Two years, three record heat waves in southeastern Australia

Posted on 14 November 2009 by Barry Brook

nov09tempSummer 2009 — 2010 hasn’t even begun in Australia, and yet we are already sweltering under another record heat wave — the third in two years. Temperature records for the month of November have been broken across the region, caused by a blocking high pressure system over the Tasman Sea. This follows an abnormally hot winter, including Australia’s hottest August on record.

In my home city of Adelaide, we’re still experiencing the first official November heat wave since records began (a ‘heat wave’ being defined here as five or more consecutive days above 35°C). Last Saturday 7th Nov, the mercury climbed to 34.4°C, and on Sunday the heat wave officially commenced. From Sun 8/11 to Sat 14/11, the maximum temperatures have been 36.7°C, 37.0°C, 38.6°C, 39.2°C, 39.0°C, 38.7°C  and 39.5°C. The forecast for Sun 15/11 is 40 °C, after which the temperatures will drop back to the high 20s for a few days, and then another burst of days in the low-40s. If Sunday’s scorcher is realised (confirmed: 39.4°C), the heat wave will have lasted for 8 days [confirmed] (almost 9, with Sat 7/11 also almost reaching the threshold 35°C). Not a great time to hold a Christmas pageant — poor Santa!

Time for some context. The closest Adelaide has ever come to a spring heat wave was 4 days in a row 1894. This month’s event will double that — a doubling like this is not twice as unlikely, it’s orders of magnitude more unlikely. Consider that in prior to 2008, the record length for an Adelaide heat wave in any month was 8 days (all occurring in summer). Now, in the space of less than 2 years, we’ve had a 15 day event in Mar 2008 (a 1 in 3000 year event), a 9 day sequence in Jan/Feb 2009 (which included 8 days above 40°C and 13 consecutive days above 33°C), and now, another 8 day event in Nov 2009. How unusual is this? There have been 6 previous heat waves that lasted 8 days, many more of 7 days, more still of 6, and so on — the return time is logarithmically related to it’s length. Given these data, and the fact that the latest spring event has equaled previous all-time summer records (!), and the alarm bells should rightly be ringing. Statistically speaking, it’s astronomically unlikely that such a sequence of rare heat waves would occur by chance, if the climate wasn’t warming. But of course, it is.

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Filed under: Ecological impacts, Future shock | 17 Comments »

Follow Britain’s nuclear lead

Posted on 10 November 2009 by Barry Brook

Brook_FissionHere’s an Op Ed I had published in today’s Adelaide Advertiser newspaper. A supporting piece from the paper’s reporters is here.

For more on the British plans for new nuclear power, see here and here.

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WHETHER you are primarily concerned about climate change, or energy security, the British Government’s choice to build 10 new large nuclear power stations by 2025 should come as welcome news.

Nuclear power is the only proven electricity generation technology that can simultaneously meet reliable baseload demand, anywhere, and yet emit no carbon dioxide when operating.

Along with hydropower from dams, it is the only clean energy technology that has been shown to be scalable. France, for instance, derives nearly 80 percent of its electricity from 59 nuclear plants.

Nuclear-powered France is the world’s biggest electricity exporter, has the cheapest power rates in Europe, and has the lowest carbon footprint per person.

On this basis, it is easy to understand the UK government’s decision to pursue nuclear power in a big way. A resolution, I might add, that has bipartisan political support. Australia, take heed.

Worldwide, in 2008 nuclear power avoided 2.7 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions, compared to what would have been emitted if coal-fired stations had instead been used.

What of the economics of the UK plan? Like any large capital infrastructure project, it will be expensive.

Yet aside from concrete, steel and labour, much of the cost of new nuclear comes from regulatory risk.

The UK wisely plan to cut through this red tape by reducing planning permission times from seven to one year, and vetoing the right of local authorities to block construction.

They’ve clearly learned valuable lessons from history.

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Filed under: Emissions reduction, Nuclear Energy | 93 Comments »

Fee-and-dividend is superior to cap-and-trade for effective carbon emissions reductions

Posted on 9 November 2009 by Barry Brook

The following guest post by Steve Kirsch presents a persuasive case that cap-and-trade systems (also called an emissions trading system[ETS]) are NOT the right way to put a price on carbon. This is relevant to the US Waxman-Markey bill, and Australia’s Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme [CPRS]. Instead, a ‘fee and dividend’ approach is advocated. Read on to find out why…

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Executive Summary
Four key reasons why it is important that we use a fee-and-dividend approach to regulating carbon emissions:
1) Fee-and-dividend is, without any doubt, the best way to regulate carbon emissions.
There is near universal agreement among experts including Al Gore, Jim Hansen, the inventors of cap-and-trade, economists, the CBO, EPA regulators, and Sierra Club that fee-and-dividend is the best way to achieve the goal of carbon emission reductions because it puts a predictable price on carbon. Conversely, cap-and-trade, even in the most optimistic scenario, would achieve virtually no reductions and in any practical, real-life scenario, would actually make the problem worse because at best it would lock in today’s emissions for decades.
2) Fee-and-dividend is popular with voters.
Fee-and-dividend is politically viable. In British Columbia where the opposition party made it an election issue, they proved it was political suicide to oppose it. The opposition party now supports it. There are now carbon fee laws all over the world, including in the US.
3) Fee-and-dividend helps our economy and our environment: it is a double-dividend.
Fee-and-dividend helps our economy whereas cap-and-trade would hurt our economy. So fee-and-dividend is a great idea even if you don’t believe in global warming; we pass the bill for the economic benefit and we get the environmental benefit for free. Economists call this double benefit (economy and environment) the “double dividend.” Cap-and-trade does not have a double dividend.
4) Cap-and-trade would irreparably harm our environment and hurt our economy.
The cap-and-trade bills would, even under ideal circumstances, insignificantly reduce emissions by 2020 according to the CBO analysis. Under any practical scenario, it would hurt the environment irreparably because it allows business as usual (BAU) for 17 years. This is why Jim Hansen is so against it and why key individuals within the green groups are personally opposed to the cap-and-trade part of the House and Senate bills. Cap-and-trade is a “double whammy,” hurting both our economy and environment.
Cap-and-trade must be defeated because it will do irreparable damage to our ability to mitigate climate change and hurt our economy at the same time. There is no analysis anywhere that disputes what Hansen says.
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The alternative, substituting Senator Cantwell’s bill (CLEAR Act of 2009) for the cap-and-trade section of the Senate bill, will help both the economy and the environment. Unfortunately, nobody is paying attention to Cantwell’s bill because cap-and-trade is sucking all the oxygen out of the room. It can easily replace the cap-and-trade part of the Senate bill. There is also an excellent 10-minute YouTube video entitled “The Huge Mistake” which summarizes the case for fee-and-rebate. I highly recommend this video.
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Filed under: Emissions reduction | 26 Comments »

