Where Is World Energy Policy Headed? Many Reasons To Smile
As I’ve mentioned, the guiding theme of my latest book project (“Bullish on Renewable Energy – Eleven Reasons Why Clean Energy Investors Can’t Lose”) is that the force of market economics alone is in the process of guiding us swiftly towards clean energy, as renewables, energy storage, efficiency, smart grid, etc. become increasingly inexpensive. However, I couldn’t help myself from mentioning a couple of other dynamics that layer themselves on top of pure market forces, namely that we will eventually have incentives to lower carbon emissions, as well as heightened consumer sensibilities that will accelerate all this even faster.
In particular, I offer evidence that the public appears to have reached its “credulity limit.” I write, “It’s true that the fossil fuel industry spends a fortune to deliberately and aggressively misinform the people, but the common U.S. voter is starting to question what he’s being told about the validity of fossil fuels, climate change, ocean acidification, loss of biodiversity, lung disease, etc.” When we look around us, we see how true this is. Even the right wing appears to be coming around on the validity of climate disruption. Instead of explaining to his constituents that global warming is a hoax, (U.S. Speaker of the House) John Boehner now says, “I’m not a scientist,” which means, “I need to cut my losses and stop looking like a jackass by asserting what scientists tell us is false.”
It’s also the case that patriotic Americans are beginning to see that it’s critical that the U.S. embrace clean energy, largely for national security concerns. The world’s addiction to fossil fuels does more to empower the enemies of democracy than any other one single factor.
In addition to national security we should note that American economic leadership is also at stake here; if the U.S. is to avoid the unenviable position of losing its relevance in the global marketplace, it cannot pretend that the world’s complete retooling of the energy industry does not exist. Each of the major countries of the world is running at this exciting new business arena at warp speed; the U.S. will most certainly lose its position of economic leadership if it continues along with its head in the sand.
All this is playing itself out “as we speak.”
Lots of reason for optimism here. Check out the pic above; even the dog is smiling.
Unfortunately gas prices remain low and we’ve now begun exporting oil thanks to fracking. This gives the fossil fuel plenty of ammunition to continue to spread FUD. Rather than a three pronged argument: economic, security & environmental we’re really down to environmental only. And that’s really disappointing.
I do agree that there’s a shift on global warming and that there’s a shift towards center in the GOP in general (they’ve finally figured out that “science doesn’t go away” and that at the end of the day peer-reviewed science isn’t politically malleable)
The dog maybe smiling but the family of three + one is driving an SUV not a PHEV…
Unfortunately, we have no fall-back position. If we find that after spending billions of dollars renewables will not do the job, then there will be pressure to continue burning fossil fuels and build more pressurized water nuclear reactors (PWRs). On the other hand, if we do the necessary R & D to develop a better, safer, and more economical nuclear technology, then if we find that renewables cannot do the job, we will have another power system ready to implement on a large scale.
It has been wisely stated that we should not put all our eggs into one basket, but yet that is exactly what we seem to be doing.
Is not nuclear clean?
After Fukashima you can ask that?
Are you assuming that it is impossible to design safer nuclear systems?
At one time, cars were considered dangerous because many people were seriously injured while cranking the engine to start it. Then, something remarkable happened to solve that problem, i.e., the electric starter was invented.
Electricity was once considered too dangerous, but improved understanding and designs solved that problem.
Steam power was once very dangerous. Large numbers of people were killed by boiler explosions on steamboats. Safety regulations and better designs solved that problem. You can do a google search on boiler explosions.
Is there some reason to suppose that nuclear power cannot be made safer? And, have you considered the stupidity that caused the Fukushima disaster and that that stupidity need not be repeated? After all, the back-up Diesel generators didn’t have to be located below the level of past tsunamis and it doesn’t require the discovery of a new principal of physics to design reactor systems that don’t depend on emergency power to prevent a melt-down. Reactors can be designed that cannot melt down.
Vicente,
Yes, nuclear is clean, but there are other problems.
Our pressurized water reactor technology is basically dangerous. It has been made safe only by having multiple layers of expensive safety equipment and by extreme diligence which is why it has a better safety record than other power technologies. It extracts less than 1% of the available energy from the enriched uranium fuel which explains why there is a waste problem. The waste problem has been greatly exaggerated, but nevertheless it is problem. In any case, it is far better than burning fossil fuels.
