Smart-Grid Enables Renewables, Energy Efficiency
Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to attend this year’s DistribuTECH conference, arguably the most significant annual event in energy distribution, but I’ve read a few summaries. I’ve come to believe that this whole subject of smart-grid and the evolution of our power utilities lies at the very crux of our society’s ability to deploy the cutting-edge energy solutions we so desperately need.
Apparently, a number of people look at smart-grid as futuristic technology, something that will come along in later years, after we’ve met certain of our energy efficiency goals and renewable portfolio standards. I’ve started to look at this thinking as putting the cart before the horse; smart-grid really should be looked upon as the enabling technology, rather than a follow-on.
Currently I am reading “Plentiful Energy” by Till and Chang; they are strong advocates of the Integral Fast Reactor (IFR). I haven’t yet progressed far enough in the book to understand their viewpoints on the technical aspects of the IFR, although I am somewhat uneasy about using Na as a heat transfer fluid because of its high chemical reactivity. Even after finishing the book, I may still favor the liquid fluoride thorium reactor (LFTR). Probably work should be done on both the IFR and the LFTR until we know for sure which way to go. However, from the book I have already learned much about a serious mistake made under the Clinton administration.
Under the Clinton administration, all federal funding for nuclear power was canceled; it was said to be unnecessary. That means that established teams of scientists, engineers, technicians, and support personnel doing reactor research were disbanded and much of their knowledge and expertise was lost. Restarting the research would be very costly because of the time required to build a new team and bring it up to speed.
Since the Clinton administration, there has been no basic work done on nuclear technology in the U.S. Westinghouse has developed the AP1000, but that is not new technology; it is just a shift in the way to apply older PWR technology to improve safety significantly and reduce costs.
Surely we should be doing R & D on nuclear power technology. It may well be that doing so would result in finding acceptable answers to all the objections currently raised against nuclear power thereby resulting in reactor systems that would provide abundant power safely and economically, but we will never know unless the research is done. And, if renewable systems prove incapable of doing the job, we will have no “plan B” to use unless we have better nuclear power systems than we have now. It is truly considered unwise to put all of one’s eggs into one basket; doing so could turn out to be disastrous. Do we really want to take that risk?
Regardless of advances in energy efficiency, the world needs far more power than is available today. Many areas have serious potable water shortages which can be alleviated only by sea water desalination which requires huge amounts of power, a situation which may be greatly exacerbated by global warming. Considering that, population growth, and the need to lift billions of people out of poverty, probably even with improved energy efficiency we will require AT LEAST FOUR TIMES as much power as we can now generate!