Can common ground be found between “warmers” and “skeptics”? Can we identify energy sources that satisfy the concerns of both groups?
Guest Post by Charles Hart
Warmers want energy that does not emit CO2 because they look at the climate data and conclude that CAGW is a credible threat that needs to be addressed. Their energy sources of choice are typically wind and solar.
Skeptics look at the same climate data and conclude the evidence for CAGW is just too weak to justify accepting the current high cost and unreliability of wind/solar. They look at Europe and notice that nuclear has given France the smallest carbon footprint and wind/solar has not been effective in any European country in keeping energy both low cost and low carbon.
What about nuclear? Some warmers support it (e.g. Dr. James Hansen) but others do not because of toxic waste streams, lingering concerns about safety, cost, and the potential for proliferation.
What if we could have nuclear power that was far “greener” than current technology, cost considerably less, was even safer and more proliferation resistant? What if this “greener” nuclear technology had already been proven in working prototypes?
Welcome to LFTR (liquid fluoride thorium reactors) technology. Demonstrated in the 60′s, the thorium/uranium fuel cycle molten salt reactor (LFTR) approach was abandoned to concentrate efforts on the uranium/plutonium fuel cycle pressurized water reactor (PWR) during the cold war bomb making era, an era when lots of plutonium was considered a good thing, not something to be worried about.
LFTR (compared to current PWR): A waste steam 10,000 times less toxic (some variations of LFTR can actually burn PWR waste). Cost <50%, thus competitive with coal. Even safer (no fuel rods to melt, no high pressure radioactive water to escape, passive criticality control ….). More proliferation resistant.
What about the politics? Replacing coal with LFTRs is far easier politically than imposing cap n trade or carbon taxes. $10B invested over 10 years could update this technology and make it ready for commercialization. LFTR is attractive to both Democrats/warmers and Republicans/skeptics. It is very green, cost competitive and can be put into production for a realively modest sum.
Short version:
Long version:
For more information see:
American Scientist “Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactors”
http://energyfromthorium.com/2010/07/01/welcome-american-scientist-readers/
“Energy Cheaper Than From Coal”
http://energyfromthorium.com/2010/07/11/ending-energy-poverty/
Mechanical Engineering Magazine “Too Good to Leave on the Shelf”
http://memagazine.asme.org/Articles/2010/May/Too_Good_Leave_Shelf.cfm
Dr James Hansen LFTR endorsement
20081229_Obama_revised.pdf (application/pdf Object)
LFTR nuts to bolts.
Think of a Coal Train 1,000 Miles long. That’s what China uses.
Every Day.
Our Coal Train is only from St. Louis to Memphis (330 miles long.)
We not only have to do something, we have to do “everything.”
And, pretty danged soon.
Trouble is, it is not the average Warmer or Sceptic who needs to be convinced of the best way forward; it’s the political elite. And they have their own agenda which has nothing – absolutely nothing – with environmentalism. I think THAT is where many Warmers and Sceptics already have common ground, in recognising this fact. If something is truly believed to be dangerous to human existence, you don’t impose a tax on it; you ration it, or in extreme cases you ban it. If, however, the object is to take the people’s money, then of course you declare how dangerous a product is and then use that justification to tax consumers as much as you can get away with.
Precisely.
I support nuclear (fission) power and enhanced research into nuclear.
However, I support them in a smart grid balanced between the cheapest and best sources of energy – solar, wind, geothermal and hydro, with fossil fuels either phased out (by mid to late century) or with cleaned emissions.
No dirty fuel sources, no dependence on foreign tyrants for our fuel sources.
This desideratum is completely feasible with capitalist innovation, technical virtuosity and risk-taking. What are we waiting for?
You forgot to mention green guru James Lovelock who is also in favour of nuclear energy.
As well as the LFTR (liquid fluoride thorium reactors) there is also nuclear technology from Hyperion Power Generation who produce a “a tiny nuclear reactor the size of a bathtub that could produce enough electricity to power 20 thousand homes.
It would contain no weapons grade material, would produce very little waste and would be refueled every seven years.
It would be so safe from kidnapping it could be buried in the backyard. Terrorists would keep away because if they did get it, it would be the same as holding a piece of the sun.” more…
Last post – I meant nuclear fusion in first sentence!
Most of the Solar projects I’ve been reading about, recently, seem to be coming in between $4.00 and $5.00/Watt. Most of this seems to be “installation.” I think we’re going to see Solar coming online for $2.00/Watt in a few years. Considered over a life-cycle that blows the doors off nuclear.
