Avoiding the guilty pleasures

You don’t have to be smart to be a Warmista, you just have to be passionate.

For so long the warmists have been criticizing the Wegman report as being rubbish.
Eventually the George Mason University started an investigation (for plagiarism? content?) which should clear up the scene.

“But overall, be prepared for claims of the hottest month leading to the hottest year on record”
As soon as I saw the hoards of third world countries — none of them exactly untarnished with corruption — lining up to receive handouts on the basis of “global warming”, I realised that barring a miracle, the only way for global temperatures was up!
Of course the real problem now, is that they have claimed “unprecedented” this and that so often that most people just think they are crying wolf … but whose fault will it be if one day they did just report a real crisis and no one listened!

The coal age will not end for a lack of coal… just as the stone age did not end for a lack of stones.
The engineers have the answers, just as we have always had. All we need is for the economics to be favorable. Increased coal consumption will drive up the price of coal, and the alternative energy systems will be implemented. Thus it has always been, thus it will always be. By alternative energy systems, I do not mean wind or solar power.
Rest easy, Mr. Fuller. We, the engineers, got this one.

Tom,
Good points as usual, but be careful about painting all whom you refer to as skeptics as unconcerned with pollution and the environment.
As a wee youngster, my family moved from Oregon to Los Angeles; a long time ago – must have been something like 1960. It was very smoggy and polluted back then, and since then I noticed steady improvements in air quality. I lived overseas in the ’70s then back to LA and left for good in 1995, but by my memory, the air quality got better and better despite the huge growth in population and automobiles. Just as a reality check, here is an interesting link:
http://www.arb.ca.gov/html/brochure/history.htm
One beef I have with the current crop of environmentalists is the emphasis on CO2 rather than neurotoxins like lead, mercury, and poisons like sulfates in the atmosphere. Lots of lessons have been learned how to clean up air pollution. Why aren’t there efforts to transmit these lessons to the developing world? Big meeting scheduled in Cancun…I wonder if anti-pollution technology for developing countries will be discussed or whether they will focus on polar bears and man-made CO2?
After you answer that question for yourself, perhaps the narrow focus of the skeptics won’t seem so narrow by comparison.

Don’t worry about burning coal. Coal is plentiful and cheap. Utilities have ways to ensure that the CO2 is pretty clean. The CO2 helps vegetation grow. Vegetation makes the world greener, giving the people more houses, food, and clothing.
Time keeps on slippin’ into the future…
Feed the babies
Who don’t have enough to eat
Shoe the children
With no shoes on their feet
House the people
Livin’ in the street
Oh, oh, there’s a solution.
— Steve Miller

I am pretty sure all of this reasoning wrong.
You see, water (vapor) is a much stronger greenhouse gas than CO2.
Nuclear power generates a lot of heat, which has be led off by cooling with water, usually from the oceans.
When all of that water vapor (from the process) condenses, the heat is released in the atmosphere. I assume 50% goes to space and the other 50% is directed back to earth.
So nuclear energy does not solve the warming problem. In fact it makes it worse.
This is what really causes global warming: the condensing of water from water vapor that was evaporated from nuclear energy, burning (including fossil & rocket fuel), boiling, cooking, bathing, etc. But most of all: the erection of shallow waters for irrigation and consumption of water and the extra evaporation of water as a direct consequence…

You write ” clear the way for pumped storage for a not-so-rainy day, ” Two sorts of energy related topics I have been interested are pumped storage and cellulosic ethanol. With respect to pumped storage, here in Ontario, Canada, we should be in an ideal place to use it, but we are not. I suspect the reason is that large electric motors cannot be run directly from such sources as wind and solar, because of the varying power these sources produce. I have not been able to confirm this. As to cellulosic ethanol, this was supposed to be the year it was to be produced in large quantities; e.g. by Range Fuels and Iogen. It has not happened, and I cannot find out why. Anyone have any ideas?

Predicting we’ll be burning however much coal then is like the ‘prediction’ in the 1880s that by 1920 London would be 6 ft deep in horse manure.

That is the real problem.

