion), coal ($68 billion), or nuclear energy ($61 billion)."
[eia.doe.gov]

"While the bill's environmental objectives are a strong advance, one provision remains misguided. Despite the provision of billions of dollars in subsidies to the nuclear industry in the 2005 Energy Policy Act and over $85 billion in historical subsidies, the bill introduced today contains additional nuclear subsidies that NRDC continues to oppose."[NRDC]

But let's take the wildest of the these guesses, prwatch.org's 145 billion dollars. Spread over the 17,111 billion KWH nuclear plants have generated, the cost of this purported subsidy is 0.8¢/KWH. In contrast, the subsidy for geothermal, wind, and solar, using prwatch.org's 5 billion dollars spread over 485 billion KWH, would be 1¢/KWH. Or, if we use MISI's estimates, the subsidies would be 0.4¢/KWH for nuclear and 18¢/KWH for renewables.

If we were to believe nuclear opponents, they all are stalwart Defenders of the Public Purse. They are deeply concerned that taxpayers will have to support uneconomic nuclear power plants. Renewable energy sources are different, though. Taxpayers should be glad to support them.

But these numbers show that this is all a red herring. Even if we accept nuclear opponents' exaggerated projections of nuclear subsidies, most renewables still won't compete. On economic grounds, the choice is between nuclear and coal.

So why is coal so cheap? It's because the federal government has a deliberate policy of allowing coal-burning utilities to emit so much pollution into the air that thousands of Americans die every month, all in the interest of holding down electricity rates. Just counting deaths among adults over 25, the estimate ranges from 33,000 to 121,000 per year in the US [table]. Nuclear energy can't compete with coal and neither can anything else, not even conservation.

Subsidies for nuclear energy are not necessary. If air-pollution controls were adequate then windpower, nuclear, and conservation would all be cost-competitive. But if we set a policy that coal-burning utilities are free to poison the air, and we want at the same time to make them stop operating, then we can't just leave it up to the market to decide.

Propaganda

2008-01-23T22:50:00.000-08:00

When the Berlin wall fell, East Germans were astounded to learn that West Germans were better off than they were. Every time East Europeans liberated themselves they made the same discovery. Today, North Koreans are starving but they believe the South Koreans are worse off. The fact is, propaganda works.

In the same way, anti-nuclear political organizations have succeeded in convincing people that nuclear energy is a threat to the environment. As we have discussed in earlier articles, nuclear energy has the best safety record and the best environmental record of any practical energy source. It also is essential to minimizing global warming. But anti-nuclear activists have cloaked themselves as Defenders of the Environment and by constantly hammering people with the same slogans they've made people so secure in their misconceptions that most never have looked at the issue plainly.

Eric Hoffer knew the value of anti-nuclearism before it even existed when he wrote about true believers:

"When Hitler was asked whether he thought the Jew must be destroyed, he answered: 'No. . . . We should have then to invent him. It is essential to have a tangible enemy, not merely an abstract one.'"

So nuclear energy has been enormously valuable to political organizations. They can command immediate obedience from their followers by continually fabricating misinformation.

Consider the pollution from coal. Thousands of Americans die every month from the air pollution generated by coal-burning power plants. Please see the Abt report, "The Particulate-Related Health Benefits of Reducing Power Plant Emissions." [http://www.abtassociates.com/reports/particulate-related.pdf]. It's a long report, very technical; if you like, you can just look at the results table Worldwide, the deaths certainly run in the tens of thousands every month. Coal pollution is the main source of lead in the ocean; fish now are so poisoned with lead that people are advised to limit their consumption. When whales beach themselves and die the carcasses have to be treated as hazardous waste because of the heavy metals they contain.

But environmental groups have offered only token opposition to coal pollution. When confronted directly, they'll answer, Oh, we're against coal too! Then they'll explain that nuclear versus coal is a false choice, that windmills will solve the world's energy needs. Here's an experiment: if you find one of these people, ask him where the energy will come from when the wind isn't blowing and the sun isn't shining. I guarantee he'll change the subject.

This debate has always been one-sided. The anti-nuclear political organizations have set up a straw man to fight against: the Nuclear Industry. In their presentation, the Nuclear Industry is directing a massive, well-financed campaign and only the stalwart Defenders of the Environment are standing between Good and Evil. Actually, the big players in nuclear energy always have been energy companies, not nuclear companies. Westinghouse, General Electric, Exxon, etc. are glad to provide whatever kind of energy utilities and their ratepayers are willing to take. There never have been powerful groups able to take on Greenpeace or Friends of the Earth or any of the anti-nuclear political organizers. In the US, an industry group called the Nuclear Energy Institute is struggling to get good information over the shouting of the nuclear opponents; it's like your high-school basketball team going up against the Lakers.

But the dishonesty goes deeper. Nuclear opponents don't just spread misinformation and exaggerate the strength of their opponents. Besides that, they shed themselves of all responsibility. The easiest position to take is the one that never will be tested. Despite their unwillingness to admit it, they know as well as you and I that the world never will depend on part-time energy sources. So no matter what happens they'll be able to say that the world should have done it their way.

This self-indulgent preening shouldn't be allowed to affect public policy.

An Energy Plan

2008-01-22T22:57:00.000-08:00

To start, we should look at some energy numbers. These apply to the US only. Here are the quantities of energy the US used in 2006, in quadrillion British thermal units, usually called quads:

Source	quads	%
Renewable	0.329091699	0.216726496
Hydro	0.987196598	0.650127793
Nuclear	2.686778447	1.769403728
Fossil-fired Elec	9.844436722	6.483148269
Other Fossil	137.9990426	90.88059371
TOTAL	151.8465461	100

Sources:
http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electricity/epa/epates.html
http://www.eia.doe.gov/iea/convheat.html
http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/aer/txt/ptb0103.html

Note, if you will, that fossil-fired electricity accounts for only 6.5% of the energy even though it accounts for 40% of the CO2 emissions.

