What volume of synthetic hydrocarbon fuels can we generate in the future?

Posted on 30 April 2012 by Barry Brook

Guest Post by Chris Uhlik. Dr Uhlik did a BS, MS, and PhD in Electrical Engineering at Stanford 1979–1990. He worked at Toyota in Japan, built robot controllers, cellular telephone systems, internet routers, and now does engineering management at Google. Among his 8 years of projects as an engineering director at Google, he counts engineering recruiting, Toolbar, Software QA, Software Security, GMail, Video, BookSearch, StreetView, AerialImaging, and research activities in Artificial Intelligence and Education. He has directly managed about 500 engineers at Google and indirectly over 2000 employees. His interests include nuclear power, photosynthesis, technology evolution, artificial intelligence, ecosystems, and education.

(Ed Note: Chris has written previously on BNC on calculating the cost of ending global warming)

In a hypothetical carbon-neutral future, we can still use liquid hydrocarbon fuels if they are synthesized from non-fossil carbon sources. This analysis looks at how much carbon we use today and which of those uses can be readily substituted by electricity and synthetic fuels.

I’ll use numbers for the United States as economic and energy use data are well published by various government agencies such as the National Laboratories and the Energy Information Administration.

Flows of fossil carbon in the US Economy: (Please forgive the excess precision)

Coal: 9.08e11 kg/year which I estimate to be about 64e12 moles/carbon/year

Petroleum: 19,498,000 bbl/day, (incidentally I was surprised to learn that only 46% of this ends up in motor fuel)

Natural Gas: 7.4e11 m^3/year produced + 1.1e11 m^3 cuft/year imported

Cement: 2.5e9 Mg clinker/year worldwide of which I estimate 24% is used in the United States (by ratio of USA GDP/world GDP)

This amounts to a fossil carbon flux of about 170 x 10^12 moles of fossil carbon being extracted and released to the atmosphere each year in the United States.

To what uses is it put?

  • Electricity generation (coal and gas fired thermal plants)
  • Automobiles and light trucks (light transportation)
  • Highway trucks and rail trains (heavy transportation)
  • Ships
  • Airplanes
  • Heating oil
  • Steel production
  • Cement production
  • Fertilizer production
  • Residential and Commercial gas
  • Industrial gas
  • other materials

By combing a variety of sources and making educated guesses, I break it down like this:

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Filed under: Emissions, Future | 1 Comment »

The future of Brave New Climate

Posted on 26 April 2012 by Barry Brook

Life is a series of natural and spontaneous changes. Don’t resist them; that only creates sorrow. Let reality be reality. Let things flow naturally forward in whatever way they like.  ― Lao Tzu

The Brave New Climate (BNC) blog has seen many changes in its almost 4 years of existence. I’d like to think of this as an evolutionary process — underpinned by a natural selection of ideas and advocacy based on what I think is important and workable, framed in the context of identifying viable options for global climate change mitigation. As the quote above emphasizes, this flows naturally from a progress of thought and effort.

A few years ago I announced a shift in focus on the website, in the post ‘A necessary interlude‘. Now things on BNC are changing again.

In summary, the motivation for the new changes are: (i) time limitations, (ii) audience outreach and (iii) freedom and flexibility. I’ll first explain what is going to happen, and then elaborate a little on the justification.

1. A BNC Discussion Forum has been established. This will, hereafter, be the main place for comments.

2. A new website – KnowMoreFearLess.com [KMFL] — will be launched (currently locked and under development). This will be focused on public education on nuclear power for greenhouse gas mitigation.

3. The Front Page of the bravenewclimate.com website will become a semi-static PORTAL page. This will include fixed links to the BNC Discussion Forum (see 1), the BNC archives (after some further indexing and re-organisation of this page), KMFL, and also provide a summary (with links) to the latest BNC blog post.

4. The flow of BNC blog postings will be less frequent and more opportunistic — rather than regular and scheduled (the historic rate was a post every 3-5 days).

The BNC twitter feed (microblogging) will not change in character or frequency — mostly consisting of up-to-date links to articles on climate change and low-carbon energy.

Okay, now some explanation on these changes.