Carbon emissions and nuclear capable countries

Posted on 6 November 2009 by Barry Brook

Atoms for peace — uranium and thorium power. This is the fit and proper use of nuclear technology in the 21st century, as a means to generate enormous amounts of cheap, convenient, reliable, clean electrify to supply the burgeoning needs of an energy-hungry and carbon-overloaded world. Yet there is no denying that nuclear technology has other uses. It is deployed in many nations in order to produce the radioisotopes needed for nuclear medicine and industrial applications. Nuclear science has also allowed for the development of atomic weapons, and this is where much contention lies.

Of the world’s 214 countries, 7 to 10 have a proven (or suspected) existing capability to create nuclear weaponry, and 20 currently possess ‘the bomb’ (via sharing arrangements), or have had it in the past and subsequently dismantled it. Further, as commenter DV82XL has pointed out, 5-10 other nations have the scientific capacity and economic wherewithal to launch an emergency R&D programme to build a deliverable weapon within 1-5 years (Japan, Sweden and Australia included) — if they so chose. An additional 20 non-weapons states use commercial nuclear power, or are currently constructing their first plant (see map — click for link), and a further 18 nations either run small fission reactors for research, experimentation and isotope production, or else are planning to embrace nuclear power in the short- to medium-term.

So, let’s lay the cards on table. What new challenges will we face — in terms of a wider scope of international technological oversight and secure management of fissile material — if nuclear power is to become the predominant energy generation technology for all people, all nations? In geopolitical terms, we are talking about deploying nuclear technology, in some form (be it large reactors or small, sealed nuclear batteries) to over 150 new countries.  There is no doubt that it presents a difficult yet very important future pathway for the global community to tread. Tom Blees, in the book ‘Prescription for the Planet‘, offers a detailed assessment of how this might be possible, in chapters 10 (“How Great is GREAT?”), 11 (“Going Global”) and 13 (“Come the Revolution”).

But for now, let’s put these exigent questions aside, and simplify the problem. What if we were only to deploy new nuclear power technologies with fuel recycling, like the Integral Fast Reactor and Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor, in ‘nuclear capable’ countries? What sort of dent would that make in terms of matching world energy demand and heavily mitigating planetary carbon emissions from fossil fuel combustion (the two are obviously highly correlated, at least at present)?

To answer this in a way that should satisfy most people, let’s consider three categories of nuclear countries:

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Filed under: Emissions reduction, Nuclear Energy | 23 Comments »

Critique of ‘A path to sustainable energy by 2030′

Posted on 3 November 2009 by Barry Brook

The November 2009 issue of Scientific American has a cover story by Mark Z. Jacobson (Professor, Stanford) and Mark A. Delucchi (researcher, UC Davis). It’s entitled “A path to sustainable energy by 2030” (p 58 – 65; they call it WWS: wind, water or sunlight). This popular article is supported by a technical analysis, which the authors will apparently submit to the peer-reviewed journal Energy Policy at some point (or may have already done so). Anyway, they have made both papers available for free public download here.

So what do they say? In a nutshell, their argument is that, by the year 2030:

Wind, water and solar technologies can provide 100 percent of the world’s energy, eliminating all fossil fuels.

Big claim. Does it stack up? Short answer, no. Here I critique the 100% WWS plan (both articles).

The articles are structured around 7 parts: (1) A discussion of ‘clean energy’ technologies and some description of different plans for large-scale carbon mitigation. (2)  The amount and geographic distribution of available resources [wind, solar, wave, geothermal, hydro etc.] are evaluated, globally. (3) The number of power plants or capture devices required to harness this energy is calculated. (4) A limit analysis is undertaken, to determine whether any technologies are likely to face material resource bottlenecks that risk stymieing their large-scale deployment. (5) The question of ‘reliability’ of energy generation is discussed. (6) The projected economics of this vision are forecast. (7) The policy approaches required to turn vision into reality are reviewed.

In this post I want to concentrate on (5) and (6) — what I consider to be “The Bad”. But first, let’s look quickly at “The Good” (actually, more like the “Okay”) and then the really “Ugly” parts.

The majority content of the twin papers is focused on making the banal point that there is a huge amount of energy embodied in ‘wind, water and sunlight’ (“Plenty of Supply”), and that a wide diversity of technologies have been developed to try and harness this into useable electrical power.  No critic of large-scale renewable energy would argue any differently, and the size of these resources has been covered in detail by David Mackay. In that context, I wonder what they hope to add to the literature? There’s nothing wrong in this section, and well explained, but it’s just standard, rehashed fare.

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Filed under: Renewable planet | 136 Comments »

Red Necked Aussie Greenies

Posted on 31 October 2009 by Barry Brook

Guest Post by Geoff Russell. Geoff is a mathematician and computer programmer and is a member of Animal Liberation SA. His recently published book is CSIRO Perfidy. For his previous post on BNC about the Integral Fast Reactor, read “Rethinking Nuclear Power“.