This analysis comes in two parts. First we'll cover electricity. We know the rate of electricity generation will go up because a lot of the schemes for reducing greenhouse-gas emissions require shifting fossil-fuel applications to electricity: battery-powered cars, light-rail transit systems, replacing furnaces with heat pumps, etc.

Renewable energy sources such as wind and solar can't replace fossil fuels owing to their part-time natures. But they can greatly reduce the amount of fossil fuels being burned during the transition period while renewable and nuclear sources are being installed. So our plan includes both renewable and nuclear.

But wait, there's more! Electricity is a big part of the problem but not the only part. We also have to replace petroleum-based motor fuels. At this point, there are only two possibilities in view, besides electrified vehicles, bicycles, foot travel, horseback, rickshaw and some other specialized transportation modes. The two possibilities are hydrogen and hydrogen-enriched biofuels, as we discussed in the article, "The Dimensions of the Challenge." Our plan needs to include the capability of producing large amounts of hydrogen. This plan does that, because nuclear plants allow for thermochemical production of hydrogen, by far the most efficient technique available.

Once all the fossil-fired power plants are replaced, nuclear and renewables can complement each other. The nuclear plants can provide whatever electricity is needed during times of dim sunlight and low winds, or no sunlight and no wind. When the sun is shining and the wind is blowing, and when demand for electricity is low, nuclear plants can divert some of their capacity to generating hydrogen.

This plan allows solar and wind to play their maximum part in providing electricity. Further, it allows them to contribute efficiently to the production of hydrogen.

I don't want to claim that this is the only energy plan that could work. But it is the only plan I've seen that could work. If you know a better plan we'll do it your way instead. However, if your plan doesn't allow for providing electricity when the sun isn't shining and the wind isn't blowing then you don't have a plan.

Obstacles to Minimizing Global Warming

2008-01-21T21:47:00.000-08:00

In earlier articles we discussed the technical challenges of preventing massive economic and environmental dislocations because of climate change. Actually, the world has the capability to meet those challenges if it has the will.

For example, the United States transformed itself from an agricultural nation in the depths of an economic depression into an industrial giant able to manufacture the hardware needed to defeat the Axis powers in five years even with millions of its able-bodied men and women in military service. Compared with that, converting energy away from fossil fuels is easy.

The problems arise from attitude.

First there is the problem of skepticism about global warming. The evidence isn't just strong, it's conclusive. Yet people have made up their minds not to accept it. You can find them on the web even if you don't want to. Any criticism of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, justified or not, from any person, qualified or not, is touted to be the final "debunking" (a term much in fashion) of climate-change science.

Overcoming this obstinacy should be the easiest part of the problem to solve, but we can't even accomplish this much.

Next is the perverse refusal of nuclear opponents, all of whom claim the mantle of Defenders of the Environment, to acknowledge the clear necessity of nuclear energy for minimizing climate change. The same Defenders of the Environment deny both the environmental benefits of nuclear energy and the limitations of part-time energy sources.

We see some erosion of this monolithic inertia among more thoughtful members of the public, but the executives at the major international anti-nuclear political organizations aren't budging.

Then, assuming these problems can be overcome (or possibly ignored), we face the difficulty of implementing solutions.

Perhaps there will be local opposition to construction of nuclear power plants. But wind farms already are seeing fierce opposition. And the fights over solar panels haven't begun. When utility ratepayers realize how much they're paying to subsidize their neighbors' rooftop panels they'll do one of two things. Some of them will decide to cash in on the program. But if too many people do that the program will collapse from the expense. So all the people left out will see their rates go up dramatically. Before it's over you will hear people say they wish they'd never heard of solar energy.

What's left is conservation. And conservation is always the preferred nostrum; whenever energy and global warming come up, conservation is always our best and brightest hope.

But conservation means more than putting in compact-fluorescent lightbulbs and recycling wine bottles. It even means more than junking our SUVs and buying hybrid cars. It means smaller houses and no vacation homes. It means giving up motorhomes and cabin cruisers and recreational flying. No more flying vacation trips.

Sounds discouraging, no? It is discouraging if stubborn, misinformed people are allowed to dictate the world's energy future. But there is a way to solve this, and that will be the next articles's subject.

The Dimensions of the Challenge

2008-01-21T10:26:00.000-08:00

Most people don't understand the scale of the energy we use. This article will try to put it in perspective. The data will apply to the United States; nationals of other countries will have to interpret it for themselves. Generally speaking, though, nationals of other advanced countries will face challenges of the same scale or higher and those living in developing countries will increasingly find themselves in the same dilemma.

We will compare the different non-fossil energy sources that have been proposed with respect to their capabilities. Where appropriate, we will compare the land areas required for each with the land area available.

Electricity

First, consider the amount of electricity the US uses, a total of just over 4 billion MWH/year.[source]

Wind

What really limits wind power is the small amount of storage available; hydroelectric dams can treat a small part of their capacity as short-term storage for wind power. For the purpose of this calculation, we shall pretend that the limitation doesn't apply but we'll discuss storage later in this article.

Currently, typical wind-turbines on wind farms are sized at 1.5 MW, with a rotor-tip height of 450 feet and a rotor diameter of 231 feet.[source][source]. Allowing a generous load factor of 0.35 [source], each turbine yields 4602 MWH/year, so 869,000 turbines would be required. The minimum turbine spacing recommended is five times the rotor diameter [source], so each 1.5 MW turbine requires (5 X 231 ft)^2 = 1,334,025 feet, or 0.048 sq mile.