It has been shown possible to design nuclear reactors that are intrinsically safer and which more efficiently utilize the nuclear fuel thereby greatly reducing waste. The liquid fluoride thorium reactor (LFTR) seems especially promising, but would require considerably more R & D before it is ready for implementation. It has been successfully tested in prototype form, but it could be that when scaled up and operated over longer periods of time, serious problems could be discovered. However, I think that the funds should be allocated for R & D work and see where it leads. The integral fast reactor (IFR) is another possibility and there are other possibilities besides those.
For more information, visit
http://thoriumremix.com/2011/
That is basically promotional, which should be taken into consideration. There are other opinions, only some of which are valid. It helps to get information from several different sources. The media have not adequately informed us on energy issues, so we have to do our own research and not rely too heavily on one source.
Hi Frank,
Thanks for replying, specially to a non-US citizen. That was a provocative question because energy efficiency and renewables alone would not suffice for a high tech 22 century civilization (if our descendants can make it)…Generation IV and V (fusion) nuclear energy would.
The last pro-nuclear I´ve watched was the 2013 “Pandora´s promisse”.
All the best.
Vicente,
What does not being a U.S. citizen have to do with it? Surely we are all equal.
I was disappointed with “Pandora’s promise.” All the actual technical material it covered could have been covered in a video of 1/4 the length. When I’m after technical information, I don’t want to waste time with all the extraneous folderol or listen to information which ought to be common knowledge.
Whether fusion will ever become practical is unclear. It’s been worked on for several decades with only little progress shown, but I suppose that considering its theoretical advantages, work should still continue. However, I see other types of fission reactors as being more promising, quite possible the LFTR. It would make sense to use a nuclear technology that does not depend on multiple levels of safety systems and extreme diligence to assure adequate safety and which uses the nuclear fuel more efficiently to reduce the amount of radioactive waste.
For many years, I was strongly in favor of renewable energy systems and had strong reservations about nuclear power. Then, on a 5,500 mile (8,870 KM) motorcycle trip to Savannah, Georgia and back, from here in Albuquerque NM, I saw many wind farms with stationary blades. I (belatedly) wondered whether renewable systems could actually provide sufficient and reliable power at all times. Many favoring renewables asserted that if wind and solar systems are interconnected over a wide area that requirements could easily be met. After searching for many hours, I was unable to find even one credible quantitative study that indicated that that was possible. Then there are statements about how much solar energy the earth receives each year from the sun which is about as relevant as how much solar energy the moon receives. Renewables simply cannot do the job without huge amounts of storage and the technology to make that practical on a large scale is just not available except in a few locations where geography makes pumped storage practical. Claims that it is possible seem to be based on wishful thinking. Then, I began studying nuclear power and learned that many types of reactors were possible.
I fear that the anti-nuclear groups will continue opposing nuclear R & D and the implementation of nuclear power until we are in even more serious trouble by which time we will have to struggle with the effects of climate change. Even our current nuclear technology, which is mediocre at best, is less risky than doing to little to reduce CO2 emissions.
Probably we are already in extreme trouble. At my age, I don’t expect to live to see the worst of it but others will be less fortunate.
“Probably we are already in extreme trouble. At my age, I don’t expect to live to see the worst of it but others will be less fortunate.”
Presumably, you are at an age when you don’t need to worry so much about the consequences of what you write and say. This means you are in a perfect position to fight the misinformation which is hindering nuclear power development and putting our children’s future at risk. You seem to be doing alright already in this discussion. Keep up the good work!
http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/11/04/3588512/bnef-renewables-developing-countries/?utm_content=buffer2f1c4&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_campaign=buffer
Renewables in developing countries is a different matter.
It will be many years, perhaps even many decades, before many people in developing countries can be connected to the grid. Meanwhile, they can have small amounts of solar power at a reasonable cost. With modest battery backup, that can enable them to operate a couple small LED lights and recharge cell phones. Thus, even a small amount of power would significantly improve their quality of life even if it is not entirely reliable. Providing enough reliable power for most large prosperous countries is a very different matter.
We need to face reality in all we do on earth, irrespsective the economic and political factors that we have to sacrifice, global climate change in our world today is only a mild warning as to what will transpire in the future. I believe prevention is better than cure and we are beyond the prevention mark already.