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redneck

UK Economist Lord Nicholas Stern is the latest in a growing list, including IPCC head Rajendra Pachauri and NASA climate scientist James Hansen calling for a global shift in dietary habits towards less meat. The CSIRO has issued a new Home Energy Saving Handbook which tells people diplomatically, but unambiguously, that if they do use the CSIRO Total Wellbeing Diet, with its huge meat component, then use it for as brief a period as possible and switch to a high carbohydrate diet which has a much lower greenhouse footprint. The book also has a great section on the implications of suburban food growing, including a mention that this also tends to reduce meat consumption. This new CSIRO handbook is a long way short of the major public corporate apology that I called for in my recent book CSIRO Perfidy, but it’s an excellent start. All in all this CSIRO book is a great practical book about how people can significantly reduce their various footprints on the planet. It doesn’t fall into any of the all too common traps like considering the fuel consumption of a car, but ignoring the emissions generated during the building of the vehicle.

Stern’s call reduced animal product intake follows close on the release of a report on livestock and climate change from the Food Ethics Council in the UK(commisioned by World Wildlife Fund (WWF)). The press release announcing the report contains a statment which will probably raise the blood pressure of any meat producer. It says that the report:

Identifies a wide array of measures by which government might change consumption behaviour, …

The livestock industry can live with feel good statments about breeding for lower emitting cattle and the like, but changes to consumption, changes that would actually make a difference, that is anathema.

At the risk of boring people who know this stuff, let me quantify using an analogy that I hope will clarify. Consider a computer screen. I’m using a 19 inch 37 watt LCD. My TV is a little bigger and uses 58 watts. Most people know that huge plasma TVs can be more than a little bigger and use 10 times more power. Systems labelled home theatre can run to over 1500 watts … about half for the sound and half for the picture. Now, pause and think what would happen if somebody started making 7400 watt screens that were much the same size as normal screens. Imagine further that these screens caused serious and frequently life shortening health problems.

Would anybody defend such screens? Would anybody bother with a defence that better manufacturing could reduce their power usage by 25%?

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Filed under: Ecological impacts, Emissions reduction | 57 Comments »

Energy dialogue, Green debate, Blog updates

Posted on 29 October 2009 by Barry Brook

Three new things to report to BNC readers.

First, on 11 November, the University of Adelaide’s Environment Institute will host the 2nd Dunstan Environment Dialogue, entitled “Power and the People“, featuring yours truly. Here’s the promo:

The Dialogues are a series of public meetings to stimulate debate on how to better manage our environmental resources, to encourage participants to cut through technological haze and the lobby-speak so they may form their own judgements about the directions Australia should be taking as it considers the Green New Deal the world must now develop.

In Australia and around the world, energy demands are on the rise. What must happen to energy generation in the face of issues such as climate change and limited fossil fuel reserves? Should power generation be localised or centralised? Researchers, governments and communities are struggling to agree upon the best method for future energy generation. It is an issue for everyone to consider.

The second Dialogue in the series, entitled Power and the People, will ask whether new nuclear or clean technologies should power our future.

Professor Mike Young, Director of The Environment Institute at the University of Adelaide, will moderate a discussion with two leading thinkers and the audience. You will hear from Fiona Wain, Chief Executive Director of Environment Business Australia and Professor Barry Brook, Sir Hubert Wilkins Chair of Climate Change, University of Adelaide. Together with these speakers we will explore energy generation options and opportunities for Australia.

It will commence at 5:30pm on Wednesday 11 November 2009 at Union Hall (google maps), University of Adelaide. Join us in the debate, then make your own judgement on the direction policy should take. To secure your seat RSVP to environment@adelaide.edu.au

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Second, I was invited to engage in a written debate on nuclear power with Dr Jim Green of Friends of the Earth in “Australia’s leading radical newspaper”, Green Left Weekly. Here is a quote from my piece (the full article is 1600 words, and uses some past material you’d have probably seen before if you’ve been following my writings):

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Filed under: Climate change Q&A, Nuclear Energy, Renewable planet | 25 Comments »

Crunch Time: Using and abusing Keynes to fight the twin crises of our era

Posted on 27 October 2009 by Barry Brook

Guest Post by Tony Kevin. Tony holds degrees in civil engineering, and in economics and political science. He retired from the Australian Foreign Service in 1998, after a 30-year career during which he served in the Foreign Affairs and Prime Minister’s departments, and was Australia’s ambassador to Poland and Cambodia. He is currently an honorary visiting fellow at the Australian National University’s Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies in Canberra. He has written extensively on Australian foreign, national security, and refugee policies in Australia’s national print media, and is the author of the award-winning books A Certain Maritime Incident: the sinking of SIEV X (Scribe 2004), and Walking the Camino: a modern pilgrimage to Santiago (Scribe 2007).

‘Crunch Time: Using and abusing Keynes to fight the twin crises of our era’, by Tony Kevin (Scribe Publications, Melbourne 2009, RRP $32.95).

I am pleased to introduce my new book on Australian climate change policy, ‘Crunch Time’ (Scribe Publications, Melbourne 2009) to readers of BraveNewClimate. I see BNC as a responsible public affairs website that is making a distinctive contribution to climate change discussion in Australia.

Crunch Time is the latest in a series of books written by Australian non-scientists (e.g., Clive Hamilton, Guy Pearse, David Spratt and Philip Sutton, Gareth Morgan and John McCrystal) who seek to communicate the scientific truth of Australia’s climate emergency to general Australian readers. The purpose of such books is to convince non-specialist readers – that is, those who have not yet surrendered their intelligence to the soothing seductions of denialist dogma – that the science of disruptive global warming is real; and that it is broadly accessible to all readers, even those with little or no scientific background.

This is an ambitiously wide-ranging book. It goes further than its predecessors into the current convoluted and deeply dishonest Australian political discussion of the issue, and into the possibility of real nationally funded fiscal and engineering solutions, which would apply a bold green Keynesian approach to achieve a comprehensive energy infrastructure transformation away from burning coal as Australia’s electricity source.