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Filed under: Future, Hot News | 32 Comments »

IFR FaD 13 – cost comparison of IFR and thermal reactors

Posted on 22 April 2012 by Barry Brook

This is the fourth and final part of the series of extracts from the book Plentiful Energy — The story of the Integral Fast Reactor by Chuck Till and Yoon Chang.

Reproduced with permission of the authors, these sections describe and justify some of the key design choices that went into the making the IFR a different — and highly successful — approach to fast neutron reactor technology and its associated fuel recycling.

These excerpts not only provide a fascinating insight into a truly sustainable form nuclear power; they also provide excellent reference material for refuting many of the spurious claims on the internet about IFR by people who don’t understand (or choose to wilfully misrepresent) this critically important technology.

For reference, here are the previous entries:

Part 1 (metal fuels and plutonium).

Part 2 (coolant choice and reactor configuration).

Part 3 (lessons learned from fast reactor capital costs).

This last extract considers the cost differences and similarities between the next-generation IFR and the current generation of thermal reactors (using a comparison with a generic LWR). Note that this section does not include the costs of fuel (mining, enrichment, fabrication, recycling, and so on). That is, however covered later in the book:, with full fuel-cycle cost estimate being: LWR = 0.55 c/kWh at current uranium cost (Table 13-4) and IFR 0.44 c/kWh — or $35 million/GWyr (Table 13-9).

This section is drawn from pages 277-280 of Plentiful Energy. To buy the book ($18 US) and get the full story, go to Amazon or CreateSpace. (Note that the images below do not come from the book).

—————-

Generic cost comparison between the IFR and LWR (light water reactor) 

Comparison of fast reactor capital cost with the capital cost of commercial LWRs is not straightforward either. First, the part that should be straightforward, that of identifying the capital cost of commercial reactors, isn’t straightforward at all. U.S. LWRs were built twenty or more years ago, under wildly varying construction environments, some prior to the anti-nuclear campaigns of cost increases, some during the height of them, and a few after. Comparisons between PWR, BWR, heavy water reactors, and gas-cooled reactors are not straightforward either, even though, with the water reactor types, we are dealing with actual experience. Comparison with yet-to-be-designed fast reactors involves more uncertainty. However, the details of the makeup of capital costs do provide useful insight.

The Department of Energy’s Energy Economics Data Base (EEDB) defines a code of accounts for estimating and categorizing such cost components. [6] For illustrative purposes, a reference PWR capital cost breakdown developed for the EEDB is presented in Table 13-2. [7] Since the database was generated in the 1980s, the absolute dollar amounts have little relevance to today, so the cost breakdown is expressed in terms of percentage of the total direct costs.

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Filed under: IFR FaD, Nuclear | 13 Comments »

Off to Russia

Posted on 15 April 2012 by Barry Brook

Well, I’m just about to hop on a plane to Russia to visit for a week — destination Moscow. This is part of my duties as a member of the International Awards Committee for the Global Energy Prize (see here for details).

Whilst in the heart of the former Soviet Union, I’ll hook up with Tom Blees (President of SCGI) and Evgeny Velikhov (President of the Kurchatov Institute), among others. It’s going to be my first trip to the country, and although I’ll only get to see Moscow this time around, I’m returning to the country in again June (partly for the GEP awards ceremony, after which I go directly to the U.S. for lots of other exciting activities); on the June trip, I’ll go to the wonderful old city of St Petersburg. Lucky me, eh?

Anyway, I hope to be able to post one or two updates on BNC during the trip, provided I can hook up to the internet from time to time.

In the meantime, here is something that will be of interest to many readers, given recent discussions on the blog. Apologies if you’ve seen it before.

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Economic/Business Case for the Pyroprocessing of Spent Nuclear Fuel (SNF)

While many still claim that conservation together with wind and solar will solve the world’s energy problems, they are dead wrong. Nuclear power is the only proven alternative source of carbon-free energy that can be developed rapidly enough and to sufficient scale to meet the world’s growing need for energy. This report outlines the actions which must be taken; both to reduce the amount of troublesome nuclear waste called Spent Nuclear Fuel (SNF) and simultaneously create the fuel needed by Fast Reactors. The authors are certain the use of Pyroprocessing to close the nuclear fuel cycle, and Fast Reactors, particularly in the form of Integral Fast Reactor (IFRs), are inevitable in a fossil fuel-free world.