We need aggressive and assertive companies to engage in acquiring all the possible solutions and ideas in the markets across the globe to prevent the air pollution caused by fossil fuels.
If we were supported by our government 5 years ago South Africa could have been one of the leaders in the world already in emission reduction.We obviously we’re not engaging with right type of people as first priority people were looking at how much financial gain there was for the individual than the wholistic approach how we could improve our world. My assumption was that “small things amuse small minds”.
How serious are we in making a change that could impact the lives of our generations to come? I would imagine that we would have our grandchildren’s children being born and then they would have to be raised in baby space suites. It may sound far fetched but this is how our awareness and conscious have to about environment.
Change today for a better tomorrow, actions speak louder words, fore warned is fore armed.
I would challenged in corporate international company to embrace this task and make the ultimate difference in the world rather sooner than later.
Regards
Randall Truter
Life is our most important asset. Without it everything else is irrelevant. More pollution is produced by the production of some food sources than all the forms of transportation in the world combined–cars, planes, boats, etc. Tesla Supercharging Stations worldwide will create many jobs and provide renewable energy to autos and probably a reduction in pollution and illness due to the use of fossil fuels. Check out the following videos to see suggestions that were made almost 40 years ago. The health of the individuals of this planet is not getting better as time passes. The planet will survive man’s abuse but man might not fare as well. We can and should make better lifestyle choices, for ourselves and for the other inhabitants of this orb we call home. Wishing all the best in health and happiness.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kuvFqKb3k7A
You’re certainly right about certain food sources. Raising animals for meat is especially damaging. Surely meat consumption could be easily reduced if attitudinal and cultural problems did not get in the way.
Considerable energy is used to produce nitrogen fertilizers. Crops which fix their own nitrogen do not need nitrogen fertilizer. Genetically modified crops could possibly be designed to fix their own nitrogen but the problems of doing that may be considerably increased by the excessive resistance to genetically modified crops.
Micropower’s Quiet Takeover; This is a great example of how the little people can retake control over their energy and save the planet!
Besides being cost-competitive and rapidly scalable, why does micropower matter? First, as explained below, its operation releases little or no carbon Second, micropower enables individuals, communities, building owners, and factory operators to generate electricity, displacing dependence on centralized, inefficient, dirty generators.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/amorylovins/2014/09/19/micropowers-quiet-takeover/
There are circumstances where micropower makes sense. However, it seems unlikely to be able to provide only a small percentage of the world’s power requirements.
To minimize climate change, the world will have to get about 90% of its power from non-CO2 emitting sources even as global demand for power increases by about FOUR TIMES! That includes power for heating, cooling, cooking, lighting, manufacturing, and manufacturing.
Cogeneration has been around for many decades and may continue to expand. Some large buildings generate their own electricity from natural gas or Diesel fuel. The waste heat is used to provide hot water and to heat or cool the building. In fact, some very large air conditioning systems operate on waste heat using the lithium bromide / water absorption cycle.
The maximum efficiency of large fossil fueled power plants is usually below 40%, but by using cogeneration to utilize waste heat, the efficiency can be raised to about 90% thereby reducing CO2 emissions. However, that requires that the power generation equipment be within a reasonable distance of where the waste heat can be utilized which is possible when buildings have their own generation equipment not not usually possible when power is generated with large power plants which provide power for large areas.
Without nuclear power, we are doomed. But it would be much better to phase out our current nuclear technology with a better nuclear technology that does not depend on emergency cooling systems to prevent a melt down and which would use the nuclear fuel much more efficiently so that the amount of nuclear waste would be about 1% of what it is now.
Unfortunately, the mass media has failed to educate the public about the various ways that nuclear reactors can be designed. The result is that while the public has a basic understanding of our current nuclear technology, it is generally unaware that much better, safer, and more economical nuclear technologies are possible. That is why bad decisions are being made.
Error correction:
In my post above, in the second sentence, “only” should be replaced by “more than”.
In the second paragraph, “transportation” should be added to the list.
It seems to me that there is a basic fallacy in most of our assumptions – that we can continue to waste energy as we have for the last hundred year, regardless of how it’s generated.
I remember 3 Mile Island, and Fukushima. Nuclear is dangerous – now and for 250,000 years. I wonder what the effect would be if some nut-bar flew a passenger jet into a modern nuclear power plant?
We’re runnning through the store of fossil fuels at a staggering rate – and we have no replacement in sight. All the cheap easy stuff has been used.
