Why Obama should meet Till

Posted on 28 September 2011 by Barry Brook

Steve Kirsch of SCGI is like the Energizer Bunny — he never runs out of energy in trying to get something meaningful done on the carbon emission mitigation problem. Below is his open letter to the U.S. President’s energy and climate policy staffer. His aim: to get Chuck Till an invitation to the White House!

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Heather Zichal, Deputy Assistant to the President for Energy and Climate Change Policy, The White House

Dear Heather,

I am writing you today to join with Eric Loewen, President of the American Nuclear Society (ANS), in asking you to suggest to President Obama to meet directly with Dr. Charles Till.

I admit this is a very unusual request, but I hope you will take the time to read this admittedly very long letter and watch the 8 minute video referenced at the end. If you do that, I think that you will absolutely understand why I am making such an unusual request.

I will tell you the story of an amazing clean power technology that can use nuclear waste for fuel and emit no long-lived nuclear waste; that can supply clean power at low cost for our planet, 24×7, for millions of years without running out of fuel. I will tell you why this technology is our best bet to reduce the impact of global warming on our planet. And finally, I will tell you why nobody is doing anything about it and why this needs to be corrected.

If you act on this letter, you will save our country billions of dollars and allow us to become leaders in clean energy. If you delegate it downward, nothing will happen.

I have no vested interest in this; I am writing because I care about the future of our planet

First, since we met only briefly during the Obama campaign, let me provide a little background about myself. I am a high-tech entrepreneur and philanthropist based in Silicon Valley. I have received numerous awards for my philanthropy. For example, in 2003, I was honored to receive a National Caring Award presented by then Senator Clinton. The largest engineering auditorium at MIT is named in my honor. The first community college LEED platinum building in the nation is also named in my honor.

I am also active in Democratic politics. In the 2000 election, for example, I was the single largest political donor in the United States, donating over $10 million dollars to help Al Gore get elected. Unfortunately, we lost that one by one vote (on the Supreme Court).

I have no vested interest in nuclear power or anything else that is described below. I write only as someone who cares about our nation, the environment, and our planet. I am trying to do everything I can so my kids have a habitable world to live in. Nothing more.

Dr. James Hansen first made me aware of fast reactors in his letter to Obama in 2009

As an environmentalist, I have been a fan of Jim Hansen’s work for nearly two decades. Many consider Dr. Hansen to be the world’s leading expert on global warming. For example, Hansen was the first person to make Congress aware of global warming in his Senate testimony in 1988. Hansen is also Al Gore’s science advisor.

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Filed under: IFR FaD, Nuclear, Policy | 80 Comments »

Why population policy will not solve climate change

Posted on 19 September 2011 by Barry Brook

I have given lots of talks on climate change over the last few years. In these presentations, I typically focus on explaining the basis of the anthropogenic climate change problem, how it sits in the context of other human and natural changes, and then, how greenhouse gas emissions could be mitigated with the elimination of fossil fuels and substitution with low-carbon replacement technologies such as nuclear fission, renewables of various flavours, energy efficiency, and so on. When question time follows, I regularly get people standing up and saying something along the following lines:

It is all very well to focus on energy technology, and even to mention behavioural changes, but the real problem — the elephant in the room that you’ve ignored — is the size of the human population. No one seems to want to talk about that! About population policy. If we concentrated seriously on ways to reduce population pressure, many other issues would be far easier to solve.

On the face of it, it is hard to disagree with such statements. The human population has growth exponentially from ~650 million in the year 1700 AD to almost 7 billion today. When coupled to our increasing economic expansion and concomitant rising demand for natural resources, this rapid expansion of the human enterprise has put a huge burden on the environment and demands an accelerating depletion of fossil fuels and various high-grade ores, etc. (the Anthropocence Epoch). Obviously, to avoid exhaustion of accessible natural resources, degradation of ecosystems and to counter the need to seek increasingly low-grade mineral resources, large-scale recycling and sustainable use of biotic systems will need to be widely adopted. Of this there is little room for doubt.

So, the huge size of the present-day human population is clearly a major reason why we face so many mounting environmental problems. But does it also follow that population control via various policies is the answer – the best solution — to solving these global problems? It might surprise you to learn that I say NO (at least over meaningful time scales). But, it will take some time to explain why — to work through the nuances, assumptions, sensitivities and global versus region story. So, I’ll explain why I’ve reached this conclusion, and, as always, invite feedback!

Below, I outline some of the basic tools required to come up with some reasonable answers. A huge amount of relevant data on this topic (human demography) is available from the United Nations Population Division, the Human Life-Table Database, the Human Mortality Database, and the U.S. Census Bureau. That data and statistics I cite in these posts come from these sources.

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Filed under: Clim Ch Q&A, Emissions, Future, Policy | 61 Comments »

The Swiss army nuclear knife

Posted on 15 September 2011 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. His previous article on BNC was: Greenpeace’s Plan for India

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Switzerland. It’s smaller than Tasmania, but rather more famous and never missing from maps of Europe. Cheese and chocolates, pocket knives and swatches. Banks replete with hot money and the global puppeteers of the World Economic Forums at Davos. Everybody has an image of this tiny little country of just 7.5 million people in the center of Europe. But the image may be vastly different from the reality with fame inevitably viewed through a pale ale, darkly.

Recently Switzerland has been in the news for joining the lemmings massing to jump the nuclear ship in the wake of the failures at Fukushima. What will this do to the Swiss greenhouse gas footprint? What is that footprint?

The greenhouse gas emissions per person in Switzerland are well under a third of those of an Australian. That’s 7 tonnes per year compared with 25. This 7 tonnes per year is still 7 times bigger than the 1 tonne budget which following generations will inherit and be required to meet before today’s toddlers are getting a pension, but it’s still remarkably low compared to our bloated Aussie hoof print.

How is such a low footprint possible? Is there a simple explanation? Is it because the Swiss are parsimonious misers who build bicycles from recycled bottle tops or drive tiny efficient matchbox cars while Australians BBQ gross steaks in front of monster screen TVs and drive gas guzzling 4WDs vast distances across our great brown land? And what are the long term (30 year) prospects of the Swiss getting down to that magic 1 tonne sustainable emissions limit?

