106 Comments

  1. In the exchanges above, Rod Adams shows himself to be immature, rude, and profoundly biased about the work of Amory Lovins. He presents little evidence to discredit Amory’s evidence, because there isn’t any. So he makes ad hominen remarks instead. He believes Amory is wrong, but he just can’t accept that because he (Rod) has no evidence, he has no standing to argue.

    Although we never knew one another there, Amory and I were undergraduate classmates at Harvard University. Of the 1500 of us in the Class of 1968, I suppose there were about 300 people I’d call geniuses. Among those, at least of the ones I know, nobody in our class has distinguished himself like Amory, although many of them have had quite distinguished careers.

    When the world beats climate change, a significant part of the reason is that we will have adopted energy efficiency in its fullest possibilities. There is no one in the world who has done more to explain the need and opportunities for energy efficiency than Amory.

    Rod Adams is a smart guy. But like most of the rest of Earth’s citizens (including me), he is simply not in Amory’s intellectual league. He cannot compile evidence as sophisticated and all-encompassing as Amory frequently does.

    So Rod, you and all your pro-nuke brethren who are hopelessly in love with the nuclear dream need to realize one thing: All of your and your fellow travelers’ continually nasty comments about Amory don’t dent his armor or his evidence one iota. Over the next 20 years, you guys are going to be seen as the profoundly biased people you are, and you won’t look good in other people’s eyes. The world will come to see Amory as the profoundly important thinker he is and thank heavens he came along when he did.

    Dr. John Miller
    @NuclearReporter

  2. Rod,

    I find your website very refreshing…….many, many nice reads for a lonely HP Tech on backshift at the Northwest’s only Nuclear Power Plant.

    Thank You

  3. @ Dr Miller,

    Dr. Amory Lovins contention that energy efficiency can solve the climate crisis does not address the needs of poor people for whom one light bulb in a shack is the total family energy use. Instead his drive toward efficiency is aimed at what? The USA? In terms of the USA energy efficiency for companies means vast savings in cost, if they are able to reduce their overall energy bill. I worked for UPS for several years. Moving packages is energy intensive. The belt systems and cage systems drew an enormous amount of electricity. UPS invests in new tech on a constant basis. BUT – renewable energy will never run those systems by themselves. Wind turbines do not function well in Winter conditions in the mid-west. Neither do solar panels help much when you come into work at 3:30 am to begin loading packages onto trucks. Dr. Lovins says that Natural Gas is the answer.

    I like Natural Gas. I used to warm myself as a boy over the natural gas fired floor heater in our living room. I like cooking with Natural gas – it is much easier to use than Electric stove tops. However, I have understood that every sale of a wind turbine and most sales of Solar are lost leaders for Natural Gas.

    Frankly, your statement that “Over the next 20 years, you guys are going to be seen as the profoundly biased people you are, and you won’t look good in other people’s eyes. The world will come to see Amory as the profoundly important thinker he is and thank heavens he came along when he did”

    Is one that I hope to live to either verify or vilify. Hum, 20 years. Well, I don’t know how long either of us will live, but I suspect this is past the expected life span of both you and Dr. Lovins.

    My bias toward Nuclear power (I also like and use, coal, natural gas, liquid fuels as well as any other reliable and abundant energy source), came from living in Asia and sleeping on bamboo slat beds, or on tables under Mosquito nets while teaching classes. I began a 5 year search for ways to provide energy for these rural areas and to increase efficiencies in our electric use that was taking nearly 30 to 40% of our non-profit’s budget. I was highly motivated and was ready to put money on the line. I found that none of the renewable systems could survive and or pay back themselves in less than 25 years. Even in the energy poor super high electric price environment I was in at the time of my initial research. The wave machines would be destroyed by storms. The solar was simply too expensive and still needed backup. Wind energy was ok while it was on, but high winds like hurricanes or typhoons would close them down or destroy them. Even Hydro is subject to droughts.

    My appreciation for why the world uses gasoline and diesel for energy grew greatly. Then I found Nuclear energy. I found it was a million times more energy dense than any other fuel. I found that radiation is a very very weak cancer causing agent – moving the hazard from unusual to a lot less than normal. In fact – in terms of people killed or injured – a lot less than Natural Gas! Which I like.

    Then I found that using a carbon source you can convert water and carbon into liquid fuels in the presence of high temperatures. Gradually, I came to realize that Nuclear Power is a true solution to the energy poverty of the world.

    Dr. Lovins will never sell me on negawats. I have a few bamboo mats I would like him to spend some days on.

  4. Although I disagree with Dr.Miller about Rod’s character, I understand how these kinds of adversarial exchanges are the inevitable result of the “us against them” tone that seems to be how this blog and its community offers their argument. As I’ve commented here before, its a damned shame that the various energy advocates offering alternatives to fossil fuel don’t bury the hatchet and commit to a unified front. This business of advocating outside the science, through sniveling about perceived conspiracies, (real or imagined), and making enemies out of potential allies is a guaranteed loser. Stick with the science, and prove your point if you can. But hostile criticisms directed towards powerful representatives of the so called “antis” can only be described as self -defeating. Ask yourself if what you are doing is working. If not, maybe its time for a new approach.

  5. @poa

    I’ve done what you suggest. I’ve carefully investigated the approach that nuclear advocates have taken over the past few decades, decided that it did not work and then started working on a new approach. Part of my untested approach is head on confrontation with people like Lovins, who may say that he is opposed to fossil fuels, but whose actions speak louder than words to me.

  6. Dr. Miller,

    I can see how you could read some of Rod’s comments above and perceive them as being ad hominem or biased. However, I think there’s more of a backstory here that really you or I fully grasp.

    I, like Rod, take issue with Amory and his ilk for the way they speak out of both sides of their mouth and usemisleading data and or headlines to present a picture that does not accurately reflect reality. For instance, Dr. Lovins is on the record numerous times stating that he envisions a world powered by cheap renewables and energy storage. Currently, we have seen renewable energy costs reduced significantly, but energy storage is still far more expensive and technologically difficult. Trying to play off the “success” of Germany’s Energiewende, now the RMI has recently published a video titled “The storage necessity myth: how to choreograph high-renewables electricity systems.” Of course, this production paints a beautiful picture of a choreographed dance of multiple clean energy sources all working in unison to power our daily lives. It then goes on to point out several European countries getting a high percentage of their electrical energy needs from RE sources, namely Germany, Spain, and Denmark. Needless to say, he fails to mention that Denmark and Germany are among the priciest electricity markets in the EU, Spain is nearly bankrupt in no small part to the incredibly generous subsidies their government handed out, and emissions in many of these countries, Germany in particular, have been ON THE RISE even as their power needs have decreased through efficiency and the fraction of energy from RE has increased. How is that? Because these RE sources must be backed up, and Fossil Fuels (FF) are how they do it. Keep in mind that producing less power from coal does not mean that one is burning less coal.

    You make quite a big production of Rod not being in Amory’s league intellectually. Quite honestly, I could care less about who’s the intellectual lightweight in the room. When I reported to West Point in 1998 from small town southern Ohio, I went from being the intelligent prize fighting heavyweight in the room to being in the flyweight division of IQ. But one thing I have learned through my years of undergraduate and graduate level engineering studies is that there is no free lunch, and one must understand the whole story good and bad if one is to make an informed decision about pressing energy problems in the US and around the world. Here at Atomic Insights, I find the whole story in the articles and the comments section. I cannot say the same for most of what Lovins and his RMI brothers and sisters produce.

  7. Your experience with solar was years In the past. The cost of solar is half what it was 5 years ago. The price of wind is also dropping precipitously.

    I qualified to be the officer in charge of two different submarine reactors. So I’ve been where the rubber meets the road. Nuclear is not safe, it is not cheap, and it is not clean. The plutonium it creates must be stored away from humans for 240,000 years. That alone is reason to shut down every nuclear power plant on Earth.

  8. Rod, you are just delusional to think that Amory Lovins is in favor of oil. He is not and has never been. You think that because you feel it must be true that everybody who disagrees with you is somehow morally wrong. He is not. Get over it.

  9. I didn’t comment on Rod’s character, just his behavior in the current disagreement. He has not presented evidence to counter Amory’s evidence about renewables, efficiency, and the unacceptability of nuclear power. When you have no evidence, the professional thing to do is to stop criticizing. Rod won’t ever do that. He’ll probably arrange to have pro-nuke leaflets passed out at his funeral. As they’re lowering him into the ground, he’ll reach out and pass a few to the gravediggers!

  10. Lovins and I are spring chickens, only 68. Most of my relatives have lived into their late 80s, so I hope to be here to see myself proved right.

    Amory Lovins has done nothing wrong just because he hasn’t solved the energy needs of the world’s poor. No one on Earth has solved that so far. Renewables are a much better solution for the Third World than nuclear. They are cheaper, faster to build, and they don’t leave radioactivity for 240,000 years.

  11. In the exchanges above, Rod Adams shows himself to be immature, rude,

    You mean “sacreligious”, daring to question the prophet’s proclamations.  With FACTS, no less!  Doesn’t he know that there’s no such thing, that reality is a social construct?

    and profoundly biased about the work of Amory Lovins.

    Yes, daring to ask about matters like “peer review”.  Who peer-reviewed the Gospels?  The Gospel of Lovins needs no peer review!

    So he makes ad hominen remarks instead. He believes Amory is wrong, but he just can’t accept that because he (Rod) has no evidence, he has no standing to argue.

    Yes, those little “facts” like the oil-fired generation on the US grid through the 1970’s, and its re-appearance in New England last winter.  Obviously this did not happen, because Vermont has built wind farms and wind farms (together with negawatts) solve everything.  The social construction of Vermont Yankee will be deconstructed and everyone will live in green harmony.

    Rod Adams is a smart guy. But like most of the rest of Earth’s citizens (including me), he is simply not in Amory’s intellectual league.

    It does take a great deal of brainpower to change what we experience as real with your mind.

    So Rod, you and all your pro-nuke brethren who are hopelessly in love with the nuclear dream need to realize one thing: All of your and your fellow travelers’ continually nasty comments about Amory don’t dent his armor or his evidence one iota.

    Evidence and reason are tools of the oppressor.

  12. Though this piece is not going to be a point by point answer of the Lovins’s/RMI rebuttal of Frank’s paper, there is a particular section in that work that may help to illustrate the habit that Amory Lovins has for making statements that can be misinterpreted as indicating that he is erring on the conservative side by providing underestimates of the performance of unreliable energy collection systems like wind.

    @Rod Adams.

    This doesn’t appear to be the case looking at the RMI rebuttal (and verifiable data provided by Lovins and others). He’s giving accurate figures (31% on average for years 2008 – 2013, and 38.2% for the first five months of this year which is the most recent data provided by EIA). For the yearly figure, this is a 21% difference from what is reported by Frank. The same for solar and gas combined cycles, and the same for project costs (and other data sets).

    I’m not sure what you are advocating here. That we continue to use data that we already know is incorrect, and discount the more accurate information (and modeling results) provided by Lovins and others?

    Perhaps it would have been more informative to limit your discussion to a point for point rebuttal on the substantive merits of the argument … simply for the sake that others could have better understood the differences you wished to highlight, and more fully understood what you find so objectionable in the rebuttal. If it’s not the merits of the argument, then what is the point of this “head on confrontation” (to advocate for the use of flawed data and flawed conclusions in the original study)?

  13. Lovins is wrong about Germany which means he will be wrong about the US.

    Germany has ramped up their lignite coal mining operations

    German lignite coal usage has ramped up to its highest level since 1990’s.

    German industries are having to pay for emergency backup power sources such as lead acid batteries and diesel generators to ensure they do not lose their raw material process streams or their fabrication lines.

    Many of us in the utility industry predicted some of these issues. Lovins disputed our assertions with his usual dazzling pie charts and dense statistics. However engineering and physics of grid operations remain unchanged.

    Also Lovins depends on Doug Koplow for his definition of “subsidy”. Koplow founded Earth Track. Mr. Koplow is anti-nuclear through and through and assists the Union of Concerned “Scientists” in their anti-nuclear activities.

