Geothermal Provides Clean Power To Nations Wishing To Escape Diesel’s Costs and Emissions
From the perspective of energy, everything you need to know about the French-owned island of Guadalupe in the Caribbean is that it’s making terrific progress in replacing its legacy power resource, diesel, with geothermal. The world leader in geothermal, Ormat Techologies, has purchased and will operate the existing Bouillante plant, currently generating 10MW, with the capacity for expansion to 45 MW.
There is a lot to like about geothermal, especially in regions of the world that have solid resources and an unattractive incumbent technology. In many cases, the move is made to replace the combustion of bunker diesel, best known for the film of black particulate emissions that accumulates on the surfaces of cars, porches, etc., making life unpleasant and chasing away tourists.
In addition, geothermal provides 24/7 baseload power, indistinguishable from that produced by fossil fuels and nuclear plants. Geothermal boast a benefit over such plants, however, in that it is easy to ramp up and down according to varying loads.
The chapter on geothermal in my first book (Renewable Energy — Facts and Fantasies) featured an interview with Ormat’s spokesperson, Paul Thomsen, who covered the entire (111-year) history of the industry and where it’s headed today in the context of the migration to clean energy resources. Linked above is a free e-copy of the book; it may be worth a read.
It is hard to predict the future of geothermal power. There are those who state that heating water by forcing it through porous material deep in the earth may fail as the porous material loses its porosity. However, just about everything has risks and the potential of geothermal power, though limited, is enough to justify the risk. In areas where it is practical it may provide plentiful and inexpensive power.
Traditional geothermal uses relatively high heat within the Earth. http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-is-the-earths-core-so/ Some recent wells tap into the high heat of magma for the highest production. Other adaptations of geothermal energy use lower levels of heat primarily derived from the sun heating the Earth to heat homes and buildings. Eventually we may also be able to use these lower sources of heat to economically produce electricity.
For now geothermal is among the renewable resources that all have to be carefully matched to what resources are available at the location. When matched well, renewable energy can and does provide 100% of the electricity for these communities. Here are other island communities that have achieved or are close to getting 100% of their electricity from renewable energy. Mostly with wind power and a hydro back up:
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/samso-attempts-100-percent-renewable-power/
http://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2014/09/17/349223674/tiny-spanish-island-nears-its-goal-100-percent-renewable-energy
http://ecowatch.com/2015/05/20/kodiak-island-renewable-energy/
The linked-to articles were about small islands which are using renewable power. In their situations, renewable power makes perfect sense. The alternative would be Diesel power. Small Diesel generators have high maintenance costs and the fuel is quite expensive, especially when it has to be transported to islands.
I’m sure that in those cases, renewables have improved the lives of the people and reduced the costs of generating electricity. In such special situations, renewable power system make very good sense.
By “small islands” you may be thinking of population rather than area. Kodiak Island, the third citation, is the second largest island in the US. With almost 3600 square miles of area it is larger than the US states of Rhode Island or Delaware and more than 12 times the size of NYC. It is larger than Puerto Rico and slightly smaller than the largest island, the big island of Hawaii. With a population of about 12000 it is also the most populous island of the three citations.
The first communities to pursue 100% renewable energy could reasonably be expected to have less population or a relatively simple electric grid.
The comment below illustrates how more complex communities in the state of Illinois on the mainland are pursuing 100% renewable energy.
Here is an article that explains how Vermont’s largest city of Burlington, pop 42000, went with 100% renewable energy: http://www.csmonitor.com/Environment/Energy-Voices/2014/1027/How-Vermont-s-largest-city-went-100-percent-renewable-electricity
And here is a list of countries and the amount of renewable energy they use. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_electricity_production_from_renewable_sources
From that list the following countries have an electric grid that incorporates more than 99% renewable energy:
Albania
Bhutan
Burundi
Costa Rica
Democratic Republic of the Congo
Ethiopia
Iceland
Lesotho
Mozambique
Norway (just misses by 1% and is also known as the country with the most electric cars per capita)
Zambia
In some cases it is possible to get 100% of power from renewable sources. It can be done with hydro power provided that there is enough water. If there is not quite enough water, then wind and or solar may be able to reduce the amount of water used to make 100% renewable as possible. Also, some very small countries may be willing to tolerate unreliable power to get to 100% renewable. Burning bio waste is another possibility. For example, some countries that produce sugar burn the waste in their boilers to operate the sugar mills and sell the extra power.