Wind is already cheap, and getting cheaper as the turbines get larger. Now, add in a “fast-follower” such as a 57% efficient turbine from Siemens running on biogas (obtained from the anaerobic digestion of lignin left over from the “cellulosic” production of ethanol,) and you’re starting to look at a heck of a low-cost, sustainable system.
Frederick Davies, August 10, 2010 at 12:47 am
Frederick, I have to agree, although I’m keen on thorium reactors. In engineering you have to make it as simple and idiot-proof as possible. Molten halide salt baths are uber-corrosive and are difficult to engineer. I have experience of this. Removing waste nucleotides ‘on the fly’ from a bleed stream is also good in theory but likely to be difficult in practice.
I do like thorium as a nuclear fuel, but in nice sealed modular units which can be made fail safe relatively easily and which are easy to handle. Halide systems have a poor record of availability, maintenance and reliability (cryolite aside – 100 years has knocked out most of the bugs from Hall-Heroult – but frozen pot electrolyte is not a radioactive nightmare), I think it would be difficult to engineer this package well enough to avoid such problems.
On the thorium front, a plus is that mineral sand miners presently return the monazite and xenotime fraction to the pit, since thorium has no value at the production rates current (mineral sand primarily is used to make TiO2 pigment for paint, so thorium byproduction is inflexible since we use lots of paint). A minus is that the cost of uranium to nuclear power producers is relatively low (as I hear it) as the economics are overwhelmingly driven by the capital cost. So there’s not much economic driving force to push thorium reactors even if the thorium was free. If a carbon tax came in operators would probably just build low risk conventional plants if they could.
LFTRs will be built in the next five years. This is the simplest most elegant energy resource that the earth has given us. LFTRs will first be deployed where they are needed most — in the developing countries. LFTRs cannot be stopped. Their business case is indefatigable, a fraction of the cost of current coal plants, especially in the developing countries. LFTRs will be buried underground, and co-located with local distribution grids. Their ubiquitous distribution will eradicate $1.5 million a mile high-voltage transmission infrastructure that today loses 7% of the power it transports. LFTRs’ waste heat will be dissipated through hybrid desalination facilities on the coast and industrial production processes inland. Prosperity is generated by cheap energy and fresh water. Prosperity retards then stabilizes population growth. Conservation does not require the obliteration of mankind, just a measure of maturity, which prosperity breeds. Count on it.
Wired had a story on Thorium reactors in January:
http://www.wired.com/magazine/2009/12/ff_new_nukes/all/1
off to watch the above embedded videos now.
In today’s Daily Telegraph there’s a report about the Iter fusion project. There’s good news, as now it seems its funding problems have been resolved. But it also reports that Greenpeace opposes it. What a surprise. I suspect that what these environmental extremists really hate is the thought of society becoming ever more prosperous by using advanced technology. That’s why they love Medieval technologies such as these pointless windmills.
My energy policy would be fairly simple:
1. Forget so-called alternative technologies, particularly wind power. Just by adding an additional power station you would make them unnecessary. Alternative energy is also very expensive and very unreliable. If you think wind power is a good idea, I suggest you monitor this web site for a few days. A table near the bottom lists the current percentage contribution of all power sources for the UK, including current, the last half hour and 24 hours. The wind contribution goes up and down like a yo-yo. Sometimes it’s literally zero (in effect, probably less than 0.05%) Worse than useless.
http://www.bmreports.com/bsp/bsp_home.htm
2. For the next few decades, concentrate on using nuclear, using the best available technology such as that highlighted in this report.
3. Probably starting around 2050 (assuming, of course, that Iter is successful), start ramping up fusion. It promises clean, reliable and cheap energy that can be produced in vast amounts. If there are no fundamental engineering problems that cannot be solved, then I’m fairly confident that the world, starting around 2050, will be powered by fusion.
If fusion gets rid of these stupid, stupid windmills that disfigure the countryside and don’t work most of the time, that alone will be worth it.
Chris
LazyTeenager says:
August 10, 2010 at 12:49 am
Very lazy I would say.
The British MAGNOX reactors which were gas cooled using CO2 were so called after the alloy used because they were not only designed to produce civil electric power but also plutonium for atomic bombs. They date from the nineteen fifties and are only now being retired.
The British AGR reactor programme of the 1960’s used helium and after various teething problems have proven so satisfactory that they are probably good for another forty years.
Compared to a standard PWR they are between, depending on load, about 5 to 10% more efficient and produce only about one half the residual plutonium per unit of power generated.