    Both Mr. Lovins and Mr. Koplow appear to believe that any federal money going to nuclear power is bad while the bulk of federal subsidy programs for wind, solar and energy efficiency should not be classified as “subsidies”.

    In other words their goal is to continue to politically stack the deck against nuclear power which is the only workhorse power generation source that can deliver 24/7/365 electricity to the grid without adding CO2 into the atmosphere. But hey why not switch to a natural gas based system that uses temporary wind and solar. Keeps those petro dollars flowing from the rate payers hands into consulting business like RMI.

    They appear to be continually working to change the EIA’s definition of

  14. I hit the submit button to quickly.

    Let me finish that last sentence…….

    They appear to be continually working to change the EIA’s definition of “subsidy” to highlight their intense dislike of nuclear while pushing for more wind and solar.

  15. @EL

    Would you be willing to allow me to provide data on the nuclear competition that I know is correct based on large scale demonstration, best of class, and standard learning curve assumptions or will you insist that nuclear projects are going to remain uniquely resistant to the cost savings associated with experience and series production at a proper industrial scale with appropriate standardization of key components for interchangeability?

    How about if we use German numbers for solar photovoltaic capacity factors instead of the optimized numbers from the US where initial project developers for utility scale solar have, logically enough, chosen to locate their facilities in places with much better than average solar conditions?

    Let’s also recognize that US wind developers have preferentially located their turbines in particularly windy areas, which then require substantial transmission line investments to move the power to market and that the optimal areas will not last forever. That will lead to a gradual reduction in capacity factors as the expansion continues, where the opposite has proven to be the case for nuclear plants.

  16. Disapponting but typical dodging of main arguments with buckshot ‘facts’ by amory lovins. Don’t waste your time on this fruitcake rod. He lives on a different planet where the laws of physics are different.

    As for peer review. This has long ago lost its credulity. Heck look at what mark jacobson publishes in peer review on nuclear energy and wind power.

  17. @EL

    Lovins has been playing fast and loose with “data” for forty years. He and his organization have also been known to build rather impressive Keynote slide shows that purport to be based on detailed models. I was treated to one of those when I attended the 35th Anniversary of TMI symposium held at Dartmouth. Following Lovins’s presentation, I chatted with a couple of the meeting attendees, including a professor from Dartmouth and Dan Reicher, one of the organizers of the meeting. We agreed that it would nice to be able to reconstruct Lovins’s slides summarizing an hourly dispatch model run for ERCOT showing how to meet projected 2050 loads with 100% renewables and no bulk storage.

    I corresponded with Lovins directly. He initially sent me a link to a PDF version of his slideshow, which did not provide the animations and data supporting those animations. I pushed a little harder and received the following response:

    …as a matter of policy, RMI doesn’t normally release its original presentation graphics, but only PDFs, which were just posted at engineering.dartmouth.edu. If anything is unclear about a particular PDF slide or slides, please let me know. Unfortunately the ERCOT slide, created by Duarte Associates, is such a complex build that we can’t disentangle it into successive one-per-PDF-slide builds, but there are no hidden elements, so I think the color-coding should suffice to understand the moving parts.

    We will be converting the analysis in my Dartmouth talk into a peer-reviewed journal paper, so of course would be grateful for any specific comments and corrections, ideally by 20 May but at latest by end May.

    I have not been able to find the planned peer-reviewed journal paper, but would be happy to read it if someone else knows where it is. It is entirely possible that it is still in the review and publish cycle.

    Here is a quote from the executive summary of a recent analysis by a Swiss financial advisor company called Finadvice regarding the lessons learned from the German Energiewende. That company has come to a radically different conclusion about the experience than the one promoted vigorously by Lovins during that symposium hosted at Dartmouth.

    Over the last decade, well-intentioned policymakers in Germany and other European countries created renewable energy policies with generous subsidies that have slowly revealed themselves to be unsustainable, resulting in profound, unintended consequences for all industry stakeholders. While these policies have created an impressive roll-out of renewable energy resources, they have also clearly generated disequilibrium in the power markets, resulting in significant increases in energy prices to most users, as well as value destruction for all stakeholders: consumers, renewable companies, electric utilities, financial institutions, and investors.

    Accordingly, the United States and other countries should carefully assess the lessons learned in Germany, with respect to generous subsidy programs and relatively rapid, large-scale deployment and integration of renewable energy into the power system. This white paper is meant to provide further insight into the German market, present an objective analysis of its renewable policies, and identify lessons learned from Germany, and to a lesser degree, other European countries.1

    1. The authors of this white paper would like to state that they fully support renewables as a part of the overall power portfolio. All the authors have worked with both electric utilities and purely renewable companies. Some of them have 20+ years of experience in the power sector, and a couple have direct equity interests in renewable projects.

    Note: I reject Finadvice’s judgement that the implementers of the Energiewende have been “well-intentioned.” Their specific goal was to eliminate nuclear energy. One of the leaders, Gerhard Schroeder, has demonstrated by his subsequent actions that he was interested in getting rid of nuclear to make more room in the market for other fuel sources, especially natural gas imported from Russia via the Nordstream pipeline. That effort has not worked as well as planned so far, but there are still 9 large nuclear plants producing about 100 billion kilowatt hours per year for the German grid. As those shut down, Schroeder’s plan will provide more and more income for his current employers.

    Yes, I plead guilty to the charge of aiming at the archer rather than at the arrows. In my minority opinion, that is the most likely strategy for success against such a prolific promoter of questionable prescriptions for the planet. It is also justified by my presumption that it is unlike that a man as smart as Lovins can believe his own propaganda. He’s been at the game for far too long and has been schooled by people as qualified as Alvin Weinberg on the places where he makes fundamental analysis errors.

  18. @Cyril R

    I do not believe that discrediting Amory Lovins is a waste of time. Honest engineers might recognize the truth of your characterization of the man, but he has far too many honorary degrees and receives far too many invitations for paid positions at credible institutions — including one of alma maters — to be ignored. His message is a siren song that attracts far too many people in decision-making positions. That song is amplified by influential people like Joe Romm, John Podesta, and John P. Holdren. Before we all crash on the rocks and shoals that his song is pulling us towards, he must be either silenced or overcome by a higher intensity generation of more accurate information.

  19. @Dr. Miller
    In Boston Consulting Group format Oil is only the Cash Cow of many large Multinational Oil Companies. Natural Gas is an Oil companies’ Star. Amory Lovin’s is advocating not for a specific product, but he is clearly advocating for the Oil Giants, and himself being paid handsomely for his efforts.

    The Oil companies can only profit if people see their competition as sunshine, breezes, dung, cardboard, grasses and negawatts.

    I wish the American people saw the rent seeking component in the Oil Companies marketing endeavor goes far beyond lobbyists, but drills down into the culture itself through the Non Government Organizations (NGOs) such as the Sierra Club and the Rocky Mountain Institute.

    In The Oil companies’ feint of solution through the use of NGOs, their real goal is to maintain the current state of affairs for at least the next handful of years. It’s clear they wish to maintain their cash flows and to move their Natural Gas Products from the “STAR” category (of the Boston Consulting Group’s Format) to the CASH COW category.

    It’s extremely difficult not to scoff at people whom help in this endeavor since this endeavor results in so much hardship, poverty, and death.

  20. @Dr. John Miller August 9, 2014 at 11:07 PM
    “I qualified to be the officer in charge of two different submarine reactors. So I’ve been where the rubber meets the road. Nuclear is not safe, it is not cheap, and it is not clean.”
    Congratulations on a job well done, I also “qualified” on two different naval reactors so I know it is a challenging and difficult task. But could you possibly enlighten us as to exactly when the “rubber hit the road” in this experience? Was it while driving to work at the land based navy training facilities? Or perhaps while driving to work at Mare Island shipyard?
    https://atomicinsights.com/john-dudley-miller-nuclear-engineering-officer-us-navy/

    There must have been something strange in the water of SSN575 as I know of another case where a “set of orders” to that boat qualified someone to claim “nuclear experience.” You sir have certainly experienced nuclear power, but it is a stretch to claim you have nuclear power experience where “the rubber hits the road.” Unless your ride through the Panama Canal qualifies you.

    From your website CURRICULUM VITAE:
    http://www.drjohnmiller.com/cv.html
    Nuclear Submarine Officer, USS SEAWOLF (SSN 575), U.S. Navy, 2/70-6/72
    I stood watches first as the officer running the nuclear reactor and later as the officer controlling the entire ship. Off watch I supervised 25 men full-time, including sonarmen, radiomen, electronics technicians, cooks and storekeepers. I resigned with the rank of full Lieutenant (equal to an Army Captain).

    Your experience where the “rubber hits the road” is as a Journalist; with an inflated nuclear resume.

  21. Bad, bad, bad pronuclear advocates, how dare we criticize the sainted sage, Amory Lovins. Only we, unlike Dr. John Miller. Well I have just reposted an old blog post that is relivant to this discussion, about the encounter between Amory Lovins and a Real genious, alvin Weinberg. Weinberg demonstrated that Lovins was more concerned about the thermal pollution from nuclear power plants, while ignoring the greenhouse gas emissions of coal fired power plants. Not only did Lovins ignore Weinbergs CO2/Global warming argument, Lovins continued to advocate the coal bridge almost to the present. Thus Lovins was a coal lobbyist for several decades. http://nucleargreen.blogspot.com/2014/08/two-paths-to-copenhagen-weinberg-and.html

  22. “faster to build, and they don’t leave radioactivity for 240,000 years.”

    You forget, that the spent fuel is in a nice neat, easily contained little package, unlike fossil fuels which just dumps its waste into that communal resource we call the atmosphere.
    As nice as they might seem at first glance, ‘renewables’ simply cannot work alone. If we cannot use nuclear (an eventuality you and Lovins would love to see, for some reason) then we willhave to back them up with fossil fuels.

    If you’re a spring chicken, then I’m a relative embryo at the age of 25. I am one of the many who will have to live with the decisions you hope to influence. I can only hope that you do not succeed. Unusually for my young age, I know what it is like to live with little or no electricity in extreme conditions and how unpleasant it can be. I suppose have my time as a soldier in Iraq and Afghanistan to thank for that. “Freezing my ass off in the arctic with no heating” and “sweating like there will be no tomorrow” are not things I want to do again, ever.
    In my opinion, having but not using the technology that can bring comfort to the rest of humanity morally wrong. We owe it to them to bring clean, abundant and reliable electricity to the rest of the world. ‘Renewables’ cannot satisfy two of those criteria, and even the third is at best debatable. The only option that will satisfy all three of those criteria in the near future is nuclear fission.

  23. John Miller wrote above:

    “Over the next 20 years, you guys are going to be seen as the profoundly biased people you are, and you won’t look good in other people’s eyes. The world will come to see Amory as the profoundly important thinker he is and thank heavens he came along when he did.”

    Twenty years is a long time. This was 1994. I believe I had some work at a fluidized bed coal plant. It thought this may be the future at the time. Many coal plants are being closed down.

    http://instituteforenergyresearch.org/topics/policy/power-plant-closures/

    Who would have predicted the cheap natural gas in 1994? Who would have thought of the US as a potential oil exporter?

    I hope both Mr. Adams and Mr Lovins are remembered for the good things they are doing. Lovins stresses energy efficiency. This will be a good thing to remember him for. His biased anti nuclear thinking can be a footnote.

    It is a simple fact that the world will need clean reliable safe energy in the future. It is a fact that many people in this world aspire to a higher standard of living. It is a fact that electric power is one major facet to meeting this aspiration.

    Look to the countries that are raising the standards of living of their people. Look at India. Look at Taiwan. Look at mainland China. Look at Korea. You see a nuclear future. You see a piece of the world twenty years hence.

    I think Mr. Adams bias will be seen as prescient. I also think the tide of public opinion is slowly swinging in his direction.