However, most countries will never be able even to approach 100% renewable with currently available technology. Trying to do so will simply delay implementing nuclear power and will greatly exacerbate global warming.
Global demand for power will increase by about four times as poor nations strive to lift their people out of poverty. Also, we will need more power to deal with the already inevitable global warming. For 90% of global power to come from non-CO2 emitting sources requires that most countries get about 100% of their power at all times from non-CO2 emitting sources. Only nuclear power can make that possible. That will require building nuclear power plants at very high rate.
We could get 90% of global power from nuclear reactors, but doing so would require an unlikely degree of commitment. At my age I will not live long enough to see the worst consequences of global warming, but I greatly fear that most of the world’s people who are now living will have their lives seriously disrupted and cut short.
The average household, where nuclear power is used, would generate about one gram of nuclear waste per year. That is less than one millionth the amount of waste generated by burning coal.
There are also communities banding together on the mainland to demand renewable energy. It takes some legislation along with the community will: http://ecowatch.com/2014/03/08/illinois-clean-energy/
If your goal is to put a concrete planter on the top of a building it is possible to bring in a crane and lift it into place. … or you could have a group of workers carry it up the stairs or you might just put it in an elevator. It entirely depends upon the budget and the resources available.
A nuclear power plant is an expensive proposition. It is like using the crane. In the US plants had a history of being built at two times the projected cost that was initially budgeted. http://www.rmi.org/RFGraph-cost_leadtime_US_nuclear_power_plants
There is also a substantial cost to decommissioning a nuclear station that has been estimated at 500 million dollars. http://thebulletin.org/rising-cost-decommissioning-nuclear-power-plant7107 Perhaps this is one of the reasons most of the US plants have been certified for several 20 year extensions beyond their planned life.
The cost of nuclear waste and any “accident” is underwritten by taxpayers through the government. There are some who claim that the entire industry is very close to a Ponzi scheme with 7.1 billion in taxpayer subsidies per year http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Corporate_Welfare/Nuclear_Subsidies.html
With this background there might be some who are reluctant to invest in nuclear energy without the promise of government support. Instead they continue to look for less costly solutions.
The consistent energy fact about the island communities that pursued 100% renewable energy is that they did so based upon wind power. Water and therefore hydro power is not as likely a dependable source of renewable energy on islands. In several cases it is pumped hydro that is used as a battery to store the wind energy.
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An alternative way to look at energy sources uses an EROEI analysis. Unfortunately these values can widely vary. This site gives values but cautions that all such calculations are not the same: http://www.azimuthproject.org/azimuth/show/Energy+return+on+energy+invested Geothermal is listed at 2-13:1 and nuclear energy is listed at at 10. But on the wiki site https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_returned_on_energy_invested one figure for geothermal is 32:1 and on this pro nuclear site, nuclear is listed at 75:1 http://www.theenergycollective.com/barrybrook/471651/catch-22-energy-storage
A problem with this type of analysis is that many assumptions are made. Fossil fuels are used for construction… But what if we “closed the loop.” Here is a discussion of engineered geothermal systems and various means to increase the EROEI (like using electric transportation.) https://pangea.stanford.edu/ERE/pdf/IGAstandard/SGW/2011/mansure.pdf The same influences could be extrapolated to any renewable energy source.
