Cheap, emission-free way to boil water
For the majority of human history, people used their own muscles to provide almost all of the work required for survival and development. A thin slice of humanity achieved a moderate amount of personal comfort and leisure because they were able, often through an accident of birth, to control a portion of the daily work output of hundreds to thousands of their fellow humans. The only sources of work—in the engineering sense—that were not either human or animal muscle came from capturing falling water or intermittently by capturing the breezes through devices like cloth sails or wind mills.
Humans understood fire. They used it to keep warm, to process their food, to produce some implements from metal, and as a weapon of destruction. It was not, however, until inventive people with names like Savery, Newcomen, and Watt started to work out ways of using the useful vapor (steam) produced when fire boiled water that humans learned how to become masters of the earth’s vast store of combustible materials.
The seemingly simple act of boiling water provided humans the means necessary to gradually invent and manufacture their way out of a life of drudgery. Steam power was the key; H2O had always been important for people, but when they learned to pump it as a liquid, heat it into a pressurized gas, and condense it back down into a liquid, H2O became the vital working fluid that could turn heat into work and force machines to become the drudges in service of human beings.
It is not an exaggeration to note that without the act of boiling water to create and use steam, getting rid of serfdom and slavery would have been virtually impossible. One of the inspirational books in my personal library, titled “Power from Steam: A History of the Stationary Steam Engine,” has a chapter titled “The Noblest Machine” that leads with a quote from an influential author from the 1880s:
England is the birth-place of the steam engine. Its invention has been a grand triumph over the material which nature has placed at our disposal. There is no limit to the sphere of its usefulness, nor can anyone measure the benefits which directly and indirectly accrue to society from its employment.
Though internal combustion engines have replaced steam engines in almost every machine that most people ever see, steam is still the working fluid for a very important class of machines. Approximately 70–80 percent of the world’s electrical power comes from machinery that uses heat from either combustion or fission to boil water. The resulting steam spins turbines that rotate conductors through magnetic fields and create the current that is the lifeblood of modern society.
Every year, humans dig up, transport, and burn more than 7,800,000,000 tons of coal, most of which is consumed in the deceptively simple activity of boiling water to create steam. Modern societies also consume millions of tons of natural gas, oil, and wood every year producing steam. Boiling water is still a foundational process that enables people in developed countries to live, study, work, and play with a leisure enabled by harnessing a variety of heat sources to be their mechanical slaves.
Unfortunately, most people do not understand just how large a debt they owe to those thousands of engineers and material scientists who figured out how to safely boil water, capture the resulting vapors at enormously high pressures, and efficiently use that high-energy fluid to spin turbines.
Not very many people in modern societies have actually seen steam machinery in action, have measured its temperature and pressure, or have seen how destructive it can be if not handled with the utmost care. Because of the efforts of organizations like the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, which has worked hard for about 100 years to develop and document the technical codes that prevent boiler explosions, most people take steam power for granted.
In fact, one of the frequently used phrases used in disrespect of nuclear energy is that it is “essentially a very complicated way to boil water”. One of the fiercest and most effective nuclear energy opponent, Ralph Nader, used to use a similar phrase with depressing regularity. My interpretation of the way that people use the phrase is that they expect their audience to think, “Heck, anyone can boil water, you just turn on the stove and it happens. Why do you need to make it complicated?”
I would bet that most of the people who nod their heads at that phrase have never had to cut and carry enough wood to boil a large pot of water. I am sure that few have ever spent much time watching a coal conveyor steadily feed a large boiler that is producing some of the electricity that feeds the sockets and stoves in their homes. Boiling water is not only important, but it is not as simple as it may seem. It generally requires the consumption of a vast quantity of increasingly expensive materials and it requires a tacit agreement on the part of everyone in the area of the fire to accept their share of the waste products that are spread far and wide from every fire.
The exception to that general rule is the water that gets boiled by the heat released from atomic fission. Once the work of the talented engineers and builders is complete, operating a fission heated boiler is a rather simple task. The task is not made simple by complex automation or hard working pumps and conveyors, it is enabled by physics. Once a moderate amount of fuel is loaded into a nuclear reactor, it will reliably and simply produce heat for somewhere between 18 months and 33 years (for a Virginia class submarine) with relatively little additional effort.
That fuel is not even terribly expensive; the average fuel cost for a nuclear plant operating in the United States is just 0.75 cents for every kilowatt-hour generated. Even “cheap” coal costs about three times that amount, and natural gas can cost about 3-50 times as much per unit of electricity produced depending on when and where that gas needs to be delivered. The average total production costs (fuel plus operations and maintenance) for a U.S. nuclear power plant in 2012 was just 2.4 cents per kilowatt hour.
The fact is that nuclear energy is a cheap, clean, simple, elegant way to perform the vital act of boiling water.
ANS Nuclear Cafe published the above commentary on February 1, 2011 with the title Nuclear energy is a disruptively cheap and simple way to boil water. I updated the cost figures in the penultimate paragraph with the latest available numbers and made a few other small revisions.
I’m reintroducing it to lay the groundwork for a follow-on piece about using nuclear heat as a replacement for combustion heat in applications that do not necessarily involve boiling water, as important as that activity has been for industrial development.
Well, demeaning atomic energy’s power and significance down to merely being a potboiler works on a low-science quotient public constantly wooed that “clean & simple to understand” sun and wind skip this “complicated” technological step, and gas gets away with the stigma with a shrug because it’s a ho-hum familiar thing on the kitchen stove. As always, this is an public education hurtle issue easily and readily resolvable by aggressive educational Ads (doesn’t paint a flattering image to the public when it looks like “atomic scientists” can’t even figure this out). I can’t blame Greens for shooting such cheap arrows in nuclear’s hide like this when it’s chronically cowering in a foxhole’s basement. Again, here in $$ NYC, Bide-A-Wee, Puppy Rescue, Chinese restaurants and taxi companies routinely air Ads on the main channels. Is someone telling me that the combined resources and memberships of ANS and NEI and atomic workers unions can’t cough up enough dough to match THEM for Ad fees??
James Greenidge
Queens NY
@James Greenidge
Many nuclear professionals are motivated to keep the mystery and the air of complexity. After all, if they let people know how simple it can be to operate a nuclear plant, why would anyone keep paying those generous salaries and maintain such large staffs?
My answer, of course, is that those important people are paid to be there when the going gets a little more complicated, not for the routine parts of the job. They also are key to a very productive system that produces plenty of value to cover the salary costs.
I enjoy almost all of your articles but for some reason this one really struck me and made me want to comment, especially the paragraphs surrounding the ‘complicated way to boil water’ phrase.
Ask someone to boil water and they will probably run for the stove or kettle. Then take that away from them and say “YOU boil water. No outside help from the people who invented modern appliances or got you the gas or generated the electricity”. Then they’ll probably start to build a wood fire. As they’re about to strike a match take that away and remind them “YOU boil the water. No help from the people who make matches”. As they start to collect enough wood to boil water and rub 2 sticks together they may start to appreciate that this simple process is much harder than they may have thought. As someone who’s made and cooked over many fires (using matches, I’m not that determined) I like to think I can appreciate the difficulty and inefficiency of the whole thing. This whole thought process reminds me of a very interesting talk about a DIY toaster: http://www.ted.com/talks/thomas_thwaites_how_i_built_a_toaster_from_scratch
Once upon a time this work was done by slaves. Now we have the benefits of modern life to do it for us and we can scale it up to industrial proportions to produce work. Nuclear power is the next evolutionary step of “boiling water” and to belittle nuclear power as a “complicated way to boil water” is ignorant.
In a similar vein, economist Milton Friedman made a presentation titled “I, pencil”. In it he demonstrated that no one person was able to produce all the elements and combine them into even a lowly pencil. I thought it was an elegant, simple demonstration of division of labor and use of resources.
Jay Leno’s 1832 steam engine: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zoBWAE0win0
Thanks for the link. Very interesting and enjoyable.
Well…….
A nice simple bit of advocacy. A bit “see spot run”, but pleasantly so.
Sadly…..
It does not address the hurdle you must leap, and that is the public’s fear of radiation. How you boil water for energy production is the farthest thing from an uninformed John Q’s mind when pondering the prospect of an accident at a nuclear plant. It takes a heap of PR to erase the stigma of the events at TMI, Chernobyl, and Fukushima. It may well be a PR impossibility. As an advocate, or pro nuke reader, I can see how one could read your piece while nodding in agreement. But as a reader who has already developed a fear of radiation, (as I believe most of the public body consists of), your essay would just receive a …… “yeah but”.
@POA
Did you fail to read the previous posts addressing the irrational fear of radiation that has been sold to the public by people who want to sell them more lucrative products?