  24. Your comment makes no sense. Anybody who ever qualified as the guy in charge, the engineering officer of the watch, on a Navy submarine has been where the rubber meets the road. It’s the most demanding nuclear environment on Earth.

    In addition, during my time on board, SEAWOLF was arguably the best nuclear power learning platform in the Navy. Only NAUTILUS was older, and it was in such bad repair that again and again, they’d motor down the Thames River and catch on fire before they got to the Atlantic Ocean. They’d have to turn around in mid-river and get towed back to New London using their diesel generators to provide electricity.

    SEAWOLF was able to meet most of its operational commitments, but we had lots of fires and breakdowns, more than any other boat I knew anything about. We’d experience 5-10 Kohm grounds almost every month. That little resistance to current flowing to ground essentially meant some piece of equipment was heating up and starting to smoke because of current travelling from the equipment to ground.

    Bottom line: Just by luck, I got stuck on SEAWOLF when I had orders to a Polaris submarine because the officer with the SEAWOLF orders lied and told the Navy he’d bought a house in New London, even though the ship was going to move to the Pacific Ocean in several months; it was one of the luckiest things that ever happened to me. Guys on newer ships thought nuclear power was great. They never experienced all the unexpected failures I experienced. It changed my mind forever about exactly how nuclear power plants have accidents–what they look like to operators as they’re happening.

    Why don’t you identify yourself? You can email me at johnmillerATnasw.org.

    Dr. John Miller
    @NuclearReporter

  25. @Dr. John Miller

    I generally don’t bother to respond to you, but could not resist getting a chuckle from seeing your above comment about a day after receiving the following quote from you in response to another commenter.

    Your experience with solar was years In the past. The cost of solar is half what it was 5 years ago. The price of wind is also dropping precipitously.

    By your own admission, you served more than 40 years ago for a couple of years on the second nuclear powered submarine that was built anywhere in the world. During a part of that time, you stood Engineering Officer of the Watch. You never held a billet in the Engineering Department so you were not responsible for training any of your own people, giving final checkouts in any systems, or repairing any of the equipment that experienced the unexpected failures that apparently were bad enough to permanently scare you.

    Do you really believe that experience is enough to qualify you to comment on current nuclear energy technology?

  26. Would you be willing to allow me to provide data on the nuclear competition that I know is correct based on large scale demonstration, best of class, and standard learning curve assumptions …

    @Rod Adams.

    No … not if you don’t use the same future and best case cost projection scenarios and standard learning curve assumptions for other energy resources as well (including renewables)! Nuclear has a long track record of NOT meeting project cost estimates (underestimating decommissioning and long term O&M costs), you’re suggesting we ignore this well documented and historical track record?

    How about if we use German numbers for solar photovoltaic capacity factors instead of the optimized numbers from the US …

    So your best argument is that we cherry-pick data and ignore real world results in solar energy markets where we have reliable and detailed energy production data (and options for building utility scale projects in locations where the available resource is very good and there are terrific opportunities for scaling utility solar in the future)?

    Lovins has offered a rebuttal for why Frank’s data on average US solar capacity factors is incorrect. What does German solar PV data have to do with this?

    Let’s also recognize that US wind developers … require substantial transmission line investments …

    There are many benefits to grid expansion, enhanced grid management systems, and distributed infrastructure … and these go beyond one specific energy resource. Public utility commissions take all of these costs and benefits into consideration, there are important independent rules for their work, and it seems there are many feel such work isn’t moving quick enough (that the pace of expansion is too slow regardless of new resources coming on line). There is no getting away from grid modernization … if this is best argument offered by pro-nuclear advocates, this is a non-starter. They aren’t aware of important end-user, grid development, and business shifts in energy markets.

    A well managed grid should have very low curtailment rates for renewables (especially with adequate storage or demand response options available). I’m not aware of anybody doing current planning for a poorly developed and inadequately supplied grid. I don’t think this is a reasonable assumption in planning and advocating for different energy alternatives in the future.

    I have not been able to find the planned peer-reviewed journal paper, but would be happy to read it if someone else knows where it is.

    It seems to me you may have misrepresented his position. He appears to me to be talking about “Reinventing Fire” (the peer reviewed basis of which he describes above in your exchange). Here is how he summarizes the results of these findings:

    Bulk storage is an additional option, but is not necessary, for example, for reliable 8766 h/y 100%-renewable operation of the isolated Texas grid ERCOT (a rather difficult case) in 2050 using these methods, assuming levels of end-use efficiency that the National Academies consider highly profitable. Other and far more detailed simulations, such as the National Renewable Energy Laboratory’s June 2012 *Renewable Energy Futures Study* (www.nrel.gov/analysis/re_futures/) and Rocky Mountain Institute’s 2011 *Reinventing Fire* (www.reinventingfire.com), respectively adopt modest bulk storage for 80-90% (all-centralized) and 80% (half-distributed) US electricity supply in 2050 — but *Reinventing Fire*’s “Transform” scenario needs only 5% as much bulk storage as its renewable capacity. Similarly, LBNL-5559e’s annual analysis of the US windpower market shows most US utility studies of high (40-50+%) windpower penetration find needed balancing reserves equivalent to only =5% of wind capacity. Note that 5% is 3-4x less than the reserve margin (including spinning reserve) classically required for the reliability of big thermal stations (here)

    Since you seek to more fully consider the source material for these statements, I would start with the list provided by Lovins: Reinvventing Fire, NREL Renewable energy futures study, National Academies study on end-use efficiency, LBNL-5559 (and likely others if I were to look at other comments, and most specifically references in his book length monograph). He doesn’t seem shy to provide source material for his various claims. Did you bother to ask in your exchange with him above (and in any other debates and e-mail exchanges you have had with him in the past)? If it were me, I would post a readable and critically engaging “book review” of Reinventing Fire on your site, and open the flood gates to crowd sourcing to more fully document and highlight any flaws or inaccuracies in the book. These things are written to encourage discussion and debate, after all. If you can save people from reading the book (and giving royalties to the guy), based on your comments above, it sounds to me like this might even be a win win from your perspective!

  27. To Rod Adams,

    You don’t respond to me because you don’t like it that I provide evidence which shows errors in your pro-nuclear views.

    And when you do respond, you invariably get it wrong. Every damned time!

    In this case, you equate my reply to a guy who was claiming on outdated data that solar electricity is too expensive to my having nuclear power experience on essentially the oldest reactor in the Navy, S2Wa. That is an invalid comparison. I wasn’t maintaining that today’s reactors cost the same as the ones I served on.

    You ignore that I also qualified on S5G, the newest plant in the Navy when I served and the near-relative the S8G plants in the fleet today.

    You also ignore that there is not a lot of difference among Navy submarine plants. Any Navy pressurized water reactor is much more like all the rest of them than it is different. You know that, and you are less than honest when you don’t mention you know that.

    If you didn’t constantly distort and misinterpret facts about nuclear power, you wouldn’t have anything to say in its favor. That ought to give you a clue about which side the truth is on.

    Dr. John Miller
    @NuclearReporter

  28. To John Chatelle,

    I too wish RMI had not done consulting work for oil companies. Whatever they did must have improved the lot of the oil companies, or they wouldn’t have continued buying it year after year. As a psychologist, I believe that taking pay for work performed has a long-term effect of making the paid more positive toward the payor. It’s not a bias that can never be overcome, but it happens, and it has at least a small effect. Since he is a physicist, perhaps Amory never learned that.

    If I had to guess, I’d say Amory saw it as a way to grow his young institute so that he could hire more analysts to do more work to make more money. But I don’t know; you’d have to ask him.

    Dr. John Miller
    @NuclearReporter

  29. Mr. Adams will not be seen as prescient by open-minded people, because he is strongly biased toward nuclear power. He has said before that he sees nuclear power as progress, so as he assesses particular issues, he’s already decided nuclear is progress, so it must be good. A person being honest to himself would first assess the issues and only then decide whether nuclear = progress.

    For instance, is it progress to leave Pu-239 on Earth when it must be sequestered away from humans for 240,000 years? That problem alone makes it the worst choice for electrical power in history.

    Dr. John Miller
    @NuclearReporter

  30. Oh, he “must be silenced.” Just how do you intend to silence him, Rod?

    Threatening language like that has no place in a civil discussion. You should apologize.

    Dr. John Miller
    @NuclearReporter

  31. Oh right! Anybody who uses evidence and reason is an oppressor. What a nutsy world view! If you believe that, your view of life is delusional.

    Dr. John Miller
    @NuclearReporter

  32. Not surprisingly, you’re as irony-blind as you are ideological.  I was satirizing you.

  33. By shaming him, of course.  Nobody should be able to tell such lies without repercussions.  If Lovins doesn’t have the decency to correct the falsehoods he’s been telling all these years, the least he can do is to stop telling them.

    The same goes for you.  Adams pegged a number of verifiable falsehoods pushed by Lovins.  You characterized this as “little evidence”, and “isn’t any”.  You should be as red-faced as Lovins should be.  Since you obviously are not, you must either be delusional or psychopathic.

  34. Mr. Adams will not be seen as prescient by open-minded people, because he is strongly biased toward nuclear power.

    If you could tell the difference between “bias” and “informed judgement”, you might have had something worthwhile to say there.

    is it progress to leave Pu-239 on Earth when it must be sequestered away from humans for 240,000 years?

    Did you know that there is Pu-244 on Earth, and has been since it was formed?&bnsp; It’s primordial material, created by the supernova which seeded the Solar nebula.  Do you expect to sequester THAT away from humans?  How?

    The “problem” with Pu-239 is the creation of fanatics like you.  All artificial plutonium makes excellent fuel for FBRs.  We’d turn it into energy, if we hadn’t been blocked by ideologues who say on the one hand that it’s too dangerous to have, and also wrong to truly get rid of on the other.  If you didn’t hold (as I satirically pointed out last night) that facts and reason are irrelevant to your position, you could see this.

    That problem alone makes it the worst choice for electrical power in history.

    Such hysterical posturing is why the United States still burns coal four decades after its replacement was firmly in hand, and we have a major and growing problem with anthropogenic climate change.  Grow up.

  35. Whatever they did must have improved the lot of the oil companies, or they wouldn’t have continued buying it year after year.

    But of course, you don’t follow that thought anywhere.  That’s Crimestop in action.  You cannot pursue the notion that the oilco’s may have paid Lovins because he was promoting their interests, even when Adams laid it out in black and white.

    Truly, your commentary is a bunch of scenes lifted straight from Orwell’s dystopia.

  36. Editor note: mjd’s wife informed me that he died laughing after reading Dr. John Miller’s reply to his comment and was unable to hit the submit button. She decided to copy the note from the screen and send it directly to me via email to post if desired.

    From mjd

    @Dr. John Miller

    August 10, 2014 at 1:36 PM you wrote:

    “It’s the most demanding nuclear environment on Earth.”

    Nope, shift supervisor at a large commercial nuclear plant is. I’m not going to understate the responsibility of a sub EOOW, but they are toys compared to commercial nuke plants.
    There is ~900% more equipment (nuke subs are ~10% of commercial plant equipment), stretched over a couple thousand percent more geography (virtually everything inside the owner controlled fence is under the SS responsibility). Additionally subs have the equivalent of 10 licensed operators per shift. I had 4 (counting me), and also your whole “station staff” back-up is never more than 600 ft away on instantaneous immediate call.

    A licensed Site Supervisor on a multi-unit site has all that, compounded.

    A nuke sub is a weapon, operates in an environment with that responsibility compared with a commercial nuke. But pound for pound, there is no comparison with the pressure and demands of a licensed commercial plant shift supervisor.

    I’m sorry your navy experience, both personal and professional, has apparently made you bitter and against nuclear power, but “we’ve come a long way baby” from the retired experimental designs you were exposed to. Even SSN575 held her own, and served well, after NSSS change-out.