Breath,
Having lived in Fiji from 1994 to 2004 I am aware of the challenges of providing adequate power for small island nations. In Fiji, the FEA is providing micro hydro systems to remote areas where conditions make it practical; there is at least one company that specializes in micro hydro systems using Pelton turbines and high heads. Other areas get PV systems with batteries which are not totally reliable; they commonly have Diesel backup. The biggest island, Viti Levu, gets most of its power from a Pelton hydro system but when it run low on water, they have to use Diesel power. The sugar mills provide some power by burning bagasse.
It is questionable whether wind power is actually practical for Pacific island nations. Fiji has a wind farm in the Sigatoka area. The units are designed so they can be lowered when a hurricane is expected. That limits their size; the cost effectiveness of the smaller sizes is questionable.
I understand that many people use intuition to make decisions and believe that one’s feelings should be trusted. That is not my approach at all. I much prefer to use all the objective information available and use actual numbers to make decisions. I also change my conclusions when new information so dictates.
The two most important reasons that nuclear power has been too expensive are that too many nuclear plants have been a “one-off”, i.e., that there was no standardized design. That caused many delays, including construction delays and licensing delays. The other reason is that the anti-nuclear crowd has intentionally caused delays. Because of the very high investment cost of nuclear plants, the interest costs are very high. Delays in licensing cause delays in receiving income from the investment while compound interest costs escalate. So, after causing delays which cause costs to escalate, the anti-nuclear crowd asserted that nuclear power is too expensive.
There is a push to build smaller nuclear reactors that can be entirely factory-built and shipped to the site for installation. The standardized design of these reactors plus the fact that they are built in a factory would greatly reduce costs and licensing fees. It would also make it possible for power companies to increase capacity incrementally thereby reducing risk. How well that will work remains to be seen. Some might object to that approach because the smaller reactors would probably use uranium enriched to about 20% U235 instead of to the 3% to 5% U235 used by our current reactors. Obviously that would result in the wasting of more uranium.
I know about EROI, decommissioning costs, etc. etc. In addition to getting information from numerous web sites, I have read books on the subject.
I haven’t actually kept track of the number of hours I’ve spent studying various power technologies, but by now, it has to be at least 100 hours.
My degree is in business administration. It includes the equivalent of a minor in economics. Of course it also includes accounting, finance, labor relations, etc. I’ve also had, at the college (university) level, two years of physics, one year of chemistry, and one year of zoology. Perhaps my one year of studying ancient Greek, Roman, and Egyptian mythology doesn’t count, but it was interesting. Working as a computer programmer / analyst (which, because of title inflation, would now be called “computer scientist”) for more than 20 years required totally objective reasoning and logic. I worked on software for several applications including systems, data communications, accounting, and industrial control.
Oh, and before I got my degree, I had a trade school certificate in industrial electronics and worked for 7 years as an electrical technician for a manufacturer of generators and industrial engines.
Frank, I am familiar with a tradition that holds a great deal of respect for age. But it is a very odd thing.
My teen were overshadowed by the feelings that I could do anything I wanted, the world was going to implode soon, what was the point.
In my 20’s I had more specific experience than some twice my age and constantly fought to gain some respect. In my thirties I found that I was automatically given credence in fields where I had little experience or knowledge simply due to age. I have come to believe that every decade of life brings with it a context of age which we should respect and sometimes gently put aside.
Here we discuss ideas. You are not going to build a nuclear power plant here much less a world full of them. I am not going to populate a world based upon renewable energy. But I very much appreciate your thoughts as they also encourage me to look deeper into my own.
I have long ago stopped believing that I would “change people’s minds” as some sort of goal. The ideas most rewarding are the sometimes ones we do not hold too tightly. And occasionally among all the BS we find on the web there are a few gems and a few shining individuals. … In the conversation that follows we might just begin to find out what is the point of life.
Actually, I changed my mind on nuclear power several years ago. Prior to that, I greatly favored renewables and, while not totally opposed to nuclear power, I had strong reservations about it. It was on a motorcycle trip from Albuquerque, NM, to Savannah, GA, that I began to change my mind. The change was not instantaneous but began after I recognized the need for considerable study.