I remember when someone I was talking to expressed shock that an off-grid house won’t have air-conditioning. Unbelievable! How could we survive?
Oh, I don’t know… Lots of insulation? Judicious use of window coverings? Opening windows at 2300hrs and closing them again at 0900?
Post-war babies (and beyond) grew up with lots of everything, and the assumption that that’s the way it was, is and shall be evermore. It’s all we’ve ever known – it must be the “natural order of the universe”..
Except, of course, it isn’t.
No entity can continue to withdraw from a finite store forever. Whether it’s petroleum, fresh water, clean air, nutritious food, etc., we need to take a real look at how we use resources.
Roger.
BTW, in a petroleum-free planet, can we still have nuclear? Does the entire system not require access to oil and gas? (Mining, refining, transportation, fabrication of all the components required for a large-scale, centralized power supply?)
Nuclear power is the safest form of energy ever devised. It is also the cleanest and the most abundant. We will never run out of fission fuel. It is the only form of energy which will allow all people (not just the rich) to enjoy modern existence without environmental damage. It is the only morally defensible form of energy.
An entire industry is devoted to spreading misinformation about nuclear power. This is nothing but lies. Without nuclear power, the battle against climate change and resource wars is as good as lost. Don’t let yourself by fooled by the anti-nuclear propagandists. They are ultimately responsible for the climate change problem and for thousands of deaths due to radiophobia. Due to anti-nuclear propaganda around Fukushima alone, fear-mongering has killed two thousand people, even while the radioactive contamination of Fukushima is so low that it could never harm anyone. The barriers erected by anti-nuclear propaganda against nuclear expansion have benefitted the expansion of fossil fuels throughout the last several decades, which have killed millions of people due to air pollution. Anti-nuclear propagandists are the scum of the earth.
If you are pro-nuclear, then you will have the force of science and reason at your side. Anti-nuclearism is a lie. It is the fraud of the century. Fighting anti-nuclearism on the basis of reliable, objective science and reason is the best thing anyone can do to help save our common future. Don’t let these scumbags get away with it!
In general, I agree with you. However, I believe that we have chosen a bad nuclear power technology even though multiple levels of safety systems and extreme diligence have still made it safer than other power generation technologies. The safety can be statistically demonstrated, but we should be working on finding a better nuclear technology.
You may have read elsewhere in this link what I posted about other nuclear power technologies which should be better.
Although it seems quite unlikely that renewable sources of power could ever provide for the requirements of most large advanced countries, there are important exceptions. If a country has enough hydro power available, it could provide for all of its power requirements. If it has considerable hydro power available but not enough, wind and solar power could supplement the hydro power to meet all the power requirements. In some situations, that could be a very reasonable approach.
Of course there is no substitute for liquid fuels for airplanes. With abundant nuclear power available, artificial liquid fuels could be manufactured; ammonia is one possibility since engines designed to run on ammonia work very well. It may be that we would end up with a mix of ground vehicles (cars, trucks, and busses), some of which would be electric and some of which would run on ammonia or another manufactured fuel.
Roger,
Many of us live in areas where in slightly earlier times few people lived until air conditioning became available. Had air conditioning not become available, there would still be few people living in these areas. If air conditioning now became unavailable, many people in these areas would be practically forced to relocate to cooler areas. The attempted mass migration would cause enormous problems.
For more information, you can use the Internet to get climate information on portions of Arizona, including Phoenix. In fact, much of Texas, Nevada, New Mexico, California, Florida, and Louisiana would be miserable places to live without air conditioning. Heatstroke would be common. With daytime temperatures ranging between 95F and 115F and insufficient cooling even at night during the summer, I doubt that even you would want to live in those areas during summer. There would be similar problems in other countries.
It is too late to prevent climate change; it has already started. About all we can do now is to limit the amount of climate change to some extent and learn to live with it. And, living with it will require even more air conditioning and energy.
Roger,
In your second paragraph, you state that nuclear is dangerous. It would be more accurate to state that our current nuclear technology is dangerous.
Frank – I don’t know enough about nuclear technology to speculate whether new ones can/will be “safer” but I still don’t know what we do with the waste. I know they’ve dumped some into “abandoned” mines, but there have been documented effects of groundwater – heat and radioactivity.
The real problem with the waste is that it’s so dangerous for so long.