Here are a couple that have appeared just this month. There are plenty more.
https://atomicinsights.com/radiation-safe-within-limits-robert-hargraves/
https://atomicinsights.com/resolving-issue-science-biological-effects-low-level-radiation/
https://atomicinsights.com/improvements-spent-fuel-pool-modeling/
https://atomicinsights.com/radiation-health-effects-medical-professionals/
https://atomicinsights.com/godzilla-movie-parallel-fukushima/
https://atomicinsights.com/engaging-anonymous-antinuclear-commenters/
https://atomicinsights.com/rational-reason-fear-radiation-dr-wade-allison/
“Did you fail to read the previous posts addressing the irrational fear of radiation that has been sold to the public by people who want to sell them more lucrative products?”
You know better, Rod. Of course I saw them. It ain’t me you gotta reach and convince. I’m just one guy who stumbled across your blog.
I have an idea in my head, that is probably not feasable. But…..
You really wanna get the message out? Then figure out a way to band together a huge contingent of Fukushima evacuees, and organize a class action suit waged on their behalf, in the Japanese courts; suing to return to their property, on the premise that the Japanese government and the media have grossly exagerated the risks and dangers of the radiation released from the incident at Tuwaitha. Such a suit would be sensational, and could be turned into a global media extravaganza. And just think, should the suit prevail on its merits, you would have a community of people living back on contemned land, demonstrating to the world the veracity of the pro nuke argument.
@POA
That’s not a bad idea. I’m still working on what might be the starting point for getting something like that started by seeking to make contact with the Senior Brigade in Ozuma Town and arranging support for their efforts. Thanks to some well connected readers, I’ve been in contact with someone who is in Japan now and laying some of the groundwork.
Of course, I am handicapped here because I don’t speak Japanese and have no legal training, but that is where communications tools and the leadership/management training I began at age 17 might come in handy. There is no need to know how to do everything, just a need to figure out ways to build a team with the appropriate skill sets and resources.
@Rod Adams
Just following through on your argument here. It seems you may be suggesting a new line of attack for critics: “nuclear is a very complicated way to abolish slavery and reduce human drudgery?”
I don’t really find these kinds of arguments terribly compelling or informative. Consumption is a real practical concern in modern lives (either from an environmental, human rights, economic, labor, national security, or any other perspective). If you’re only focused on production and lowering costs (as I am sure many plantation owners were in the era of slavery) you’re not engaging with larger questions about market dynamics, productivity of labor and goods, equalization of opportunity, freedom, market dynamics, etc.
Slavery is simply a mode of production (and not consumption). Another form of human drudgery is the uncertainty and precariousness of modern work as it relates to indefinite needs (particularly if work takes away from other basic human needs and requirements for comfort, family, education, community, moral values, etc.). Our current credit culture has much to do with this. In other words … work can be exploitative rather than enabling (particularly in the context of uncompensated labor, very low wages, and rising and indefinite consumer wants and social values).
Sure, production may lower the cost of goods, but this just means people want more of it (right)? A Jevon’s Parodox (since he is so popular here) of modern consumption so to speak. This doesn’t free humans from drudgery, it simply binds us tighter to the world of material consumption. We’re no longer slaves to a master, but slaves to our own material wants and conditions (we move to the suburbs, for example, and are forever bound to the automobile, and a long list of services, infrastructure needs, and institutional requirements that go along with it). We can no longer live without our conveniences and modern tastes (to where we see ourselves as destitute without two and a half cars, 4,000 sq food homes, membership at the country club, AC running full blast, and other social relations and institutional supports such as foreign wars, national security interests, and all the rest). No, this isn’t an anti-modern view, it’s just a view attentive to a full range of dependencies and social conditions (beyond those that merely are tied to low production cost as a driver of human freedom and liberation).
I find the fantasy of indefinite consumption of nuclear salespeople to be really problematical. It’s fine from the perspective of the developer (and owner of the resource) but not so fine from the perspective of the consumer (and modern approaches to the marketplace focused on controllability, choice, independence, and adaptation). The old model is out of synch with the new … and hides a number of ideological conceits and economic and social constructs that run counter to the common interest (and broader objective goals of longevity, low risk, freedom, value, independence, equality of opportunity, fairness, etc.).
If nuclear salespeople have no response to Jevon’s paradox of consumption, I’m not sure how complete their vision can be. They cover the production side of the relation really well, but what else beyond that (particularly with respect to modern approaches to flexibility, control, and availability of consumer choice and options). I’m sure slavery was sold on some of the same basis (it’s competitive advantage and very low cost). But the legacy of costs of slavery are indeed very high. Fully flexible nuclear is not cheap, but is more expensive than alternatives. Is nuclear a faustian bargain? The modern consumer cares about price, no doubt, but they also care about a great deal more (especially in the age of consumer choices, social media and the internet, voting for social choices and values with dollars, etc.).
From the link above:
Is Downs more “free” than the consumer tied to a regulated utility, making investment choices on behalf of the shareholder, inextricably tied to global fuel security and market pricing risks, etc.? Worth a close look. If he is not so now, with declining costs and increasing availability of such alternatives, he may soon be so. And if his own self-conception is any measure, he certainly seems free and happy (“laughing in near disbelief”). Low prices don’t equate with increased freedom and liberation. The history of slavery tells us as much (low prices for sugar were very competitive in the marketplace). Human choices do, and we should have more of them. The current marketplace seems to be favoring this. Luckily, so do our policy makers and others interested in a better world for consumers (one less tied to relationships of obligation, debt peonage, and servitude than in the past).
@EL
For a guy who claims to be a liberal, you sure are disrespectful of your fellow humans and the choices that they make.
I’ve lived in the suburbs all my life. I’ve worked in cities and briefly considered apartment dwelling, but I could not stomach all of the tradeoffs I would have to make. There is something quite liberating about an automobile, four walls of my very own, a buffer area of greenery between me and the nearest neighbor, and being surrounded by other family minded people.
Yes, I consume the output of many other people who also find satisfaction from the American way of living. Take your guilt trip elsewhere.
Rod – You’re thinking of the antiquated definition of “liberal.” By modern standards, EL is the consummate example of a Liberal — particularly the type that styles itself as “Green.”
I think that you’ll find that the manifesto that he has written above would be embraced by most, if not all, Green Liberals. It certainly is crafted to push the right buttons. Notice the accusations of greed and selfishness leveled against opponents that pervade the screed. There are even thinly veiled insinuations that people whom he does not agree with are racists. That’s a hallmark of the modern Liberal.
As someone who calls himself a liberal that believes in the role of regulation, I call them authoritarians. Its more than that though. “Green” liberals have a anachronistic and wholly negative view of mankind and human progress in general and also human expansion it seems. They are not even competent environmentalists; choosing lifestyle philosophies over reasonable practice.
Politically entrenched populists pushing conspiracy, propaganda and individual mistrust from the left.
They scare me. More so now that the far religious right and entrenched sexism, racism, and bigotry is not so politically viable any longer. They were incredibly late to the party and do not critically self evaluate. They are inflexible. Style over substance. Always the populist angle from a washed out and antiquated perspective: Civil rights power movements. Bad America. No GMO. No Nukes. No Guns. No war. All Renewables. Rabid anti-corporatism. Bits and pieces of classic socialism.
Worrying about the things I used to worry about politically seems like hazy, breezy easy wonderful nostalgia now. None of it being all so much left or right any longer.
Well, that’s one term for them. Personally, I divide them into two categories: aristocrats (Prince Charles and Robert Kennedy, Jr., come to mind) and totalitarians.
The former is largely a result of laziness and stupidity — sub-mediocre people with more wealth and influence than brains. The latter is far more dangerous. They are the new Puritans.
Puritanism: The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.
— H. L. Mencken
I’d say that Rod is happy living in the suburbs, wouldn’t you? 😉 I doubt that he’s the only one.
Rod … the suburbs are a social construct, not an absolute taken for granted achievement (upon which societies and peoples can be ranked). A great deal of planning, institution building, and design has gone into them. Cities too. I don’t feel suburbs are terribly efficient or adaptive (aka “sustainable”). This doesn’t mean that I look down on people who live in them. Living at a distance from large commercial centers where you work (and from easy access to markets and commerce) may prove rather difficult to sustain in an era of rising fuel prices (and constraining budgets on public infrastructure). You speak of broken windows at times, well, the suburbs takes up it’s fair share (and then some). Don’t shoot the messenger for stating the obvious. I agree that the suburbs and automobile are a distinctively American tradition and dream (born of a specific historical era and social geography). And like all good and viable traditions, they are living and evolving social constructs and subject to change, adaptation and transformation (like all meaningful things in the world).
I’m not sure why you hear “guilt” in any of my comments. From my vantage point, I hear a great deal of “nostalgia” and longing for a golden era in your’s (a golden era of energy abundance, atomic era optimism, American exceptionalism, rising post-war opportunities for the middle class, etc., etc.). Perhaps even a pretty unexceptional grid (dumb but full of new consumers coming on line, demand continuing to rise, and no shortage of folks excited to build new and large power plants in American locations were energy is scarce and folks are getting laundry machines and incandescent lighting for the first time).