    PS from editor – mjd is actually alive and quite well. The part about “dying laughing” above was a joke. MJD — who has previously identified himself in Atomic Insights comment threads as Michael Derivan — was a Shift Supervisor at the Davis Besse Nuclear Power Plant. I published a guest post from him titled TMI Operators Took Actions They Were Trained to Take. Last week I wrote about his quest to clear the names of the TMI-2 operators who have been blamed by many people over the past 35 years as having made operating errors that were a root cause of the accident in an article published on ANS Nuclear Cafe titled Correcting History Can Be an Uphill Battle.

  37. Nuke plants produce a relatively small amount of plutonium. It’s accounted for and out of the environment.

    The alternative has always been coal plants. Many of these produce mercury and other toxins that is spread over the environment. What’s the half life of this stuff? Well – forever. Think of mercury the next time you eat fish. It may be in that fish.

  38. My goodness! Only in bizarro world can reliance on weak, intermittent, and highly variable sources and long transmission distances be considered “modernization”. Is the reintroduction of dung as a power source also considered “modernization”?

    If you’re not advocating for gas either directly or in some transitive way, then the reason why you’d push this very strange advocacy is beyond comprehension.

  39. You guys continue to present what you call “evidence,” and I continue to find it is usually weak, it is often irrelevant to the main arguments, and it is often unfair.

    For instance, in the discussion thread above, somebody castigates Lovins because his efficiency scheme doesn’t also supply the Third World with all the power people there want and deserve to have. So what is a great contribution to humanity is bad in that poster’s mind because it’s not the solution to every human problem. That’s just silly.

    Dr. John Miller
    @NuclearReporter

  40. So where the hell is the verifiable science in this pissing match? Surely, if this debate can be won by the science of either side, one or the other side has to be able to offer an indisputable argument. Instead, this particular thread has gone from bad to worse , little more than a spitting contest. Not a great way for either side to win converts.

    Silly me, I thought science was about finding fact, not finding fault. Tell me, has the back and forth insulting got you guys any closer to “winning” the debate?

    Damn, I wish I knew what I was talking about, then I’d show you, by golly!!!

    But I don’t. So, seeing as how I got no facts to offer, anyone mind if I hurl a few insults? I’m feeling sorta left out.

  41. Nuke plants have produced 70,000 metric tons of waste. Plus, they emit radiation every day in the air and water they release. It’s not out of the environment.

    Dr. John Miller
    @NuclearReporter

  42. @poa

    Sorry to disappoint you, but discussions about energy are not always based on science or even truth. Sometimes they involve business and politics, two areas of human endeavor where the ability to fling and absorb insults is simply part of the skill set required.

    Amory is a prolific propagandist. Nobody would have the time to read a detailed point by point illumination of all of his misstatements. For example, in the very next post after this one, I deconstructed a 15 second sound bite of his from one particular speech. That effort, including quoted statements from public law, ran to nearly 1000 words.

    I’ve quit caring about anyone’s opinion of my methods of argument, especially when I have uncovered abject lack of the high standards of personal integrity with which I was raised and that were reinforced at my alma mater. As the old black and white movies about that place describe, the traditional method of responding to a violation of our honor code was to shun the perpetrator. That action had to be initiated by a quick effort to spread the word about the offensive deed.

  43. Dr. John:

    Well – This article says the chances of the radiation from a nuke plant hurting me are about 1 in a billion. The chances from the radiation from a coal plant hurting me are about 1 in ten million to a hundred million. Heck – Both those odds are better than sunshine. I’ve had lots of sunburns from solar radiation.

    http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/coal-ash-is-more-radioactive-than-nuclear-waste/

    That number 70,000 metric tons sure does sound like a scary number. However, the stuff is the heaviest stuff around so it doesn’t take as much space as other things,

    From this link:

    http://www.americanenergyindependence.com/nuclearwaste.aspx

    ‘As of January 2009, the United States nuclear energy industry, with over 50 years of safe operation, has accumulated about 60,000 metric tons of spent nuclear fuel from its 104 nuclear reactors operating within the U.S. To put this in perspective, if we were to take all the nuclear waste produced to date in the United States and stack it side-by-side, end-to-end, it would cover an area about the size of a football field to a depth of about thirty feet. How Much Nuclear Waste is in the United States?”

    This doesn’t sound so bad. If you can re-use this stuff, it’s quite good.

    And,….. I was referring to plutonium above.

    I googled Nuclear Reporter and got nothing. Please provide a link. Maybe, you’ll get a new convert.

  44. Dr. Miller,

    Respectfully, the world’s poor are purchasing energy at a rapid rate. They are building power plants. Your influence is adding to the fear of Nuclear Power, a misplaced fear and one that makes them much poorer. They are left with two choices. 1. Burn Coal. 2 do without.

    I like Coal but Nuclear is far better in every way. One of the easy examples of what burning coal does is found in China today where the particles in the air are so far above dangerous that people are buying gas masks. I have friends in these cities. It is interesting that China did not power the cities with Wind and Solar – even though most of the Manufacturing for Solar panels is in China? Why do you think that is the case?

    I think it is the case because both Wind and Solar are basically unreliable and EXPENSIVE! Even with the price dropping to 1/2 for solar panels, the cost of a whole system, which includes battery backup (normally lead acid) is nearly the same. In my previous work I ran the numbers for a whole system. The batteries alone will cost as much as the rest of the system. The other system costs, such as mounting, wiring, cleaning etc take up about 25 to 30% of the cost. At the same time, I have to purchase a system with enough generation capacity to charge those batteries during the day and leave me with enough power to run my washing machine at night. The whole system has to be built to carry peak loads – with everything turned on. Frankly, if I can’t run a washing machine when I need it…. the whole point of having power is moot.

    Why a full system? The poor people referred to do not have POWER now. There is NO other backup system.

    I am NOT afraid of radiation. Nor of any material that takes 240,000 years to convert to a stable configuration. I have learned that the longer the 1/2 life… the weaker the radiation. I might as well worry about paper cuts, which I consider a much more major hazard, (blood loss, infections, secondary infections, recurrence each time I use office materials), than material that radiates for 240,000 years.

    Also, I am not impressed with IQ. Smart people also dissimulate. I am impressed with hard work, integrity and the willingness to state the strongest case of your opponent and refute it.

  45. And You did not answer my challenge, what method will supply reliable electricity to the world’s poor? What method do you advocate? Are you willing for them to live with deep energy poverty? Are you willing to force them to live with rolling blackouts? Or are you trying to sell them diesel fuel? I want to sell them NuScale, MPower, Adam’s Atomic Engines, etc.

    I have lived in those areas. Everyone buys a diesel generator for their home and business. You can tell you are in an energy poor area when you see many generators at hotels and businesses. Wind and Solar sell diesel – in most parts of the world and Natural gas when available. This is not a theory on my part, but simple observation and personal participation.

  46. @ Dr Miller,

    “Renewables are a much better solution for the Third World than nuclear. They are cheaper, faster to build, ….”

    No they are not. In terms of the amount of power produced, China is currently building the AP1000 – that is 1 GW of power 24/7 330 days a year on average for a cost under 2000 / kw. Can you show me a complete delivery system of 100% renewables – NO natural gas backup – that will deliver 27/7 330 days a year of power for under 2000 / kw – full cost? If you can show this to me I will gladly purchase one tomorrow for an institution that I sit on the board of. We will sell power to our neighbors and make enough to run the institution from the profits. This is one of the best poverty reduction programs I know of. Factories are attracted to lower cost reliable power and they tend to provide jobs for people of low to medium education.

  47. @ Dr. John Miller,

    “somebody castigates Lovins because his efficiency scheme doesn’t also supply the Third World with all the power people there want and deserve to have. So what is a great contribution to humanity is bad in that poster’s mind because it’s not the solution to every human problem. That’s just silly.”

    Silly me. I am trying to solve every human problem. So, you are fine with supplying Africa with Nuclear power? You are fine with contradicting the hyper fear in Asia (Tiawan and Japan especially) over radiation and Nuclear power? Are you willing to support the use of Nuclear power in Kenya? How about Vietnam, or Myanmar?

    Would you support the use of Small Nuclear reactors – such as the NuScale design in the Algers? How about in Israel or in Iran?

    In other words, where would YOU support the use of Nuclear power? If you are not willing to support this option anywhere, you are saying that you support either Coal or Diesel for the long term future and around the world. In the next 20 years the world is going to power up. This will drive the price of power much much higher unless we use the most energy dense systems we have available. This is a fact. We are already seeing it’s effects.

    Oh, I know, silly me, I have not presented any facts at all.

  48. @ Dr. John Miller,

    70,000 metric tons of waste. According to Pandora’s Promise that amount of waste will cover a football field to a depth of 6 feet. The Plutonium in that is a very small fraction of the total. Yes, we should be afraid, very afraid. Can you share with me the actual effects of radiation releases by Nuclear Power Plants in standard operation? How is this harming people? What is the comparative harm?

    Thank you for your long studied insight into the harm of radiation.

  49. @Dr. Miller

    China is building the AP1000 faster and faster as they gain experience. Let’ see, China has chosen Coal and Nuclear over wind and solar….

    Why is that again?

  50. @ Dr. Miller,

    “Rod, you are just delusional to think that Amory Lovins is in favor of oil. He is not and has never been.”

    So if the effect of his advice is to sell more oil and natural gas.. he would want to change that advice? Selling Wind and Solar sells natural gas and diesel. Or do you challenge that point?

  51. @David

    Two minor corrections. The proper form of the possessive for my last name is Adams’s, but in the context of your statement, the trademark name is Adams Engines.

    I also have to take issue with “Everyone buys a diesel generator for their home and business.” As you well know, the only people who buy diesel generators are those who can afford to buy them. In many cases, because the product of a generator can be so valuable to people, they sacrifice many other things that they could buy with the same money in order to purchase a precious generator and supply it with carefully rationed fuel. Also, many of the people in the areas that you and I are concerned about have neither a home nor a business.

  52. @ Rod,

    Touché 🙂

    And thanks for the correction to my hyperbole over the purchase of generators. What I am seeing is that Coal plants are being built. The world is buying coal from the USA and Australia. Thailand just put Nuclear power off the table and will be looking into Coal. Thailand currently sells a great deal of electricity already into Laos and Cambodia. But you are exactly right that the poorest cannot afford a generator. Standard power lines are being built. A standard infrastructure based on Coal generation and hydro is underway. This is going to work for most of Asia, but the pollution is going to be terrible.

    In many of these countries their deepest concern is that Nuclear is so dangerous that their corrupt governments and cultures cannot build it safely. The newer reactors are seen as safer,but they deeply distrust their culture’s abilities to assemble and operate these safely.

    Kenya is working to establish the regulatory and educational foundations necessary to build Nuclear.

  53. I don’t do challenges. Nuclear is too expensive. Renewables much better fit the scale of third world needs and population distributions.

    Dr. John Miller
    @NuclearReporter

  54. @David

    Overcoming the corrupt governments and cultures is a task that is beyond my capabilities. However, that does not mean that the good people who represent the vast majority of the inhabitants in those oppressed places need to avoid using nuclear energy.

    Just suppose there is a “Mule” (Asimov Foundation reference) somewhere who has a reasonably well-developed concept of building essentially “black box” nuclear generators that need only a supply of cooling air (or water if its readily available) and provide electrical power out. The controls will be simpler than those required to operate a diesel generator. They will be available in a variety of sizes and sold with a variety of financing models, including “build, own, operate.” In fact, that model might be the most preferred in many areas. All the customer needs to provide is cash — or barter — and wires to deliver the power to the places where it is needed.

  55. Well, we disagree. I think it is both physically and financially impossible to store plutonium for 240,000 years. Nobody is going to pay to build a replacement repository 100 years after the original repository, and then do that again every 100 years, a total of 2400 separate buildings.

    Wikipedia says the WIPP repository in New Mexico cost $19 billion total. So in present value dollars, 2,400 WIPPs would cost about $45.6 trillion. That’s about 12,100 times the 2014 U.S. annual federal budget expenditures, again according to Wikipedia. And this calculation doesn’t even take into account the cost of demolishing each building when it no longer seals the waste.