Because they are not load following they are used as base load stations but can be modulated safely if required since they are at no danger of cold slug instability for the dangers of which note Three Mile Island and of course Chernobyl.
Kindest Regards
Read this article, in its entirety
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=smarter-use-of-nuclear-waste
I am sorry to inform you folks that the only way LFTR (liquid fluoride thorium reactors) technology will be adopted in the west is when power outages cause winter mass deaths due to the wholesale adoption of wind energy and solar panels. Many greens don’t want cheap, safe energy they want rationed energy via windmills for themselves and a drastic reduction in world population which excludes them.
Poptech
Convert Nuclear to Electricity OK. Get some CO2 (I breath it out or its in the atmosphere) and separate the C from the O2 using the electricity. Get some H2O (it falls from the sky) and separate the H2 from the O using more electricity. Join the C’s and H’s to make a chemical CxHy using pressure and heat from making electricity from the nuclear reaction in the first place. Its called a hydrocarbon and you can have it in gas, liquid or solid (plastics). Its great for powering ships, planes, trucks and cars. Its dead easy to store and transport. The oil companies are great at this.
Nuclear power is eminently suitable for providing for all our energy needs including transport. I stopped counting when I got to approximately a Million years of energy availability in nuclear fission deposits.
There are thorium reactors, mostly experimental, operating for many years I believe. India which has large thorium reserves, has had one working for some time.
The “excess deaths” during winter are much more likely to be caused by the effects of Peak Oil. And quite soon too. Just to let you paranoid %#$ know, nobody is any particular rush to phase out coals and gas powered power plants and replace them with solar and wind.
This won’t do. I need to become the world’s first trillionaire by making money out of trading a trace gas. I don’t care how many people get screwed over or live on carbon rations for me to achieve my goal.
You are thinking too rationally. If you want to appeal to alarmists, warmists, econuts, etc, then you’ll need to propose something far more fantastic. Something like a large orbiting solar array that can beam energy down to Earth via super efficient bird friendly Lasers. The more expensive and unobtainable the better. Extra points are given for technologies that haven’t been invented yet and which are unlikely to ever be invented and thus require infinite amounts of investment capital. It’s also important to focus on “sustainable” and “renewable” energy solutions which require unsustainable amounts of non-renewable precious metals from remote, inhospitable, and politically unstable regions of the Earth.
If you can suggest an alternative energy solution that follows these simple green-friendly guidelines then you just might win over our friends on the other side. However, suggest anything less and you will likely be accused of being in the pay of Big Oil, Big Nuclear, Big Tobacco, Big HFCS (High Fructose Corn Syrup), or George W. Bush. Your name will be permanently added to several high profile blacklists and fanatic climate stalkers will follow you around the globe and harass you about Exxon for the rest of your life. This is how the green energy market creates jobs, drives innovation, and saves the planet.
There will never be “common ground”
People want/need cheap energy to power their work and lives.
Politicians/greens want expensive energy to control and shackle people to live the lives they are allowed to.
Not much common ground between the choices is there ?
Greenies are unwilling to accept nuclear energy because that would achieve acceptable CO2 goals yet preserve capitalism.
What; did you actually think the left cared about the planet? Silly Billy!
This has NOTHING to do with the CO2 theory.
A comporomise would be to address the issue of population control instead of climate control.
System Change, NOT Climate Change.
$10B invested over 10 years could update this technology and make it ready for commercialization.
How about those Polywell Fusion guys? So far the research has cost about $40 million and for about $200 million more they will build a working reactor (if the research pans out – We Will Know In Two Years or less).
Bussard’s IEC Fusion Technology (Polywell Fusion) Explained
Fission is good too. So is coal. Natural gas. And oil.
Alternative energy will not have its day until we have low cost electrical energy storage.
population control
The USSR was very good with such problems. China has a system that PUNISHES people who have too many children. And of course the poster boy for such efforts was Germany (1933 – ’45). And of course let us not forget China under Mao.
I don’t think population control will go over well. And then there is the little problem of the US Constitution. But under the right regime I suppose that can be ignored.
Well Mr/Ms Meme what is your plan for population “control”? Sounds ominous to me – what happens if the proles around the world don’t follow orders? Mass culls? Forced sterilisation? All the stats show that the only things that slow down birth rates are affluence and women’s education, so rather than make sinister noises about control we should be focusing on improving standards of living in the developing world. Affordable energy, some kind of healthcare, and efficient food production are the keys, and buggering about with cap and trade only makes Goldman Sachs bankers richer.