Running through the book is a documented case setting out the ways in which the Rudd government has failed dismally to live up to its own early rhetoric on the urgency of confronting the climate change challenge, thus betraying the high hopes that were placed in it by environmentalists. The book begins with a forensic account of how the government, under pressure from the coal lobby, abandoned its commitment to respecting the science set out in the Garnaut Review.

With great political skill, Rudd presented himself as the final arbiter above the ‘scientific argy-bargy’. He claimed the final responsibility as Prime Minister to strike a responsible balance between the climate science and the needs of the economy. In so doing, he betrayed the climate security of the coming generations of Australians.

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Filed under: Climate change Q&A, Emissions reduction | 21 Comments »

TCASE 5: Ocean power I – Pelamis

Posted on 25 October 2009 by Barry Brook

The first four posts of the TCASE series were logically sequential — each post built on the conclusions of the previous one. Overall, I hope the TCASE will retain a sense of coherency, but at the same time, I don’t want to get too constrained in following a rigid structure. To be frank, I can’t plan the ’storyline arc’ well enough at this stage to make that even half feasible, and besides, I want to the series to be responsive to topical debates (and keep each post to a digestible, bite-sized chunk of information).

So future offerings in TCASE will branch out to cover everything from examinations of different technologies/energy sources, case studies of actual real-world projects, evaluation of new policy decisions (such as Australia’s 2020 ERET), questions of build rates and constraints, cost/feasibility assessments, consideration of technology gaps and physical limitations, exposing spin and hype, limit analyses, thought experiments, etc. I certainly hope to continue to get ideas from the commenters on this blog, which collectively represent an enormous wealth of knowledge, experience and ideas. To me, this is a fine form of peer review and a great source of inspiration. Thanks BNC readers!

Today’s post offers a first look at ocean power — the mighty fist of Poseidon (mythologically and in reality) — harnessing the energy in waves (I’ll look at tidal energy separately). Wave power is a form of indirect solar energy — driven by fairly consistent oceanic winds, which whip up waves over hundreds or thousands of km of open ocean. This energy may be harnessed with the use of buoys, oscillating air columns, barrages and so on, with a conversion efficiency of ~30%. Waves are a linear energy resource — once you’ve tapped its energy, you need thousands more km of ocean to regenerate new waves, so the resource is measured in kW per linear metre (not metre-squared, like direct solar). Average annual wave power density range from 10-40 kW per metre in inshore regions to as much as 70 kW/m in highly energetic regions. Although it is somewhat more regular (‘available’) than wind (and with a higher power density), wave energy is not constant and will still require substantial back-up and/or energy storage. More technical documents here.

Carnegie corporation, an Australian wave power company, state that their CETO technology (which I will look at in detail in another post — it has some fascinating prospects) can generate 100 MW peak using an a 500 buoy system; so, 200 kW peak per undersea buoy. To date, however, the only commercially operating wave farm in the world is in Aguçadoura, Portugal, about a year ago — so let’s focus first on the energy potential of this technology.

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Filed under: Renewable planet, TCASE Series | 14 Comments »

Danish fairy tales – what can we learn?

Posted on 22 October 2009 by Barry Brook

“It’s estimated that if we fully pursue our potential for wind energy on land and offshore, wind can generate as much as 20 percent of our electricity by 2030 and create a quarter-million jobs in the process — 250,000 jobs in the process, jobs that pay well and provide good benefits. It’s a win-win: It’s good for the environment; it’s great for the economy. Today America produces less than 3 percent of our electricity through renewable sources like wind and solar—less than 3 percent. Now, in comparison, Denmark produces almost 20 percent of their electricity through wind power.”

Barack Obama, Earth Day Speech, April 22, 2009

” ‘But the Emperor has nothing on at all!’ said a little child.”

From The Emperor’s New Clothes, by Denmark’s famous poet and author, Hans Christian Andersen, 1837

Guest Post by Tom Blees. Tom is author of Prescription for the Planet – The Painless Remedy for Our Energy & Environmental Crises. Tom is also the president of the Science Council for Global Initiatives.

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Last month Denmark’s CEPOS, their Center for Political Studies, published a report called Wind Energy, The Case of Denmark, from which that Obama quote was lifted. It sheds a harsh light on the young president’s wind vision, and reveals a dubious statistic and assumptions that may be far from the future reality of the USA despite the promising rhetoric.

Brave New Climate is one of those rare sites that eschews the hype about energy systems, where the contributors and most commenters seem to want the straight facts based on actual data. Fortunately we have a couple decades of data on wind and solar power systems, and of course considerably more decades than that on nuclear, though changes in regulatory and subsidy frameworks have often had as marked an effect on energy systems as technological advances.

Last week I wrote a post on Germany’s economic experience with solar power, and in the comments I included more links to similar articles describing Spain’s own dubious foray into a solar-powered future. Today, with Barry’s indulgence, I’d like to turn the spotlight to Denmark’s experience with wind power, a national experiment that began in the mid-Eighties and is continuing to this day. Denmark was the leader in the development and deployment of wind turbines up until very recently, and still plans to keep moving in that direction with the construction of 800 MW of new offshore wind turbines by 2013. One reason they’re going offshore, despite the added cost, is because after almost 25 years of building windmills all over the country they’re starting to get a NIMBY reaction to building more of them on land.

While President Obama’s statement that “Denmark produces almost 20 percent of their electricity through wind power” might be technically construed as true, it belies the real picture, a situation that bedevils the notoriously fickle wind power wherever it has been built. If one simply looks at the statistics of the number of megawatt-hours of electricity produced by wind power in Denmark over the course of a year and divides it by Denmark’s electricity demand, the number does indeed come out to nearly 20%. But the devil is in the details.