    The money that utilities pay into the waste trust fund will create a pile of money that is a small fraction of the $45.6 trillion, because the payments were calculated on the basis of there only needing to be one waste repository building that would last all 240,000 years.

    So, just on the basis of waste storage costs, nuclear power is the most expensive power ever devised on Earth. Although there are lots of other reasons to reject nuclear power, this one will suffice.

    John

  56. @ Dr. Miller,

    I see, you don’t do challenges but you do assertions. You feel free to simply state that renewables are better for low energy countries without demonstration. You are rapidly loosing credibility. I enjoy a debate. I don’t often have time to engage in this due to work. But your simple assertions – renewables are better – is simply false.

    I will make an assertion – renewables cannot power the factories they are made in. This fact is supported by the observation that regional electric operators in the USA require that 100% of the capacity for Wind and Solar be placed on stand by reserve. This is also supported by the difference in generation capacity compared to the needs of a factory. Large factories need between 1mw / hour to sometimes 200 mw / hour. If the power browns out or blacks out often times the production is ruined totally.

    In some locations Wind or Solar are steady enough to provide some of the power needed, but even large scale wind must have backup. Of course every power system needs backup at some point.

  57. David,

    Unless you have qualified to operate nuclear power plants and have decades of experience doing so, you simply don’t have standing to declare nuclear power safe.

    On the other hand, a person needs no background in nuclear power to be able to spot problems and mistakes. Even a schoolchild can reason well enough to say, “Chernobyl blew up. That’s a problem.”

    The bottom line is that very few pro-nukes have the experience and knowledge to judge whether nuclear power is acceptable. Unfortunately, almost all of them believe in the nuclear dream, so their use and interpretation of evidence is highly biased.

    If we were discussing competing kinds of medical operations to combat heart disease, you wouldn’t be claiming you knew enough about it to declare one of them better than the other. But somehow, when the subject is nuclear power, millions of pro-nuke people are sure it’s clean, safe and cheap, even though they have no formal training or experience. What they have is a passionate belief in the myth that it’s safe, clean and cheap. What they don’t have is the evidence to prove it.

    Dr. John Miller
    @NuclearReporter

  58. @ Dr. Miller,

    WIPP does not need to be built several times. The facility can be expanded to contain vast amounts more material than the original design. This is because it is a hole in the ground leading to a vast salt deposit. No need to rebuild over and over.

    Second, Plutonium is a fuel. The best way to get rid of it is to burn it in a breeder reactor.

  59. Dr. Miller,

    What evidence would be acceptable to you? I am not a trained expert, but I have spent several years listening to them, reading them, and checking the basic science behind their assertions. Their claims cohere.

    The claims that Nuclear is uniquely dangerous do not cohere and I only need a few seconds of searching to find that death tolls from other energy sources are far higher than anything that comes from the Nuclear power industry. Thus, while not a safety expert, I can assess the difference between the numbers of people killed by various types of power production using publicly available numbers.

    Do you have links to resources to challenge my understanding that Nuclear kills fewer people than any other power resource, except perhaps Wind? James Conca summarizes below. I think he does have the credentials to speak to this point.

    http://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2012/06/10/energys-deathprint-a-price-always-paid/

  60. I have never seen a calculation to show that 70,000 metric tons can be spread over a football field only to a height of six feet. Until I see one, I will reserve judgment about whether that claim is true.

    If you figure it out, then each square foot of the football field is supporting 2,680 pound of weight. That’s over 1.25 US tons per foot, but the pile of waste is only six feet high. That claim is hard to believe.

    What is clear is that the mere weight of the waste would create a mini-China syndrome, because the football field dirt will be compressed downward!

    To your other questions, every commercial nuclear power plant emits radiation in the air and water releases it makes daily. It also releases much more radiation to the air when it is refueled, on the order of 1000 times as much per operating day.

    Likewise, reprocessing plants release even higher amounts of radiation to the air as they cut apart spent fuel and gases trapped inside escape.

  61. To David,

    Selling wind and solar is not selling natural gas. Utilities are free to purchase whatever backup power they prefer.

    Dr. John Miller
    @NuclearReporter

  62. @Dr. Miller,

    I did not ask if Nuclear plants release radiation. I asked for the comparative harm done by that radiation. thank you for your input.

  63. @Dr. John Miller

    You are repeatedly publishing misinformation. Please perform your self-assigned task in a different location.

    BTW – Just in case anyone here is confused, Atomic Insights is a moderated forum that is a bit akin to a series of discussions held in a personal living room. There are no firm rules other than keep the discussion interesting, don’t berate other guests, and back up assertions with some references. Occasional violations don’t necessarily halt the open invitation to participate, but repeated violations will result in an invitation to leave and not let the door hit you on the way out.

    Of course, in the virtual world, automated tools might be used to simulate the effect of locking the door or changing the meeting location without informing those who have been disinvited.

  64. Dr. Miller,

    According to Pandora’s Promise 1:15 minutes in, the actual depth would be 3 meters for the whole 70,000 tons. Sorry for the mis-statement. I was off by nearly a whole meter. The point of this is not to suggest a way to store the fuel, but to illustrate the actual volume of the “problem.” I would also point out that this whole amount could be converted into fuel in a fast breeder reactor.

    Am I accurate? Have I understood the situation correctly?

  65. @ david

    I too would like to see Dr. Miller’s answer, despite the obvious: China doesn’t need the red herring / loss leader to support an extremely powerful, combersome and expensive oil and gas plutocracy.

  66. @ Dr. Miller

    Either back up the following comment with documentation from a reputable source or stop pushing the comment onto unsuspecting people:

    To your other questions, every commercial nuclear power plant emits radiation in the air and water releases it makes daily. It also releases much more radiation to the air when it is refueled, on the order of 1000 times as much per operating day.

    Where is the NRC or EPA data to back up that claim of 1000x? Both organizations are required by federal regulations to monitor and track radioactive emissions from commercial nuclear power plants with the NRC taking the lead for operating reactors.

    Here is what the NRC requires of every commercial nuclear reactor plant:

    The concentration of radionuclides that may be released is limited to levels which, if inhaled or ingested continuously over the course of a year, would produce a dose of no more than 100 millirem

    (Emphasis is mine)

    That would be a 100mr dose above background if inhaled or ingested continuously Since no one lives 24/7 at a nuclear facility and there are exclusion areas around each facility, the 100mr dose is very, very conservative.

    That exclusion area is one reason many nuclear facilities are known for the wildlife that congregates. I have been to several facilities that grow crops near the plant boundaries which means the crops are safe to eat and therefore the plant is NOT emitting dangerous levels of radiation to the public.

    Let me help you start down that road of proving your 1000x hyperbole. Here is the NRC’s website discussing how they meet their federal requirements:

    http://www.nrc.gov/about-nrc/radiation/protects-you/radiation-monitoring.html

    Now doing a thought exercise by assuming you are correct that each and every plant emits 1000x during refuel operations, then each and every plant is approximately at the 0.1mr level annually at the fence based on the federal regs of limiting each and every plant to 100mr annually. The 100mr dose is an accumulated number not a continuous dose rate number.

    I am not losing sleep over those miniscule numbers since there just isn’t anything to worry about. So stop the FUD.

  67. Dr. John:

    Natural gas is the natural choice as it can be online quickly, is inexpensive, readily available and a pretty clean fuel. I’d think a PUC would be on the utility’s case if they chose another source. The use of renewables is a great stimulus to the increased use of natural gas. Natural gas producers show those windmills in their ads with a great big smile.

    Coal and nukes do not have the ability to go online as quickly when the wind dies down.

    Selling wind and solar is akin to selling natural gas. I happen to like windmills and solar power, but they are just not available all the time.

  68. Is the reintroduction of dung as a power source also considered “modernization”?

    @John Chatelle

    Do you consider it “weak” that generation from renewables will “surpass that from natural gas and double that from nuclear power by 2016” (here)

    When you have any facts to add to the conversation (beyond what appear to be musings on feces), please be my guest.

  69. This fact is supported by the observation that regional electric operators in the USA require that 100% of the capacity for Wind and Solar be placed on stand by reserve.

    @David.

    Where do you get this silliness?

  70. @Eino

    I love wind and Solar too, but the idea that sunshine will scale up to powering the grid is tragic-funny; availability is only part of why it won’t.

    A canoe was great for transporting Beaver pelts from the hinterland to the trading post, but can a billion of them also substitute economically for a trans oceanic container ship? Why would anyone suppose sunshine can power a grid? I realize what the dream is for people; Sunshine is so darn innocuous. ‘If we only had a billion solar panels….’

    Of course the rent seekers take advantage of the mindlessness. As we have seen, those that advocate oil and gas, employ, NGOs through mostly transitive means to raise the confusion level, advocate wind and solar as a distraction, and keep the discussion complex and pretentious. To do so always reminds me of the work of the con. From as low a level as the “artful dodger”, up to the early 21st century banking/energy Con, a component of the Con is always to distract, cause confusion, or simply to raise the complexity, such as repealing Glass-Steagall was for the great banking con, which doubled the complexity of commercial banking by adding in investment banking. So that Con began, so continues the great Energy Con. If there is one lesson I want all of America to learn from the first decades of the 21st century, is to finally realize that parsimony is the enemy of the Con Artist. Amory Lovins is a classic example of breaking parsimony using all the tools of his trade, but even a lowley artful dodger will cause a distraction or aim to confuse. A more sophisticated con artist adds feigned complexity to get the desired result.

  71. @EL

    I consider your comment “weak” because the press release to which you linked did not say that “renewables” will “surpass that from natural gas…”

    The actual quote was “Power generation from hydro, wind, solar and other renewable sources worldwide will exceed that from gas and be twice that from nuclear by 2016,”

    Once again, renewable advocates love spreading a big tent to include hydro, wood, wood waste, municipal solid waste, dung, and black liquor, in addition to wind and solar when they want to emphasize the size of their market share. However, when it comes time to give credit to large hydro or some of the other marginally “renewable” sources in meeting Renewable Portfolio Standards or gaining other incentives available to “renewable” energy, the tent shrinks rather dramatically.

  72. @ el

    Do you consider it “weak” that generation from renewables will “surpass that from natural gas and double that from nuclear power by 2016″

    Certainly not the power sources you’re advocating. El, I grew up on the banks of the Racquette river. It falls off the Adirondack plateau with one variable pond at the top, and several run of the river dams down through Potsdam NY. I can safely say this power source not only predates your advocacy, but it predates both of us. Lets face it: You’re pushing sunshine and breezes as an alternative to natural gas, and deep in your bones, you know you’re advocating nonsense. The Hydro power I know, including the power of the St Lawrence river predate your nonsense. Sunshine, breezes and now Dung (feces as you like to phrase it) are 3 power sources you’d like to see as the competition to gas and oil.

    The odd think is, dung actually can supply a higher power density than either of your favorites: sunshine and breezes. Your advocacy is THAT strange.

    I like your little article. I didn’t but scan it, but I did notice it use the work “renewable” 25 times, and used the word intermittent “0” (goose egg) times.
    A little slanted, can’t you agree?

    Perhaps you’d better tell them that sunshine and breezes are quite intermittent. They don’t seem tor realize it, or simply prefer to overlook it.

  73. A lot going in in your comment there EL.

    So just picking out one point to discuss

    A well managed grid should have very low curtailment rates for renewables (especially with adequate storage or demand response options available). I’m not aware of anybody doing current planning for a poorly developed and inadequately supplied grid. I don’t think this is a reasonable assumption in planning and advocating for different energy alternatives in the future.

    So let’s unpack a few things:

    1. Where is anyone suggesting that the grid shouldn’t be well managed? Your comment: I’m not aware of anybody doing current planning for a poorly developed and inadequately supplied grid. appears to be a straw man argument. What is being discussed is the mix of generation sources to be used to deliver reliable electricity to the end user 24/7/365. A focus on a concentrated, non-CO2 emitting generation source that can meet on-demand response curves; or a dependency on diffuse generation source that is subject to variable inputs, i.e. weather, wind and sun insolation levels, which then requires a massive overbuild and wires strung everywhere to move electricity long distances from remote areas?