Be prepared for a few surprises.

[Unless otherwise noted, the data below comes from either the Swiss 5th Communication (pdf) to the UNFCCC or the 2008 Australian Greenhouse Accounts (released in May 2010) (10MB Zipped PDFs)].

Energy Overview

Swiss winters look stunning on postcards but would quickly kill anybody living in houses as thermally leaky as most in Australia. Consequently, heating oil is about 21 percent of Swiss energy consumption and you’d expect housing construction emissions to be higher. There is a cost to double glazing and roofs that don’t collapse under a metre or two of snow. Nevertheless, per person energy use in Switzerland is just over half what it is in Australia, and more of what they do use is electricity (23% to our 16%). Swiss electricity is virtually all emission free, as we shall see.

Big new taxes

Despite its tiny carbon footprint relative to places like Australia and the US, the the Swiss targeted heating oil with a BIG NEW TAX back in 2000 with the aim of reducing its use to 15 percent below 1990 levels over the 2008-2012 period. The tax takes the form of a levy where initially the full amount, but now 2/3, of the money raised is returned to the population and the rest goes toward research and development projects.

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Filed under: Emissions, Nuclear, Policy | 28 Comments »

Switching from coal to natural gas would do little for global climate

Posted on 11 September 2011 by Barry Brook

A common refrain from politicians and members of the business community is that moving from coal to natural gas is an effective way to cut carbon dioxide emissions and therefore address global warming. This argument is flawed, as I detailed last year in two posts, Santos Chief’s gassy vision (Parts I and II). Yet, gas is still often labelled a ‘transition fuel’ or ‘bridge technology’, even by groups that promote large-scale renewables such as the solar-thermal-focused DESERTEC (see here). So how useful is gas for climate change mitigation?

Below is a media release describing a new paper (published in the journal Climatic Change) by my colleague Dr. Tom Wigley (Adjunct Professor at the University of Adelaide) on the impact — expressed in terms of climate forcing — of a wholesale switch from coal to gas for electricity generation (i.e., a limit analysis). They key considerations to be modelled are the effects of methane leakage, the extraction method used to supply the gas (e.g., conventional versus shale gas), and the aerosol dimming effect of coal compared to gas (i.e., the story is more complicated than just the greenhouse gas forcing effects, especially on the decadal time scale). Some of you have already mentioned associated news stories on this paper in the latest Open Thread, but I thought it would be good to present the media release (largely written by Tom), and have a focused post for discussing the paper and its implications.

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Coal to gas: the influence of methane leakage

Although the burning of natural gas emits far less carbon dioxide than coal, a new study concludes that a greater reliance on natural gas would fail to significantly slow down climate change.

The study by Tom Wigley, who is a senior research associate at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), underscores the complex and sometimes conflicting ways in which fossil fuel burning affects Earth’s climate. While coal use causes warming through emission of heat-trapping carbon dioxide, it also releases comparatively large amounts of sulfates and other particles that, although detrimental to the environment, cool the planet by blocking incoming sunlight.

The situation is further complicated by uncertainty over the amount of methane that leaks from natural gas operations. Methane is an especially potent greenhouse gas.

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Filed under: Clim Ch Q&A, Emissions, Policy | 78 Comments »

Two responses to the U.S. BRC on the nuclear fuel cycle

Posted on 8 September 2011 by Barry Brook

The Blue Ribbon Commission on America’s Nuclear future was charged by President Barack Obama with recommending ways to move forward with used nuclear fuel in light of the closing of the Yucca Mountain used fuel repository project (details on NEI Notes). They released a 192-page draft in late July report that is currently open for public comment. Below I publish two responses, by Bill Hannum and Jan van Erp, that are particularly relevant to the Integral Fast Reactor — a much-discussed technology on BNC.

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By: William Hannum, PhD. (reactor physics and safety, former Deputy Director General of the OECD Nuclear Energy Agency, Paris, France)

Gentlemen,

As someone who has spent his entire professional career in peaceful nuclear power development, and who has been involved in many of the key aspects of this development, I have followed the work of the Blue Ribbon Commission (BRC) with considerable interest. The July 2011 Draft Report appears to be thoughtful and carefully prepared. While it includes useful recommendations, I believe the priorities are misplaced. The result is a report focused on managing the problem, rather than on resolving it.

The first key recommendation in the report addresses the process for identifying an acceptable repository site, without focusing on why it is currently unreasonable to that expect a new, more gentile effort will be more successful than Yucca Mountain. The problem is not lack of consultation and discussion. As long as the basic criteria are based on a Linear-no-threshold (LNT) approach, applied over a period of 100,000 or 1,000,000 years, there will never be an adequate technical approach for nuclear waste disposal. As an aside, I don’t know what the population is assumed to be 100,000 years from now, but some assumption for that is implicit in the EPA criteria. Until there is agreement on more credible criteria than those applied to Yucca Mountain, it is a waste of time, money and credibility to discuss disposal. Extended storage should be assumed.

Second, the report gives passing reference to “game-changing” technologies. There is one technology, the Integral Fast Reactor (IFR), which is sufficiently advanced that it is ready for a make-or-break demonstration. Not the least of the potential features of fast reactor recycle (as with IFR) is that it eliminates, essentially forever, the need for a second repository. Yet, this is among the lowest of DOE priorities. The draft report implicitly states that DOE has proven itself incompetent to manage the nuclear waste program. Your report fails to recommend that DOE, or some other agency, should realign reactor development priorities and pursue immediate game-changers that will resolve the spent-fuel dilemma. This should be a primary recommendation, not an incidental afterthought.

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Filed under: Nuclear, Policy | 36 Comments »

Nuclear risk insurance

Posted on 21 August 2011 by Barry Brook

The Three Mile island nuclear power facility.

Guest Post by Luke Weston. Luke is a Melbourne-based physicist and occasional freelance electronic engineer, with a strong interest in educating the community about nuclear energy and related issues.