The marketplace has changed (and so has American values and culture). I find a great deal of hope, excitement, and optimism in this. Not guilt and resentment over bygone eras, changing traditions, and the illusion of perpetual demand growth (which in fully developed nations appears to have reached a zenith). We have our laundry machines already, and our devices are getting smaller and more energy efficient. We’re doing fine capturing more waste from industrial and consumer processes and converting it back to work (and can be doing much better). I’m entirely happy with this (I’m not sure what is terribly positive or progressive in the alternative). Next you’ll be calling me a “square” …
@EL
Don’t forget that about 75% of the electricity on our grid still comes from burning coal and natural gas.
You might have your full quota of devices, but there are still large swaths of the US and far more in the rest of the world that are full of people who would like a better, more energetic life.
I do pine a bit for the era in which I grew up; I am also angry with the people who spent so much time and money trying to tell us all that we were using too much, we have plenty already and we do not need to build any more of those new fangled nuclear power plants. The era of “limits to growth” has been exceedingly profitable for some of the least ethical people on the planet. We have plenty of actinide energy available to stretch hydrocarbons to last for many centuries into the future.
Of course, burning them more slowly as we shift more and more of our energy supply to actinide energy is not in the current, short-term interests of the people who, often by accident of geography, birth or brute force, control hydrocarbon resources.
Isn’t this a good reason to oppose suburbia (and the car dependency it entails):
Oil, Not China, Is The Real Destroyer Of America’s Trade Balance
@George Carty
Private automobiles are not the problem, neither is suburbia — though there is plenty of room for improvement in both.
We have the tools to change the dollar value of our trade balance. Abundant nuclear energy will drive down the price of all other energy sources by increasing the overall supply. We can also use nuclear energy to upgrade our abundant domestic hydrocarbon resources (coal, oil shale, natural gas) to be more valuable distillate fuels like diesel or jet fuel.
There are many reasons we have not already done this, but the primary one is that it is against the interests of a wealthy and powerful group of people who have always liked importing oil. It is the basis of our petrodollar economy, it enables money center banks to be involved in a large circulation of dollars from the US consumer to nations like Saudi Arabia, to construction companies, and the military industrial complex in the form of arms sales to oil producers. The MIC also benefits by having an important job of protecting both the petroleum flow and the dollar flow.
@JohnGalt
Why do people jump to accusations of “conspiracy” theories when I point out business planning and monetary interests? Besides, if you are interested in the history of petrodollars and the conscious decision by American politicians to allow oil prices to skyrocket in 1973, I recommend reading William Endahl’s “A Century of War.”
Nuclear energy is not completely controlled by the same people that profit from hydrocarbons. Westinghouse is owned by Toshiba, a company that is split between nuclear energy and memory chips. Electric power plant operators are not part of the MIC. Most of the money in nuclear energy is widely distributed to large numbers of well paid professionals; there is not a huge amount of profit for the companies. The total market capitalization of the largest nuclear power plant operator in the US is about the same as the annual after tax profit figures of ExxonMobil.
There was a time when enrichment costs were extremely high, but gas centrifuge technology reduced the energy requirements for each unit of enrichment by about 90-95%. Besides, I did not just list the lifetime of submarines, I included a range of 18 months to 33 years just to show that design choices are available.
The biggest reason that Navy plants are more expensive per unit power than commercial plants is because they were built by the same organization that sometimes pays $600 for a hammer, $2000 for a toilet seat, and $10,000 for a coffee maker.
Wall Street is one of the biggest beneficiaries of America’s trade deficit (as all those dollars accumulated by the trade-surplus countries have to be invested somewhere).
And wouldn’t the United States still have a big military presence in the Middle East even if it wasn’t dependent on Middle East oil, in order to protect Israel?
@George Carty
“Wall Street” is very definitely part of the Establishment that loves the petrodollar economy that creates the need for monetary circulation. Investment banks like Chase and Citi have maintained strong ties to the petroleum industry for many years. (David Rockefeller, John D.’s grandson, was CEO of Chase for many years, including paradigm-changing 1970s.)
I could be wrong, but my reading of history tells me that if there was no oil in the Middle East, the Jewish homeland would have been established in Eastern Europe. Israel, despite the ancient historical reasons, was really chosen to be a democratic beachhead.
@JohnGalt
Perhaps its time for me to compose a summary piece laying out what I see as a pattern of many different actions done in full view of the public coordinated more by a common world view and recognition of common interests than by any secret cabal weaving a complicated, secret plot.
One of the fundamental insights that made John D. Rockefeller the world’s richest and arguably most powerful men was that the energy business was most profitable when the supply of energy to ultimate customers could be controlled to a level that was slightly lower than demand. That situation kept prices firm and profitable while preventing the disastrous — for suppliers — situation of having too much supply and not enough demand from customers.
Though there are variations depending on the specific fuel, energy sources are notoriously difficult and costly to store. In some cases, it is downright dangerous to have more fuel on hand than you actually need and can store in a carefully designed and often expensively monitored container. That characteristic makes the supply-demand-pricing relationship very tenuous and subject to sharp variations. If people cannot get as much fuel or electricity as they need, they are willing to pay substantially more generous prices to a supplier that can deliver. If people have all that they need and their moderate storage bins or tanks are full, they temporarily stop buying, no matter how low the prices get.
Standard Oil was a cartel that eventually controlled a major portion of the world’s oil market. The Nobels and the Rothschilds controlled one of the few challengers to Standard’s domination from their base in Baku, which at the time was controlled by Russia. (I think that is one of many roots of traditional American eastern Establishment animosity toward Russia.)
As you point out, the people who controlled oil eventually did what they could to purchase similarly controlling interests in competitive fuel sources like coal and nuclear. Many of those purchases took place in the late 1960s and throughout the 1970s as the oil cartels, with cooperation from beneficiaries in multinational oil companies, banks, media and politics, established a whole new level of pricing. At the beginning of the 1970s, oil was selling for $2 per barrel and customers often complained about high gas prices and market manipulation. By 1980, oil was selling for $40 per barrel, customers complained about high gas prices and market manipulation, but Congress could not be convinced to pass the “windfall profits tax.” Some will point to the fact that everything increased in price during the inflationary years of the 1970s, but that was because of the increase in energy prices. Energy prices did not go up because of inflation; their increase was the primary cause of inflation.
Anyway, the wild card in this effort to ratchet oil (energy) prices to a level 20 times higher in 1980 than in 1970 was nuclear energy. As Engdahl puts it, it was important for all other energy suppliers to “take the bloom off of the nuclear rose.” There were lots of ways to do that, especially since many players in the oil industry were invited into the nuclear industry from the very beginning.
The always independently minded French refused to listen to the propaganda. Many others didn’t listen very closely at first, but eventually the campaign worked and nuclear fission growth slowed, then stopped and now seems to have hit a “local peak.”
We are at a new stage in the Great Game, however. Unlike the engineers and scientists involved in the early days of nuclear energy, today’s nuclear professionals have no reason to carry any guilt. We did not invent “The Bomb” and we do not spoil the environment. We do not put our waste products into uncontrolled burial pits. The other aspect that is important is that the oil industry has mostly abandoned its insider position and no longer has much control at a decision making level.
Fission fuel is so superior to combustion fuel that it has the potential for reversing a lot of paradigms and to disrupt the entire energy industry Establishment. It will not be easy, but we have an excellent tool with a pretty good starting point despite all previous efforts to the contrary.
After all, the antinuclear propagandists, despite all of their power and wealth, did not control everything and could not control the real wild card in the deck – the ability of free-thinking people to do math, question assumptions, and reject conventional wisdom.
@Rod
I could be wrong, but my reading of history tells me that if there was no oil in the Middle East, the Jewish homeland would have been established in Eastern Europe. Israel, despite the ancient historical reasons, was really chosen to be a democratic beachhead.
That doesn’t seem plausible to me — it’s not as if Israel itself has oil under it. In fact, the creation of a Western-backed settler nation in the Middle East intensified Arab hatred of the West to the point that the Egyptian and Syrian governments (at least) were willing to jump into bed with the godless Soviets, in spite of the devout religiosity of their populations!
I don’t see how that was a good move in terms of protecting the West’s supply of oil.
@George Carty
It was an excellent move in terms of protecting control of oil by multinational enterprises based in the UK and the US and in terms of vastly enhancing the profitability of extracting that oil in what has been an unstable political climate that frequently threatens the supply and keeps prices high in anticipation of conflict.
Modern armed conflict is a highly profitable demand driver for hydrocarbons.
@JohnGalt
Throughout the 1980s, nuclear generation continued to grow, displacing more and more petroleum each year. In the US, oil represented 17% of the electricity fuel market as late as 1978. France, South Korea, Sweden, France, Japan, Switzerland all replaced a large amount of oil consumption with nuclear fission in their electricity markets.
Look at the increasing number of TW-hrs produced each year as the 1980s progressed.
http://www.world-nuclear-news.org/NN_Nuclear_power_down_in_2012_2006131.html
The US Navy also reduced its oil consumption considerably by shifting aircraft carrier propulsion from distillate fuel oil to nuclear fission.
There is little evidence to support your assertion that France needed any help from the US to develop its nuclear capabilities. After all, France was the home of the Curies, the Joliots, and the Radium Institute. If my history is correct, there were fewer than a dozen French scientists who had anything at all to do with the Manhattan Project. There was never a bilateral agreement with France as their was with Great Britain.