On the motorcycle trip, I saw several wind farms with stationary blades. Upon seeing that, I belatedly began to wonder if adequate consideration had been given to the intermittent nature of wind and solar power. I spent hours searching to see whether intermittent sources of power could actually meet our needs for power. At the time it was widely believed that if wind and solar systems were interconnected over a wide area that reliable power would result. I was directed to a youtube presentation by a professor at UC Davis.
Before the UC Davis professor gave his presentation on renewable energy, a formal written survey was taken to determine the beliefs of the audience in the auditorium. A survey was taken again after the presentation. The comparison showed that the presentation had caused many doubters about renewable energy to change their minds and support renewable energy. I did not have the same reaction. The professor had asserted that even in California, interconnecting many sources of renewable energy would result in reliable power, but he presented absolutely no proof. He expected the audience to accept his unsupported statements, and many in the audience did exactly that. What did impress me was the ease with which people could be induced to change their minds with no proof.
Following that, I searched in vain for any credible quantitative study which would prove that interconnecting renewable sources would result in reliable power. I could not find that any such study had ever been done although there were many unsupported statements. And, I will not accept unsupported statements to justify spending untold billions of dollars when there is no clear indication that something will work.
I did find that many people were unaware of the need to eliminate all fossil fuel usage; they believed that a modest reduction of fossil fuel usage, perhaps 30%, would be sufficient. They also failed to realize the dramatic extent to which global demand for power would be increasing.
Well, eventually it became widely realized that interconnecting renewable systems over a wide area would not do the job. Then, it became recognized that huge amounts of energy storage would be required to make renewables work. Later, it became recognized that adequate storage technologies did not exist, but it was assumed that surely they would quickly be developed.
Upon studying nuclear power, I found that there were many possible nuclear reactor types and was especially impressed with the liquid fluoride thorium reactor (LFTR) which, in prototype form, and been successfully tested for a few years. However, it was clear that years of R & D would be required before it could be put into production.
I also learned that nuclear power actually, in spite of two disasters, had a much better safety record than any other power source. I learned that most of the nuclear “waste” was not waste at all but rather was unfissioned fuel because of the inefficiency of our current nuclear technology and that better nuclear technologies could use the “waste” as fuel thereby getting rid of most of it.
It became clear that we have to eliminate the use of fossil fuel as quickly as possible and that nuclear power can be scaled up faster than any other power technology at least partly because currently no energy storage technology is up to the job of adequately dealing with the intermittent nature of renewables. Therefore I became a strong supporter of nuclear power while still recognizing the usefulness of renewables in some niche situations.
At this time about all we can do is limit global warming to some degree; it is already to late to prevent a disaster. And, to deal with global warming, we will need even more power.
How easily people are swayed is part of a pet topic of mine. I come at it from a different perspective but agree it can be disturbing.
Interconnecting energy resources is what we do everyday on the grid today. Inter-connectivity is not really an issue, it has worked for some time. However it works in combination with sources of energy that can follow demand by increasing power or bringing new sources on line. And this is really the key.
The off peak bath tub curve has historically been a problem because it required sufficient resources to meet peak demand that were under-utilized off peak. So we always needed and could have used grid level energy storage. But we had “cheap” coal. Nuclear energy will not solve that over capitalization problem.
Incorporating renewable energy into a grid, particularly the intermittent sources of Wind and Solar PV is complicated. Solar PV has an advantage of peaking when we use much of our power. So it is really just wind energy that presents most of the intermittency issue.
To increase the capacity factor for wind and add time shaving just gives us some more reasons for grid level storage that we already need. The Nuclear option then only fixes a part of the grid. The inevitable energy storage will allow wind and solar PV to be more practical.
Grid level storage will also make nuclear cheaper by not requiring us to over capitalize in expensive nuclear power plants.
While you promote the nuclear option and agonize over the political situation, I am more inclined to see risk and public opinion. If we are to move forward I can’t wish away either the risk or the political environment. Somehow we have to find our way through it.