It is often said by the anti-nuclearists that the commercial nuclear energy industry “can’t get insurance” against the risks of nuclear or radiological accidents, or that it is “uninsurable”. This is simply garbage, a myth, a load of baloney that gets exclaimed backwards and forwards between the anti-nuclearists, without any of them ever bothering to actually check the facts or do the research. It’s simply a meme, one of many nonsense pseudo-fact memes that persist in the community of people who are really just devout believers that nuclear energy is bad.

The Price-Anderson Act in the United States is often bought up by anti-nuclear activists as some sort of damning evidence of preferential government treatment for nuclear energy, but it’s actually quite the opposite – it’s legislation which imposes exceptional demands on nuclear energy above and beyond any other industry; demands which are completely out of proportion to the reality of the demonstrably low risk of nuclear energy, especially relative to other energy sources.

This should be compared with the risks associated with other important energy generation systems, where the industry is not insured in any such way against significant impacts on society and the environment.

In this post I’ll focus the discussion mainly on the Price-Anderson act in the United States. How does this relate to other nations? I’m not really in a position to say. How does this relate to the earthquake and tsunami-related damage to the Fukushima-Daiichi reactors? I’m really not in a position to say. What is the position of the Japanese government regarding the amount of private-sector insurance coverage that their nuclear energy industry is required to maintain? I really don’t know and I won’t pretend to know – but you can do the research, ask skeptical questions, think critically and evaluate the evidence just as well as I can, if you want to find out.

When there’s a catastrophic disaster on an oil rig or a coal ash dam or a natural gas pipeline or a coal mine in the United States and people lose their lives and/or there is severe environmental damage, where are the Price-Anderson style requirements for insurance and industry liability coverage for those industries? They do not exist.

In these kinds of incidents, the government is likely to spend a fortune managing and cleaning up the effects. Sites polluted by the fossil fuel industry and the chemical industry in the United States are all too often cleaned up as Superfund sites; these industries are not required to take responsibility for themselves in the same way that the nuclear energy industry is.

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Filed under: Nuclear, Policy | 84 Comments »

TCASE 14: Assessment of electricity generation costs

Posted on 17 August 2011 by Barry Brook

In the previous TCASE post, I considered how various low-carbon energy technologies meet the following criteria: commercial readiness, scalability, dispatchability, fuel constraints, load access, storage requirements, capacity factor and emissions intensity. Here I consider the next issue: cost of deployment, based on expert consensus.

Emission intensity for fit-for-service baseload electricity generating technologies. Error bars represent 90% confidence intervals for the mean (bar height). NOTE: PF Coal = Pulverised fuel black coal, CCGT = Combined cycle gas turbine, IGCC = Integrated gasification combined cycle, CCS = carbon capture and storage, FOAK = first of a kind, CC = combined cycle.

The primary data again come from the work I had published in 2011 in the peer-reviewed journal Energy (with colleagues Martin Nicholson [lead author] and Tom Biegler). Cost was analysed on the basis of 15 comprehensive levelised cost of electricity studies published over the past decade. The data are as follows (see also figure above), with references given in the footnote:

(LCOE = levelised cost of electricity (in 2009 US$/MWh) — see footnotes for a more detailed explanation.)

Enthusiastic supporters of various renewable energy technologies have long made claims that all or most of the world’s electricity needs could be met with renewable energy. Our analysis point to the costs involved and hence to the reliance on future major advances on that front in order to be competitive with other, low-emission, alternatives. In our view such reliance is highly speculative and risky as part of any plan to secure future energy.

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Filed under: Emissions, Nuclear, Policy, Renewables, TCASE | 91 Comments »

A critique of the 2011 IPCC Report on Renewable Energy

Posted on 9 August 2011 by Barry Brook

The following is a detailed guest post by Dr Ted Trainer, University of NSW (http://ssis.arts.unsw.edu.au/tsw/). In it, he provides the most detailed critique I’ve yet seen of the recent IPCC renewable energy scenarios report. Now, I don’t agree with everything Ted says — in particular the conclusion that the only feasible alternative to large-scale renewables is “The Simpler Way” — but that’s another matter.

His analysis of the report is important and robust, and deserves wide dissemination. Ted is also looking for critical feedback, so please supply this in the comments at the foot of this BNC post.

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Preamble, by Ted Trainer

Below is a critical discussion of the recent IPCC Working Group 3 Report on Renewable Energy. It is being referred to as a report from many experts showing that the world can be running mostly on renewable by 2050.

However I think it is a remarkably unsatisfactory document. Following are some of the main points I detail.

• It is not a report on an examination by the IPCC of the potential of renewables. It is a statement of the conclusions evident in 164 studies, which were not selected at random. The IPCC does not evaluate these studies; we do not know how valid their conclusions are.

• What the IPCC actually concludes is that more than half the studies reviewed project that renewables could provide more than 27% of energy in 2050. Again, the IPCC does not inquire as to whether such projections are sound.

• There is no reference to the studies I know of that doubt the potential of renewable energy.

• Even if this conclusion could be regarded as well-established it would fall far short of solving the greenhouse problem. According to the IPCC’s own figures it would leave us with a higher CO2e emission level than we have now. Yet the Report’s air is one of optimism.

• In the key Chapter 10 most attention is given to one study which concludes that by 2050 70% of world energy could come from renewables. This study, by Greenpeace, is highly challengeable. It does not establish its claims, and it fails to discuss a number of problems confronting renewable energy.

• The brief reference to investment costs is not derived or supported, and is highly challengeable. I sketch three approaches indicating that the cost would be far higher than claimed, and not affordable.

The document is puzzling. It does not do what it should have done, and is being taken to have done, i.e., critically examine as much of the evidence as possible on the potential and limits of renewable energy in order to derive demonstrably convincing conclusions which deal thoroughly with all the relevant difficulties. It does not advance the issue; it just summarises what some others have said, without assessing the validity of what they have said. Most difficult to understand is why it gives so much attention to one clearly problematic study, and allows its highly optimistic conclusions to be taken as those the IPCC has come to. It is likely that as the Report is examined it will damage the credibility of the IPCC.

