Open Thread 1

Posted on 27 November 2009 by Barry Brook

This is a general discussion thread where you can talk about whatever you like — there is nothing ‘off topic’ here — within reason. The standard commenting rules of courtesy apply, and at the very least your chat should relate to the broad theme of the blog (climate change, sustainability, energy, etc.). You can also find this thread by clicking on the Open Thread category on the left sidebar.

I’ll start a new thread once this one drops off the bottom of the front page, which by past experience will be about every 2 months.

Filed under: Open Thread | 137 Comments »

The Nuclear Economy

Posted on 27 November 2009 by Barry Brook

“The Nuclear Economy: Why Only Nuclear Power Can Revitalize The Economy And Environment” by Zachary Moitoza, Xlibris, Sept 2009.

This is a book well worth getting. First, as a basic spruik, I’ll reproduce the press release and some details about the author, to give the basic background. I’ll then offer some personal perspectives on the book, and consider how it compares to other material out there on the future energy economy.

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With the release of author Zachary Moitoza’s informative and expedient The Nuclear Economy, readers will now find the answers to the numerous questions concerning the screeching halt of the global economy, the extremely volatile oil prices, and other seemingly unchanged distressing conditions.

The Nuclear Economy provides readers with absolute awareness about the Earth, its ecological conditions, the global economic downfall, the energy problem, and other crucial issues affecting human existence. The Earth is finite and fossil fuels are not renewable. As these fuels approach depletion, the global economic system will need to find an alternative source of energy or it will completely collapse. Equally disturbing is the carbon dioxide produced by fossil fuel combustion. This greenhouse gas scientists are warning about could lead to mass drought, famine, and further climate change. Could the entire world be facing the most catastrophic culmination of events in human history?

In this book, Moitoza articulately explains in great detail that none of the purported solutions to the energy problem will work-except one. Readers will plunge into this pool of knowledge and discover the solution to the energy problem that Moitoza believes will actually work, end the world’s economic and environmental odyssey, and lead to a sustainable era of clean air and “post-scarcity” for all.

The Nuclear Economy is enrolled in Xlibris’ Bookstore Returnability Program, which gives booksellers the convenient option of returning excess stocks through Ingram Distribution. For more information on this book, log on to www.Xlibris.com.

About the Author: Zachary Moitoza holds a Bachelor’s degree in political science from the University of Oregon, with a minor in English. Fascinated by America’s energy odyssey, this book is the culmination of years of detective work spent searching the internet for information as his primary pastime. He is in no way affiliated with the nuclear power industry, but simply wants to help make the world a better place through public awareness. Aged twenty-five, he lives in Eugene, Oregon. This is Moitoza’s first book.

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The Nuclear Economy [TNE] is an interesting, well-written and easily understood book. Indeed, if you want a straightforward digest on the energy problem, coupled with a cogent advocacy statement in support of next generation nuclear power — the energy source that I (and many others who regularly visit this blog) have concluded is our best prospect at displacing fossil fuels — then TNE is a great start. Or, if you’re looking to chip a few rough edges off your understanding of various alternative energy options, then TNE will also serve you pretty well. I’d certainly never recommend that people read this and nothing else on energy, but as a primer, it rates highly.

As you might have guessed from the previous declarations, TNE is a relatively short book (173 pages). It has a mix of some very brief chapters and other more extended discussions; you can finish it in four or five hours. The first phase (chapters 1 to 7) deal with energy and the economy (the GFC, peak oil, global warming, economic growth, the nature of electricity), the middle section of the book (chapters 8 to 21) reviews a whole raft of energy generation and storage technologies (from standard stuff such as coal, natural gas, solar, wind, wave, hydro, biomass, through to more ‘out there’ options like space-based solar arrays, methane hydrates and fusion). The final section (chapters 22 to 27 plus conclusion) — energy phase five — describes nuclear power with an emphasis on the IFR.

Read more »

Filed under: Nuclear Energy | 8 Comments »

Key concepts for reliable, small-scale low-carbon energy grids

Posted on 22 November 2009 by Barry Brook

Recently, I published a guest post by Gene Preston on BNC, which examined the electricity cost comparison for remote solar PV vs small nuclear reactors. This generated considerable discussion (128 comments), much of which focused on whether this was a useful comparison in many circumstances; what if, for various reasons, the small-scale nuclear battery is not a viable option?