Denmark’s thermal power plants, fueled mostly by coal, produce not only electricity but also heat for the towns near which they’re located. The Danes have taken great pains to make their coal plants as efficient as possible by building them for such double duty. But what happens when it’s wintertime and the wind is howling, spinning those turbines like crazy? One can easily imagine that those same days are mighty chilly, and so those coal plants are fired up even though the electricity they’re producing is now in less demand than the heat they’re producing to keep the Danes warm.

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Filed under: Renewable planet | 110 Comments »

TCASE 4: Energy system build rates and material inputs

Posted on 18 October 2009 by Barry Brook

In TCASE 3 – The energy demand equation to 2050, I concluded the following:

The world in 2050 will demand ~700 EJ of thermal energy, or roughly 300 EJ of electrical energy. This will require ~10,000 GWe (10 TWe) of generating capacity, which is a 5-fold increase in electricity generating capacity, or 680 MWe, every day, for the next 40 years (2010 to 2050).

Given the large uncertainties associated with this forecast, the actual value could easily be as high as 15 TWe, which would up the daily built-out rate to a little over 1 GWe per day. But let’s stick with 680 MWe rate for this post.

What would that mean in terms of today’s zero-carbon (when generating) energy sources? Consider three technologies that are potentially (i.e., theoretically) able to be scaled up sufficiently to do this job (wind, solar thermal and nuclear fission), and then look at the limit analysis (what would be needed for any one technology to do the whole job — accepting that in reality, there will always be some diversity of energy technologies that are deployed worldwide). I will, for simplicity, use US capacity factors for these energy sources (solar thermal from Spain), based on the latest (2008) data. We can assume the US situation would be reflective of global conditions if the technologies are properly deployed worldwide (with due expertise and siting considerations).

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1. Wind turbines. Wind power collects ~2 W/m2 (or 2 MWe per km2), and this figure is not really dependent on the turbine size. (If you have larger turbines, you need to space them further apart. If you build large turbines with tall towers, the increased hub height does access stronger winds, increasing the yield by ~30%). The 2008 US capacity factor for wind was 23.5%. For our unit, let’s choose a widely deployed turbine, the 2.5 MWe (peak), the GE 2.5xl (rotor diameter = 100 m, hub height = 75 – 100 m, cut-in windspeed of 3.5 m/s, peak at 12.5 m/s, cut-out at 25 m/s).

To get 680 MWe average power, 680/0.235  = 2900/2.5 =  1,160 GE 2.5xl turbines per day, worldwide, spread over 340 km2 of land area (a square 18.4 x 18.4 km). Based on the University of Sydney ISA report (p145), which also agrees with Prof Per Peterson’s figures, this will consume ~1,250,000 tonnes of concrete and 335,000 tonnes of steel per day. Every day, from 2010 to 2050. Adding 1 day’s energy storage using NaS batteries (to make it equivalent to the solar thermal example below), increases the mass of steel required to 455,000 tonnes per day (see chart at bottom of the post).

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Filed under: Nuclear Energy, Renewable planet, TCASE Series | 142 Comments »

The Integral Fast Reactor – Summary for Policy Makers

Posted on 16 October 2009 by Barry Brook

ifr_conceptSteve Kirsch, after discussions with a large number of the principal researchers on Argonne National Laboratory’s IFR project, has prepared his ‘one stop shop’ summary of the Integral Fast Reactor technology (sometimes referred to as the ‘Liquid Metal Fast Breeder Reactor’ [LMFBR] or the ‘Advanced Liquid Metal Reactor’ [ALMR], although in reality, the IFR is the systems design that includes an ALMR and on-site pyroprocessing) and the urgent need for deployment.

I should note that Steve’s piece is not written for a science, technology and engineering audience. The aim is to alert policy makers, politicians, and everyday folk with a concern for cleaning up our energy supply, to the great potential of the IFR as a major alternative route to slashing carbon emissions.

You can get the Word version of this ’summary for policy makers’ here. Print this, read it. Send the link to others who you think are currently ignorant of this prospect (either through not appreciating what Gen IV nuclear means, or because they’ve never heard of it!). Print out copies and hand it to them. This sort of information must be more widely known, appreciated, discussed and debated. It’s critical, and we’re all running out of time. The public dialogue on this matter must begin in earnest.

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The Integral Fast Reactor

Guest Post by Steve Kirsch stk@propel.com

“In the decade from 1984 to 1994, scientists at Argonne National Laboratory developed an advanced technology that promised safe nuclear power unlimited by fuel supplies, with a waste product sharply reduced both in radioactive lifetime and amount. The program, called the IFR, was cancelled suddenly in 1994, before the technology could be perfected in every detail. Its story is not widely known, nor are its implications widely appreciated. It is a story well worth telling, and this series of articles does precisely that.”

— excerpt from Plentiful Energy and the IFR story by Charles Till, former Associate Director, Argonne National Laboratory

Executive summary

Congress should add a provision to the climate bills to authorize $3B to have DOE work with industry to build a demonstration Integral Fast Reactor (IFR) plant in order to jump-start this critical clean energy technology.

wasteGraphic1

A successful IFR demonstration can lead to the following important benefits:

  1. The only technology we have with a realistic potential to save the planet. The IFR is the first viable solution to how to eliminate CO2 emissions from coal plants because it can do that without increasing costs. Eliminating emissions from coal plants is required to prevent a climate catastrophe. But using carbon capture adds cost and may not be practical or viable. The IFR, on the other hand, can replace the burner in an existing coal plant while reducing operating costs. This is why the IFR is one of Jim Hansen’s top five priorities for saving the planet.
  2. Solves the nuclear waste problem and opens the door for the expansion of nuclear power in the US. The IFR uses today’s nuclear waste as fuel. The waste product from the IFR is minimal and short-lived. Solving the waste problem is required if we are to expand nuclear power in the US. The IFR does this.
  3. Opportunity to become the world leader in clean energy. The IFR is the state-of-the-art nuclear technology that everyone wants. It is better in every dimension than any of today’s nuclear reactors. If we make a strategic bet on this technology and heavily invest in it, the US has the opportunity to become the undisputed world leader in clean electric power generation. Nuclear is the elephant of clean power technologies and the IFR was determined to be the best nuclear power technology by an extensive comparative study DOE. It is arguably the most powerful clean power technology on the planet.
  4. Creates enormous economic value. It turns our existing nuclear waste into an asset worth over $30 trillion dollars. That is a fantastic return on investment for a one-time $3B investment to jump-start the technology. Nothing else comes close.
  5. Unlimited clean power. The IFR allows us to power the entire US electricity needs for the next 1,500 years without doing any additional mining of uranium; just using the “waste” we have on-hand that nobody wants. The power is carbon free. If we mine, we can power the power needs of the entire planet forever.