The Report reinforces the dominant faith that renewable energy can save us and there is no need to question the commitment to affluent living standards and the pursuit of limitless economic growth. In my opinion that belief is seriously mistaken and this report will make it less likely that attention will be given to a sound analysis of our situation and what to do about it.

I should make it clear that my comments do not cast doubt on the IPCC’s statements re: climate science. It is also my view that we should transition to full dependence on renewables as soon as possible…although this will not be possible in a consumer-capitalist society.

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Filed under: Policy, Renewables | 96 Comments »

Hansen warns not to drink sustainable energy Kool-Aid

Posted on 5 August 2011 by Barry Brook

Regular readers of BNC would know that I’m hardly the only climate change researcher to recommend serious deployment of nuclear energy to displace fossil fuels. (Although I’m often portrayed as an isolated [and presumably therefore ignorant?] voice on this point). One very prominent example of a colleague in arms is my fellow SCGI member, Dr James Hansen (pictured left). Some call him the ‘grandfather of global warming‘. He’s an incredibly influential and important figure in science and advocacy circles around the issue of human-caused climate change. For instance, the 350.org initiative is based on his recommended number.

This guy ought to be taken seriously by any environmental ‘activist’ who wishes their case to be scientifically based and consistent. Yet, he’s being blithely ignored (or even denigrated) by the ’100% renewable energy will solve everything’ crowd and their anti-nuclear side-kicks. This is a shame, because he has some really important things to say on energy matters, as well as climate. He’s a polymath, and thinks big. He’s clever. He’s willing to speak out. We need more folks like Jim.

Below I reproduce a slightly abridged version of a recent essay by Jim on the topic of sustainable energy. I do so because: (i) its content matches so well the other material and arguments I’ve published on BNC; (ii) Hansen has featured on many other past posts (see list here); (iii) he’s a personal friend and IFR supporter, and I respect what he says; and (iv) it’s a great topic of conversation for readers. I look forward to your feedback and comments on Hansen’s piece. It should be read widely.

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Introduction

Today’s adults, unless they have a sudden change of heart, are preparing to leave young people a dynamic mess out of their control.

This is an odd situation. It is a wonder to see instinctive, sometimes frantic, reactions of many species as they try to protect their young from dangers. One would think that the intelligent species would have become particularly good at providing protection for their young, and that a democratic system would give that function high priority. But as our paper #3 (“The Case for Young People“) makes clear, governments are failing to protect the rights of young people to inherit a planet that preserves creation and preserves their equal opportunity for good lives.

A facile explanation would focus on the ‘merchants of doubt’ who have managed to confuse the public about the reality of human-made climate change. The merchants play a role, to be sure, a sordid one, but they are not the main obstacle to solution of human-made climate change.

The bigger problem is that people who accept the reality of climate change are not proposing actions that would work. This is important, because as Mother Nature makes climate change more obvious, we need to be moving in directions within a framework that will minimize the impacts and provide young people a fighting chance of stabilizing the situation.

Let me try to provide some insight about the problem via personal experience and simple charts for the United States and the world.

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Filed under: Emissions, Nuclear, Policy, Renewables | 91 Comments »

Carbon smoke and mirrors – the reality of emissions reduction plans

Posted on 2 August 2011 by Barry Brook

When it comes to energy and carbon emissions reduction, the devil is always in the detail. So too with Australia’s plans to cut its emissions by five per cent below year 2000 levels by 2020. But first, let’s look at the big picture.

Why we need to do this

As a scientist who researches the impacts of climate change on biodiversity and other natural systems, I see an existential threat posed by global warming to our planetary boundaries. As the dominant species on this planet, we have no choice but to face up to this problem, and solve it, fully.

Will a carbon tax in Australia do this? Of course not – it is only a small piece in a very large puzzle. So why should we commit to this, and why should Australia move ahead of most of the world?

Greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuels are a tragedy of the commons. If most nations ‘wait and see’, the commons – our atmosphere and biosphere – will be degraded, to the detriment of all people.

Without a price on carbon dioxide emissions, Australia will keep burning coal for its electricity. With an abundant and cheap supply, there is no reason to do anything else. To decide not to do this, there must be an economic justification – a trigger for change. That is what the carbon price is.

The carbon tax plan

At $23 per tonne of carbon dioxide, however, little will be immediately different. Coal will still probably be the cheapest option. So the price must rise over time – or else the carbon tax will fail to deliver.

A rising tax makes the debate about the initial price a sideshow, because businesses will plan for the future, not just for the now. A rising price with scheduled minimum gateways will make a real difference to the medium and long-term choices being made by investors (government and private sector).

Households should be compensated, because they currently have few options other than to buy what is offered. To fix this lack of choice, the energy market must also be opened to real competition. Renewables, nuclear, fossil fuels with carbon-capture-and-storage – all must be allowed to compete on a fair and level playing field. Other technology specific subsidies should be eliminated.

If we try to pick winners and ban competitors (nuclear), as we are currently doing, we risk high costs, few gains and lost time. As a nation and a leader, this is not something we can afford to get wrong.

Emissions reduction targets – it’s complicated

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Filed under: Emissions, Policy | 58 Comments »

Germany’s grand energy experiment

Posted on 29 July 2011 by Barry Brook

Most readers of BNC know the story — after the Fukushima nuclear crisis, the German government announced that Germany would phase out all of its nuclear generation capacity by 2022. In almost the same period, Germany also aims to cut its national greenhouse gas emissions to 40% of 1990 levels (by 2020). Their emissions have already fallen by 22% since 1990, due in part to the reunification of West and East Germany and the subsequent closing down of the most polluting industrial and energy plants. So they have another 18% to go. Given the nuclear policy, can it be done?