Gene has since done further work to consider the problem of how to design a reliable, small-scale, low-carbon energy generation system, which is economically competitive (though not necessarily lowest cost). He uses a case study approach to consider five crucial aspects:

1. System 1: A rooftop solar and wind 100% renewables powered microgrid concept.

2. System 2: Like (1), but the 10 kW rooftop solar is replaced with 5 kW of centralized solar.

3. Analysis 1: Three ways to improve the reliability of a (nearly) 100% renewables system.

4. Analysis 2: The cost of CCS carbon capture and sequestration makes coal power uneconomical.

5. Analysis 3: Small nuclear power provides reliability without needing a new transmission grid.

First, here is a summary of the five cases. Following this overview, the case studies are given in full (for the more dedicated reader — which is probably most BNC readers!). I find these type of empirical studies incredibly useful in understanding the options available to us. Great work Gene.

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In all the cases the microgrid has 150 homes. This number of houses was selected to best match the output of a 1.5 MW wind generator. Of course the size of the system could be scaled to any number of houses. The intent is to design each system to be as independent of the larger grid as possible. Each house has two PHEVs with 50 kWh batteries for a range of 100 miles of city driving for each fully charged vehicle. Each home is assumed to annually use about 12500 kWh plus another 12500 kWh for the PHEVs for a total of 25000 kWh per home annually. The PHEVs are assumed to be bi-directional power sources, being able to both receive power from the microgrid and deliver power to the microgrid in all cases. The microgrid consists of an undergound distribution system connecting the houses as well as the power sources local to the microgrid. All the costs for the distribution system, metering, etc that are the same for each of the above cases are not included in these calculations. The purpose of this analysis is to simply compare the cost and reliability of different types of power sources.

Here are the findings:

Case 1 has 10 kW of rooftop solar fixed panels at each house and a 1.5 MW wind generator for the whole neighborhood. The up front cost of the solar and wind per household is $90,000. This system will suffer occasional power deficiencies if operated as a standalone system. The interconnection costs for backup power from a larger grid were not estimated.

Read more »

Filed under: Nuclear Energy, Renewable planet | 60 Comments »

TCASE 6: Cooling water and thermal power plants

Posted on 20 November 2009 by Barry Brook

Heat engines require cooling, to turn heat energy into mechanical energy (and then, via a turbine-connected generator, to electrical energy). This is an unavoidable physical principle, and is typically exploited via the Carnot cycle. Usually, this cooling requirement uses water.

Why do I raise this point? Because it seems to be a source of much confusion (innocent and deliberate) amongst the energy illiterate, especially when mounted as an argument against nuclear energy generation (and, implicitly, as a reason for adopting renewable energy). For instance, Friends of the Earth have decried:

Nuclear power plants consume large amounts of water –35-65 million litres daily. Indeed nuclear power is the thirstiest of all energy sources. A December 2006 report by the Commonwealth Department of Parliamentary Services states: “Per megawatt existing nuclear power stations use and consume more water than power stations using other fuel sources. Depending on the cooling technology utilised, the water requirements for a nuclear power station can vary between 20 to 83 per cent more than for other power stations.” Global warming and water shortages are likely to exacerbate problems experienced by the nuclear power industry during heatwaves in recent years. Nuclear power plants in several countries, including France and the US, have had to operate at reduced capacity, or to shut down temporarily, because of reduced water supply or to avoid breaching regulations limiting the heat of expelled water.

So what’s the story? Are water limitations and discharge regulations destined to be a major limiting factor for nuclear power, especially for places that are experiences increasing water shortages, such as Australia? The short answer is no — this is classic FUD. For the longer answer, read on.

All thermal power plants, by definition, make use of heat engines with heat exchangers, and so require cooling (although this need can be reduced in various ways, as explained below). This includes coal-fired, nuclear fission, oil-fired, conventional gas-fired, solar thermal and geothermal power stations. The renewable energy sources that don’t have this cooling requirement are hydropower, wind, wave, tidal and solar photovoltaic power.

