Atomic Show #216 – Just the Fracks, Ma’am
Greg Kozera is the President of the Virginia Oil and Gas Association and the author of a recently-released book titled Just the Fracks, Ma’am: The Truth About Hydrofracking and the Next Great American Boom. I heard about the book from his publicist, News & Experts. Here is an excerpt from the communication I received.
Hi Rod,
EPA to propose 30 percent reduction in power plant carbon emissions. Coal-industry advocates are already warning that the proposed new standards, intended to address climate change, will cost jobs and raise the price of energy.
Enter Greg Kozera, an environmentalist with more than 35 years in the natural gas and oil industry. The proposed standards cause him concern because he worries that natural gas will be the next target. “We need both fuels,” he says. “Natural gas is much cleaner burning than coal, and will reduce the carbon emissions causing climate change. The burgeoning natural gas industry in the U.S. has already generated many new jobs, and natural gas costs much less than coal. Additionally, the U.S. natural gas industry decreases our reliance on foreign oil especially as we begin to use it for transportation. Exporting natural gas to developing countries can decrease pollution and CO2 emissions from some of the dirtiest places on the planet.”
Greg, president of the Virginia Oil and Gas Association and author of Just the Fracks, Ma’am, is available for interview or to provide comments via email. Let me know if you’re interested.
As regular readers of Atomic Insights will understand, I was intrigued by the description of the book and the offered opportunity to interview the author. The book is available from all of the on-line bookstores in both print and several e-book formats. I arranged for the interview time slot and then purchased and read a Kindle version of the book so I could be ready to ask useful questions.
Aside: I love living in the modern world. The total elapsed time between the email that introduced me to Greg Kozera and the end of the recorded interview was just 72 hours and I never had to leave my house. End Aside.
It turned out that Greg and I had an almost scary number of things in common. We both grew up in the 1960s and 1970s, we are both grandparents, we both have a strong coaching background, we’ve both taught leadership courses, we both live in Virginia, we have both spent our careers in energy-related fields, we are both environmentally conscious, and we both care deeply about America, the rest of the world and the future prosperity of humanity. We are also both certain that energy decisions will play a major role in enabling that prosperity.
The big difference is that Greg has written a book about his belief that natural gas produced using hydraulic fracturing is the fuel of the future, while I have been publishing Atomic Insights for 19 years based on a growing certainty that atomic fission will be the power source that propels humanity into an almost unimaginably bright future.
I’m almost certain that you will enjoy our conversation as much as I did.
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“When the public fears something like nuclear power or fracking then our government makes bad regulations.”
Your guest really hit on a general truth.
I think you and your guest might agree on a national energy policy that shifted the use of natural gas from electric generation to powering vehicles and shifting electric generation from natural gas to nuclear.
My national energy policy would include increasing nuclear electric generation toward 50%. Maybe the other 50% would come from hydro, 15% and renewables, 35%.
Isn’t the phrase “affordable, domestic, and abundant” wonderful?
I believe this phrase is used in the natural gas ads on TV.
But actually the only energy industry that can not claim this description is the oil industry. This phrase accurately describes coal, solar, wind, and nuclear.
Nuclear would claim this phrase because the plant and the bulk of the operational cost is domestic even if most of the uranium comes from overseas.
I wonder what three adjectives best describes nuclear electricity. Maybe “affordable, clean, and abundant” or “reliable, clean, and abundant”?
How can I find out how much the natural gas TV ads cost? These little ads seem to run on all channels and year-round. Does an ad campaign on all channels and year round cost closer to one million dollars or 10 million dollars or 100 million dollars?
Of course, I would like to see a similar campaign for electricity from nuclear.
@martin burkle
My guess is that it is a multiple of 100 million dollars, but I’ll try to find out more.
Wow! Really a multiple of 100 million dollars??
“Affordable, Abundant, and American” is more alliterative, and runs the emotional flag up the pole. Like it or not, marketing is all about feelings.
If we reprocessed, or went to fast spectrum reactors, the supply could be truly American for a while, using up our “waste”. Until then, the Southwestern states, and our friends in Canada, have more than enough to supply us with a secure source.
Anyway, even if every atom of fuel didn’t originate here, the technology certainly did.
@Atomikrabbit
Until then, the Southwestern states, and our friends in Canada, have more than enough to supply us with a secure source.
Don’t forget the 119 million pound deposit on private, rural land right here in Virginia that is, for some bizarre reason, off-limits. After all, Virginia is a state with about 150 licensed coal mines, so the concern about mining uranium cannot actually be the safety that opponents claim.
Transatomic Power’s reactor design needs 65 tons of SNF actinides per 520 MW(e) unit at 1.8% enrichment. Not coincindentally, this is approximately the description of “spent” LWR fuel. We have some 70,000 tons of SNF (95% or so actinides), which ought to be able to start on the order of 500 GW(e) of their reactors. Their fuel consumption, at 1 ton per GW-yr, would be adequately supplied by the existing LWR fleet.
I wish TAP’s white paper had more detail on thorium. If thorium’s neutron economy allowed the use of Th+DU as makeup fuel after startup, the USA’s supply of DU would make us fuel independent for centuries without mining another gram of uranium.
That may be a calculation I can do myself. I’ll have to look into it.
Great Talk
Maybe it’s time for a book on nuclear energy from a well informed ex navy guy – hint
@Eino
Working on it. It’s harder that it looks, but the results will be worth while.
Once the book is out (avoid self-publishing), you will be “qualified” in the eyes of the mainstream media as a bonafied nuclear expert, and eligible for recruitment as a commentator when the need arises. You or your publisher may need to work with a publicist to get the word out, and a book tour with media interviews would be in order.
Hopefully in the near future, in the event of breaking nuclear news, the CNN editors’ digital Rolodex will turn to Adams before Alvarez.
I don’t know about that. Our friend Helen once said that Robert Alvarez at one time was “tall, and dark and handsome and a guitar player”. Rod might be only 1 or 2 out of those 4.
Self-publishing might not be that bad, Dr. Phil’s new book is published by his son’s publishing company.
BTW, Rod, the volume levels of the intro and outtro are a great deal higher than the podcast itself. I always get my ears blasted.
@EP – Thank you for the feedback. I’ll correct for the next show.
re: Invited Atomic Show Contestant
Michael Mariotte on 13, 2014 at 1:42 pm c/o GreenWorld http://safeenergy.org/2014/06/06/poll/comment-page-1/#comment-2434
Well, I have been at NIRS nearly 30 years and have never been asked to participate in one of these, so not sure who you’re talking about. But I have publicly debated nuclear industry people often in a variety of fora, including NEI CEO Marvin Fertel, their top lobbyist Alex Flynt and many more. If the timing can be made to work (which is admittedly difficult for me these days), I’d be happy to debate on your forum too.
Michael, NIRS
http://nirsnet.wordpress.com/
Careful! This guy eats pro-nukers for breakfast! It’s why they’re all so chewn out at promoting nukes while this guy’s got a wave!