Background

The IFR is an advanced fourth generation sodium-cooled fast nuclear reactor (SFR) combined with a reprocessing facility using pyroprocessing, typically in the same power plant. The combination of a fast reactor plus waste processing is known as the Integral Fast Reactor.

Unlike today’s nuclear power plants (all of which are second generation designs built 30 years ago), the IFR uses fast neutrons (instead of slow neutrons) and thus is known as a “fast reactor.” Fast neutrons have the advantage of “burning” the nuclear material completely so that the only waste products are fission products (elements near the middle of the periodic table).  This waste is only dangerous for a few hundred years which is much less than the 100,000-year sequestration time that many think is needed for conventional nuclear waste.

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Life and death on Earth – the Cronus hypothesis

Posted on 14 October 2009 by Barry Brook

Bradshaw, C.J.A., & Brook, B.W. (2009). The Cronus Hypothesis – extinction as a necessary and dynamic balance to evolutionary diversification Journal of Cosmology, 2, 201-209 (free online access)

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As described on ConservationBytes, we (Corey Bradshaw and Barry Brook), and I recently published a paper in the very new and perhaps controversial online journal , the Journal of Cosmology. Cosmology? According the journal, ‘cosmology’ is:

“the study and understanding of existence in its totality, encompassing the infinite and eternal, and the origins and evolution of the cosmos, galaxies, stars, planets, earth, life, woman and man”.

The journal publishes papers dealing with ‘cosmology’ and is a vehicle for those who wish to publish on subjects devoted to the study of existence in its totality.

Ok. Quite an aim.

Our paper is part of the November (second ever) issue of the journal entitled Asteroids, Meteors, Comets, Climate and Mass Extinctions, and because we were the first to submit, we managed to secure the first paper in the issue.

Our paper, entitled The Cronus hypothesis – extinction as a necessary and dynamic balance to evolutionary diversification, introduces a new idea in the quest to find that perfect analogy for understanding the mechanisms dictating how life on our planet has waxed and waned over the billions of years since it first appeared.

In the 1960s, James Lovelock conceived the novel idea of Gaia – that the Earth functions like a single, self-regulating organism where life itself interacts with the physical environment to maintain conditions favourable for life (Gaia was the ancient Greeks’ Earth mother goddess). (see here for a book review on BNC of Lovelock’s latest, “The Vanishing Face of Gaia“) Embraced, contested, denounced and recently re-invigorated, the idea has evolved substantially since it first appeared. More recently (this year, in fact), Peter Ward countered the Gaia hypothesis with his own Greek metaphor – the Medea hypothesis. Essentially this view holds that life instead ‘seeks’ to destroy itself in an anti-Gaia manner (Medea was the siblicidal wife of Jason of the Argonauts). Ward described his Medea hypothesis as “Gaia’s evil twin”.

One can marvel at the incredible diversity of life on Earth (e.g., conservatively, > 4 million protists, 16600 protozoa, 75000-300000 helminth parasites, 1.5 million fungi, 320000 plants, 4-6 million arthropods, > 6500 amphibians, 10000 birds and > 5000 mammals) and wonder if there might be something in the ‘life makes it easier for life’ idea underlying Gaia. However, when one considers that over 99 % of all species that have ever existed are today extinct, then a Medea perspective might dominate.

Enter Cronus. Here we posit a new way of looking at the tumultuous history of life and death on Earth that effectively relegates Gaia and Medea to opposite ends of a spectrum. Cronus (patricidal son of Gaia overthrown by his own son, Zeus, and banished to Hades) treats speciation and extinction as birth and death in a ‘metapopulation’ of species assemblages split into biogeographic realms. Catastrophic extinction events can be brought about via species engineering their surroundings by passively modifying the delicate balance of oxygen, carbon dioxide and methane – indeed, humans might be the next species to fall victim to our own Medean tendencies. But extinction opens up new niches that eventually elicit speciation, and under conditions of relative environmental stability, specialists evolve because they are (at least temporarily) competitive under those conditions. When conditions change again, extinction ensues because not all can adapt quickly enough. Just as all individuals born in a population must eventually die, extinction is a necessary termination.

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TCASE 3: The energy demand equation to 2050

Posted on 11 October 2009 by Barry Brook

Updated 13/10/2009, based on post comments. Bottom line: 2050 power demand will be ~10 TWe of electrical generating power — a 5-fold increase on today’s levels, requiring the construction of ~680 MWe per day from 2010 to 2050.

Before we look in detail at the various low-carbon energy technologies that may provide the means to move away from fossil fuels, it is worthwhile considering what our future energy targets are likely to be. That is, what are plausible energy demand scenarios?

In the developed world (US, Europe, Japan, Australia and so on), we’ve enjoyed a high standard of living, linked to a readily available supply of cheap energy, based mostly on fossil fuels. Indeed, it can be argued that this has encouraged energy profligacy, and we really could be more efficient in the mileage we get out of our cars, the power usage of our fridges, lights and electrical appliances, and in the design of our buildings to reduce demands for heating and cooling. There is clearly room for improvement, and sensible energy efficiency measures should be actively pursued. More on that in later posts.