Water is used in two ways in thermal power plants: (a) Internal steam cycle: to create steam via the energy source (fossil fuel combustion, fission chain reaction, heat exchange with deep rocks [hot dry rock geothermal] or a heat transfer fluid [concentrating solar power]) and convey it to an electricity-generating turbine, and (b) Cooling cycle: to cool and condense the after-turbine steam (this condensation dramatically decreases the volume of the expanded steam,creating a suction vacuum which draws it through the turbine blades), and then to discharge surplus heat to the environment.

Read more »

Filed under: Nuclear Energy, Renewable planet, TCASE Series | 49 Comments »

Forget the quality, it’s the 700 million tonnes which counts

Posted on 17 November 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.

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There’s a gross cognitive dissonance when a Government who professes to think that climate change is the defining issue of our generation can’t face down a few blustering cowboys. This is implied in the anouncement that agriculture will be omitted from the CPRS.

Well, that’s not quite true. Doing good things like planting trees will be rewarded by allowing farmers to sell pieces of paper called offsets. Doing bad things … like generating more warming than all our coal fired power stations, like causing 6,000 new bowel cancer cases annually, like giving teenagers athlerosclerotic plaques. These will also be rewarded in the usual way … by the traditional head in sand approach on the emissions and by medical subsidies while continuing to allow Meat and Livestock Australia to mislead the public without being bothered by silly inconveniences like truth in advertising laws. This is analogous to the time honoured principle behind handling the Global Financial Crisis, privatise the profits and nationalise the losses.

Recall that it isn’t very much of agriculture which is the problem, it isn’t the potato growers or the wheat millers, or the fruit and vegetable growers. Their emissions are tiny and we have no low emission alternatives to these foods when it comes to eating. Quantitatively, even the downstream food processors and transporters are relatively low in emissions. For new BNC readers let me just spell it out once more … suppose the emissions generated by making pasta were the equivalent of a car using 5 litres per 100 kilometers. What are the emissions generated by lean beef equivalent to? About 1000 liters per 100 kilometers. Would we allow cars that were so inefficient? Obviously our current Government would, at best, merely ask producers of such cars to join the other pigs at the free CPRS permit trough.

So out of the whole of agriculture, the big emitters are just the sheep and cattle boys and there’s not too many sheep boys left after a couple of decades of culling by market forces and cheaper (and sometimes better) fabrics. Like I said in the beginning its really just a few cowboys calling the shots. The interests of these cowboys so dominates the Australian psyche that Kevin Rudd seriously thought a few BBQs would heal the rift over the bashing of Indian students. Apparently neither he nor anybody in his office seemed to understand that asking Indian students home for slashed and seared roast religious icon between 2 slices of limp white bread substitute wasn’t going to be quite the winner on the sub-continent that it is in Australia.

Leading the charge for the cowboys these days is Australian of the Year in 2007, Tim Flannery. He was recently paid by Meat and Livestock Australia to speak at a meat propaganda forum for young students at Roseworthy agricultural college just out from Adelaide. ABC’s Bush Telegraph last week discussed the forum and featured Flannery not only discussing the sustainability of red meat but prophetically outlining exactly what Government policy should be. And so it came to pass, that before the sun rose and set a few more times, the deal was done and announced. Bush Telegraph did a follow-up program the next day featuring a rerun of Flannery’s statements and a response from philosopher and well known animal rights campaigner, Peter Singer.

Read more »

Filed under: Ecological impacts, Emissions reduction | 111 Comments »

Two years, three record heat waves in southeastern Australia

Posted on 14 November 2009 by Barry Brook

Summer 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.

Read more »

Filed under: Ecological impacts, Future shock | 77 Comments »

Follow Britain’s nuclear lead

Posted on 10 November 2009 by Barry Brook

Here’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.

Read more »

Filed under: Emissions reduction, Nuclear Energy | 130 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 | 44 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 | 25 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.

Read more »

Filed under: Renewable planet | 191 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%?

Read more »

Filed under: Ecological impacts, Emissions reduction | 59 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 [email protected]

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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 | 23 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 | 20 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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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 | 165 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 [email protected]

“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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Filed under: Nuclear Energy, Renewable planet, TCASE Series | 100 Comments »

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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Filed under: Nuclear Energy, Renewable planet | 108 Comments »

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