To provide all the electricity the US uses would require more than 41,720 square miles. That would be a strip of land 40 miles wide running from the Montana/Canada border to the Arizona/Mexico border. To get good efficiency, a strip 60 miles wide would be needed.

Solar

Solar energy has the same storage limitations as wind power, but we still shall pretend that the limitation doesn't apply.

For the US, an average insolation would be around 5.5 KWH/m^2/day[source], or 2 MWH/m^2/year. Allowing a generous 20% efficiency[source], the output would be 0.4 MWH/m^2/year. To provide all the electricity the US uses would require 10 billion square meters or 3861 square miles of solar panels. That would be a panel 1-1/2 miles wide running from San Diego to Boston.

Nuclear

Nuclear plants are operating at about 90% capacity factors.[source]

However, new ones will run somewhat lower, so an average capacity factor of 80% will be assumed.

For 1000 MW power plants, 571 would be required to provide all the electricity the US uses, compared with 104 that currently are in operation.

Up to now, this discussion has ignored the difference between peak power demands and gross power generation. In the case of solar and wind power, it didn't matter because neither can reliably supply energy at any time, let alone meet peak demands. Nuclear power is available at all times, though, so peak demand can be met. The current US electric capacity is about 890,000 MW[source], so about a thousand 1000-MW power plants would be required, or a smaller number of larger plants.

Motor Fuels

The US uses about 140 billion gallons of gasoline per year.[source] Since ethanol has only 70% of the energy content of gasoline[source], at 439 gallons per acre[source], the US would have to plant 456 million acres, or 713,000 square miles in corn to displace gasoline with ethanol. That is about one-fourth of the area of the 48 contiguous US states.

The US consumes 63 billion gallons of diesel fuel per year.[source] The land area required to grow enough soybeans to displace the petrodiesel with biodiesel, at 63 gallons per acre[source], would be one billion acres or 1,563,000 square miles, about half of the area of the 48 contiguous US states.

These calculated land areas seem too high to be correct, but they are in line with calculations done by others. For example, this analysis finds that, if all vehicles were diesel-powered, the land area required would be 58% of the US including Alaska. Another calculation shows that if all the corn and soybean crops in the US were converted into biofuels they would replace just 12 percent of the gasoline used and just 6 percent of the diesel fuel.

Of the land in all of the US, only 18% or 650,000 square miles is arable[source], and most all of that is being cultivated for food and fiber. Also, the calculations shown above assume that all the land would have the same yields as the prime farmland currently under cultivation and that there would be sufficient water for irrigation. Neither of those conditions is true, of course, so plainly there isn't enough land.

Clearly, biofuels won't provide much liquid fuel. There is a possibility that these land requirements can be reduced by two thirds if hydrogen is injected into the biomass during processing. For example, 0.77 gallons of biodiesel can be produced by adding 1 kg of hydrogen[source], which requires 39.3 KWH of energy to produce from water. The biodiesel equivalent of US diesel consumption is 70 billion gallons per year; to produce enough hydrogen would require 2.75 trillion KWH per year. The fact remains, though, that biofuels can only be part of the solution.

For a long time, fuel cells have been the holy grail in the quest to free the world from fossil-based motor fuels. The barrier seems to be the catalyst; platinum so far is the only material that works. Not only is it very expensive, several thousand dollars per vehicle [source] but if fuel cells drove up the demand then the cost would be even higher. There also is the unsolved problem of storing enough hydrogen on board for a reasonable driving range. But suppose these problems could be overcome.

As a rough estimate, let's say the amount of hydrogen needed would be the energy-equivalent of 100 billion gallons of diesel fuel per year, chosen mainly because it's a round number about half of the total of gasoline and diesel fuel: 50 billion gallons probably is too little and 150 billion gallons probably is more than necessary. The heat value of diesel fuel is about 38 KWH/gallon[source], so our energy equivalent is 3.8 billion MWH/year. For our rough purposes, this is the same as our current electrical usage.

Unfortunately, the process for converting water to hydrogen at normal temperatures is less than 30% efficient. So, the electricity required would be more than three times our current electrical usage. To generate that much electricity with solar panels would require a panel 5 miles wide running from San Diego to Boston. To generate the electricity with wind turbines would require a strip of land 130 miles wide running from the northern Montana border to the southern Arizona border with 2,870,000 turbines, all rated at 1.5 MW.

It is possible to produce hydrogen efficiently in a thermochemical process, using nuclear-generated heat. The nominal efficiency is over 45%.[source] But the heat left over from the conversion can be used to generate electricity, so the hydrogen production is nearly 100% efficient. The nuclear plants can produce electricity and hydrogen at the same time. More power plants aren't required because the additional heat will be available during off-peak hours.

Currently, hydrogen storage is the weak link. It's practical only for local transportation, but intense research is underway.

Bulk Energy Storage

Pumped Energy Storage
The purpose of this admittedly rough calculation is to estimate the amount of pumped storage that would be required if wind power provided all the electricity the US uses.

First, consider the amount of electricity the US uses, a total of just over 4 billion MWH/year.[source] On an average day, not a high-demand day, that's 11,000,000 MWH/day.

We have to make up a fictitious example because there aren't any real examples. Suppose we use Lake Erie, Niagara Falls, and Lake Ontario as our pumped-storage, pretending that we could increase the capacity of the turbines enough.