Read entire article (This is a large file. Please be patient while it loads.)

Filed under: Hot News, Nuclear, Uncategorized | 18 Comments »

The Nuclear Energy Solution

Posted on 12 April 2012 by Barry Brook

Guest Post by Bill Sacks and Greg Meyerson. Bill is a physicist and a radiologist, and wrote Lessons about nuclear energy from the Japanese quake and tsunami about a  month into the Fukushima crisis. Greg is an English professor with specialization in critical theory. Both are based in the U.S. For further details about the authors, see the Endnote to this post.

—————-

NUCLEAR ENERGY: THE ONLY SOLUTION TO THE ENERGY PROBLEM AND GLOBAL WARMING  By Bill Sacks and Greg Meyerson

The following is a brief rationale and outline of a much longer essay that is also available on bravenewclimate.com (CLICK HERE to download the printable PDF, 58 pages).

This essay unifies four critical contentions that the authors cannot find combined in any other of the many sources on nuclear energy.  Our four contentions are 1) fossil fuels (coal, oil, and natural gas) are now the main source of global warming; 2) they must be completely replaced with clean energy sources, chiefly nuclear energy since the inherent physical properties of wind, solar, hydro, and geothermal severely limit their use; 3) radiation at the dose ranges encountered in nature, as well as by the public in nuclear accidents, actually promotes, rather than destroys, health; and 4) the profit system presents an inherent obstacle to achieving the goal of clean, sustainable energy.

The authors hold the opinion that all four of these aspects are inseparable, and that a general understanding of all is necessary if any progress is to be made in solving the problems of inaccessibility of adequate electricity for much of humanity and anthropogenic global warming that is nearing tipping points that threaten to make self-amplifying and irreversible changes.  No one of these four, in our view, can be safely put aside as a distraction from some “main” point.

Recognition that the earth is warming and that human activity, rather than natural cycles, is now responsible is only the beginning of this solution — a necessary but not sufficient condition.  Similarly broad general understanding of the severe inherent limitations of all clean alternatives to nuclear energy is needed to hasten the building of nuclear plants world over, and to end the wasteful efforts to scale up wind and solar particularly, that profit a few but at the expense of rich governmental subsidies and higher energy costs that further restrict access to electricity.

Furthermore if nuclear energy is to gain the respect and advocacy of the public, the exaggerated fears of radiation have to be brought under rational control, which requires first that governmental regulatory agencies around the world be forced to admit that they have been basing their restrictions on an obsolete relic of the Cold War — one that falsely claims that all radiation is harmful to our health regardless of how low the dose, known as the linear-no-threshold (LNT) assumption.  However, the science of biological effects of ionizing radiation overwhelmingly points to an evolved response that protects against any harm from low levels of radiation, known as the hormetic effect, or hormesis, a very general biological response to all sorts of chemical and physical agents.

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Filed under: Clim Ch Q&A, Emissions, Future, Nuclear, Policy, Renewables | 68 Comments »

IFR FaD 12 – lessons learned from fast reactor capital costs

Posted on 7 April 2012 by Barry Brook

This is the third of a four-part series of extracts from the book Plentiful Energy — The story of the Integral Fast Reactor by Chuck Till and Yoon Chang.

Reproduced with permission of the authors, these sections describe and justify some of the key design choices that went into the making the IFR a different — and highly successful — approach to fast neutron reactor technology and its associated fuel recycling.

These excerpts not only provide a fascinating insight into a truly sustainable form nuclear power; they also provide excellent reference material for refuting many of the spurious claims on the internet about IFR by people who don’t understand (or choose to wilfully misrepresent) this critically important technology.

Click here for part 1 (metal fuels and plutonium).

Click here for part 2 (coolant choice and reactor configuration).

The third extract looks at the history of costs for commercial fast reactors to date (e.g., Superphenix in France). What can this tell us about the possible future costs of the IFR? (the final part will do a comparison with light water reactors). This section is drawn from pages 274-277 of Plentiful Energy. To buy the book ($18 US) and get the full story, go to Amazon or CreateSpace. (Note that the images below do not come from the book).

—————-

Fast Reactor Capital Cost: What can be learned from fast reactor construction experience to date?