The Nixon administration?! By the time Nixon took office, the French had been operating their own UNGG reactors for over a dozen years. This design is far more amenable for producing weapons material than any technology that the French later purchased from Westinghouse.
You clearly don’t know what you’re talking about.
@JohnGalt
Even bigger growth had been in the nuclear “pipeline” but got cancelled.
Exactly my point. The proper balance between supply and demand in the energy industry is even more critical for profitability than in most other commodity businesses. Even with all of those cancellations – many of which took place years before TMI took place – the growth of nuclear electricity production around the world between 1970 and 2000 added the equivalent of another Saudi Arabia plus another Kuwait to the world energy supply.
Imagine what the effect would have been on oil prices had more of those cancelled projects been completed. Now can you begin to understand why a man like Robert Anderson, CEO of Atlantic Richfield Company MIGHT feel motivated to donate $200 K to David Brower, a man with already established “environmental” creds, to start a new, aggressively antinuclear group like Friends of the Earth? Once the group was established it became difficult to “follow the money,” but I am pretty sure that there were additional funds from organizations like the Ford Foundation, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, the Pew Charitable Trusts, the Rockefeller Fund, and numerous other foundations whose money came directly from oil and gas-related enterprises.
It has always puzzled me to figure out why antinuclear power activism started and grew in the late 1960s, a quarter century AFTER the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. For the first 25 years, people were proud of living in the Atomic Age and excited about the growing prosperity it was bringing.
Since nuclear electricity output did not begin showing up on annual statistics until 1970, the technology’s only effect on other energy sources was to increase demand due to the materials and construction efforts begun in the early to mid 1960s. It was only after nuclear began producing that the movement against the technology gained strength and supporters. I believe that is when the competitors began recognizing the existential threat to their “perception of scarcity” related profits.
@EL
If you’re only focused on production and lowering costs (as I am sure many plantation owners were in the era of slavery) you’re not engaging with larger questions about market dynamics, productivity of labor and goods, equalization of opportunity, freedom, market dynamics, etc.
I’m not just focused on production and lowering costs; I’m focused on production and doing more with less material. Nuclear fission enables low cost production by something far more moral that slavery or low wage work. It enables low cost because nature (or God, if you prefer) packed so darned much energy into such a small amount of material that is otherwise not widely used by either humans or by other creatures.
In my way of looking at the world, fission is just as natural and just as free as collecting wind or solar energy. The advantage is that it takes a lot less effort, makes a lot less mess, and enables a lot more leisure with just as much valuable product – useful heat that can be converted into work.
@EL
Fully flexible nuclear is not cheap, but is more expensive than alternatives.
I strongly disagree with that statement. Nuclear fission is just another heat source; it can use the same conversion devices as other heat sources. There is no fundamental reason why a nuclear heated steam plant or gas turbine should be more expensive than one heated by burning hydrocarbons. In fact, since fueling and waste disposal are far less material intensive, well designed nuclear machines built in a series production mode could be far less expensive than any other alternative.
Please visit http://atomicengines.com for just one potential way of achieving this result.
Downs is very heavily subsidized, to the tune of $34,488 in your example (plus the hidden subsidies of net metering, where Downs’ grid costs are pushed onto others). Those who payed those subsidies are enslaved twice.
@Engineer-Poet
All energy is subsidized.
You don’t think there are any more future cost savings to be realized in renewables, energy storage, distribution, efficiency, EVs, waste recycling, etc. (to say nothing of better meeting evolving consumer preferences for controllability, choice, independence, low risk, sustainability, etc.).
@EL
How will any of those future developments change the fact that the situation you described required one person to received $34,000 from his fellow taxpayers?
I’m tired of hearing “all energy is subsidized.” It is about as useful as saying that the Pacific Ocean was “contaminated” by Fukushima.
Quantify or be quiet.
A half-truth, at best… and a half truth is a whole lie.
Yep. I live in Austin. Our rates went up 20% this year to pay for Down’s subsidies and the ridiculous subscription to wind, solar and wood burning that the city has engage in.
@Jeff Walther
Gas prices rose quite a bit in your area (here).
You also haven’t had a rate increase in 18 years (here). City Council, PUC, and Austin Energy all agree these increases are long overdue, and are hoping to spur construction of new power plants. You’re population is growing, you don’t want to see new power plants and meet rising demand in your area?
And even with the increase, your rates are still lower than the ERCOT competitive average (here).
It doesn’t appear to me that any of this has much to do with Downs (minus your city’s wise policies in conservation, well regarded low-income customer assistance program, and more).
Buried in this incredible collection of blather is one sentence that, in my view, utterly defeats your (apparent) attempt to demonize society as we know it:
“We’re no longer slaves to a master, but slaves to our own material wants and conditions….”
This, in fact, counters your contention that slavery is simply a mode of production, and satisfies your desire for “human choices.” If I am a “slave” to my material wants, I also have the choice of how to fulfill those wants–or not to fulfill them at all. And having that choice is, in part, what makes me “free.” Personally, I’ll take the modern world, which affords me that choice (and which you seem to hold in such contempt), over living as my ancestors did, 300 or 400 years ago, where simply producing enough to stay alive was a dalily struggle.
But you also seem to forget (conveniently) that a significant fraction of the world’s population still lives without access to reliable, affordable electricity, clean water, and many of the most basic human needs. For those people, nuclear power can be a means to a better, freer life without having to ravage their environment by the combustion of fossil fuel. I suspect that most of those folks would regard your philosophy as effete.
@oldnuke
You’re correct, slavery is a social relation (and not simply a mode of production). We can be both a slave to a master, and exploited by very powerful ideas (the world is full of such cases).
Choice is a thorny issue. We are just now starting to emerge from a global crisis in which people’s wants (homeownership) were greater than their means. And this is not an anomaly in world history. I understand you are saying you are prudent with your own finances and personal choices, but it just doesn’t work this way on a larger scale. Given the opportunity to pollute for gain, crash the world economy to make very lucrative deals in the housing market, or even engage in exploitative practices like slavery to gain a competitive advantage, yes, human history is rife with examples of this sort. Personal choice (and various folk conceptions of the same) just isn’t what we are talking about here. We’re talking about common sense guidelines and basic rules of the road (a policy framework that ensures that new opportunities flourish and inequalities are minimized, and that best advances the causes of individual, national, and commercial interests). In energy policy, these involve a host of things from public interest guidelines, state and regional resource plans, investments in research and development, sustainability and environmental goals, public safety oversight, certification and licensing procedures, and much more.
We don’t make energy choices independent of such economic, engineering, consumer, environmental, safety, and public policy constraints (and I think there is a pretty good reason why we don’t). We unleashed the power of the unfettered market in the world of lending and creative insurance products that didn’t adequately account for risk, and we’ll be unwinding the consequences of this for decades to come. I really don’t fault the consumer of such unaccountable practices (do you)?
In the 50s, nuclear gave us marketing slogans such as “too cheap to meter” (propounding our sense of American idealism for material luxury and abundance), and most recently we had zero down subprime loans (predatory in nature, and built on the hubris of rising expectations and a real estate market that could do no wrong and only increase in value and benefit consumers). Yes, as far as marketing hype is concerned, humans appear prone to material extravagance and excess (typically held in check by physical constraints or rude evidence to the contrary). These aren’t the best slogans (I hold) for today’s marketplace and consumers better attuned to world history and resource constraints, environmental values, stagnant wages, rising infrastructure costs, shrinking public budgets, etc. We may be slaves to our human myths of abundance and extravagance, but we don’t necessarily have to be slaves to good common sense and intelligent planning. It certainly appears that we are not? All we have to do is learn the latter and make it a daily habit in our personal and collective lives. I believe that we can.
Trust me. I don’t forget this. It’s actually very important to me, and one of the reasons why I am such a fan of renewables, and distributed energy systems that are easy to manage, low risk, quick to build, and reliable for both small communities (micro grids) and large.
@EL
In the 50s, nuclear gave us marketing slogans such as “too cheap to meter”
I’m going to call you on this canard. Please furnish evidence of any marketing done by major players in the nuclear energy industry that used such slogans in repetitive advertising campaigns.
The phrase was mentioned by the Chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission and picked up by the opposition.
https://atomicinsights.com/too-cheap-meter-its-now-true/
Since the phrase was initially used in a 1954 speech and most organized opposition to nuclear energy did not appear on the national scene until the very late 1960s, the people who were carrying the antinuclear message at the time were the “coal boys” in the form of the National Coal Association and the National Coal Policy Council. (As documented in Professor Brian Balogh’s excellent history titled “Chain Reaction: Expert debate and public participation in American commercial nuclear power, 1945-1975.”)
@Rod Adams.
You don’t think a speech by the Chairman of AEC before the National Association of Science Writers counts as a sales pitch? Do you think he was surprised when the media picked up on the claim?