We know that Niagara Falls' power capacity is 2400 MW, using 375,000 gallons/second of water.[source] We also know that the capacity of Lake Erie is 484 cubic kilometers of water, which is 128,000 billion gallons.[source] At present, the falls could produce 57,600 MWH/day, using 32.4 billion gallons/day. So, to serve all of the US for one day, the water required would be (11,000,000/57,600) X 32.4 billion gallons = 6,187 billion gallons, which is 4.8% of Lake Erie. That means that Lake Erie could provide storage for three weeks.

How much storage would be required? Looking at data for all of the US, we see that, with surprising consistency, low-wind months have average speeds about 70% of the average speeds for the high-wind months.[source] Based on the cubic relationship between wind speed and power, we would expect seasonal variations in energy generation of around 0.35 to 1, so the average would be something like the rated capacity times (1 + 0.35)/2 or 0.675. Conversely, for the generation to equal the load, the rated capacity of the wind farms would have to be the yearly average load divided by 0.675, or multiplied by 1.48. Since we can expect the generation in a slow-wind month to be 0.35 times the rated capacity, the storage capacity would have to be about 1 - 0.35 X 1.48 (= 0.48) times the yearly average load times the length of the low-wind period.

21 days' capacity would be good for 21/0.48 = 43 days of low winds. But low-wind seasons last longer than 100 days.

The power grid allows for some redistribution of power from areas experiencing high winds to areas with low winds. But the wind-variation patterns cover large regions so there are limits to what can be achieved. Allowing for redistribution still leaves a need for more than three-weeks' capacity.

To provide adequate pumped-storage capacity for wind power as the main electical-energy source for the US would require damming canyon streams to create twin lakes around the country equal in volume to something bigger than Lakes Erie and Ontario. Even if enough locations could be found, the projects would not be permitted because of the high ecological cost.

Compressed Air
Another scheme that sometimes is mentioned is storing compressed air in caves. There is a facility in Huntorf, Germany that we can use for an example.[source] It compresses air to 1000 pounds per square inch pressure.

The data show that it stores 3 x 290 = 870 MWH of energy and the cave volume is 310,000 cubic meters.

For one day of electricity storage for the US, the volume needed would be

11,000,000/870 X 310,000 = 3.92 billion cubic meters = 138.4 billion cubic feet.

Suppose a cave had an average cross-section of 50 ft X 50 ft = 2500 sq ft.

For one day's electricity storage, the cave's length would have to be 138.4 billion / 2500 = 55.34 million feet = 10,490 miles. Granted that most big caves have never been surveyed, it's still safe to say that there aren't ten-thousand miles of caves in the US. So there is no possible way enough energy could be stored to see the country through 100 days of low winds.

Conclusion

Barring some startling new energy development, what all this shows is that solar panels and wind turbines won't provide major parts of the world's energy; biofuels can only be important if a large amount of hydrogen is available. If global warming is to be avoided, the only two technologies that can provide sufficient energy are nuclear and hydrogen.

In the next article we'll look at the obstacles to solving this problem. In the article after that we'll see a scheme for reducing the consumption of fossil fuels.

Are Anti-Nukes Environmentalists?

2008-01-20T10:38:00.000-08:00

As was shown in the last two articles, nuclear energy offers many environmental benefits. In fact, the leading threat to the environment is global warming and nuclear energy is absolutely essential for minimizing it. Besides that, its environmental costs are very low, even lower than for most of the alternatives that have been suggested.

But the biggest international environmentally-oriented political organizations oppose nuclear energy and in the strongest terms possible. How can this obvious contradiction be explained? A close look at the record of these same organizations makes clear what has happened.

Please take a look at this scorecard. It shows that, for all their self-praise, these organizations have a poor record. It also includes descriptions of how they got to be so ineffective, from the viewpoints of insiders.

Besides a stubborn unwillingness to look at environmental problems that matter, anti-nukes also have in common a total misunderstanding about the ability of various energy sources to meet the world's present needs and no imagination about the world's future needs. We'll discuss the limitations of the various energy alternatives in the next article; later on we'll discuss future needs.

Solutions to Global Warming: Part 4

2008-01-19T22:36:00.000-08:00

In the last article we covered the arguments in favor of nuclear energy. This time we'll cover the arguments against.

Wastes

The waste materials from nuclear energy are at most a hypothetical concern. No person has ever been harmed by them. Despite that, people who oppose nuclear energy do so mainly because the wastes stay radioactive for a very long time, even hundreds of thousands of years. It's odd that the same people don't have problems with coal wastes, which pile up in vast heaps and sludge ponds that stay toxic forever.[source]

Until recently, the plan was to bury the wastes in geological structures where they would be safe until the radioactivity decayed away. But now the plan is to reprocess the wastes to separate out the valuable uranium and transuranic actinides to use as fuel. The remaining wastes are only 3% of what was there before and lose their toxicity in much less time, hundreds of years instead of hundreds of thousands.[source] Many geologic places, such as caves or abandoned mines, could store those wastes safely. Besides that, proven technology exists to irradiate the wastes into other, shorter-lived materials.[source] To deal with the wastes this way doesn't require any technological breakthroughs, just a political decision.

Bomb Proliferation

There is a common misunderstanding that nuclear power plants are a requirement for making bombs. That is not the case, as explained by Hans Blix, a former Director of the IAEA, the United Nations agency responsible for preventing proliferation [source]:

"A phasing out of nuclear power in some or all states would not lead to the scrapping of a single nuclear bomb.