A model of the Superphenix nuclear power station, a now closed fast breeder reactor. While it was open, it was highly controversial and once on the receiving end of a eco-terrorist rocket attack.

Some notion of likely cost competitiveness can be gained from past fast reactor construction experience, but the information available is limited. It can be said that the capital costs per MWe of the early fast reactors built around the world were much higher than those of LWRs. But the comparisons are not by any means direct and unambiguous. In comparison to the LWR, every difference between the two adds a cost increment to the fast reactor. With one significant exception, they were much smaller in size and electrical capacity than the LWRs built for commercial electricity generation. There were only a few of them. They were built as demonstration plants, by governments underwriting fast reactor development. There was basically one demonstration per country, with no follow-on to take advantage of the experience and lessons learned. Nor were they scaled up and replicated. The LWR had long since passed the stage where first-of-a-kind costs were involved, and had the advantage of economies of scale as well. Further, their purpose was commercial, with the attendant incentive to keep costs down. None of this has applied to fast reactors built to the present time.

Experience with thermal reactor types, as well as other large-scale construction, has shown that capital cost reduction follows naturally through a series of demonstration plants of increasing size once feasibility is proven. This has been true in every country, with exceptions only in the periods when construction undergoes lengthy delays due to organized anti-nuclear legal challenges. But this phased approach of multiple demonstration plants is no longer likely to be affordable, and in any case, with the experience worldwide now, it is probably unnecessary for a fast reactor plant today. Estimating the “settled down” capital cost potential is not an easy task without such experience. Nevertheless, as the economic competitiveness of the fast reactor is taken to be a prerequisite to commercial deployment, we do need to understand the capital cost potential of the fast reactor and what factors influence it.
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Filed under: IFR FaD, Nuclear | 55 Comments »

Open Thread 22

Posted on 2 April 2012 by Barry Brook

The Open Thread 21 has passed 500 comments and is getting a little bloated, so time for a new one.

The Open Thread is a general discussion forum, where you can talk about whatever you like — there is nothing ‘off topic’ here — within reason. So get up on your soap box! The standard commenting rules of courtesy apply, and at the very least your chat should relate to the general content of this blog.

The sort of things that belong on this thread include general enquiries, soapbox philosophy, meandering trains of argument that move dynamically from one point of contention to another, and so on — as long as the comments adhere to the broad BNC themes of sustainable energy, climate change mitigation and policy, energy security, climate impacts, etc.

You can also find this thread by clicking on the Open Thread category on the cascading menu under the “Home” tab.

———————–

There was quite a bit of discussion in the previous OT on radiation levels and the Fukushima evacuation zone. Relevant to this is the recent announcement that Japan will lift the entry ban on some cities within the prefecture. To quote:

In areas where annual radiation measurements are below 20 millisieverts per year, a government safety guideline, residents will have free access to their homes during the day and will be allowed to return permanently at the earliest opportunity post-decontamination. Where readings are between 20 to 50 millisieverts annually, evacuees will also have unrestricted access during the day although their permanent return will come later. In areas where measurements top 50 millisieverts, residents will not have free access and they will not be allowed to return for a minimum of five years.

A past BNC guest poster, engineer Chris Uhlik, analysed the situation a private email distribution list, and I thought his summary with respect to LNT (linear no-threshold hypothesis of radiation damage to living organisms) was very useful. With Chris’ permission, I reproduce it below:

———————–

The official position of every regulatory agency & scientific body, and even the people who will tell you “we don’t know what’s going on under 50 mSv”, the weight of the evidence favors LNT.

Here’s what I think is going on:

Under 50mSv/year we can’t find any epidemiological data to support LNT. There is simply too much noise and other effects to see sub-0.5% changes in cancer rates in populations where the variations from other effects (smoking, stress, chemical exposures, etc) are in the range of 20–45%.

The rates of different kinds of cancers are affected differently by radiation. Some kinds appear to increase while others decrease. Some kinds of cancer are more treatable than others and thus result in different mortality rates, even if the occurrence rate increases. Simple statements like “cancer death rates show a LNT response to radiation exposure” are way too simplistic to be true, but such statements are easy to base regulations around. When regulators feel a need to support a regulation with some math, they’d rather choose simple math than more-correct, but difficult to understand and explain math.

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Filed under: Nuclear, Open Thread | 282 Comments »

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