In the bigger, global picture, however, there is no realistic prospect that we can use less energy in the future. There are three obvious reasons for this.

1) Most of the world’s population – collectively, the developing world – is extremely energy poor. Over a third of all humanity, some 2.5 billion people, have no access to electricity whatsoever. For those that do, their long-term aspirations for energy growth, to achieve something equating that used today by the developed world, is a powerful motivation for development. For a nation like India, with over 1 billion people, that would mean a twenty-fold increase in per capita energy use.

2) As the oil runs out, we need to replace it if we are to keep our vehicles going. Oil is both a convenient energy carrier, and an energy source (we ‘mine’ it). In the future, we’ll have to create our new energy carriers, be they chemical batteries or oil-substitutes like methanol or hydrogen. On a grand scale, that’s going to take a lot of extra electrical energy! This counts for all countries.

3) With a growing human population (which we hope will stabilise by mid-century at less than 10 billion) and the burgeoning impacts of climate change and other forms of environmental damage, there will be escalating future demands for clean water (at least in part supplied artificially, through desalination and waste water treatment), more intensive agriculture which is not based on ongoing displacement of natural landscapes like rainforests, and perhaps, direct geo-engineering to cool the planet, which might be needed if global warming proceeds at the upper end of current forecasts.

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Germany – crunched by the numbers

Posted on 9 October 2009 by Barry Brook

Guest Post by Tom Blees. Tom is author of Prescription for the Planet – The Painless Remedy for Our Energy & Environmental Crises. Tom is also the president of the Science Council for Global Initiatives.

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Following up on the article Barry pointed out the other day about Spain’s drastic turnabout in solar subsidization and the ripple effects it’s having on the solar industry worldwide, I thought I’d mention some similar news from Germany. I ran across an article from Die Zeit, a prominent German publication. You can find a typically rough Google translation of the article here. I did have a German friend of mine translate a few of the pertinent paragraphs to get a more accurate rendition:

The entire amount can be pretty accurately calculated. The expected installation of new solar modules [in Germany] for the year 2009 will cost the consumer at least ten billion Euros in the next 20 years. Count on an additional 1.8 billion kWh of sun energy from the outlets, which represents about 0.3% of the entire present energy consumption, which means almost nothing. Whatever was built up to 2008 will amount to even more than 30 billion Euros. That at least is what the Rheinisch-Westfaelische Institut fuer Wirtschaftsforshung calculated.

And the costs will grow rapidly. If the prognosis of the Union of the European Photovoltaic Industry proves correct, there will be so many new installations by 2013 in Germany that the cost will grow to at least 77 billion Euros, without inflation.

Here’s what Germany’s solar electric output came to in recent years (in gigawatt hours):

2006 = 2,220 GWh;     2007 = 3,500 GWh;     2008 = 4,300 GWh

According to this, the increase in 2009 comes to another 1800 GWh, bringing the 2009 total up to 6,100 GWh. Note the progression hasn’t been steady since 2006, increasing by 1300, then just 800, and now 1800, for a three-year average of 1,300 GWh. I don’t know what the prognosis of the photovoltaic industry organization above projects for increases to 2013, but let’s assume it’s even higher than this year, that it’ll be 2000 GWh more per year. So that’ll give us this probably over-generous estimate:

2009 = 6,100 GWh;     2010 = 8,100 GWh;     2011 = 10,100 GWh;     2012 = 12,100 GWh

So by 2013, Germany will have committed to spending €77 billion (that’s over $113 billion USD) for solar capacity equivalent to less than 2% of their 2006 electrical demand.

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Backstory – Barry Brook on 4th Generation Nuclear Power

Posted on 7 October 2009 by Barry Brook

This is a mini “in-between” post to alert you to an extended radio interview I just did on 4th Generation nuclear power. (For those who might wonder, I’m currently writing “TCASE 3: The Power Hungry Future”, which I’ll post in a couple of days).

Here is a link to the audio (MP3 download). It runs for 50 minutes and was conducted at 6-7 pm tonight (7 October 2009). It was broadcast on Radio Adelaide’s 101.5 Backstory, a weekly current affairs programme which provides perspective on politics, people and places, with a special focus on international issues. Here is the interview précis:

Any solution to the world’s ever increasing energy requirements must be climate change friendly.

While many activists and scientists insist that renewable energies such as wind, solar and hydro electric can solve the world’s energy needs and avoid a climate catastrophe, opponents point to fourth generation nuclear power as a better solution.

Professor Barry Brook holds the Sir Hubert Wilkins Chair of Climate Change at the University of Adelaide and is an advocate of fourth generation nuclear power. Barry’s personal website is Brave New Climate.

Sean Robinson spoke to Barry and asked him to give an over view of what “fourth generation” means and how it differs from contemporary nuclear reactors.

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Remote solar PV vs small nuclear reactor – electricity cost comparison

Posted on 4 October 2009 by Barry Brook

It is often claimed that small-scale renewable energy, such as solar photovoltaic panel arrays, will fill an important future energy niche by providing much-needed electricity to developing nations and other remote regions (such as the outback of Australia). That’s a seemingly reasonable argument, but how do the numbers stack up? Below, Gene Preston (SCGI member) provides some easy-to-follow calculations (currency is in US dollars/cents). The results might surprise many:

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A friend of mine at the University of Texas and I were talking about his desire to develop a presentation for educators in Africa to use in estimating energy costs. He has just 3 hours for his presentation. He wants the teachers to be able to do the economics calculations themselves. I suggested he narrow down the discussion to just a comparison of solar versus small scale nuclear. Here’s what I came up with:

Solar – Lets go low tech with fixed solar panels. The cost is $8/watt (W) and runs about 14% of the time (its capacity factor). You will need energy storage, which costs $1/W + $.4/Wh (that is, 40c per watt hour**).