"States can have nuclear weapons without nuclear power though it is not common today. Israel is a case in point. It has no nuclear power but is assessed to have some 200 nuclear warheads. For a long time China had only the weapons. Indeed, most nuclear weapons states, including the US, had weapons before they had power. "

Despite that, people have a concern that nuclear fuel could be diverted and used to make a bomb by someone who shouldn't have one. This concern overlooks the fact that, even assuming someone could defeat the security measures for protecting the material and somehow ship it to his own facility, the material has to be treated with chemical separation and isotope separation and enrichment. This is a major industrial operation. In every case where it has been done, it required a nation's best minds and vast capital resources. And there still remains the problem of learning how to make a bomb go off. If a nation decides to make a bomb and is willing to make the investment, it can make it from natural uranium; stealing fuel is not a requirement.

Dirty Bombs

A possibility of dirty bombs comes up in some discussions. The concern is that a terrorist could get his hands on spent fuel and blow it up with conventional explosives. That is a possibility, and puts it in the class of other threats, such as chlorine or ammonia or explosives made from fertilizer. But spent fuel is unattractive to terrorists for several reasons. One is that it's monitored in shipping and it's highly likely that the thieves would be caught and the terrorist plot would be exposed. Another is that it has to be heavily shielded so it would take a huge explosion to spread the waste. Another is that the radioactive material is easy to detect; people who are contaminated can be decontaminated quickly and cleanup crews can clean up the contaminated area. Of all the things we have to concern ourselves with, dirty bombs don't rank very high.

Conclusion

This finishes up the initial series of blogs. What they show is the following:

Global warming is happening.

Global warming is caused by artificial greenhouse gas, mainly carbon dioxide.

There's a possibility global warming could reach a tipping point, after which there's no way to fix the problem.

To prevent global warming, carbon-dioxide emissions have to be minimized.

To minimize carbon-dioxide emissions will require all the renewable energy we can manage, all the nuclear plants we can build, and more conservation than anyone wants.

In future blogs we'll cover some of the same issues in more detail.

Solutions to Global Warming: Part 3

2008-01-19T14:29:00.000-08:00

In this article we'll cover the arguments in favor of nuclear energy. We'll cover the arguments against in the next article.

4) Nuclear Energy

Pros of Nuclear Energy

Nuclear energy has the best safety record of any energy source. No member of the US public has been killed or injured by any nuclear plant. This is a key point, because many people are under the impression that nuclear plants are wildly dangerous. The Chernobyl accident in Ukraine in 1986 showed what the actual scale of an accident could be without normal safety provisions. After the accident, the World Health Organization did an extensive investigation and continual followup; its findings were that actual deaths have numbered less than 50 and there could be as many as 4000 fatal cancers in the future.[source] As tragic as that is, it doesn't approach the death rate due to burning coal. Even in the US, tens of thousands of people die every year just from the pollution from generating electricity with fossil fuels.[Abt Associates Report, Exhibit 6-4] More important, the accident at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania in 1979 totally destroyed the reactor but resulted in no adverse health effects, which validated the defense-in-depth designs used in all US reactors.[source]

Nuclear energy is clean. Since reactors emit no pollutants they are as clean as any of the renewable energy sources that have been suggested.

Nuclear energy is abundant. At current usage, the world's known uranium reserves producible at less than US$60 per pound of U3O8 will last 85 years. Geologic data show that the supply is over 600 years. At higher prices, the supply is even greater. With advanced fuel cycles, the proven reserves would last over 2500 years.[source]

Nuclear energy is economical. Presently, it is cheaper than any energy source except hydroelectricity. Both of them are cheap because the capital costs have all been paid back. Here are average operating costs in the US in 2005, in cents per KWH[source]:

Nuclear	1.816
Fossil Steam	2.769
Hydroelectric	0.886
Gas Turbine and Small Scale	5.885

For new plants, of course, the cost would be higher because of the capital costs. Here are comparisons for different energy sources [source]. The costs are in UK pence/KWH.

Gas-fired CCGT	2.2
Nuclear fission plant	2.3
Coal-fired pulverised-fuel (PF) steam plant	2.5
Coal-fired circulating fluidized bed (CFB) steam plant	2.6
Coal-fired integrated gasification combined cycle (IGCC)	3.2
Onshore wind farm	3.7
Offshore wind farm	5.5
Wave and marine technologies	6.6

Note that the coal-fired electricity costs more than nuclear, which no doubt is because advanced-technology plants are being considered in order to minimize pollution. If older-technology plants were being priced, the cost would be somewhat less, probably less than any of the costs shown.

Nuclear energy is effective against climate change. Comparing life-cycle greenhouse-gas emissions, nuclear ranks with the cleanest of all electric-energy sources in tonnes CO2-equivalent per GWeh.[source]

Coal	974
Combined-cycle natural gas	469
Photovoltaic	39
Nuclear fission	15
Wind	14
DT fusion	9

Furthermore, most of the solutions to replacing petroleum-based motor fuels require hydrogen and the most efficient way to convert water to hydrogen is with high-temperature processes, at temperatures nuclear reactors can provide. In particular, hydrogen can be added to biomass to triple the output of biofuels; that could make biofuels a major alternate fuel.[source] The nominal efficiency is over 45%.[source] But the heat left over from the conversion can be used to generate electricity, so the hydrogen production is nearly 100% efficient.

So those are the points in favor of nuclear energy. In the next article we'll go over the arguments against.

Solutions to Global Warming: Part 2

2008-01-16T21:26:00.000-08:00

3) Renewable Energy Sources

In this article we'll look at alternative energy sources and appraise their effectiveness in minimizing global warming. The numbers apply to the US; nationals of other countries will have to figure this out for themselves.