A quick look pulls up the following illustration:
http://a3.img.mobypicture.com/dfa012a49f52b3523f04ddc2c7046118_view.jpg
It’s true, most sales efforts were focused on minimizing risks and public safety concerns. Atoms for Peace being a major example: “a carefully orchestrated media campaign, called “Operation Candor”, to enlighten the American public on the risks and hopes of a nuclear future.” (wiki).
Nuke cars, nuke planes, nuke railroads, children’s toys, sea launch spaceships, and a great deal more.
Your branding of nuclear as “abundance” and “transformational” isn’t that exciting or new (and has a great deal to do with a cold war re-branding effort to make Americans “comfortable” with the technology, and reduce stockpiled nuclear weapons). 50 years later, we’re still burning lots of carbon, and waiting on reactors to pick up a greater share of the load.
@EL
You don’t think a speech by the Chairman of AEC before the National Association of Science Writers counts as a sales pitch? Do you think he was surprised when the media picked up on the claim?
No, I do not think that a single speech by anyone, including the President of the United States, qualifies as “marketing” for a commercial product. In my mind, that term implies planning, resources, strategy meetings, ad campaigns, Madison Avenue input, etc.
Heck, if marketing was a simple matter of having some appointed politician give a speech…
@EL
50 years later, we’re still burning lots of carbon, and waiting on reactors to pick up a greater share of the load.
That’s right. The hydrocarbon pushers were a heck of a lot more experienced at marketing than the nuclear scientists and engineers who came out of the Manhattan project. Some of those innovative thinkers had some great ideas, but were forced to either sign over their ideas to the hydrocarbon dominated Atomic Energy Commission or to bide their time for about 8 years while the government considered all atomic energy information to be a state secret that could not be shared or sold to anyone.
Did you know that the National Reactor Testing Station was operated for its first two decades by the Phillips Petroleum Company?
@Rod Adams
Uh … there’s a little matter of Strauss being appointed by Eisenhower and huge media (some would even say propaganda) effort behind Atoms for Peace program … wouldn’t you say? You think Strauss had absolutely nothing to do with this? He attended no meetings, and received no memos?
Wiki: “[Eisenhower’s] The speech was part of a carefully orchestrated media campaign, called “Operation Candor”, to enlighten the American public on the risks and hopes of a nuclear future. It was a propaganda component of the Cold War strategy of containment. Eisenhower’s speech opened a media campaign that would last for years and that aimed at “emotion management”, balancing fears of continuing nuclear armament with promises of peaceful use of uranium in future nuclear reactors.”
NEI: “Undeniably, the US nuclear industry owes its existence to Atoms for Peace policies, as do many of the world’s nuclear industrial players. By 1953, companies involved in supporting defence nuclear defence programmes were impatient to develop and sell civil technologies, from small-scale research reactors to nuclear power plants. Eisenhower’s speech laid the ground for successful amendment of the 1946 Atomic Energy Act (AEA) in 1954 to permit privatization and commercialization of fuel cycle technologies, cooperation with foreign partners, and international nuclear commerce. Ultimately, Atoms for Peace yielded billions of dollars in civil nuclear commerce for the US economy [5]. However, the motives behind Atoms for Peace extended beyond nonproliferation, arms control, and economic interests. Arguably, positioning the United States advantageously vis-à-vis the Soviet Union, both materially and politically, was the Eisenhower Administration’s priority Atoms for Peace objective … Yet in contrast to its PR-friendly title, the Atoms for Peace initiative had important military dimensions, providing political cover for the wholesale nuclearization of US defence policy. The Eisenhower Administration brought the world Atoms for Peace and the January 1961 Farewell Address warning of the dangers of the military-industrial complex; ironically, it also did the most of any Cold War administration to increase the size and role of the American nuclear arsenal.”
@EL
I’m sorry, I thought your initial comment said something about the nuclear industry, not government politicians creating a program for reasons that had little to do with making money by selling products to customers.
It was explicitly a blue-sky speculation… years before the first nuclear plant would start feeding the US grid. And up through the early 1970’s, he was looking more right than wrong. Nuclear plants of the day were built for less than coal-fired, and the fuel was dirt-cheap.
No you’re not. You are working to shut down the reactors we have, and the efforts of you and your compatriots over the last 40 years have prevented the very outcome you now claim is all-important.
EL – Frankly, no.
While you love to carelessly spout off the shibboleths like “too cheap to meter” that mark you clearly as one of the hard-core, ideological anti-nuclear crowd, you have failed again and again to address any of its meaning whatsoever — such as the fact that Strauss was referring to Project Sherwood (i.e., the potential of nuclear fusion), not anything that we recognize as the modern nuclear industry today.
Sadly, it’s not for a lack of words. Out of 865 recent comments on this blog, you are responsible for 59. That might not sound like much, but it does mean that you have posted a comment for every three comments that have been posted by Rod himself — the owner of this site who is trying to respond to all of the comments here. That’s quite impressive for someone who is not even willing to share his name, wouldn’t you say?
What’s more, some your recent comments have been noticeably long — almost blog articles in themselves. If I had been counting by the number of words, instead of the number of posts, I suspect that your “contributions” to the comments in this blog would be even more impressive.
What motivates someone to spend so much time and energy writing so much for the comments of one lone internet blog? It’s a rhetorical question, of course, but if you’re willing to take a crack at it, EL, please be my guest.
@Brian Mays
I can confirm your statement about Strauss referring to the potential of fusion, not fission.
In April 2010, when I first posted the blog that includes the full context of Strauss’s often quoted comment, I received an interesting email from Luke Strauss.
@Brain Mays
No … E-P appears to be correct on this one (at least according to the article summarized in Rod’s post from CNS). Project Sherwood was a secret program at the time (funded covertly, hence it’s code name, and prone to many obstacles and challenges). Strauss’ statement appears to be a general reference about a possible future given many new advances in science and technology (of which nuclear promised to be a part). The specific attribution for nuclear comes from Walter Marshall (according to BBC).
Will you ever stop with the ad hominem? Why not just comment on the main topics and substantive themes of the site or lead article. It’s really not that hard.
Most of my comments are obviously discussion points and responses (not one off comments). It’s my understanding discussion is an important feature of the site, and other sites like it (with similarly active comment pages). I count one primary post in this thread. Is that too much (in your estimation). I try to be informative and civil (and also back up my claims with substantive rebuttals when pressed … and relevant links). I’d appreciate it if you would attempt to do the same (and give up your usual habits of targeting and harassing others who don’t share your view). It’s not very interesting … and it really is quite annoying to have to respond to you (especially when you aren’t being terribly informative or thoughtful in your replies).
@EL
From your link to the BBC article:
I’ve never thought that the idealistic voices were much more than a distraction covering the voices and actions of hard-headed businessmen for whom hydrocarbons are a more profitable enterprise. The problem they have with nuclear energy is that the technology is too dependent on intelligent, high-integrity, observant, well-paid people and too independent of people whose core competency is their ability to control natural resources.
Oligarchs don’t like nuclear; there are few massive fortunes available for the taking.
There are a lot of good jobs and a lot of power to be made available to the people.
@EL
Trust me. I don’t forget this. It’s actually very important to me, and one of the reasons why I am such a fan of renewables, and distributed energy systems that are easy to manage, low risk, quick to build, and reliable for both small communities (micro grids) and large.
Why should we trust you when you apparently have no capability to do math or even to understand the definition of simple words like “reliable.”
Please help us understand how a micro grid that is dependent on “renewables and distributed energy systems,” can be reliable and produce power when needed and in the quantities desired unless the distributed energy systems have a nuclear heat source. The initial statement to which you were responding implies power far beyond the absurdly low goal of a little LED light and a fan. It needs water treatment systems, refrigeration, and indoor cooking systems that do not require women and children to hunch over a smoky fire. They don’t have to be big, a dorm/bar refrigerator might be enough to store perishable items, water pumping and filtering does not require a tremendous amount of power, and hot plates can be simple and cheap.
You don’t get to depend on the hand-waving “studies” by Mark Z. Jacobson and company in this discussion, since a “micro-grid” is, by definition spread over a small geographic area.
Even if you move past “micro” and believe in widespread transmission lines going every which way to allow unreliables to “firm” each other from long distances, can you help me understand how such systems can be “quick to build” in areas where there is little infrastructure like roads to enable the laying of transmission lines?
@Rod Adams.
You really haven’t been paying much attention, have you?
If you don’t think renewables have well defined advantages in a developing world context (and aren’t being expanded with vigor on such a basis), I’m not sure numerous additional links and articles that I have already provided and discussed on your site are going to change your mind. None of which reference Mark Z. Jacobson. It appears you enjoy your expansive vista from a vantage point with your head in the sand.
If you think nuclear is going to help bring basic lighting, water treatment, refrigeration and cooking to many regions of the developing world with unstable governments, financing, limited technical capacity, and infrastructure requirements … I’m not sure I can help you understand the issues here either.
There’s no shortage of interest and coverage of these topics (media, academic, finance, government, NGOs, private industry, local cooperatives, etc.). A good place to start, Rod … open your eyes!