We start with what we can do. Grid level energy, Solar thermal with energy storage, hydro and several forms of geothermal. We add PV and wind or more likely overbuild it until the funding collapses along with the bubble.
Our nuclear plants get older and older. Finally we realize that we can’t re-certify them and we better come up with a new plan or a new design. Then we add the nuclear option on top of whatever else we have built until then. This isn’t a plan for perfection. It is a political reality.
Unless we are able to change our thinking and reformulate how nuclear is going to be done. A nationally certified design board for nuclear power plants? A common standard would make construction cheaper, but we would have to accept that a little socialism may be a good thing. It may help to get us out of a crisis that our present outlook has helped to create.
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With respect to “nuclear waste” it is my understanding that it is the reaction in the fuel that becomes inefficient. There are radioactive elements that dampen the reaction and those that increase it. Using the fuel increases those elements that dampen the reaction. “Spent fuel” has too many elements dampening the reaction. To change the “efficiency of a reactor” you have to change the fuel. It is not as if you can redesign the reactor pool or add a pump or a containment shell. The design of the reactor will flow from the design of the radioactive fuel. As with all designs there are assumptions and consequences. These should include the possibility of damage, failure and waste products. These considerations are of a different order of magnitude than other energy sources leading to at least a perceived increased risk.
Breath,
While spending countless hours studying energy issues, including various types of renewables, various types of nuclear reactors, and grid issues, I became very familiar with load following, storage, spinning reserve, frequency regulation, AC and DC transmission lines, etc. etc. While getting my degree in business administration, I also ended up with the equivalent of a minor in economics because of all the economics electives I took. The only reason I don’t have a formal minor in economics is that I did not meet the foreign language requirements.
The main difference between us is that I absolutely do not want to be totally dependent on a technology that does not currently exist. A storage technology to make renewables reliable does not currently exist. At this time, renewables depend on backup power from fossil fuel, commonly open cycle gas turbines, which are very inefficient. In fact, the California Ivanpah solar installation even includes gas burners which is an admission that solar systems cannot provide reliable power. Here is some information about the Ivanpah plant:
“Helping Hand Tools, an environmental group that fights construction of new power plants, is also asking the state commission to reject PG&E’s request to give the Ivanpah plant more time [to meet requirements before shutting it down]. Unlike traditional solar projects, Ivanpah uses natural gas to heat boilers to make steam used to warm up its power turbines, which emits some pollution.
“‘It’s not a renewable energy plant, it’s part gas, part solar,’ said Robert Sarvey, a spokesman for the group.
“More than 2,000 wild birds died at the Ivanpah plant between March and August of 2015, according to estimates that biologists hired by the plant owners filed this week and in December with the state Energy Commission.”
“Roughly half of the dead birds the biologists found had feathers that were singed or burned, most likely from flying through an area of intense heat between the mirrors and the power towers, according to the reports.”
Here is the link:
http://www.wsj.com/articles/ivanpah-solar-plant-may-be-forced-to-shut-down-1458170858
Hydropower and geothermal systems can provide reliable power, but for geographical reasons, their availability is quite limited. Pumped storage is a proven technology which works well, but its availability is also quite limited by geography.
I am well aware that reliable and economical energy storage would be beneficial for any power system; that is not new information for me.
Currently no energy storage technology exists that would be adequate to make renewable systems practical. To put billions of people at risk because of faith in something that does not exist is not reasonable.
We know that nuclear power, despite the problems associated with our most common nuclear technology, is fully capable of providing reliable power without depending on fossil fuels for backup. The oceans provide a virtually inexhaustible supply of uranium. So, even there were no advances in nuclear power technology, migrating to nuclear power would eliminate the problems caused by CO2 emissions. France, by going from zero nuclear power to 80% nuclear power in only 15 years, has demonstrated that nuclear power can be scaled up very quickly. And, there is good reason to believe that better nuclear reactor technologies will be developed.