According to this study by the Ecologic Institute (published prior to the nuclear shutdown announcement), Germany will have to initiative a range of aggressive measures, focused on energy efficiency, smart metering, car taxation, renewable energy heating systems, etc. etc. This was to make up a ‘gap’ compared to 2009 policies of 70 – 90 million tonnes (Mt) of CO2-e. The gap is now much larger.

Let’s look at the task ahead.

In 2010, 16.9% of Germany’s electricity came from renewable energy sources; nuclear provided 23.3%. The relative share, spread across renewable-based electricity (not final energy), is shown in the figure on the right. The installed renewable capacity was 55.7 GWe, producing 101.7 TWh of electricity, for an all-tech-averaged capacity factor of 20.8%. The aim is for renewables to provide 35% of electricity by 2020.

Nuclear provided 141 TWh of electricity in 2010. If this had come from coal instead (assuming an EI of 1.12 t/MWh), it would have produced about 158 Mt of additional CO2-e. Germany’s total emissions for 2010 were 960 Mt CO2-e, compared to 1230 Mt in 1990. The 2020 target is 740 Mt, with the remaining gap, to fill in the next 9 years, being 220 Mt. If we wipe out consideration of the now-to-be-retired nuclear fleet, that brings the ‘gap’ up to almost 380 Mt CO2-e.

Note that total final energy use in Germany in 2010 was 8,984 PJ, which is 2,495 TWh. So the economy-wide emissions intensity (EI) is 0.385 tCO2-e/MWh. This breaks down to a mix of 34.6% oil, 22.5% coal, 21.7% gas, 11% nuclear, 1.5% wind, 0.8% hydro, 0.9% solar and 7.9% biomass combustion. I calculate, based on standard EI values, that about 40% of Germany’s total 960 Mt CO2-e comes from oil emissions, 39% from coal, 20% from gas and ~1% from other.

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Filed under: Emissions, Nuclear, Policy, Renewables | 108 Comments »

Fukushima, IFRs and an MIT debate

Posted on 25 July 2011 by Barry Brook

Back in May, I published a critique of an MIT report on the future of the nuclear fuel cycle (MIT FNFC), on behalf of Yoon Chang and the Science Council for Global Initiatives.

Since that time, SCGI member Steve Kirsch (a MIT alumnus and benefactor) has been trying to get MIT to engage with their critics, to little avail. Some recent details were posted on Rod Adam’s blog ‘Atomic Insights‘, here: Fast reactor advocates throw down gauntlet to MIT authors.

As you’ll note from Rod’s post, the reaction from MIT has been to (i) ignore us, then (ii) try to divert the debate to other matters (“Fukushima is now the only thing that is worth discussing” — or words to that effect), or (iii) to change the debate topic to make it so broad that no one will end up concluding anything. So Steve, like the bulldog he is, has sent another letter to the MIT nuclear guys, outlining our case for having an open and public discussion on this, will all the facts on the table and experts in the chairs. I reproduce an edited version of the letter below. Steve also gives an interesting take on the implications of Fukushima Daiichi, which I’m sure you’ll find interesting — and probably want to discuss in the comments below.

Steve Kirsch, SCGI

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Steve Kirsch’s letter to Head of MIT Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering

I’m confident that MIT is capable of telling the Fukushima story without our help.

Personally, here are some of the lessons I learned:

1) The world is in serious trouble with carbon emissions. We need to be deploying every form of clean power we can as fast as we can. Fukushima doesn’t change that goal or strategy one bit.

2) We now can update our statistics on public deaths due to nuclear power over the last 50 years by adding 0 deaths affecting the public. As we expected, nuclear is still by far the safest way to generate power (fewest deaths per MWh generated). It is important that we tell the world that they should be shutting down the most dangerous forms of power generation first. It makes no sense whatsoever to be shutting down the safest form of power generation first.

3) We learned it is a bad idea to put generators in the basement of a plant near a large body of water subject to tsunamis. But their design spec was a smaller tsunami. So we learned that sometimes, accidents happen that are beyond our design center and people will get killed. Does that mean we should spend huge additional sums to over-design everything we build to account for the worst possible disaster? Probably not. I think Haiti is a good example of setting your standards too low. But I don’t think that is the case here. I think the lesson of Fukushima is that natural disasters cause deaths that we can’t always avoid.

4) We learned that 40 years ago, people didn’t design reactors as safely as we do today.

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Filed under: Nuclear, Policy | 135 Comments »

Radiation hormesis?

Posted on 21 July 2011 by Barry Brook

At the height of the Fukushima Daiichi crisis, there was a lot of discussion in the comments of this blog about the impact of radiation on human health. In particular, there was a debate about whether the linear no-threshold hypothesis (LNT) or the hormetic dose response (RH) was more scientifically robust model for assessing the implications of a Chernobyl or Fukushima release event.

In short, the LNT hypothesis says that there is a directly proportional relationship between the dose received and the probability of biological damage from ionizing radiation. (That is, there is no safe level.) The RH model, by contrast, posits that low-dose radiation (at or somewhat above background levels) is actually beneficial to health, perhaps because of stimulation of natural repair mechanisms in the body. (High doses still are still detrimental). The following figure (from Luckey, cited below) illustrates the RH:

The hormesis does response model for biological effects of ionizing radiation (from Luckey 2011)

Now that the situation in Japan has (more-or-less) stabilised and radiation levels are low, it is probably useful to revisit this topic. First, the radiation update from Fukushima from WNN:

Provisional analyses based on radiation dose rates at the site boundary show that emissions to air have reduced by a factor of two million compared to those at the height of the crisis, when the torus suppression chamber of unit 2 ruptured on 15 March. Someone standing at the western border of the power plant today could expect to receive a maximum of 1.7 millisieverts per year (mSv/y) from airborne radioactivity from the three ruined reactors. This compares to the 2.4 mSv/y average that people worldwide receive from background sources, and the operational limit for nuclear power plants in Japan to limit public exposure to 1.0 mSv/y.