    2. Low curtailment rate is one of the sticking points. Why should wind and solar be guaranteed low curtailment rates if they are not paying something to maintain first right to the wires? Why should dependable power generators be penalized (i.e. loss of revenue) just because the wind is blowing or the sun is shining for a few hours on that day? Nuclear, coal or natural gas are not the reason wind and solar are variable, wind and solar are naturally variable. Nuclear, coal and natural gas shouldn’t have to pick up the tab for wind and solar developers to have first right to the wires.

    3. Low curtailment rates also require grid scale storage. Grid scale storage is the inherent weakness of wind and solar and is something that has yet to be implemented due to cost, technology constraints and geographical limitations. If wind and solar are to be competitive then wind and solar developers need to participate in creating storage systems that function successfully without massive environmental damage.

    Lead acid and lithium batteries are not environmentally sound on a massive grid scale level. Additional pumped hydro is 7-10 years away-minimum-unless already permitted but is also limited by geography as there is only so much land left available for pumped hydro in the US. Drought is a hydro killer as California is finding out the hard way.

    CAES is also anywhere from 3-20 years away from being a dependable grid scale storage mechanism but is also geographically limited (by the way CAES also requires natural gas to compress the air if insufficient wind or solar power is available, so that solution is not really removing the fossil fuel component.)

    So you are getting into wishful thinking arena by suggesting low curtailments are possible now without proven grid scale storage. Wind and solar are uncontrollable and highly variable power sources in a system that requires full power 24/7/365 in a steady state condition. Therefore wind and solar are dependant on natural gas to meet the other approximately 70% of time when wind and solar are not available.

    We must also resist the temptation to reduce the margin in our distribution system as others have suggested. Our distribution system must be based on peak load not a load shedding mindset. But there are some who believe the grid has sufficient margin and that margin can somehow magically buffer the swings the system sees when wind fluctuates and the sun disappears for the night. The grid is a point-to-point transmission system not a magic storage device.

  74. @Bill Rodgers

    Excellent. I would add one more consideration that is often overlooked. As shown by experience, natural gas delivery capabilities can be stressed enough during severe cold spells to put numerous power plants out of commission. Due to lack of fuel because of competition with heating loads, freeze-offs at the power station, or other effects, large portions of the natural gas fleet can be rendered inoperative at a time when a loss of power is particularly dangerous.

    Two examples include a cold spell in the highly gas dependent southwest in February 2011 and in the increasingly gas dependent northeast during the winter of 2013-2014.

    If natural gas is the fuel of choice to provide reliability, the ultimate backup now seems to be a several day supply of distillate fuel oil stored mostly on site at dual fuel power stations. That is why New England ended up getting about 25% of its electricity supply during January-February 2014 from petroleum.

    http://isonewswire.com/updates/2014/4/4/oil-inventory-was-key-in-maintaining-power-system-reliabilit.html

    Dual fuel capable combined cycle plants are incapable of running on “residual.” They are finely tuned machines with close tolerances. They use sophisticated materials in the combustion turbine parts of the system. They would be ruined unless provided “the good stuff.”

  75. If you figure it out, then each square foot of the football field is supporting 2,680 pound of weight. That’s over 1.25 US tons per foot, but the pile of waste is only six feet high. That claim is hard to believe.

    This is unintentional hilarity on Dr. Miller’s part, a breathtaking display of scientific illiteracy.  Had he merely kept to SI units, he would have found that 2680 pounds is 1215 kg and a volume 3.048×3.048×20 decimeters is 185.8 liters, requiring a density of just 6.54 to place that mass on that area.  The density of uranium dioxide is 10.97, uranium metal is 19.1.

    What is clear is that the mere weight of the waste would create a mini-China syndrome

    What is clear from the above is that a doctorate in psychology does not guarantee that the holder is capable of putting emotional responses aside in order to think clearly, even about relatively simple factual matters.

  76. I have never been sure whether Miller is a paid liar or just possessed of abysmal ignorance, congenital idiocy and an enjoyment of undeserved attention.

    This statement furthers the mystery:
    “I have never seen a calculation to show that 70,000 metric tons can be spread over a football field only to a height of six feet. Until I see one, I will reserve judgment about whether that claim is true.

    If you figure it out, then each square foot of the football field is supporting 2,680 pound of weight. That’s over 1.25 US tons per foot, but the pile of waste is only six feet high. That claim is hard to believe.

    What is clear is that the mere weight of the waste would create a mini-China syndrome, because the football field dirt will be compressed downward!”

    The air pressure at sea level is approximately 15 lbs/in^2. Over a square foot, that is 12in X 12in X 15lbs/in^2 (that’s 12 inches per foot for Miller, who may not know this, despite his inimical nuclear engineering qualifications). Which is 2160 pounds from air pressure alone. Yet, Miller believes that increasing the load on dirt to something slightly more than twice that of natural air pressure will drill a hole to China. Really?

    Did you bother to calculate that 2680 pounds over a square foot is only 18.6 lbs per square inch. A rather miniscule pressure in engineering terms.

    If your fear/assertion were true, then everywhere that the ocean is deeper than 30 feet, it would be drilling a hole to China.

    Further telling of his ignorance and overweening arrogance is the statement, “I have never seen a calculation to show…”

    Really? This is a pathetically easy density/volume calculation. You must “see” one? You can’t do one yourself? You mean to say that the big well educated nuclear engineer can’t do a calculation that any middle schooler should be able to easily perform?

    Let’s see. A football field has 120 yards X 3 feet X 53.3 yards X 3 feet (ignoring end zones) of area = 57600 square feet. 57,600 square feet to a depth of 6 feet is
    345,600 cubic feet. The density of water is about 60 lbs/cubic foot.

    So, simply covering a football field in water would weigh (345,600 X 60)/2200 = 9425 metric tons (2200 pounds to the metric ton).

    In order for 70,000 metric tons of nuclear waste to fit on a football field in a height of 6 feet, it need only be 70,000/9425 = 7.42 times as dense as water.

    Uranium is more than 18 times as dense as water. Plutonium is similar. Zirconium is 6.5 times as dense as water.

    70,000 metric tons of nuclear waste will easily fit onto a football field to a depth of 6 feet, unless one is going to insist on including packing materials and other such.

    The simplest of math and calculations, except to Lovins and his ilk. It’s still a mystery whether they’re incapable or just refuse to admit they can do the calculations because it would highlight their lies.

  77. Well, you might start with the fact that Miller above can’t do a simple volume/density calculation and thinks that an additional 18.6 lbs/in^2 of pressure will poke a hole to China. Hint, air pressure is 15 PSI and under water the pressure increases by one atmosphere every 30 feet. Why haven’t the oceans poked a hole through the ground to China?

    Why does Miller need someone to “show” him such a calculation if he’s such a great and powerful nuclear engineer. This is science and math that a moderately well educated 6th grader should be able to do.

    Or he could notice that 70000 metric tons divided by a football field to a depth of 6 feet leaves one with a density about 7.4 times that of water. Uranium is more than 18 times as dense as water. Zirconium is 6.5 times as dense as water. It think that 70,000 lbs of nuclear waste will fit in the volume with room to spare, unless we must also include packing material.

    Again, simple, simple volume density calculations and moments with a search engine to find material densities, yet Miller is incapable of these calculations. He bemoans the fact that no one has ever “shown” them to him.

    One doesn’t refute every single argument, once it is established that the writer is either misinformed, ignorant or intentionally misleading. The level of either arrogance or evil demonstrated by the likes of Miller and Lovins is breathtaking. They have no qualifications, no education, and no technical ability, yet they want to seize the reigns of policy for the USA, if not the world, and condemn the populations to an ever decreasing standard of living and higher levels of poverty.

    Just astounding arrogance from (literally) useless example of humanity.

  78. Oh, the above was in response to POA’s, “So where the hell is the verifiable science in this pissing match?”

  79. Oh, and change, “It think that 70,000 lbs of nuclear waste ” to “I think that 70,000 metric tons of nuclear waste”.

  80. Unless you have qualified to operate nuclear power plants and have decades of experience doing so, you simply don’t have standing to declare nuclear power safe.

    And plenty of people with that experience have done so.

    Unfortunately, almost all of them believe in the nuclear dream, so their use and interpretation of evidence is highly biased.

    Ah, trying to impose a Catch-22:  anyone who DOES have said experience, but doesn’t agree with your (completely without experience) position, is “a believer in the nuclear dream” and thus unqualified.  This is a Kafkatrap, a pernicious abuse of rhetoric that pretty much eliminates any claim the user can make to arguing in good faith.

    We knew that about you already, but it’s nice to have a textbook example to point at.

    a person needs no background in nuclear power to be able to spot problems and mistakes. Even a schoolchild can reason well enough to say, “Chernobyl blew up. That’s a problem.”

    You don’t need a background in coal power to look at acid-killed forests and melting ice caps, and say “That’s a problem”.  You do need a background in science to be able to run numbers, look at the claims being made for “renewables” and how the practice is massive amounts of fossil fuel consumption regardless of the “renewable” theory, and conclude “that is a VERY BIG problem”.  Plenty of people have done it; the problem is the ideologues have Kafkatrapped their justifications for not paying attention.

    It takes a mind capable of cutting through the nonsense about “nuclear disasters” to stop and say, “Wait a minute, there weren’t even any injuries at Three Mile Island.  Over 2000 people have died from the forced evacuation at Fukushima, but none from radiation.  How many people have died from the air pollution put out by the fossil generators running to replace the other 50-something nuclear plants?  The real disaster here is a FOSSIL and POLICY disaster!”

    You do not have such a mind.  Your position is safely within the herd.

    If we were discussing competing kinds of medical operations to combat heart disease, you wouldn’t be claiming you knew enough about it to declare one of them better than the other.

    Of course you could!  You wouldn’t need to know much about the surgery itself, just the survival and morbidity rates by diagnosis and surgical center.  Just like you don’t need to know everything about power systems, just the carbon emissions rates of countries using different technologies.  Nuclear and hydro are far and away the best for the world, and that assumes e.g. no methane from submerged forests due to hydro.

    What you’ve been doing is close to textbook Postmodernist argument:  claim that we don’t know the right things or can’t know anything, therefore you’re right.  It’s nasty stuff, and the fact that our most prestigious institutions of learning actually teach this as valid shows how far they’ve fallen.  I suspect you’re one of the people who pushed.

  81. @Engineer-Poet : “I suspect you’re one of the people who pushed”

    No, he never had such academic weight. However those who gave him a social psychology PhD for a political-science essay might have.

  82. ” We’d experience 5-10 Kohm grounds almost every month. That little resistance to current flowing to ground essentially meant some piece of equipment was heating up and starting to smoke because of current travelling from the equipment to ground.” That statement speaks VOLUMES about your “engineering” knowledge. It indicates both the fact that you have no idea why the Navy monitors the resistance to ground AND your complete lack of BASIC (and I emphasize BASIC) electrical theory.

    You also claim that ” Nuclear is not safe, it is not cheap, and it is not clean.” Then why does Nuclear power have a better safety record than even that of the average financial Institution? Why does facility retired from sell power for less than 4 cents per KWH to commercial/industrial companies? Why does Nuclear produce the least amount of CO2 per DELIVERED kilowatt to the customer?

    You, of all “engineers” know that the only reason that the USA is not reusing used nuclear fuel is to make it more costly and provide other impediments to the use of nuclear power.

    You love Wind/Solar why not look at where and how all of the exotic rare earth minerals are coming from and processed and the “tailings” disposed of for these programs and the needed batteries. Then multiply that horrendous environmental impact by the multiplier needed to provide “100% renewable energy.” We will need to increase our “super Fund” cleanup by several orders of magnitude. The only advantage I see is that the effects will help keep the population down and help the I=PAT equation.

    PS. I, with, only one year of college, also “qualified as the officer in charge of [a] submarine reactor.” I also know of at least 10 others that had minimal or no college that also qualified as EOOW, It was EXPECTED for all CPO’s and senior PO1’s on most subs when I served. Your statement may impress Non-nuclear Navy readers of your blog, but not those that have served in the Navy.