Lets say that we develop a solar system to serve a 5 kW peak load with an average load of 1 kW. The daily energy demand will be 24 kWh and peak load is 5 kW. This could be a few houses or a small school with some PCs. To produce the average amount of energy needed will require 1/.14 = 7.14 kW, so lets say 8 kW just to put in a little extra energy production factor. The 8 kW will cost $8/W (for 8000 W) = $64000. The energy storage system will cost $1/W (5000) = $5000 for the electronics and switchgear plus $.4/Wh (24000) = $9600 for one day’s energy usage. I would double this and install two days of storage just to be safe, which would cost $19,200.

Therefore the cost of the 5 kW peak demand solar system is:

$64000 for the panels (only half this cost is the PV array)

$5000 for the storage system electronics

$19200 for the batteries (2 days storage)

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$88000 for the entire system. (see what I mean about this being a rich person’s energy source?)

Let’s calculate the cents per kWh energy cost. Assume a loan at 6% annual interest rate to pay for it. Assume the system has a 20 year life.

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Q and A responses to climate skeptics’ arguments

Posted on 2 October 2009 by Barry Brook

I’d like to highlight a really useful information document put together by Dr Brett Parris, Chief Economist & Manager, Climate & Natural Resources Team, World Vision Australia. It’s entitled “Responses to Questions & Objections on Climate Change” and has been through some heavy revisions (currently on v3). He has also developed a scenario modeller (see below).

The climate sceptics FAQ is pretty comprehensive, running to 68 pages (PDF document here) and is well referenced. There is also a web-based html version here for convenient online browsing and cut-and-paste. Previous versions of this FAQ have been fine-tuned on the basis of iterative advice from a range of climate scientists and specialists in related disciplines, and so the content is both rigorous and reflective of the evidence-based scientific literature. I commend it to those who are interested in concise answers to a range of commonly asked sceptical questions on anthropogenic global warming.

The review covers 21 commonly raised arguments (click on number to goto):

1. The IPCC is a political body and its reports are scientifically unreliable

2. Science is not about consensus – Galileo was ridiculed by the authorities and the scientific establishment

3. There’s no consensus – 31,000 scientists signed a petition denying the link between greenhouse gas emissions and climate change

4. We should wait until there is more evidence before reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

5. Climate change has been happening throughout geological and human history. What is happening now is not outside the bounds of natural climatic variability.

6. Because what is happening now is within the realms of natural variability, we can’t say that humans are contributing to climate change.

7. Because what is happening now is within the realms of natural variability, it is not something to worry about. Species have always adapted.

8. It was warmer during medieval times

9. Climate models are unreliable

10. There was a consensus among climate scientists in the 1970s that we would soon be heading into another ice age

11. Global warming ended around 1998 anyway – it’s been cooling since then.

12. Our best strategy is simply to adapt to climate change.

13. CO2 exists only in very low concentrations in the atmosphere, therefore it cannot have significant effects.

14. CO2 is a weak greenhouse gas. Doubling of CO2 from its pre-industrial levels of 280 ppm to 560 ppm would only bring warming of about 1ºC.

15. CO2 is not a pollutant – it is completely natural and essential for life.

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TCASE 2: Energy primer

Posted on 29 September 2009 by Barry Brook

Before getting entangled in the thorny bramble of sustainable energy options, I thought it helpful to arm you with a set of terminological secateurs. So TCASE #2 (recalling that TCASE = the Thinking Critically About Sustainable Energy series) is a brief primer and glossary on energy terms. This is not meant to be anything comprehensive, but it’s enough to get your technical feet wet and to understand some of the units and concepts that are liberally thrown around by those who are used to talking in the energy jargon. (If readers feel I have missed something important [no doubt], please feel free to add this to the comments, and I will also update this post to reflect the important suggestions.)

Anyway, first up, we need to understand the difference between power and energy. Let’s say you have a jug of water. It has some volume, which is the amount of water the jug holds. Now, let’s say you gradually tip out the water — the flow of water (the amount of water being poured per unit time) is a rate. Well, in caricature, the volume of water is like energy, and the flow of water is like power. Not a perfect analogy, but they never are…

Now, when measuring anything, you could use any manner of units. I’m going to consistently stick to SI (Système Internationale) units. If you want to translate back and forth (imperial, metric, nonsensic, etc.), look up the tables here. The basic SI unit of energy is the Joule. The basic unit of power is the Watt (W), which has units of Joules per second (J/s). So, a 60 W incandescent light globe uses up energy at a rate of 60 J/s, or 216,000 J per hour (60 x 3,600 = 216 kilojoules, kJ). Or, to express it another way, in one hour (h) that light would use up 60 Wh worth of energy, and in a day, it’d use 60 x 24 = 1,440 Wh, or 1.44 kWh. So, kWh are a unit of energy.

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Thinking critically about sustainable energy (TCASE) 1: Prologue

Posted on 27 September 2009 by Barry Brook

This is the first post in what is planned to be an extended series, ‘Thinking critically about sustainable energy‘ (henceforth TCASE #). As explained in my previous blog entry, A necessary interlude, this series will look in detail at the issues confronting renewable and nuclear energy, with an aim to break down the often complex and multifaceted critiques and promotions being made about various energy generation technologies into simpler, single-issue chunks, which can be more readily pinned down and understood.

I will also profile some of the less well-developed low-carbon technologies, such as tidal, wave, microalgae, and geothermal, as well as nuclear fusion, fusion-fission hybrids, travelling wave reactors etc. and speculate on their possible future roles. I hope in this way that I’ll be able to reinforce people’s understanding of why I no longer hold renewable energy to be a primary solution — and yet, by the same yardstick of maintaining intellectual honesty, acknowledging that I’ll also keep an open mind to unconsidered possibilities and caveats that are raised by commenters (be these against nuclear energy, and/or for renewables). Indeed, I’ll also discuss critically the social and technical impediments facing nuclear power adoption and the Generation III/IV synergy.

First up, a little history of the evolution of my thought on this topic, as documented my professional research and in the archives of this blog.

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