Dose rates from emissions drop dramatically away from the site: five kilometres away the maximum rate from newly released radiation is 0.3 mSv/y; ten kilometres away it is 0.09 mSv/y; and 20 kilometres away it is 0.03 mSv/y. It is important to note that these figures apply only to the rate of release of radiation now, and do not include the effects of any materials already deposited on the ground, some of which will continue to emit radiation for many years. There are areas totalling about 1000 square kilometres where dose rates have been elevated beyond 20 mSv/y due to caesium-137 deposited on the ground.

… and some relevant recent posts/comment threads on BNC about LNT and RH:

Radiation – facts, fallacies and phobias


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For climate’s sake, nuclear power is not an ‘option’, it is a ‘necessity’

Posted on 17 July 2011 by Barry Brook

[This is an abridged amalgam of writings by me on nuclear power and climate change that I’ve published on BNC and elsewhere over the last two years. It has been updated with some commentary on recent events – the Fukushima Daiichi crisis, Germany’s announced withdrawal from nuclear energy, and so on. I hope you find it useful].

Let’s start by establishing some common ground between my views and those ‘traditional’ environmentalists who oppose nuclear energy. As the Director of Climate Science and active researcher on the impacts of global warming on the biosphere at the University of Adelaide (Australia), I understand the seriousness of the climate crisis and the imperative for a rapid transformation of our energy system to technologies that emit no carbon when generating power. I also agree that atomic weapons pose substantial risks to the security of global society and need strict regulation, and that issues of nuclear safety must be held to high standards. I also suspect that most environmentalists recognise the dangers that many countries face – including Australia, Germany, Japan and so on – in being dependent of foreign oil for transportation infrastructure and agriculture, two of the arteries of the economy. Indeed, it is in the interest of all nations needs to move to energy independence that is based on clean, sustainable sources.

However, where I part way with many environmentalists in on our view as to what the solutions to these problems are. Many well-intentioned people hope to see a world without nuclear weapons or nuclear power, and unfortunately consider (wrongly) that the two are irrevocably intertwined. In the typical environmentalist worldview (I am, of course, deeply environmentally conscious), nuclear power is not only dangerous, but also unnecessary. Renewable energy, from sunlight, wind, waves and plant life, are clearly the answer, they believe. This is a widespread view – almost ‘common wisdom’ – and would be perfectly acceptable to me if the numbers could be made to work. Unfortunately, they can’t, and there is no prospect of this changing.

To keep things in proper context, let’s quickly review the challenge. In the developed world (US, Europe, and other members of the OECD), we’ve enjoyed a high standard of living, linked to cheap fossil energy. This has encouraged energy profligacy, and we clearly and should cut back on wastage where feasible (and in situations where it is not being done due to market failures) – but this doesn’t remove the fact that we must also replace oil and gas, and that means a future surge in electrical substitution. In the bigger, global picture, however, there is no realistic prospect of even reducing traditional stationary power demand. A third of the world’s people have little or no access to electricity yet strongly aspire to get it. Even if a country like India, with more than 1 billion people, reached just a quarter of Australia’s per capita use, that country’s national energy demand would more than triple! It’s a huge challenge.

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Filed under: Emissions, Nuclear, Policy | 74 Comments »

Carbon tax in Australia in 2011

Posted on 6 July 2011 by Barry Brook

Australia is set to introduce a carbon tax (details to be released on Sunday 10 July 2011). This post is the place to discuss this policy — the good and the bad.

A description, from the Australian Parliamentary Library:

A carbon tax is a tax on energy sources which emit carbon dioxide. It is a pollution tax, which some economists favour because they tax a ‘bad’ rather than a ‘good’ (such as income). Carbon taxes address a negative externality. Externalities arise when an individual production or consumption activity imposes costs or benefits on others. In market transactions, these costs and benefits are not normally reflected in the prices involved in the transaction, or taken into account in the transaction decision.

By placing a cost on these negative externalities the underlying purpose of a carbon tax is to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide and thereby slow global warming. It can be implemented by taxing the burning of fossil fuels—coal, petroleum products such as petrol and aviation fuel, and natural gas—in proportion to their carbon content.

There is some political support for a carbon tax in Australia as a means of implementing a carbon price. Some groups favour this approach as an interim step on the way to an Australian emissions trading scheme.

Here is what I (Barry Brook) said about Australia’s proposal a while back, in response to the 2011 update papers of the Garnaut Climate Change Review :

Garnaut has elaborated and updated his report in line with the latest science and lack of effective action nationally and globally. But the bottom line, in my opinion, remains the same. We need to scrap the renewable energy target (RET), Renewable Energy Certificates (RECs) and feed-in tariffs (FiTs), set a low initial carbon tax at about $10/t, establish an equivalent of the Board of the Reserve Bank to manage the tax and set future prices, and have some legislated schedules (gateways) such as a floor price of $20/t by 2015, $30/t by 2020, and so on. The rising price – with short-term decisions taken out of Government hands to avoid distortions arising from political expediency – is absolutely key. Finally, and in line with eliminating the RET and FiTs, we need to really level the energy playing field and allow nuclear to compete with renewables and fossil fuels with carbon-capture and storage (CCS).

Here is a useful description of some other carbon prices worldwide (Finland, The Netherlands, Sweden, India, Norway, Denmark, Switzerland, Ireland, Costa Rica).

Australia is proposing an initial carbon tax, followed some years later by a cap-and-trade system. What is the difference? Here is a brief summary (my perspective, with bad points in red and good points in green):

CARBON TAX

  • Politicians or bureaucrats set costs – inefficiencies and pressure
  • No guarantee that emissions will fall
  • Clear forward price projection = investment certainty
  • removes incentives for hedge funds, derivatives etc.
  • better allows for long-term business planning
  • Can use current tax system
  • Better handles emission-intensive trade-exposed industries via import/export carbon tariffs/refunds

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Greenpeace’s plan for India

Posted on 18 June 2011 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. This article follows on from his previous: What price of Indian independence? Greenpeace under the spotlight

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In my previous BNC piece I examined the feasibility of two ways of producing a per-capita electricity supply in India which was roughly equivalent to that in Australia in 2011. The assumption was that such a supply would reduce vast amounts of suffering and transform India into a first world country over an implementation period of about 40 years.