For me, if there’s going to be an answer – especially in an era of rapidly declining supplies of carbon fuels (which, I think we all agree, have their own significant drawbacks) I believe it’s going to come from reducing consumption.
Current practice in Canada (where I live) calls for R20 insulation in walls and R28 in attics. (IOW, 4″ and 6″ more or less)
My house has R46 in the walls and R80+ in the attic. I have solar panels for electricity and hot water. My energy “inputs” from external sources (grid, natural gas) are negligible. And my house runs like any “normal” one – it just doesn’t waste energy.
Fossil fuels supplies are, by definition, limited. So are reactants (I have no idea if that’s the right term…) for nuclear. Both have major environmental impacts.
The answer has got to be conservation – and that means a significant reworking and rethinking of how we do things. (Who was it who said that doing the same thing many times and expecting different results is one definition of insanity?)
Imagine the response if we use a nuclear plant to heat all the fresh potable water from a major river system and use that heated water to wash the tar sands… Just so people can drive Hummers (in my time it was cars powered by 428 Hemis? ) to huge inefficient homes where they eat food imported from all over the world…?
That only worked when energy was cheap and “inexhaustible”, and we didn’t worry about the “leftovers”. The planets resources are finite – it’s only our demands that are infinite. That has to change.
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Wow. If only I believed that “saying makes it so”. But I don’t. As far as I know, there has never been a successful, safe and complete decommissioning of a nuclear power plant. I believe the US Navy filled a couple old nuclear subs with concrete and sank them in really deep water, but how is that different than taking your garbage and throwing it in an out-of the way national park?
Radioactives have widely different half-lives – Tritium at 12.5 years, Uranium 234 at 245,000 years. That’s the time until they’re only half as radioactive as they started out. Somewhere I read that it takes 10 half-lives to reach the level of background radiation.
3 Mile Island, Chernobyl, Fukushima – 3 accidents in the early days of commercial nuclear power. I can hardly wait for the accidents in nuclear reactors built by “lowest bidder”s, or the fallout (double entendre intended) from someone flying a plane into a nuclear generating station.
What do we say to all the people directly or indirectly affected? “Ooops”?
Yes we can build them – yes we can get the fuel to run them. But should we? Are they “safe”? Or are we playing with our great-grandchildren’s future so we can have cheap electricity now?
The problem here is like the problem with genetically modified (GM) food. As a famous geneticist said, “Anyone who claims that GM food is “safe” is either ignorant or lying.”
I think the same is true for nuclear.
Roger,
Our present mediocre nuclear technology extracts about 0.7% of the available energy from the uranium fuel. That means that a superior nuclear technology which could extract 99% of the available energy from the nuclear fuel would generate less than 1% as much waste as our current nuclear technology.
The following link will help compare the amount of waste generated by a coal burning power plant with the the amount generated by a nuclear plant:
http://www.thingsworsethannuclearpower.com/2012/03/real-waste-problem.html
As you can see, the amount of waste generated by a coal burning power plant is more than a million times greater than the amount of waste generated by a nuclear power plant.
The combined nuclear waste generated by U.S. power plants would cover a football field to a depth of something like seven yards. Probably that is less than most people would expect, but a more efficient nuclear technology would generate dramatically less waste. Also, a better nuclear technology could use the current waste as fuel which would eliminate most of it.
Unfortunately, a few decades ago the U.S. government foolishly decided that there was no more need for nuclear reactor R & D, so the funds were discontinued. Imagine what our cars would be like if R & D had been halted in 1920 after only 20 years of development. The result is that our basic nuclear reactor technology has not changed since the first commercial nuclear power plant was commissioned. Fortunately, there have been significant improvements in reactor management and safety systems, but the basic design has not changed.
Chernobyl is basically irrelevant. That reactor was of a very dangerous design to begin with; it didn’t even have a containment structure. The accident occurred after the safety systems had been disabled for testing purposes. Also, the reactor had a positive temperature coefficient meaning that as its temperature increased, the fission rate increased. Reactors with a positive temperature coefficient are illegal because of their obvious danger. In the Chernobyl case, it has been estimated that fission increased to the extent that the power output was more than 1,000 times the rated maximum. That caused a steam explosion.
Three mile island was a disaster only to the investors. Instrumentation and safety equipment have considerably improved since that accident.