The lowest risk approach to eliminating CO2 emissions is to expand nuclear power as rapidly as possible. If, while that is being done, an adequate storage technology is developed to make renewables practical, then we can halt construction of nuclear systems and build renewable systems as rapidly as possible.
Considering that the welfare and very lives of more than seven billion people is at risk, we should be minimizing that risk to the greatest extent possible. That requires rapidly expanding nuclear power rather then using methods that depend on faith and hope.
To bring this conversation back to the article, you dismiss renewables because of their intermittent nature. Yet it seems clear that not all renewables are intermittent. Traditional Geothermal seems as rock steady as coal, gas or nuclear. Hydro is so useful it is also used as the primary method of grid level energy storage. So it is only solar and wind that does not make you smile. California recently denied permits for renewable energy projects that did not incorporate energy storage. Solar thermal with energy storage did receive permits. It is relatively easy and it seems economical to add grid level storage to solar thermal.
Of the renewable sources of geothermal, hydro, solar thermal, solar pv and Wind more than half can either deliver power on demand or incorporate energy storage. Yet … you seem to tar all renewables with the “intermittency” label. Wind has a certain usefulness because it can deliver cheap power. PV is cheap to install and can start producing power almost from the start of a project. PV also has the strong point of being able to be installed on rooftops. So these forms of energy have “something else” going for them.
But we can’t put a hydro plant or a traditional geothermal plant just anywhere. Now lets talk about dry well, enhanced and engineered geothermal. This is also a type of renewable energy that will encourage the cooperation of oil companies. It is a lower temperature geothermal. Oil companies would love to see more of this as a way to make some useless dry oil wells start paying dividends again. This is a type of renewable energy that would be very distributed and could be put almost anywhere: http://www.geo-energy.org/pdf/Geothermal_Energy's_Future_Potential_Issue_Brief.pdf It involves correcting underground conditions and either using fracking to increase the permeability of underground structures and/or increasing the heat potential available using a type of heat pump.
So where is the technology?: http://www.forbes.com/sites/peterdetwiler/2014/11/06/the-newberry-volcano-enhanced-geothermal-project-the-most-important-power-plant-in-the-country/#1309170b38ad a more recent update: https://blog.newberrygeothermal.com/ The energy potential exists and for a modest investment we could easily see 10% of the US grid as geothermal by 2050 Compared to about 65% fossil fuels now, this is not particularly encouraging. We could do more.
When compared to Nuclear there is no particular political impediment to expanding this source of energy today.
We will come to a crisis with Nuclear energy. By 2050 some of the existing US reactors will be so far beyond their expected life they may become so dangerous that they will not be re-certified. 20% of our power is presently nuclear. Without another major accident, some percentage of the power grid will continue to be nuclear. At some point we will likely realize that we need to start funding alternatives to our present designs. This may happen within the next 10 to 15 years. From that point I expect it to be about 30 years to a new design power plant.
If our bets with fusion technology pay off then all other options may be once again off the table. Perhaps some are holding off on the nuclear option with a hope for fusion sooner rather than later. Historians may someday describe this period as the transition between fossil fuels and fusion with a few footnotes about some of the options that were pursued.
In my previous post I wrote the following:
“Hydropower and geothermal systems can provide reliable power, but for geographical reasons, their availability is quite limited.”
So clearly I have not dismissed hydro and geothermal.
I would not count on fusion. Perhaps research on it should continue in case it can be made to work reliably and economically, but it would be unwise to count on it.
We need a source of power that can be used in most places where power is needed. It must be practical, safe, CO2-free, and capable of being rapidly implemented. And, it must be capable of providing power at all times without fossil fuel backup. This will be made slightly more difficult because of the need to replace aging nuclear systems, but replacing aging nuclear systems would also make it more difficult to migrate to renewables.
At this time, nuclear power is the only thing that meets those criteria. Wind and solar have a place in remote areas where connecting to the grid would not be practical in which case people will have to use Diesel for backup if they need total reliability. If at some future date wind and solar become, perhaps through new storage technologies, capable of providing reliable power, then we can migrate to them. Meanwhile, we need to get CO2 free power as quickly as possible to limit to some extent the disaster which it is too late to prevent completely.