I was also critical of Greenpeace India for its Euro-centric view of nuclear power. There is something bizarre about Greenpeace India identifying with the wave of street marches in Europe over a non-fatal nuclear reactor failure under extraordinary circumstances in Japan when a quarter of a million Indian children between 1 and 5 years old die every year due to cooking smoke because they don’t have electricity.

This post is a continuation. Part II if you like. It will have two goals:

  1. Motivate the scenario approach in more detail.
  2. To examine a third scenario. This isn’t some straw man of my own making, but comes from Greenpeace and the European Renewable Energy Council.Greenpeace International has a detailed conceptual energy plan for India which involves a phase out of nuclear power and building a sustainable energy infrastructure for a projected 1.6 billion people in 2050. Page numbers below are from that plan.The global sustainable CO2 emission level, as defined by Greenpeace, is about 1.3 tonnes of CO2 per person (ignoring non-CO2 forcings for now) (p.8). This is a little higher than the 1 tonne figure I used in my BNC piece, but near enough not to be an issue. In any event, Greenpeace’s plan for India would result in greenhouse gas emissions from energy production of 1 tonne per person per annum in 2050. The plan is cogniscent of India’s biomass cooking problems and has sufficient detail (52 pages, including a full energy spreadsheet) to expose all the assumptions behind its non-nuclear future. This is a professionally produced report done by EREC (European Renewable Energy Council, a body representing the European renewable energy industries) in conjunction with Greenpeace International. The Indian plan is part of a global vision with similar reports and recommendations for other regions.

I’ll call this plan the EREC/Greenpeace (ERGreen) scenario and discuss it shortly, but first there were comments in response to the previous post which indicate that I need to at least motivate, if not fully justify, this kind of high level scenario thinking when people are anxious to go straight for detailed costs of specific projects.

Scenarios, goals and mountain climbing

Getting to the top of a mountain from some point down below is a tricky problem when you don’t have a map. Even worse when nobody has a map; and worse still when nobody has ever done the climb. Early explorers failed in attempts to cross the Blue Mountains in Sydney by following rivers up-stream and getting stuck at water falls they couldn’t climb. If you are sitting in your tent in a densely forested base camp and you can’t see the summit, what do you do? Even more of a problem is that even if you can see a peak, it may not be the summit you are looking at but just some little pimple obscuring your view of the real top point.

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Filed under: Emissions, Nuclear, Policy | 97 Comments »

Equinox Energy 2030 communiqué

Posted on 14 June 2011 by Barry Brook

The Equinox Energy 2030 Summit (2011) has now concluded, and I’ve arrived back in Australia. It was an enthralling and exhausting experience, and I befriended a wonderful group of people — members of the Forum (aged ~25 to 30 years), Advisors (including me — for generalist critiques and ), Quorum (advocates for specific technologies) and the WGSI and Perimeter Institute teams. I’d like to express my sincere thanks to everyone for giving their time and personal energy to this summit, in a spirit of camaraderie, critical thinking and practical direction setting.

On the final evening of the summit, I was part of a panel of experts on Steve Paikin’s show “The Agenda“. He’s a terrific host/moderator, and it was a really worthwhile event. (I wish Australia had a panel show of this quality!). Unfortunately I can’t embed flash videos in WordPress, so to watch the video (53 min), click on the image below to go offsite to TVO.org:

At the TVO website where the video is hosted, you can also find the list of the four other energy programs that The Agenda hosted during the summit, on the problems we’ve created and how we live, move and share. They’re all worth watching (maybe do one per night!), and include special commenters such as Vaclav Smil (energy policy), David Keith (geoengineering) and many others.

The Flickr photo feed of the Equinox event — day-by-day action — can be viewed here.

I obviously can’t cover off here on all of the wide-range discussions/debates we had during the week (there were some doozies!), although much of this material is now being reviewed and will subsequently be presented in the forthcoming ‘Equinox Blueprint‘ (being prepared by the WGSI team). But I will (in the coming week or so) blog here on BNC on a few key ideas that emerged — well, at least those which I found particularly exciting and thought provoking. This includes first electrification for 2.5 billion people using new technologies like organic solar, ultimate potential (and limits) of chemical storage batteries, lower-temperature thermochemical hydrogen production, and integrated plans for future urban and rural low-carbon communities.

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Filed under: Nuclear, Policy, Renewables | 65 Comments »

Disposal of UK plutonium stocks with a climate change focus

Posted on 4 June 2011 by Barry Brook

In the 1950s, following World War II, the United Kingdom and a handful of other nations developed a nuclear weapons arsenal. This required the production of plutonium metal (or highly enriched uranium) purpose-built facilities. ‘Civil’ plutonium was also produced, since the facilities for separation existed and it was thought that this fissile material would prove useful in further nuclear power development.

Fifty years on, the question of what to do with the UK’s separated plutonium stocks is an important one. Should it, for instance, be downblended with uranium to produce mixed oxide fuel in thermal reactors, and then disposed of in a geological repository when it has been ‘spiked’ by fission products and higher actinide isotopes? Or is, perhaps, there an alternative, which would be of far greater medium- to long-term benefit to the UK, because it treats the plutonium not as waste, but as a major resource to capitalise on?

In the piece below, Tom Blees explores these questions. This was written as a formal submission to a paper “Management of the UK’s Plutonium Stocks: A consultation on the long-term management of UK owned separated civil plutonium”. Click on the picture to the left to read the background paper (which is interesting and not all that long).

This is the final in the current series of three Brave New Climate posts which has advocated SCGI’s position on the need for the IFR: (i) to provide abundant low-carbon energy and (ii) as a highly effective means of nuclear waste management and fuel extension for sustainable (inexhaustible) nuclear fission. For more information on SCGI’s mission and objectives, read this BNC post.

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Response to a consultation on the management of the UK’s plutonium stocks

Tom Blees, President, of The Science Council for Global Initiatives

Do you agree that it is not realistic for the Government to wait until fast breeder reactor technology is commercially available before taking a decision on how to manage plutonium stocks?