@EL
Unlike you, I’ve operated virtually every available power source. I am well aware of the paper proclamations to which you refer in the realm of studies, ad-supported media, and NGO documents. I’m also keenly aware of observations by people like Bill Gates and the commenter here who uses the name “David” and describes his experiences in undeveloped parts of the world.
I’ve also been to a number of those places myself. They don’t have reliable power and they will never get it from unreliables, no matter how good the intentions may be of the idealistic people purveying the propaganda.
The world’s greatest engineers cannot make weather-dependent power sources operate on demand.
@EL
If you think nuclear is going to help bring basic lighting, water treatment, refrigeration and cooking to many regions of the developing world with unstable governments, financing, limited technical capacity, and infrastructure requirements … I’m not sure I can help you understand the issues here either.
It is too much for me to hope that you would begin to understand the depth of the vision being gradually described here.
The genesis of this blog — nearly 20 years ago — was an attempt to provide a disruptive understanding of what nuclear energy CAN be, not what it IS. One of the inspirations was a display in the Maryland Science Museum. It was a battery about the size of the tip of my pinky that was powered by 1/200th of an ounce of Pu-238. It was built to power pacemakers. After 13 years of continuous power output, it would still be producing 90% of its in titian full power current.
Another inspiration was the PM-3A, the reactor that was assembled by soldiers after a few months of technical training and used to power and heat an under-ice research station.
There is nothing fundamentally large or complex about nuclear energy. It is the only power source I know of that enables unrestricted off-grid power.
I’ve been “off-grid” for months at a time with no new supplies from anywhere – 11 different times. Those voyages were enabled by atomic fission.
Small, simple, safe nuclear generators are the power equivalent of cellular phones for the developing world. They will enable billions of people to bypass the central station power plant – massive power grid model.
They do not require accepting the extreme limitations of the weather dependent power sources or the hydrocarbon-supplier dependence inherent in using grids powered by Diesel engines.
@Rod Adams
You mean Nukey Poo and the many challenges building, operating, and disposing of this plant.
As I wrote previously on your site: “shipment by C130 Hercules aircraft, siting (at frost line), inability to build concrete containment vessel (use of gravel backfill instead), management issues surrounding radioactivity seepage and argon-41, distilling sea water and melted snow (gathered from miles) for steam generators, hydrogen fire in containment tanks and eight week shutdown (requiring diesel back-up), plans for second reactor cancelled (“unless there is some miraculous breakthrough with a plant that needs hardly anyone to maintain it”), shutdown earlier than anticipated after 11 years (unclear the reason), removal plan for PM-3A , and more.”
If this is your plan for viable expansion of nuclear to the developing world (with reliability as your central concern), I’d think we’d be wise to pass (with Nukey Poo as a cautionary tale).
@EL
Actually, I meant PM-2A (Camp Century, Greenland) vice PM-3A (McMurdo Station Antarctica). My error.
In any case, both projects are merely inspirations of what is possible. I obviously have no intention of repeating the exact technology or project errors uncovered in those early 1960s projects any more than I would be interested in duplicating a 1960s vintage automobile, refrigerator, or computer.
@Rod Adams
Lately, Greenland has been on a hydro power binge. They get 70% of their energy from renewables (and much of it supporting long standing political ideals of energy independence and home rule in the country).
http://www.abb-conversations.com/2012/12/building-an-unmanned-hydropower-plant-beneath-greenlands-glaciers/
Their latest effort diverts meltwater from underneath a glacier to an unmanned turbine station 200 m below permafrost, and powers the city of Ilulissat. “Ilulissat is now able to replace its diesel generators with clean hydropower for its electricity, heating of residential facilities and hot water supply, and still has plenty of capacity left over to allow for future growth.” Nuuk has a test hydrogen plant for energy storage of renewables, there are also wind turbines in the South and geothermal (helping free many communities from costly fuel imports). Greenland also has advanced power control systems (reliable, highly automated, important to harsh conditions and a region prone to powerful storms that can leave an area isolated for weeks).
Best part … many of these facilities were finished on time (and even ahead of schedule), and nobody had to wait for technologies to be developed, tested and marketed (with arcane rules for oversight, inspections, technology sharing, fuel availability, waste transport and handling, etc., often driving up the costs of a project, legacy or otherwise, beyond initial estimates).
@EL
PM-2A was funded, designed, fabricated, disassembled, packaged, transported to a place about 100 km from the nearest settlement, reassembled, and brought to full power operation in about 18 months.
That was what we could do with small nuclear in the era before the antinuclear movement gained strength and before the hydrocarbon hypers recognized the threat to their business models.
https://atomicinsights.com/nuclear-plant-designed-manufactured-constructed-tested-in-less-than-2-years/
Annual generation of 65 GWh (which ABB won’t tell you; you have to click through to the niras.com article to learn), or 7.4 megawatts average. That’s just over 1.6 kW per capita for Ilulissat. Meeting US electric demand would require about 60,000 such. I doubt there are 60 glaciers in the lower 48 capable of feeding water to such a turbine, let alone 60,000.
These things are great, where you have the resources to run them. Touting them as a panacea is insane.
@Engineer-Poet
We’re specifically referencing energy alternatives in developing regions of the world. This solution appears to be doing just fine for Greenland (given available resources, development goals, local demand, etc.).
You don’t think other regions (“without access to reliable, affordable electricity, clean water, and many of the most basic human needs” as oldnuke describes) could benefit from such solutions as well?
When your zealous nuclear advocacy runs amiss of viable and practical solutions to improve the lives people and provide basic common sense solutions to energy availability and sustainability (whether they are in developing regions or otherwise) I have to really ask the purpose of your advocacy here. Simply to attempt to win an argument?
Greenland is administered by Denmark, hardly a “developing” country.
Which has a population of all of 57,000. Greenland could emit 1000 tons CO2 per capita per year and make next to no difference to itself or the rest of the world.
Do you think other regions, without the glaciers, could use such solutions as well? If you do, you are insane. But I take that as a given.
You mean common-sense solutions like making certain that power is available at night and in the winter, when it’s most needed? HAHAHAHAHAHAhahahahaheeheeheeheehooooooo….. I know you don’t intend to be funny, yet you are.
Particularly ridiculous is the “Green” definition of “sustainability”. It includes clear-cuts of old-growth forests for furnace fuel as in Germany and Denmark , but does not include use of the 32,000 tons of uranium added to the world’s oceans every year by river flows.
Ask yourself that question, and please… deliberate long before returning here.
Comment forthcoming … stuck in queue!
@E-P
You still don’t seem to know what we are talking about. Greenland has a very precarious energy situation, with historically high imports and dependence on very expensive fossil fuels. It’s been able to meet many of it’s current and future energy needs and drop it’s dependency on imports primarily with hydro, and a well thought-out strategy involving efficiency, district heating, reliable power control technologies, and other low carbon sources of energy. If you think there is something bad about this, I’m not seeing it (other than your efforts to shift the topic to something we specifically aren’t talking about … i.e., waste biomass and sustainable forestry practices in disturbance ecosystems in Germany and elsewhere, among other topics).
Many of your comments seem to belie the fact that renewables are doing quite well and have scaled rather quickly in many areas. Non-hydro renewables are forecast to be 8% of global generation by 2018. The global share from nuclear appears to be dropping (to 12% in 2035). Including hydro, renewable generation “is expected to surpass that from natural gas and double that from nuclear power by 2016,” with new markets for non-hydro renewables scaling rapidly in non-OECD regions (here, here, etc.).
You appear to wish to end these efforts. Given your crusade on the issue (often involving misleading and inaccurate claims), it is entirely fair and reasonable for me (and others) to rebut your efforts, and argue in favor of energy choices that are successful in the marketplace and meet a diverse range of goals, benefits, and needs (especially so with future cost reductions and long planned grid expansion and enhancements).
You have a lot to learn about Greenland.
Which has nothing whatsoever to do with the claims you’re making. As I wrote but you failed to understand: Do you think other regions, without the glaciers, could use such solutions as well? If you do, you are insane. But I take that as a given.
You are almost comically obtuse. What works in Ilulissat will work almost nowhere else in the world. Why, then, trot it out as an example?
If Greenland is simply too harsh for permanent human settlements, maybe it should be left to the Inuit. It wouldn’t be the first time.
But they are not scaling quickly in the so-called “leaders”. Denmark’s emissions have fallen less than 20% between 2004 and 2012. Coal provides nearly half of Denmark’s electricity, a greater fraction than the USA. Denmark is home to Vestas, which has made only wind generators for 25 years. Yet despite this home-court advantage in both technology and policy, Denmark’s energy is only 25% renewable. Germany is far worse.
Contrast with others who went nuclear instead. Sweden went from 0 to 7 MWh/capita/year in 11 years; France, 0.7 to about 5.4; Belgium, 0 to about 5.4. After 11 years, Germany’s renewable electricity was barely at 1 MWh/capita/year.