Residential Energy Sources

Some important savings can be made by making greater use of natural energy sources. Home heating and residential water heating could be switched almost entirely to solar and solar-heat-pump systems. Passive solar heating techniques can be built into homes. The remaining residential applications would mainly be cooking, which could almost entirely be converted to electricity. These changes would reduce CO2 emissions by 367 million metric tons, or 6.1% of the total.[source]

Wind Power

Wind power is already providing some electricity at a price which is only a little higher than electricity from fossil-fired power plants.[source] What limits wind power is the need for storage, since neither homes nor businesses can stop functioning when the wind power is unavailable. Currently, only one form of bulk storage is available for energy: existing hydroelectric dams, which account for 6.6% of total US electrical capacity.[source] There are limits to how much storage can be used, since dam operators have to maintain minimum water flows and also have commitments to irrigators, but it's conceivable that wind power could provide a few per cent of the country's energy.

If some sort of bulk energy storage could be developed, that could make wind energy practical. The storage method closest to practicality is pumped storage. In fact, there is a small amount of pumped storage in use now. A rough calculation shows, however, that there aren't enough places to install pumped storage for wind power to become the main electricity source.

A different strategy would be to have fossil-fired power plants standing by to back up wind power. Since wind turbines have a load factor of 25 to 35%, that would seriously hamper the effort to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions because the fossil-fired plants would have to operate a large portion of the time.[source] But the existing fossil-fired plants will be around for some decades while replacement capacity is built. In the meantime, they can be used as backup for wind turbines and other renewable sources. So, in the short term, wind power can be a major power source until replacement sources are constructed and the wind turbines wear out.

Solar Energy

Solar photovoltaic systems are presently too expensive to compete with other energy sources, but over the years can be expected to become cheaper.[source] They already are becoming popular in remote locations where connecting to the electrical grid is impractical. If costs continue to fall, solar energy can complement wind power but the unavailability of bulk storage will apply to solar energy as well.

Geothermal energy

Geothermal energy presently supplies 0.34% of the energy used in the US.[source] There are two types of geothermal energy: wet and dry. The wet type is being exploited about as much as it can be. There is a lot more available in dry form; unfortunately, there aren't any practical ways of extracting it.

Biofuels

Biofuels represent a possibility. To use them unblended as motor fuels would require new engine designs, but that will be unavoidable with any change from petroleum-based fuels. Currently, the best estimate is that it takes 0.75 gallons of fuel to produce the energy-equivalent of 1 gallon of conventional fuel. That's only true if credit is given for the value of the leftover material as animal feed; once the demand for animal feed is satisfied, the payoff ratio won't be as good. It is believed that the fuel input could be reduced to as little as 0.4 gallons with advanced technology that allows agricultural waste to be used as the raw material.[source] Agricultural waste is what gardeners call mulch; it hasn't been determined what would be the adverse consequences of diverting mulch away from fields. Research is being done on different biomass plants and chemical processes that could give better results.

The International Energy Agency estimates[source] fossil-fuel use at 388 exajoules per year worldwide, which may be expected to double or triple in this century. It also estimates that to supply 300 exajoules/year, a goal attainable with moderate effort, would require 7% of Earth's landmass, requiring forest clearing and insecticides and synthetic fertilizers. In comparison, 13.3% of the landmass is arable, including 4.7% already under cultivation.[source] The IEA concludes that biofuels can be an important means of reducing greenhouse-gas emissions on a global scale. For the US and Europe, though, given their limited free agricultural land and their high dependence on liquid fuels, the main effect would be switching from oil-rich suppliers to land-rich ones. Presumably, the benefit of reducing global warming would justify the higher cost.

Silver Bullets

Many other systems have been proposed: wave engines, tidal engines, and ocean-thermal-gradient engines, to mention only a few. People have suggested micro-hydroelectric power, installing small turbines on thousands of creeks and streams, but never have addressed the legal obstacles to extinguishing hundreds of species. Fusion research continues apace, but no projections are made regarding when it could become practical. Schemes have been suggested for energy storage, such as compressing air in caves, or building mammoth flywheels. All of these ideas are exactly where they were over thirty years ago: nowhere.

Hydrogen

But one idea has real potential: hydrogen. Presently, hydrogen use is hampered mainly by the low energy efficiency (around 30%) of converting water to hydrogen at ordinary temperatures.[source] There are more efficient processes, but they require high temperatures and are poorly suited to renewable energy sources. Alternatively, research is going on to improve the efficiency of photosynthetic production, currently around 2%.[source] If the efficiency could be improved, then there is a real future for hydrogen. Storage technology is ahead of production technology, and fuel cells are already proven. Hydrogen could be a fuel substitute and could well be the main element in future energy delivery.

However, there is a trap in something this attractive. For over thirty years, Americans have chosen to stay with fossil fuels based on the promise that something new and better was almost ready to displace the use of fossil fuels. The new and better something never materialized, with the result that fossil-fuel use now is threatening the planet's climate. Is it safe to continue this way, or should we look for other solutions that are available now?

Summary

There are two time-frames to consider. With present technology, renewable energy can displace a big part of fossil-fired electric power, but will lose that capability as the backup fossil-fired plants wear out. In the long run, the world must focus on non-fossil energy sources. Unless some form of bulk energy storage is invented, renewable sources will only be able to provide about ten per cent of the energy the US uses. Conservation, if pursued aggressively, could hold energy consumption to its current level.

The next few articles will take a look at nuclear energy.

Solutions to Global Warming: Part 1

2008-01-15T21:42:00.000-08:00

In an earlier article we showed that CO2 from burning fossil fuels is causing global warming. So now we'll have a series of article on what to do about it. I'm going to present this from the perspective of the US. It's not my place to tell other people what to do about the problem, except insofar as we all will face the consequences so we all need to contribute to the solution.