I shall use an approach to risk management that is taught in risk management courses.
Few would assert that within the next 10 years the probability is 100% that renewables can provide power at all times. So, let us assume that within the next 10 years there is an 80% probability that renewables could be made to provide power at all times. That means that there would be a 20% probability that renewables could not be made reliable. Let us further assume that, combined with the already inevitable global warming, unreliable power would result in more deaths, perhaps conservatively 500K more deaths. Then, multiplying 500K by 20%, we see that depending on renewables would result in 100K more deaths. Should we take that chance? Of course these are only guesses but it should show that depending on a future technology that we cannot 100% count on would result in more deaths caused by global warming, deaths that nuclear power could prevent.
Again, the above is the approach taught in risk management courses; it is widely used to make business decisions and is completely standard practice to evaluate risk. It is used by insurance actuaries. As shown above, it consists of multiplying the cost of failure by the probability of failure.
Regarding extracting uranium from sea water, when considering the cost of doing so one must consider that the cost of generating power from uranium is mostly the interest on the investment. The cost of the uranium is a very minor part of the total cost. Thus, even if it cost 10 times as much to extract uranium from sea water, it wouldn’t much matter. Even more than that would be less than the cost of global warming. A google search returns many articles.
You might notice that when you want to support your case you have no hesitation to lean on the most extreme elements but this is the exact approach you denounce when trying to counter any criticism of nuclear energy.
I am not terribly concerned about a few wild birds being hit by turbine blades or being singed in the reflected sunlight of a mirror. Many more are likely dying by hitting the glass of tall buildings worldwide.
Are there any production facilities worldwide that are getting uranium from seawater or is this just a theory with no proven economic track record? The best I could find is 10 times more costly than uranium mining and would require a million tons of plastic to scale up to anything like a meaningful level. http://spectrum.ieee.org/energy/nuclear/nuclear-fuel-from-the-sea So it is a speculative feed in technology to a speculative new form of power plant that has not yet been developed or proven to be economical without subsidies for only a modest eroei. So while you said ” I absolutely do not want to be totally dependent on a technology that does not currently exist.” I am wondering how is this not a technology that does not currently exist?
We need energy storage regardless. We will pursue it regardless. We will achieve grid level energy storage regardless of the energy mix.
Yet you seem to characterize it as some kind of mystical unobtanium: “Currently no energy storage technology exists that would be adequate to make renewable systems practical.” Yet it is very clear that hydro is working very well for the islanders who are using 100% renewable energy as well as those countries that get most of their power from this renewable form of energy.
“To put billions of people at risk because of faith in something that does not exist is not reasonable.” “…there is good reason to believe that better nuclear reactor technologies will be developed.” So by your own admission better nuclear reactors are not presently available IE they don’t exist and yet you unreasonably want to put your faith in this “something that does not exist.”
I have no doubt in your study and knowledge. Part of what we do is weigh information. We judge what is important and what can be ignored. You have done that. And it is clear that for you renewable energy is less significant than nuclear energy. And then you have justified your bias with arguments that nuclear energy cannot withstand.
With respect to France and their grid mix you seem to be inferring something that a statistic does not imply. A grid mix tells us about the available energy resources. France going from 0 to 80% would only tell us that those resources came on line during that period. This does not tell us that France planned, permitted, developed, constructed and fueled its 80% nuclear grid mix within 5 years. That borders on absurd.
The French model is not as shining as it once may have been with expense and cost overruns. Highlighted in this article are parts that were forged with unacceptable levels of carbon in the steel leading to increased risk, and trust issues. http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/08/business/energy-environment/france-nuclear-energy-areva.html?_r=0
There will be a place for nuclear power worldwide if not in selected locations. But it will not be in the absence of grid level storage, it will require constant further development and it will continue to be plagued by cost overruns, risk and trust issues.