Mostly because of the rapid expansion of coal in developing countries and the efforts of people like you, preventing nuclear from being built in the OECD and shutting down perfectly operable plants. China is commissioning several new GW-scale plants per year. Russia and S. Korea are selling to a world-wide customer base.
Including hydro? It’s usually excluded in renewable portfolio standards. So you include it when it pleases you?
Hydro is great stuff for peaking. Nuclear base load and hydro peaking are a match made in heaven; that combination is how Sweden gets its 23 gCO2/kWh. It’s the unreliable wind and solar stuff that’s a headache, and demands FF backup where hydro is not available in sufficient supply.
I wish policymakers to recognize that such efforts have external costs and diminishing returns. Wind farms and PV panels are poor things to supply the demands of a 24/7 electric grid, which needs its generation and load balanced on a scale of milliseconds. If you had to rely on them, the grid would black out. But reliable electricity is essential for the manufacture of wind turbines and PV panels. Checkmate.
If we want to use RE to help the environment, the obvious option is to use it for environmental remediation purposes like creating carbon sinks. The variability of RE stops being an issue when the instantaneous output hardly matters on a scale of weeks, let alone seconds. Once you stop having to manage that variability, all the costs and externalities of that management simply vanish.
When heavily subsidized and mandated, they’re “successful”. If we simply taxed carbon, few would be interested aside from those on islands like Aruba.
Hypocrisy, thy screen name is EL!
@E-P
Because blog owner mentioned Greenland as a location for a early experiment in nuclear (PM-2A). Read the thread and follow the conversation please!
In 2011, Denmark got 40% of it’s electricity from renewables (p. 91). And yes, this counts as scaling rapidly.
http://www.ren21.net/Portals/0/documents/Resources/GSR/2013/GSR2013_lowres.pdf
Coal provides 22% of final energy in Denmark (less than renewables). There are many efforts to scale back generation from coal in OECD (trends that you aren’t following closely). Nuclear may reach 6% in China. Shares on a global basis are shrinking (not expanding). If you call this a success story (after 50 years of development), you need to look a little closer.
And please tone down the ad hominem (and childish tone of your posts). I understand you are frustrated by the many impediments to your favorite energy resource. Taking it out on me is not productive, doesn’t make your case, and looks entirely in the wrong direction.
@EL
I wouldn’t call PM-2A an “experiment.” It was a full scale demonstration of a potentially commercial product – a prefabricated nuclear combined heat and power plant suitable for providing power and heat to a sizable “village” located far from any grid or fuel supply source.
Ah. As a “response” to the US government building a nuclear powerplant that can be shipped by air and operate nearly anywhere (proven by putting it under the Greenland ice cap!), you counter with a plant that requires conditions present almost nowhere else.
I almost think you’re trying to help the pro-nuclear side prove our points.
So what does achievement of 80% of total generation and near-complete displacement of FF-fired generation in just 11 years count as? Which one can de-carbonize our energy supplies fast enough to avoid the next climate system tipping point… noting that we don’t necessarily know what the next one is!
Coal provided 19.99 quads out of total US energy consumption of 109.33 quads in 2013, or 18.3%. The USA is ahead of Denmark in the displacement of coal.
Nuclear electric was 7.56% of primary energy in the USA in 2013 (same link), despite 40 years of political hobbling and social demonization. Note, about half of the “renewables” in that graph is biomass, and about 2 quads is corn ethanol. The bulk of “renewable” electric generation from 2013 is conventional hydro.
Wind and solar have had all of recorded history to make their mark, plus no massive political movement equating them with mushroom-clouds-in-waiting. What’s THEIR excuse?
Just as soon as you stop lying, both by omission and explicitly. Yes, the recitation of pre-packaged propaganda talking points counts.
Speaking of hydro, I think Iceland’s natural advantage in that regard may make it the world center for the production of aluminum, magnesium and titanium. Iceland would essentially export its bounty of electricity as reduced metals. So long as care was taken to avoid production of GHGs (e.g. generation of CF4 during the electrolysis of fluoride salt mixtures), it could be nearly GHG-neutral. If the ships carrying ore in and product out ran on metal-air batteries, it would be even better.
“Low prices don’t equate with increased freedom and liberation.” Um thats horrifically incorrect. They do. “The conditions creating low prices dont necessarily derive from situations of freedom and liberation” would probably be a correct more way to say that.
Classic, albeit a bit complex causality error. Correlation does not imply causation. Cum hoc ergo propter hoc (“with this, therefore because of this”) with a smiddeling of Post hoc ergo propter hoc (the slavery example).
Very very messy.
EL is totally confused about the difference between a slave and a free person. A slave is a person who is forced, against his will, to provide for others. Freedom is the absence of outside control.
Freedom means that every person is free to do whatever he wants as long as he does not harm the person or property of another.
Saying that a person is a slave to his material possessions is
nonsense. The slaves today are the taxpayers. They are the people who are being forced to provide for their masters (parasites) in the political class.
The most frightening thing to me is the goal of low human populations living “sustainable” lifestyles.
We might divide the root of political perspective into 2 branches: One branch wants a world population of 100 Million People all living “sustainably”. The other branch wants 100 Billion people all living well. I’m in the 2nd branch. You’re in the first.
@John Chatelle
There was a time when the land mass that we now call the USA had a total human population of about 10 million people living “sustainable” lives dependent on “renewable” energy sources. About half of them experienced significant hunger during a large portion of the year.
John, I am all for nuclear energy but why on Earth would you want 100 Billion people? We can have a reliable source of energy without being people greedy.
If we engineer for 100 Billion people living well, 7 Billion would be a cake walk.
Also notice I didn’t qualify the 100 Billion as “a world population” as I did for the undesirable scenario of 100 Million people living “sustainably”.
@John Chatelle
Are you by any chance a fan of Asimov’s Foundation Trilogy?
The “trilogy” is now a series of seven books. There were two sequels and two prequels added to the original three that won the Hugo Award for “Best All-Time Series” in 1966. It beat out Lord of the Rings, which surprised no one more than Asimov himself. Still no movie deal, however.
@Rod & Brian Sure, pretty much anyone who reads Asimov is a fan.
And no, I don’t want to see Earth turned into a “Trantor” type place, although the moon, Mars, and the deep space moons are fair game. FWIW, I don’t think anyone will be living on the surface of the moon, mars, or the distant moons , but instead live at 20 feet minimum under the lith because the ionizing radiation levels on the surface of such worlds will be above optimum levels of which God and nature selected for life. Do I have to say it? Clearly such optimum levels are not Zero.
I haven’t read the “Trilogy” in quite some time.. Is there a preferred order in which these books should be read anew?
If you haven’t read all of them, or if you don’t remember all of them, then I suggest reading them in the order that they were written, because there are some spoilers in the prequels:
Foundation
Foundation & Empire
Second Foundation
Foundation’s Edge
Foundation & Earth
Prelude to Foundation
Forward the Foundation
Otherwise, if you want to follow the chronology of the story, the last two books come first. I’ll add that reading the end of the series, starting with Foundation & Earth, is more rewarding if you have also read Asimov’s robot novels.
The last book in the series, Forward the Foundation, was one of the last books, if not the last book, that Asimov wrote. It was published a year after Asimov’s death.
“Boiling water is still a foundational process that enables people in developed countries to live, study, work, and play with a leisure enabled by harnessing a variety of heat sources to be their mechanical slaves.”
It does not change any of the excellent points made in the article, but it is worth noting that as we move into the 21st century, we may finally be moving as well toward the widespread use of working fluids other than steam to make electricity (regardless of the source of heat that is driving the process). High-temperature, high-pressure gas and supercritical carbon dioxide are two examples of working fluids that could potentially reach higher thermodynamic efficiencies than are typical today.
In any case, it is important to recognize that the generation of electricity is, at its most fundamental, the conversion of one type of energy to another–whether by creating (or capturing) thermal energy to use in a Rankine or Brayton (or other) engine, using fluid kinetic energy to turn a windmill or hydroelectric turbine, or using the sun’s energy in a thermoelectric system. I doubt if most people think of that when they switch on the lights or their air conditioners, but without the complex machines that accomplish the conversion on an industrial scale, the only thing for which boiling water would be useful would be making a cup of tea.
@oldnuke
It does not change any of the excellent points made in the article, but it is worth noting that as we move into the 21st century, we may finally be moving as well toward the widespread use of working fluids other than steam to make electricity (regardless of the source of heat that is driving the process). High-temperature, high-pressure gas and supercritical carbon dioxide are two examples of working fluids that could potentially reach higher thermodynamic efficiencies than are typical today.
Did you see the note at the bottom about a follow-on post. It will be about using the heat from fission with different working fluids. Have you ever visited http://atomicengines.com?
I saw the note. I interpreted it as dealing with the use of nuclear energy for industrial process heat, rather than the production of electricity using something other than a Rankine steam engine, which is what I was referring to. Different sides of the same coin, perhaps–the issue being that looking at nuclear power as simply “a way to boil water” is far too narrow a point of view.
@oldnuke
I’m a longtime fan of Brayton cycle gas turbines. They are the heat engine of choice for cheap, responsive, normally natural gas fired power plants.