The following information comes from the US Department of Energy, using data from 2005 for US emissions.[source]

The total emissions of CO2 for the US weighed in at 6009 million metric tons. The main contributors that are amenable to replacement are as follows:

Electricity generation from fossil fuels	2375 MMT
Residential use of natural gas	262 MMT
Gasoline motor fuel	1171 MMT

The remaining 2291 MMT is spread over a large range of agricultural, residential, industrial, and transportation applications and miscellaneous applications such as road pavements. Some improvements can be sought here, but most of the users already are economically motivated to reduce energy consumption, so we should only count on modest improvements. Here's a plot that shows where all the greenhouse gases are coming from in the US:[source]

Out of all these, electricity generation is where the greatest savings can be made, accounting for 40% of the total CO2 emissions.

Taking CO2 emissions as a whole, there are four options available: carbon sequestration, conservation, renewable energy, and nuclear energy. We'll cover the first two in this article.

1) Carbon Sequestration

It is possible that the CO2 could be captured and stored in some geological formation.

The problems with sequestration are that it's very expensive to pipe the CO2 from the power plant to the formation and pump it deep into the ground, and there's no way to be sure the CO2 will stay there. The scheme du jour is to bubble the gas into saline aquifers and hope the CO2 will form stable minerals there. No one knows what the capacity of the available aquifers is, or how to find out.

2) Conservation
Improving energy codes has gone a long way toward reducing greenhouse gases. Americans are using only as much energy per capita as they were ten years ago and twenty years ago. Meanwhile, energy consumption per dollar of domestic product has dropped about 40% since 1980. Of course, the US has shifted away from manufacturing toward importation in that same period, which accounts for some of the savings. Nonetheless, it's clear that energy codes can play a part in greenhouse-gas reduction.[source]

It can be stated with no fear of contradiction that people who live in affluent countries could reduce their energy consumption by large amounts. The problem with this solution is that there is a huge difference between can-do and will-do. People for the most part don't know how to quantify energy consumption. People drive motorhomes and put in compact fluorescent lights to balance their carbon footprints. People live in 8000-square-foot houses but recycle their wine bottles so it's all okay. An energy plan that depends on people giving up their big houses and their flying trips around the world and their motorhomes or boats or personal aircraft needs to be studied carefully.

What happened in the past was that alternative-energy advocates assured everyone that using fossil fuels was perfectly acceptable because new energy sources would meet the world's energy needs and switching over was only a matter of making some simple political decisions. But it turned out that the new energy sources weren't adequate for the task and continuing to use fossil fuels had tragic results.

In the next article we should look at some of those alternative energy sources and see what their limitations are.

Skepticism about Global Warming

2008-01-14T21:25:00.000-08:00

The world is facing some tough decisions on how to deal with the oncoming effects of global warming, so it's right and reasonable that people are looking at the subject closely to make sure we don't dislocate people's lives inappropriately.

In the past, this has led to some unfortunate situations. A few people claiming to have scientific qualifications have made arguments that are demonstrably false. It also led to an embarrassing TV presentation in the UK which claimed that global warming was a conspiracy authored by Prime Minister Thatcher in which scientists lied for pay. The presentation showed falsified solar data, claiming that it matched global temperature history, and warned that Africans would suffer severe deprivation if they were denied fossil-fueled electricity.

Among the skeptics, one of the most important is United States Senator James Inhofe, the ranking Republican member of the U.S. Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. One would predict that Senator Inhofe would examine the subject carefully. Representing an oil-producing state, and being a strong conservative with investments in aviation, the Senator also flies personal aircraft as an avocation. He and his staff have compiled an extraordinary treatise which must include just about every criticism aimed at the process by which the consensus on global warming was formed.

As we look through the arguments, some patterns emerge. The most substantive of the arguments assume that there can only be one cause of global temperature change; since solar activity was clearly the driving force before 1850, they conclude that it still is the sole driving force. This and the other scientific arguments repeat the false arguments mentioned before.

Of the remaining arguments, many contend simply that too much emphasis is put on dubious methodologies: proxy data and computer models. That's reasonable enough, but the compilation leaves out the fact that the proof of climate change doesn't depend on either of these, as shown in our last article.

Some of the critics don't challenge the science but complain about the management of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. That's important to conspiracy believers but not to people more interested in the actualities.

The last group of critics don't challenge either the science or the politics, but warn that excessive alarmism could lead to mistaken decisions. Implicit in this argument is the contention that CO2's effects on the environment couldn't be very great.

The question here is, what is very great? We've only seen a temperature rise of 0.7°C (1.2°F) in over 150 years. Who cares? You can't even feel that! But mountain glaciers get a little less snow in the winter and melt a little faster in the summer. In time, the glaciers disappear and farmers who depend on snowmelt in the summer don't get it. Semi-arid parts of Africa that got just enough rain to grow some grass for cattle get less and tens of millions of people watch their livelihoods die. Beetles that never could get up a big population before because of winter-kill now can survive and increase gradually in numbers so they can destroy a forest. Cold-water fish don't tolerate temperature change and move to a different part of the ocean, disrupting their reproduction cycles. That's what we're seeing now: small temperature changes have big effects. What will happen as the temperature rises another degree? Or two degrees?

Maybe this is alarmism. If so, then alarmism isn't necessarily a bad thing.

Now that we've covered the evidence for global warming and the arguments against it, the next articles should cover our options for minimizing it.

Is Global Warming Real?

2008-01-12T22:47:00.000-08:00

We'll get this one out of the way quick. Global warming is real indeed. Not only is the news replete with evidence of it (melting arctic ice, shrinking glaciers), the measured data show it.