The Fukushima disaster resulted from shear idiocy. The height of previous tsunamis was well-known, yet the emergency generators were located below that level. The result was that when the reactor was shut down, there was no power to operate the emergency cooling systems since the grid was also down.
Our current nuclear reactors require active cooling after shut down because even though the fission stops, the short-lived radioactive materials in the reactor continue to generate decay heat for some time at a rate of about 7% as much as when the reactor is operating. If the cooling fails, a melt down will occur, although not instantly.
The new Westinghouse AP1000 reactor has passive emergency cooling that will operate without power thereby making the reactor much safer. But still, the basic mediocre design is the same.
Again, the basic design is mediocre and inelegant regardless of significant improvements in safety. A better design would not require pressurization, would be intrinsically safe, would generate far less waste, and would cost less. So, instead of demanding an end to nuclear power, the demand should be to develop a better nuclear technology after which our current nuclear technology could be phased out.
“the demand should be to develop a better nuclear technology” I have no problem with that idea, but the inherent toxicity of nuclear refuse combined with the length of time it’s dangerous means that we need a viable, long term solution – and I want it before we build any more.
OK this is weird to say, but ash from a coal plant can be reclaimed in a relatively short time. (Note: I am NOT promoting the use of carbon-based fuels – they’re killing us and our descendants and are, by definition, limited and increasingly expensive) But tiny bits of radioactive waste can kill and are very hard to control.
I mean – if someone “walks” in with enough coal station waste to kill a reservoir, we’ll probably notice the line of dump trucks. But (this is an example but the principle holds) if someone dumps a grocery bag full of radioactive waste in a municipal reservoir we have no way to deal with it.
And while the coal dust will settle/wash out relatively quickly, the radio-active stuff is deadly for decades/centuries/millennia.
I don’t know the answer – but it seems to me to be that we have to get smarter about how we use energy, that simply finding ways to produce it in larger quantities is not the answer.
Actually, the length of time nuclear waste is hazardous depends on what radioactive elements it contains. It is possible to have a fuel cycle the waste of which needs to be sequestered for only a few hundred years rather than thousands of years. With some nuclear reactor types and fuel cycles, our current waste can be used as fuel thereby drastically reducing its volume. Here in the U.S., we are doing absolutely no work on this. Instead, politicians treat even mentioning nuclear power as a political death sentence rather than something that should be rationally discussed. Fortunately, some other countries, including China and India, are using better judgement and are doing R & D to develop superior nuclear technologies.
We don’t even have a back-up plan to use if renewable sources of power prove to be insufficient so, if that is the case, then the demand for more fossil-fuled power and more poorly designed nuclear plants will increase. If we had better designs for nuclear power plants, we would not have to build them if renewables proved adequate.
Using power more efficiently can help, but not nearly enough to solve CO2 emissions problems as poor countries drastically increase their demand for power to lift their people out of poverty. It’s already too late to prevent serious climate change problems, but through good choices, there is some hope that we can limit the problems to some degree. But to deal with the climate changes that are already inevitable will actually require far more power for cooling and sea water desalination.
Sometimes I feel like we’re counting on the technology that helped create the mess to clean it up – to me, that feels like expecting the rock that crashed through the window to come back and fix it.
Sometimes I feel like the best we can do is to NOT throw the rock through another window in an attempt to demonstrate that we didn’t want to break a window in the first place.
Maybe we’re going to have to use brains and hard work instead – we’ve got to stop arguing over how/why the window was broken and get on with fixing it. After all, today I have a blizzard and the snow is coming in where the window used to be.
That means we stop using carbon. We don’t use it to drive to work, we don’t use it to transport cheap plastic toys from “Santa’s Workshop”, we don’t use it to grow and transport exotic foods all year round.
Because if we allow one “excuse” to use fossil fuels, we’ll allow a hundred. So, get a horse!
And if you can extract all the resources needed for a nuclear power plant (of whatever technology) and gather them all in one spot and build and commission the plant and have it work all without using any carbon, then go for it.
But as soon as you make an exception for trucking materials across the continent, then you’re going to make an exception for the manager who needs to drive to different sites, and you’re going to make an exception for the air conditioning for the admin offices, etc, etc.
My bet is that you can’t build nuclear (of any design) without using petroleum somewhere in the process. And if that’s true then we’d better start focusing on conservation NOW because even the best nukes only last for a few decades before they need to be rebuilt/replaced.