Nuclear fission is a great way to heat a gas. The key to making my proposed Brayton cycle heat engines cheap is to take full advantage of all of the refinements and options available in today’s combustion turbine market. That means not trying to use helium or supercritical CO2, but using a gas that behaves like air behaves in a combustion gas turbine.
In other words – nitrogen or a mixture of nitrogen and oxygen chosen to keep corrosion and combustion risks to an absolute minimum in a system that has a lot of structural graphite in it.
Rod: I hope in your upcoming articles that you hit on the Kalina cycle. Like Thorium this is another idea that seems to be bubbling up to become a reality for large power plants.
Cooking (lighting and heating) is also critical here when looked at more closely. Pollution (indoor) and inefficient combustion are some of the most important topics in energy that receive little if any serious air time. There is a whole other line of argument for expanded nuclear there as well, that works in tandem with arguments for access to usable electricity for all and it is a also an extremely strong one.
When I hear the “Its a ____ way to boil water” in all its variations, I think of a vast space of mindless parrots. There it reminds me of the “false dichotomy” repeat of a few years back that was created to proactively conceal what was and is a real dichotomy, by definition, and that obvious transgression never stopped people who were claiming the moral high ground from constantly saying it.
Thats one expensive hibachi.
I have been looking at this kind of stuff. ( http://www.biochar-international.org/sites/default/files/HERA-GIZ%20micro-gasification%20manual%20V1.0%20January%202011.pdf )I consider it more of a problem than a solution. Indoor Pollution may be reduced somewhat but its still not a end to it, it is also comparatively inefficient and requires large amounts of local fuel.
I see many mixed solutions involving things like solar for lighting and this kind of thing too. A partial stop gap waste of resources IMHO – if full electrification is a option.
I dont think others “acting” necessarily is always making things better.
Sir William Stanley Jevons… I say — wasn’t he the chap who introduced Sir Isaac, Gottfried Leibniz, and those Bernoulli blokes to Adam Smith?
And thereby introduced the power of Marginal Thinking to modern economics? No mean feat that — and one which today’s renewables-only folks obliviously accept with relish.
Adam Smith held the chair of Moral Philosophy at Glasgow, and was perhaps the most popular and sought-after lecturer of his day. (For their content — Smith was small of stature and reportedly a rather weak speaker.) After thirteen years he resigned the post to accept a private tutorship of a nephew of Lord Townsend, which enabled the pair to tour Europe and engage with other prominent contributors to the Enlightenment.
The one of whom Smith sought most avidly being the ambassador in Paris of some wayward (former) British colonies. Smith being most eager to learn first hand how the Great Experiment was making out.
Not badly, as it turned out, though there was this lingering unease over the Peculiar Institution. The other night I was reading an excerpt from Hargrave’s book wherein he cites estimates a competitive cyclists can sustain 1/4 hp for a few hours on a good day for which, were he grid-connected and selling into a competitive electric market, he might receive 2.5 cents/hr for his effort.
Such is the value of raw human labor: Not even slave’s wages. Yet that is to what well-intended minimalists would continue to condemn the bulk of the world’s population. Part of which might be forgiven if they do not totally buy it.
Germany is frequently held up as an example, and not just for their approach to carbon reduction (of which, it might be noted, at least they have one). Apart from that, Germany’s per capita energy footprint is about half that of the United States — a pretty aggressive target towards which energy conservationists might shoot.
It’s also a reasonable target towards which the developing world might aspire. Not immediately perhaps, but say over the course of the remainder of the century. Over which time the United States might also attain such target. Or not. But if we do, and “they” do, then the planet can look forward to a two-and-a-half to four fold increase in human generated (released, controlled) energy over the course of but eighty-five short years.
See Joseph Lassiter lift another Hargraves slide in The Case for Combating Climate Change with Nuclear Power and Fracking, and The Breakthrough’s weakly special at High-Energy Planet:
Human Needs and Environmental Protection in the 21st Century.
The world consumes about 15.4 PWhr of energy today, 40 – 60 PWhr/year by 2100.
That’s a lot of kilowatt hours to acquire in a very short amount of time. But transportation and cheap communication are here. They are real and transformative. The genie is out of the bottle and the ignorant masses aren’t. Those kilowatts will be generated and used, just as cheaply and reliably as possible. And if the alternatives are not as cheap and reliable as coal, then coal it will be.
One of the problems discovered by the SMR advocates here in AK is the 10 MW flavor of the Toshiba 4S was simply too large for a small village of a couple hundred people. They came up with a strategy to site the reactors regionally in the larger villages, use electricity directly, and use steam pipes to heat homes and / or greenhouses. A third use would be to provide hydrogen to “juice” biomass to liquids associated plants to produce diesel (everything in the Bush runs on either diesel or propane). The steam for heating part of this article echoes some of that thinking. Cheers –
Rod,
I had missed this the first time around on the ANS blog, but this was a beautiful piece for you to re-post on such a momentous day as the 30th anniversary of an important event.
Thanks,
Joel
@Joel Riddle
I’ll bite – was yesterday your birthday?
Long time ago, maybe in Omni magazine or Popular Science or Popular Mechanics, they had this feature on making electricity by blowing superhot gas between two giant magnets?…
Google Magneto Hydrodynamic Generator. They had a niche in fossil-fired generation, but seem to have been super-ceded by combined-cycle. Undoubtedly a matter of cost-benefit: just how hot must be your combustion gas to achieve sufficiently dense plasma, how much does it cost to contain it, versus the benefit of just extracting the lower-level heat at the exhaust end of the gas turbine. You could undoubtedly do all three and I’m all in favor of thermodynamic efficiency particularly with fossil generation, but again, is it worth it?
As for nukes, its hard to imagine a reactor core ever operating at MHD temperatures but with those things thermal efficiency is somewhat less critical than with fossils. This is due to much lower fuel cost and essentially zero operating emissions — just whatever little fossils were burnt to mine&fabricate the fuel. Efficiency is still important as a plant’s electric output is limited by the core power and the more of that you can convert to electric the lower your cooling costs and the more money you make. But all generating plant must be reliable, and nuclear designs flog that requirement to the extreme — usually at the cost of some thermal efficiency. (The operator also makes money by keeping the lights on.)
@Ed Leaver
whatever little fossils were burnt to mine&fabricate the fuel
Both mining and manufacturing are processes that can be done with electricity. In answer to the question that I like to pose to unreliables advocates, it is quite possible to point to nuclear powered factories used to produce nuclear power plant parts and fuel.
Good point, Rod. What counts of course is total life-cycle emissions, and these do vary. A while back I buried a brief comment to that effect in a discussions at 10.5.5 The United States: Renewable Electricity Futures Study 2012 and it certainly bears repeating. There I cited estimates of Nuclear 10.6, Coal ∼1000, NG ∼500, Biomass 0, Geo 9.7, Hydro 26, CSP 78.5, PV 37.4, Wind 4.6, all as tCO2e/GWh. These are averages, and to your point, Vattenfall estimates its Forsmark plant in Sweden achieves 3.1 tonne CO2e/GWh with nuclear and hydro powered enrichment and fabrication. The remaining 3.1 tonne/GWh is probably for construction steel and concrete, with a small amount for decommissioning and waste management (both of which again can be and are mostly electrified).
The particular 10.6 nuclear, 4.6 wind numbers were taken from Table C-3 of NREL’s Renewable Electricity Futures study, and were chosen to illustrate that on the margin even by NREL estimates nuclear emits near the same low level as onshore wind. But as you point out, nuclear can do much better when fuel enrichment and fabrication are cleanly powered, and better still when mining is as well: Vattenfall was citing estimates from its current sources in Canada, Namibia, Oz, and Uzbekistan, using current mining technology (largely electric) and transport (not so much).
And of course, its the total grid emissions, not the marginal from any particular source that matter.
Also worth mentioning Uranium is not deposited in isolation, there are other valuable metals extracted from those mines, notably copper and gold.
When push comes to shove later this century, its hard to see how even onshore wind will compete with nuclear on a life-cycle emissions basis, though admittedly the real enemy will still be coal. Nuclear and wind are both quite low. But for the sake of argument, wind’s emissions will always be tied to that of construction steel and concrete. In Emissions Cuts Realities (Table 5 page 21) Peter Lang estimates onshore wind consumes 4 to 8 times the concrete and 6 to 12 times the steel as nuclear, and that’s on the margin not counting the amount of aluminum, copper, and dead dinosaurs still needed to keep the lights on. Steel refining can of course be electrified, but at considerable cost over metallurgical coal. Concrete is hard to fathom. Given its value, concrete CCS will make a lot of sense: spending the resulting production on wind rather than nuclear, not so much.
Most country estimates place marginal (i.e., without fossil backup and co-generation) lifetime ghg emissions from wind about the same as nuclear; WNA has a good discussion and tables at Energy Balances and CO2 Implications. But again, its not the margin what counts, and while combined wind+gas might be an improvement over coal, it is environmentally irresponsible to promote their deployment over sustained very-low emissions baseload nuclear.