  83. Lovins is wrong about Germany which means he will be wrong about the US … German lignite coal usage has ramped up to its highest level since 1990′s.

    @Bill Rogers

    Could you please provide some actual facts for this?

    Comparing first seven months of electricity production in 2014 to first seven months in 2013: gas is down -24.3%, hard coal is down -11.6%, and brown coal is down -5.2%. That’s a drop of 41.1% in fossil fuels.

    http://www.ise.fraunhofer.de/en/downloads-englisch/pdf-files-englisch/data-nivc-/electricity-production-from-solar-and-wind-in-germany-2014.pdf

    Energy resources seeing gains are: wind (20%), solar (16.9%), and biomass (10.5%) for a total increase of 47.4%. If the germans are switching to a “natural gas based system that uses temporary wind and solar,” as you claim, this isn’t showing up in the numbers. Care to explain?

  84. @EL

    Lovins had attempted to state that Germany is becoming self sufficient on renewables which, as Rod discusses above, includes all hydro assets in Germany. Yet he makes it appear in one of his latest Forbes blog entries that wind and solar without storage are sufficient to run the German grid.

    However two issues indicate he us playing funny with the data again.

    First is that Germany used more coal in the past 12-18 months then since the early 1990″s. BBC had several articles on this several months ago.

    Second issue is that various industrial companies have had to spend thousands to install emergency generation at their sites to resolve frequency and voltage issues. One company almost lost their fabrication equipment when they experienced a frequency variation that shit down their processing line. That problem is popping up more frequently and is becoming a drag on company finances.

    So while more electricity is being temporarily generated by solar or wind, Germany is still quite dependant on lignite coal as they have opened more mines in their own country. And business are looking to move from Germany to reduce their operating costs and exposure to the imposed transition plan.

    The transition has become very expensive. Germany just revised their subsidies to reduce the amount of taxpayer money going to solar and wind. Another Lovins favorite tactic to reclassify subsides as something else. Germany like Spain is now feeling the financial pain of those subsidies.

    So he is wrong to indicate the transition hasn’t increased coal usage and he is wrong to deny by exclusion the fundamental operational issues that a deep penetration of wind and solar put on a nation’s grid.

  85. Really bad case of fat fingers this morning.

    I was trying to type SHUT down.

    Apologize for that bad case of fat finger typing.

  86. @Bill Rodgers

    Do you have any sources that indicate the scale of the installation of generators at industrial facilities? If German reporting agencies have similar policies to those in the US, any power that gets produced in those generators is no longer counted in the national electricity statistics. Only utilities and power suppliers above a certain size are required to report; individual industrial generating plants are generally below the requirement line.

    Depending on the scale of the trend, it might help explain how Germany’s industrial production seems to be keeping up while total electrical power use is slowly falling.

  87. Just for the record my previous response to EL was written before looking at the link provided.

    I didn’t even make it past page 2 before I saw what I had expected to see.

    Electricity production from nuclear power plants was on the level of the previous years. Brown coal fired power plants have produced about 4% less compared to the record year of 2013. However, the production was at the high level of 2012 and about 5% above the average of the last 10 years.

    So while solar and wind generation is putting more onto the grid this past 6 months in Germany, brown coal usage is still above the 10 year average.

    See EL, with a variable weather dependant generation source such as wind and solar and with the government sponsored subsidy programs backing them up financially, it is important to look at both long term trends and hourly operational issues, not just month over month data or week over week data. Right now the trend appears that brown coal usage will be above its long term average for the foreseeable future. With more lignite mines opening up in Germany that upward trend, both in usage and on average, appears to be more solidified.

    That data you supplied would also indicate more lignite coal is being burned now then was being burned years ago when the Energiewende program was started. Which would indicate that as a result of working to shut their nuclear generation down and push more variable generation sources onto their grid, they are burning more coal than they were 10 years ago. This is my interpretation of the data you supplied.

    And as is expected on pg 10, solar was shown ramping up this year as the seasons progressed. Which means that for the rest of the year solar will ramp back down. Not a surprise. But solar needs something to back it up at night. That is the sticking point of solar.

    While from an overall average standpoint the day to day and year to year trends are slightly more predictable then for wind, solar still requires baseload generation to provide electricity to users as solar power drops. That is why Cohen had that slide in his presentation in the other post. To point out that solar requires backup and that cost to supply a grid system with 100% of power can not be dropped off magically as Lovins and others keep doing.

    Solar and wind can not be considered in isolation. They are one part of a large system and that system has requirements to be met to be fully functional.

    And I was not indicating Germans are switching to natural gas. They would have to either allowing fracking or watch a lot of their hard earned money go to Russia. To clear that point up, I was referring to the US system where various political appointees are pushing for more natural gas to be the main electrical generation source with solar and wind as eye candy to appease the enviros.

  88. Hello Rod,

    The short answer to your question is no, not yet. It is one that I have on my list to research. When the article on Der Speigel surfaced regarding the company that did lose their production run and almost lost their fab equipment, I started specifically looking for the number of kw’s installed at that one facility. However due to workload and family commitments (and watching the Lovins videos you linked) I haven’t had a chance to go deep into that data research yet.

    You hit on a point that I have on my list as questions to resolve. Primarily is the additional capacity being installed by German industrial companies providing not just emergency backup, in case voltage and/or frequency issues crop up, BUT are they now shifting to use their own generation resources on a localized level to ensure they have sufficient power for their industrial process lines.

    The initial research I have been able to do indicates deep cycle batteries and diesel generators are being installed which is not a surprise. That is exactly what I would do if I were managing a fabrication line and needed a quick response emergency generation source.

    It will be interesting to see over time if that additional localized generation is actually lowering the total electricity power usage from the national German grid. And if that localized generation is primarily based on diesel fuel then the question will be if anything was actually accomplished by trying for high penetration levels for wind and solar from a overall system standpoint?

    The report that EL linked shows power being exported but the question then goes back to what generation sources are being displaced in the other countries? Exporting is not necessarily proof of anything until a full study of energy flows across the European continent is completed for the countries that accepted the electricity.

    For example Switzerland transmits electricity to Italy through 12 inter-ties based on a quick search. So if German wind/solar/lignite generated electricity going to Switzerland allowed Switzerland to sell nuclear generated electricity to Italy thereby allowing Italy to reduce its gas consumption, was anything really gained from an overall systems standpoint?

    Are those electricity export levels sustainable financially and operationally over a long period of time?

    Is there an offset to the German ratepayers for exporting power to other countries?

    Or is the German ratepayer and taxpayer paying higher rates for the required overbuild of wind and solar which then potentially pushes power onto the grids of other countries when generation is higher in Germany then demand? If so then that would indicate Germany is subsidizing not just their power system but other power systems in other countries as well.

    If demand response technology is working in Germany then why are they exporting so much electricity to other countries? Wouldn’t curtailment of generation sources be the way to go if demand response was working? How is a system moving to a variable input generation source become sufficiently financially viable to export electricity?

    So many questions, so little time to research them.

  89. However two issues indicate he us playing funny with the data again.

    First is that Germany used more coal in the past 12-18 months then since the early 1990″s. BBC had several articles on this several months ago.

    Second issue is that various industrial companies have had to spend thousands to install emergency generation at their sites to resolve frequency and voltage issues. One company almost lost their fabrication equipment when they experienced a frequency variation that shit down their processing line. That problem is popping up more frequently and is becoming a drag on company finances.

    @Bill Rogers.

    You really have to start providing facts for your statements (as I have done showing declines and less reliance on coal).

    You appear to have sources (but just don’t want to provide them). And I am familiar with some of the articles you are referencing, and they are no better then individual businesses harping on typical business costs (which may or may not be rising for them as a consequence of Energiewende). Companies regularly complain about high taxes and costs as they lobby for specific favors and exemptions. This is not a sign of a larger trend, unless a larger trend is indicated. Indeed, playing funny with the data (and relying on personal anecdotes) appears to be a somewhat larger trend in this thread than has previously been claimed.

  90. First as I have stated with Dr. John Miller many times, I’m not your research assistant. I don’t mean that in a sarcastic manner. I have an interest in discussing nuclear power and Rod’s blog provides me an outlet for developing comments which I then use in my discussions with members of the general public or my coworkers who have little experience talking about nuclear issues with the general public. Your commentary is a window into the the anti-nuclear talking points and mindset.

    However because of my workload and time available to comment, I sometimes will not provide links. That is just life. I am not writing a thesis paper for a dissertation, white paper or analysis for a paying customer when I make comments here. This is on my time when I comment here so I feel that if, at a minimum, I provide the base point of where I am getting my information then curious people can go look on their own by using their preferred research tools. Now if I am making a controversial point or I want to pass information along to others, I make an effort to provide the source documents. Higher lignite coal usage in Germany is not a controversial concept with most people who work in the utility industry, something your own link indicated.

    Secondly I provided the source of the coal usage information which was an easily accessible place: BBC news.

    Third, Google is a very easy to use tool.

    Fourth point is that some of us reply using mobile tools that aren’t always conducive to cut and paste of links into this comment field as I did this time. Therefore some of my comments here will not provide links just because I am in a hurry or for other reasons that are specific to that moment in time.

    Final point. You have come here repeatedly to argue about and against nuclear power with people who have spent years in the field. Many of us have sources of information and experiences that sometimes are not in convenient form to provides links. So open the mind a bit and think outside the box, don’t assume I or others are trying to hide information from you. I may be guilty of technospeak or nuclear elitism at times but not of hiding information.

    And if you haven’t noticed, I still haven’t provided the links. This is a case where I think searching for the information on your own would provide some value. Taking more of a research path instead of the simple click-on-the-link step might provide you some experience with other sources of information then the usual pathways you use.

    Sometimes taking a different path to seek information helps us see things in a different light. It is the reason I look at most anti-nuclear information that is provided to me. I will travel that path, repeatedly if necessary, to see if my conclusions still hold up after being challenged by people such as yourself. Or even challenged by Lovins’ anti-nuclear talking points since Rod has recently provided that path to walk. Bottom line is that I have yet to hear a convincing argument against nuclear power and I have been listening to the anti-nuclear talking points for decades.

  91. @Bill Rodgers

    Excellent explanation of why commentary from energy industry professionals is far more interesting and valuable to me than the kind of repetitious tripe often contributed by die-hard antinuclear activists who could not be bothered to complete any technical education before deciding they knew more about our specialty that we do.

    @EL

    You wrote to Bill – You appear to have sources (but just don’t want to provide them).

    Exactly. We have many linear feet of sources, some of which have been committed to memory, and many of which are not available in a form that can be easily shared.

    Believe it or not, young whippersnapper that you are, some of us realize that a goodly portion of the world’s collected knowledge is not available with a URL. Does that sound a little condescending? Good. It was supposed to.

  92. Electricity production from nuclear power plants was on the level of the previous years. Brown coal fired power plants have produced about 4% less compared to the record year of 2013. However, the production was at the high level of 2012 and about 5% above the average of the last 10 years.

    @Bill Rogers.

    This explains nothing! With wind and solar up 36.9% compared to the same period last year, and brown coal down -5.2%, hard coal down -11.6%, and gas down -24.3%, this is not support for your argument that increases in renewables must necessarily be met by boosts in fossil fuels. German consumption of coal was 269 million short tons in 2012 (here) and in early 90s it was in excess of 334 million short tons and as high as 407 (1991 – 1993), so your facts as you have not substantiated them are incorrect. If coal consumption has been flat for last 10 years, generation from solar and wind went from 603 GWh in 1993 (here) to 79.9 TWh in 2013, and currently makes up 13.7% of the electrify mix in Germany. Where is the comparable rise in coal (Lovins, you write, is “wrong to indicate the transition hasn’t increased coal usage”).

    … it is important to look at both long term trends and hourly operational issues, not just month over month data or week over week data.

    I agree, which is why I am curious why you are NOT following your own recommendation and advice?