First, let's look at the temperature data we have. One set of data comes from NASA [source] and the other is provided by Met Office Hadley Centre for Climate Change in the UK.[source]

The data don't agree exactly because (1) the NASA data shows the deviation from the 1951-1980 average and the Hadley Centre data shows the deviation from the 1961-1990 average and (2) the calculations were done independently so small differences are expected. We should bear in mind that the older data comes from spottier readings and is less reliable. The Hadley Centre data is shown both raw and smoothed. Now we'll look at the different factors that affect global average temperature, comparing them with the smoothed data.

Solar Variations

Sunspots receive plenty of mention in the popular literature and we have more data to look at.[source]

This is promising. Notice that the sunspots are lower in number, almost zero, in the period 1650-1700. There is anecdotal evidence that Europe and China were cooler then.[source] There also is anecdotal evidence of the same thing happening in the early 19th Century[source], although the Tambora volcano could have contributed.

Looking more closely, we see that the low number of sunspots around 1900 fits the lower temperature then, and temperature and sunspot-count both rise thereafter. There was more activity around 1960 that shows up as a temperature bump, and also around 1980-1990, that fits with a slight, stretched-out bump. So it seems clear that sunspot activity affects global temperature. Or, possibly, sunspots affect the irradiance and it's the combination that affects global average temperature. A suggestion under review is that solar activity diminishes cloud formation by influencing the intensity of cosmic rays, as shown in this figure:[source]

On the other hand, the temperature bumps are small compared with the upward temperature trend since 1900. Furthermore, if solar activity was the main driving force, then average temperature should drop after 1990 but instead it keeps going up. That means something else has become a stronger driving force since 1900.

Solar irradiance is the intensity of solar energy striking the earth and its atmosphere in watts/sq meter. It seems to follow sunspot activity, which seems reasonable. But it only matches the temperature changes about as well. [source]

Natural Greenhouse Gases and Atmospheric Dust

The gas emissions from natural vegetation are an important part of the atmosphere's loading, but the amount of land devoted to it hasn't increased. It's possible that emissions have risen as a result of global warming. Either way, natural vegetation can't be blamed for the temperature rise since 1900.

Volcanoes emit gases, too. We can do a quick calculation that shows volcanoes could never affect the atmosphere's CO2 concentration.

Volcanoes also emit particulates and aerosols, which reflect heat away from the earth and cause more clouds to form, causing further cooling. Data from the Mauna Loa Observatory shows the effects of volcanos since 1958.[source]

We can see that volcanoes reduced solar transmission in 1982 and 1991, but they don't affect the global-average temperature rise by much. The conclusion is that volcanoes don't affect global warming either way.

Heat Transfer from the Earth's Core to the Oceans

One way the Earth's core could heat the oceans is by undersea volcanoes. We can do a quick calculation that it would take around a half-million undersea volcanoes equal in size to the one at Mount Saint Helens in 1980 every year to account for the warming the oceans have seen since 1955. Even if the calculations are off by a factor of ten, it would take around five thousand such volcanoes every year just to account for ten per cent of the warming. And, there would have to have been no volcanoes before 1910. So undersea volcanoes aren't a major factor.

Another possibility is the extrusion of magma into the oceans at the edges of separating tectonic plates. But the USGS has found that the rate tectonic plates have been moving hasn't changed in the last thirty years from what it's always been.[source] So magma doesn't explain the recent warmup.

Artificial Atmospheric Dust

As is the case for natural particulates and aerosols, artificial particulates and aerosols have a cooling effect by reflecting sunlight and by causing clouds to form. The temperature graph shows a sharp drop around 1940 until almost 1950, then a slow rise until 1980 or so, and after that a sharp rise. That fits with our expectations: industrial production increased radically during the war. Virtually no attention was paid to the resulting pollution. The postwar period experienced some relaxation in both production and pollution. About 1970, serious efforts were started to control particulate emissions from fossil-burning power plants, and the temperature graph clearly shows that global warming accelerated.

Artificial Greenhouse Gases

There are a lot of these that can be important: carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide are the most dominant. We need to consider their emission rates in order to compare their relative importance in the changing of the global average temperature.

The US Department of Energy has estimated their yearly emission rates and ranks them this way (2005 data [source]). Global data comes from IPCC's report for 2001[source]. All the rates are in million metric tons per year. These numbers are calculated, but show more precision than they should. Nonetheless, they show relative magnitudes.

	US	US (CO2 Equiv)	World	World (CO2 Equiv)
Carbon dioxide	6009	6009	29223	29223
Methane	26.6	612	323	7429
Nitrous oxide	1.2	367	7	2072

Clearly, CO2 is the most important artificial greenhouse gas in respect to changing temperature. The present CO2 content of the atmosphere is 3,036,000 MMT, so the emissions amount to almost 1% of what's presently in the atmosphere. The CO2 concentration is rising roughly 0.5% per year, so about half is staying in the atmosphere and the other half is going somewhere else, mostly into the ocean. We have some measured CO2 concentration data taken from ice cores.[source]

This is our smoking gun. The CO2 concentration has risen from less than 300 parts per million all the way up to 383 ppm in 2007. Of all the factors affecting global average temperature, it's the only one that's been increasing since 1980, so it's the only one that can explain the temperature rise during that time.

What is especially troubling is that, before 1850, CO2 concentration has not exceeded 290 ppm in over 400,000 years.[source]

That's not to say that we can ignore the other greenhouse gases, but controlling CO2 emissions is essential to limiting global warming.

The Culprit

The evidence shows that solar activity and aerosols can influence global temperature. Before 1900, when greenhouse-gas concentrations were below 300 ppm, solar activity seems to have been the main driving force. Since then, greenhouse gases have become the main driving force.

The Skeptics: There are individuals who argue against these conclusions. Their claims been refuted many times but still get a lot of attention from media outlets. Read about their arguments.