Every time I have this discussion, for me it comes down to how much I’m willing to risk my grandchildren’s lives. Not their chances of going to a good university, not the likelihood that they’ll have more/better toys than I did – but the chances that their kids will end up starving or freezing in the dark.
And at our current rate of consumption and waste, I don’t like the odds.
Roger,
Surely it is true that we are using considerably more energy than required to live comfortable and convenient lives. And, sometimes governments pander to the people in ways that encourage more energy usage. For example, here in Albuquerque, NM, U.S.A., a new highway interchange, costing dozens of millions of dollars, is being completed to reduce traffic congestion. The long term effect will be to encourage people to move farther out because the road improvement will make it convenient to commute over the longer distance. It would be better to leave the roads alone so that congestion would encourage people to live in less remote locations and use public transportation.
It’s not only a matter of the environment. There are many people whose income is barely adequate yet because of poor public transportation, they have no choice but to spend money on cars. If they didn’t have to own cars, they could spend the money saved on education, better housing, more healthful food, etc., and would be better off. Reducing the need for private cars would have a positive effect on many people.
However, regardless of what we do, the demand for power will continue to increase as poor countries strive to lift their poverty-stricken citizens out of poverty. Also, because of decreasing rainfall in some areas and because there are already water shortages, the need for sea water desalination will increase. Sea water desalination is still very energy intensive even though modern technology has made it more efficient. Thus, there is no way, on a global scale, to reduce energy usage; all we can do is slightly limit its growth.
The amount of petroleum required for nuclear power is probably smaller than the amount of petroleum required for other energy systems. All power generation methods, including solar, wind, and nuclear, require moving equipment from factories to other locations, and the transportation methods require fuel and lubricants. Vehicles required to service power generation equipment also require fuel.
At my age, I don’t expect to be around to see the worst effects of climate change, but it would be irresponsible to ignore the effects on younger people and future generations. If we reject possible solutions simply because we are too intimidated to discuss them or because we are unwilling to make the admittedly considerable effort to inform ourselves, future generations will not look back to us with affection.
Frank:
There are a lot of issues – many of which we inherited. But that doesn’t mean we won’t have to deal with them.
Your Albuquerque example is perfect – the “Law of Unintended Consequences”.
As the price of motor fuels (gas, diesel, propane, natural gas) rise, people will try all of them in turn until Supply and Demand price them too high. Then they will turn to alternatives.
I live in Central canada. This morning it is about 25f. with a 25 mph wind and snow expected. By tomorrow night, the low is 18f. And this is still November.
Most of my neighbours have 6″ walls with R20 insulation. But a few have already modified their homes (strapping the inside walls, or adding more on the exterior then re-siding) (Maybe this sounds like a stereotype but my image of the old homes in New Mexico are of adobe walls @ 12″ thick.)
The new homes (post WW2) have skinny walls and large heating or cooling bills, except for a few of the newest ones. I have neighbours who pay $600 – $800 per month for heat. I pay $550/year (two bush cords of hardwood), plus heat from solar hot water panels, plus passive gain thanks to roof design, and lots of insulation so that what I have, I keep
Reducing the need for cars is wonderful. Living in communities where people can walk or cycle is very green, but I can’t walk the 5 miles to town every day, especially if I have to be at work by 8:30.
But what I could do is have a small battery-electric 2 seater with panels on the rooof of my house. Batteries in the house store current while I’m at work, then reload the car at night. Yess, I understand the losses inherent in such a system – but it occurs to me to wonder if the losses inherent in burning petrochemicals for transportation aren’t at least as high…
As for countries lifting themselves out of poverty, yes, this is important. But surely they’re not going to be as stupid as we were… Many of the most needy areas can use solar or wind for the power they need, and solving the problems can take advantage of new, best-use designs. (For example – streetlighting used to be by gas jet. Then incandescent bulbs, then sodium and fluorescent, now LED. >90% reduction in energy.)
Same with refrigeration – surely they won’t use huge 28cu.ft. side by side upright doors, 1.5″ of insulation, and heaters everywhere to be “frost free” and not “sweat”.
We need to re-think all the things we accept as “normal” and imagine what it would be like, not in 1950, but in 1850, then apply 2020 technology and knowledge! With that kind of thinking, we can solve the issues currently created by poverty AND reduce our consumption of carbon-based fuels.
Roger