    We’ve talked about German coal production before, what is driving new construction, and why this has nothing to do with Energiewende and a current glut in energy supplies as a consequence of rising renewables. Sure, Germany has a brand new supercritical and highly efficient (low carbon emitting) best in show lignite plant that it first commissioned in 2005. Plant retirements are continuing, the industry is not rebounding, and plans for 20 new coal plants have been cancelled since 2007 (here). Carbon prices are set to quadruple in the coming years.

    Your dearth of information and analysis leaves a great deal to be desired. Instead of expecting other people to do the work for you, you’re going to have to start doing it yourself. Reading articles and not properly understanding the context, and summarizing them incorrectly (or even advancing errors and faulty claims) in what you presume to be authoritative posts, is not cutting it. Commenting on posts without reading the links provided is not cutting it either. We shouldn’t have to spend so much time cleaning up after your posts (it would be great, and a service to us, to simply provide better and more accurate information in the first place).

  93. @Rod

    Have you researched “DR. Miller’s” Naval accomplishments/ history? This statement in his CV sounds very strange to me. “I stood watches first as the officer running the nuclear reactor and later as the officer controlling the entire ship. Off watch I supervised 25 men full-time, including sonarmen, radiomen, electronics technicians, cooks and storekeepers.”
    As the LPO for the RC division on two subs I had to break-in at least four new officers. The RC Division typically was the first assignment on both of these two subs for the “boot” (newest) officer, as it was the smallest and typically the division with the fewest problems. This allowed him to qualify on the nuclear watch stations and in Submarines, which had a short timeframe. I know of only one officer that completed NPS, was assigned to a sub, qualified as an EOOW and was then was assigned to, what appears by his description, as a non-nuclear billet. The reasons were never fully explained to the enlisted personnel, but it happened shortly after a failed ORSE Board exam. We ended up on emergency DC power for over 4 hours (real – not a drill), and other significant problems – and he was the EOOW. His description just sounds weird. I know of no nuclear trained officers that “supervised – sonarmen, radiomen, electronics technicians, cooks and storekeepers” other than the CO/XO and other senior officers – “Full LT is not a senior officer IMO. Some of the new officers were full LT by the time they got finished with NPS and from NROTC, etc. I also know of no non-nuclear trained officers that “Qualified” as EOOW. Is this something new? But he claims this was in the 70’s, and that is when I was in the Navy.

  94. @EL

    German consumption of coal was 269 million short tons in 2012 (here) and in early 90s it was in excess of 334 million short tons and as high as 407 (1991 – 1993), so your facts as you have not substantiated them are incorrect.

    How much of that coal consumption in the period of 1991-1993 was in the former East Germany? Coal consumption in the reunified Germany fell dramatically in the years after 1990 (the base year for Kyoto, by the way) as many energy inefficient production facilities in the East were shut down.

    http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/231186/Germany/233611/Economic-unification-and-beyond

  95. @Rod Adams

    I haven’t found data available on this basis. More recently, of the 20 coal plants cancelled since 2007, 4 were in the East and 16 in the West. Of the 6 put on hold for same period, only 1 was in the East (here).

    Western States appear to be doing a much better job cleaning up their coal production. Eastern states still have a ways to go (and it is my understanding many rules are still in place and have yet to phase out protecting the industry in the East). Continuing to operate these plants at a loss will not be a winning strategy if electricity remains in glut (and net exports at all time highs).

  96. We have many linear feet of sources, some of which have been committed to memory, and many of which are not available in a form that can be easily shared.

    @Rod Adams

    So it’s permissible to talk in vague abstractions if you let people know there are linear feet of grey literature somewhere unsupported by publicly available information in technical databases, government and industry provided research and data, public interest investigative reporting, and scientific peer reviewed analysis and literature?

    My rule is simple. The best argument is the one that can be independently verified and backed up by quality and substantive facts and analysis. If you don’t have information available to substantiate and verify your claims, you don’t have an argument (you have a faith and a personal belief). A dodge doesn’t cut it, we’re all busy and have limited time to devote to unrelated and non-substantive arguments on this site (unless this is to become the new standard for advocacy on pro-nuclear sites … evidenced by the physical and digital drudgery of mud slinging against a single individual in three consecutive posts). A more thoughtful and critical engagement on the many substantive and adequately documented points made by Lovins and bringing forth clearer arguments, including highlight flaws and shortcomings in public statements and published reports (from both perspectives), remains a service to be provided (in my view) to your more inquisitive and evidence based readers.

    Bottom line is that I have yet to hear a convincing argument against nuclear power and I have been listening to the anti-nuclear talking points for decades.

    @Bill Rogers

    You’re probably not looking close enough. I assume you are not saying this with a straight face. There are no perfect energy resources. All have tradeoffs, and costs and benefits. Nuclear is very challenged in today’s marketplace. If you don’t see this, it’s unlikely you are thinking clearly, or are once again making up statements that can’t be supported (and may not even supported on a personal basis as a fully candid matter of faith and personal belief).

  97. @EL

    You put words into my mouth. I did not say that the information upon which professionals base their statements is not available to the public. I said it was in a form that is not easily shared – mostly copyrighted books and articles that are available in good university libraries or specialized collections and not in digital databases.

    I’ll give you a very specific example. I have a copy of exchanges between a young Amory Lovins and Dr. Alvin Weinberg, the former director of the Oak Ridge National Laboratory and the primary inventor of two different nuclear reactor systems – the light water reactor and the molten salt reactor.

    The exchanges were published in a journal called Energy Policy. There were two separate interactions, one in 1976 in response to a book written by Lovins that year and reviewed by Dr. Weinberg. The other was in 1978, again begun with a Lovins book and a critical review of that book by Amory Lovins.

    I would dearly love to share these documents or to link to a publicly available version of them. Unfortunately, Energy Policy is one of the thousands of scholarly journals now owned by the publishing power house called Elsevier. Yesterday I submitted a formal request for permission to publish just one part of the conversation, the first review by Weinbergy of Lovins’s 1976 book.

    Elsevier’s computerized system is quite responsive. After I set up an account and entered the information applicable to the request, I had a quote back in just a couple of hours. For the privilege of posting a publicly accessible link to the 4 page review published almost 40 years ago, Elsevier wanted to charge the modest fee of $34,000. Since Atomic Insights is a “for profit” publication and since the average monthly visitor count is about 20,000, Elsevier thought that was a quite reasonable fee of $1.70 per copy.

    Sharing the whole conversation would cost in excess of $100,000.

  98. @EL,

    You stated

    You’re probably not looking close enough. I assume you are not saying this with a straight face. There are no perfect energy resources. All have tradeoffs, and costs and benefits. Nuclear is very challenged in today’s marketplace. If you don’t see this, it’s unlikely you are thinking clearly, or are once again making up statements that can’t be supported (and may not even supported on a personal basis as a fully candid matter of faith and personal belief).

    My response:

    I was around in the 1980’s when very much of the same dialogue was being thrown around. Rooftop solar, distributed generation, solar thermal, etc etc, etc. Nuclear was bad, nuclear was expensive, clean coal would be our salvation, coal to gas tech would save us all, etc, etc, etc.

    So from my perspective this is a rinse-repeat moment. All the same discussions that were occurring 30 years ago are occurring now except there is a higher penetration of industrial wind and solar primarily due to political benefactor system that wasn’t in place back in the 1980’s. So what I see is a system moved more by politics not true technical advances. Sure there are advances around the edges but many of those designs being implemented were on the table 20-30 years ago. There just wasn’t the investors to take a design from paper to implementation until the political benefactors arrived. So we are not talking about a huge technology leap in wind and solar tech as was nuclear power in the 1950’s.

    What I don’t see is a system that is sustainable unless nuclear is a primary component. Since the politics has pushed the pendulum excessively to one side, there will be a correction at some point in the future. No energy source is perfect that is correct. However energy production and delivery ultimately is based on hard sciences such as applied physics, engineering; reality based financial and economic systems based on the ability of the user to pay. A sustainable energy production and generation system is not based on the latest political trend of the day or decade.

    Estimates I have seen are that natural gas will begin to climb in 2015 or at the latest in 2016. Some of those estimates are available, others are not as they are conversations with people in the business. So in this case I don’t have links or information to pass along. Such is life.

    At the point that gas rises above $6MMBtu the financials of a system based on natural gas with wind and solar begins to change. At the point that natural gas rises above $8MMBtu then a gas/wind/solar grid system becomes very comparable to a nuclear grid system. Again due to years of working in the industry these numbers are fairly well known as benchmarks to gauge future direction of industrial electric generation investments. At a sustained $10MMBtu rate, the consumer will be faced with hard decisions such as what to give up to pay for electricity or give up electricity. See the thing is that a rise in natural gas costs can be passed onto the consumer where coal and nuclear fuel costs were much harder to get passed by utility commissions of various states.

    So even if I supplied data to backup these lunch conversations I have had with energy economists and engineers, I suspect you would just throw some politically generated report or think tank paper at me.

    Based on my perspective of history, I believe that my version of the future – beyond 2030 – will be closer to reality then yours. Partly because those windmills and solar panels that were installed with taxpayer money over the past 5-7 years only have about a 20 year life at best. So many of those windmills and panels will have died before 2030 when our real power crunch begins to hit.

    I see this issue as a multi-modal model not a simple replacement of nuclear and coal with wind/solar/natural gas. I see hurdles to cross that are necessary for demand response to take hold on a wide scale implementation. I see many changes upcoming due to the reduction of the subsidy programs in Germany, Spain, and the US. There are many trends I see as possible outcomes. Will they all happen, I don’t know. If I did I would use that power to predict the lottery numbers. However think tanks, green enviro groups and other similar NGO’s are slowly losing out to an economy that won’t pick up speed again for about 3-5 years at which point many people are going to want their electricity at an inflation adjusted rate not an inflated rate.

    So you can continue to be snarky but there are times when a sense of time and scale regarding energy policy comes into play not a focus on just the data.

  99. I would like to challenge this statement:

    “The places where the sun shines most reliably or the wind blows hardest are often special habitats and quite a long ways from places where humans society has chosen to concentrate.”

    The large majority of US population lives along our coasts – off shore wind is proximate. Muir and Adams were not marine aesthetes.

    Urban land use provides multiple locations for solar. There is very little “special habitat” that John Muir would appreciate there.

    Would you care to provide data to support that statement?

  100. How many “off-shore” wind facilities have been built in the US? Where is your evidence that their is a substantial amount of unharvested wind in areas shallow enough for reasonable cost installation that are NOT special areas of value (fisheries or coral reefs)?

    Roof tops many be available, but people tend to live in areas with a temperate climate where there are rainy, cloudy days. Many of us like trees and natural shade around our homes. Those are not conducive to solar collection.

    My initial statement was qualitative; I don’t intend to cite data. I want people to look at reality and to think about what it means to try to collect large amounts of energy from diffuse, weather-dependent energy flows.

  101. As a layperson who is concerned about the environment, I was brought here when searching for recent information about Amory Lovins. His TED talks and book seemed too good to be true, and I wanted to hear the opposing viewpoint backed up with recent stats and research. I guess I will keep looking.

    Nuclear has a PR problem right now. I am a rabid environmentalist–was one of the protest marchers who helped get Brayton Point shut down. I used to be pro-nuclear for that very reason, especially about those new thorium reactors. But Fukushima gave me serious pause, and I have been rethinking my position–not so much from the dangers of the reactor itself, but from the really peculiar and disturbing behavior of TEPCO and the Japanese government since the disaster.

    The bizarre attacks here on both Lovins and his supporters actually give him support, if the only counterarguments to his position are attacks on his cv and vague references to mystical knowledge locked away in the little grey cells. Ignoring cost (because everyone knows that nuclear is damn expensive too), have Germany and Spain been able to balance their renewables effectively without increasing dependence on fossil fuel sources as Germany’s nuclear power plants have been phased out? If not, that argument needs to be better explained here. I’m not an energy scientist, but that does seem to be the weak point in Lovins’ argument.

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