I strongly disagree, and I hope that you’ll take the time to read this and consider the fact that the fast reactor option is far more imminent than you might have heretofore believed. Not only that, but it is arguably the best option by far.

Current Fast Reactor Development

Worldwide there are well over 300 reactor-years of experience with fast reactors. Russia’s BN-600 fast reactor has been producing commercial electricity for over 30 years, and Russia is beginning to build BN-800 reactors both for their own use and for China. India’s first commercial-scale fast reactor is about to be finished within a year or two. South Korea has already built a sizeable pyroprocessing facility to convert their spent LWR fuel into metal fuel for fast reactors, and have only refrained from starting it up because of diplomatic agreements with the USA that are due to be renegotiated in the near future. China is building a copy of the Experimental Breeder Reactor II (EBR-II) that was the mainstay of the Integral Fast Reactor (IFR) development program at Argonne National Laboratory in the USA. Japan has reopened their Monju fast reactor to continue that research, though it should be noted that Toshiba and Hitachi contested the wisdom of that decision, favoring instead the metal-fueled fast reactor design as exemplified by the EBR-II.

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Filed under: Nuclear, Policy | 24 Comments »

Critique of MIT future of nuclear fuel cycle study

Posted on 31 May 2011 by Barry Brook

MIT (energy initiative) recently released a controversial and well-publicized report on the future of the nuclear fuel cycle. In it, they argue that there is sufficient uranium to allow ongoing deployment of water-cooled reactors for many decades; they recommend that no far-reaching decision be made yet on the ultimate disposal of the ‘spent’ nuclear fuel so produced and suggest that research on technical solutions can be ongoing over this period, with no particular urgency.

Below, on behalf of the members of the Science Council for Global Initiatives, I present a critique of this report which focuses on its core arguments — and their inherent weaknesses.

A printable 6-page PDF version of the critique can be downloaded here.

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Critique of “The Future of the Nuclear Fuel Cycle: An Interdisciplinary MIT Study (2011)”

Developed by the Science Council for Global Initiatives, led by Dr. Yoon I. Chang (Contact: [email protected])

1. The Study recommendations on actions to deal with spent nuclear fuel and waste do not recognize the importance of the technological options to reduce the radiological toxicity, which could have great impact on waste management.

One of the main Study recommendations is:

Planning for long term interim storage of spent fuel – on the scale of a century – should be an integral part of nuclear fuel cycle design.

This recommendation is based on an implicit assumption that spent nuclear fuel is a de-facto waste form destined for ultimate disposal, and that it would take a long time to develop repositories. The Study ponders whether the spent nuclear fuel is a resource or a waste. Since the Study speculates on a large supply of low-price uranium that will continue to meet rising demand for many decades, the value of spent fuel as a resource is diminished. However, there is another dimension to this equation. The actinides contained in the spent fuel are potentially a valuable resource. They are also a long-term radiological risk, and thus must be managed accordingly. The radiological toxicity of the LWR spent fuel constituents is presented in Figure 1 below.

Figure 1. Radiological toxicity of LWR spent fuel constituents as a function of time

Radiological toxicity here is a relative measure of the cancer risk if ingested or inhaled, which we have normalized to that of the original natural uranium ore. As mined, the ore contains uranium along with decay products that have accumulated by its (very slow) decay over millennia. Normalization to the natural uranium ore from which the spent fuel originated is a useful but somewhat arbitrary relative standard. If the radiological toxicity drops below the natural uranium ore level we would be disposing of nuclear wastes that had no greater hazard than the uranium found naturally. The point at which the radiological toxicity curve crosses the natural uranium line then can be defined (at least loosely) as an effective lifetime of the waste components.

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Filed under: Future, Nuclear, Policy | 154 Comments »

What price of Indian independence? Greenpeace under the spotlight

Posted on 25 May 2011 by Barry Brook

Two PWRs under construction in Kudamkulam, India

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. To see a list of other BNC posts by Geoff, click here.

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India declared itself a republic in 1950 after more than a century of struggle against British Imperialism. Greenpeace India however, is still locked firmly under the yoke of its parent. Let me explain.

Like many Australians, I only caught up with Bombay’s 1995 change of name to Mumbai some time after it happened. Mumbai is India’s city of finance and film, of banks and Bollywood. A huge seething coastal metropolis on the north western side of India. It’s also the capital of the state of Maharashtra which is about 20 percent bigger than the Australian state of Victoria, but has 112 million people compared to Victoria’s 5.5 million. Mumbai alone has over double Victoria’s entire population. Despite its population, the electricity served up by Maharashtra’s fossil fuel power stations plus one big hydro scheme is just 11.3 GW (giga watts, see Note 3), not much more than the 8 or so GW of Victoria’s coal and gas fumers. So despite Mumbai’s dazzling glass and concrete skyline, many Indians in both rural and urban areas of the state still cook with biomass … things like wood, charcoal and cattle dung.

The modern Mumbai skyline at night

Mumbai’s wealth is a magnet for terrorism. The recent attacks in 2008 which killed 173 follow bombings in 2003 and 1993 which took 209 and 257 lives respectively. Such events are International news, unlike the daily death and illness, particularly to children, from cooking with biomass. Each year, cooking smoke kills about 256,000 Indian children between 1 and 5 years of age with acute lower respiratory infections (ALRI). Those who don’t die can suffer long term consequences to their physical and mental health. A rough pro-rata estimate would see about 23,000 children under 5 die in Maharashtra every year from cooking smoke.

The image is from a presentation by medical Professor Kirk Smith, who has been studying cooking smoke and its implications for 30 years.

Medical Prof. Kirk Smith’s summary of health impacts from cooking fires

The gizmo under the women’s right arm measures the noxious fumes she is exposed to while cooking. Kirk doesn’t just study these illnesses but has been spinning off development projects which develope and distribute cleaner cooking stoves to serve as an interim measure until electricity arrives.

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Filed under: Emissions, Future, Nuclear, Policy | 170 Comments »

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