There’s is no nuclear waste only left over energy that vastly surpasses the energy that has been used. Put another way nuclear waste is just energy going to waste or nuclear waste is all them 97% we didn’t use?
Do you know why god damn greenie hippies don’t want to recycle nuclear waste? I know, because they fear accepting nuclear waste recycling for more energy production would demote wind, wave and solar power to the rock from whence they sprung. That’s also pretty much why they don’t want to renew and add to or enhance proper hydro energy production, that’s why they scream so much about local environment when energy companies suggest enlarging or building a new dam for generating more of the clean hydro generated electricity but not for thousands of silly pseudo-windmills.
That’s also why the idiots love coal power still dominating rather then nuclear and hydro, they need its tangible concrete stuff to puke their hate at to convince the “civilians”.

I find myself agreeing with you today.
We have not pushed Nuclear as much as we should and we will pay the price for that.

…What we have not done is enable nuclear power to be used as much as it should, due to fears of nuclear waste…

Alvin Weinberg, the inventor of the light water reactor, once said:
“Nuclear waste is not a substance. Wasting valuable nuclear materials is only what stupid governments do.”
What’s known as “nuclear waste” or “enrichment tailings” or “depleted uranium” is pure stored energy. Convertible to usable energy with long known technology that has been sabotaged and hindered by the same people that cry “global warming” today.
With the reactors we use today we extract only 1% of the energy that could be extracted from the uranium we mine.

Why no major research into Thorium reactors? Potentially a good part of the mix. Many fewer waste/safety/terrorist problems, potentially.
Because we’re wasting money on windmills!!!!
REPLY: We had a big article on thorium reactors here
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/08/09/finding-an-energy-common-ground-between-%E2%80%9Cwarmers%E2%80%9D-and-%E2%80%9Cskeptics%E2%80%9D/
Anthony

Nuclear.
Not entirely without its achilles heel, ECONOMICS, one consumes the other quite nicely. Its been clear, for a while, that regulatory bodies can be captured by vested interests. When that happens, safe-gaurds diminish, accidents happen.
It’d be fair to say that the Nuclear industries are subject to the same unwholesome greed as any other. So whats to be done? How do we increase Nuclear energy use, but decrease the risk of political corruption undermining it? Do we create a watchdog to watch the watchdog?
The tech is there, no doubt, so its ceased to be an issue of failsafes and containment.
The weak link is, as always, Human self interest topping prudent caution.
While Nuclear could keep the Human race ticking over nicely for centuries to come, we would need a revolution in business/political and scientific ethics to safely use it.
Theres where the evolution needs to happen.

I read somewhere recently (I can’t remember where, sorry) that China was now buying its coal-fired generating technology from Siemens of Germany, which is state-of-the-art as far as emissions are concerned.

One of my guilty pleasures is reading. Today I read that Wegman is being investigated for academic misconduct.
Who will go down with him? Barton ; an unidicted co-conspiritor. Some plagerising PHD’s. McIntyre- too much invested in a false ” bad science” shriek. Cuchilleni: plagerised the plagerism. Watts.
Go Mike. Go John. Go Ray.
REPLY: Ah, more of your fine prose I see. You may wish to employ a spell checker before pressing submit. I’m not sure that you can fully understand the words indicted, conspirator, PhD, plagiarism, plagiarizing, or plagiarized if you can’t spell them properly. 😉 A review of your past comments here shows an equal spread of similarly misspelled foaming taunts. Actually, I think this issue is a good thing. The question is: was this intentional or accidental? Was it Wegman himself or an assistant? Meanwhile, the other issues of the report get more press. -Anthony

No single site as done more for the skeptical viewpoint than WUWT. Reading this sites articles and comments leads one to the conclusion that we have been winning the battle. People should realize that here (WUWT), we are preaching to the converted. Many have been lulled by the comfort of commenting to “like” thinking individuals.
However, the battle for minds, and truth is not necessarily being won at other discussion forums. A major setback has been AccuWeather’s Global Warming blog, which once was mainly skeptical and then subsequently revamped to new moderators. Skeptic commenters have systematically been banned and hounded out of this forum until there is barely 3 left (including myself).
It would be nice if some people, who enjoy basking in the warm glow of peer approval here, would perhaps, risk a little heat, in the open forum there. There are so few “neutral” forums, I would hate to see this one lost. It may already be lost.
http://forums.accuweather.com/index.php?showtopic=22788&pid=1071705&st=80&#entry1071705
On this page, there is a vicious attack against Willis Eschenbach. Moderation seems to be applied only against skeptics. I have been moderated to death and can no longer defend such fine people. GK

I am as worried about the problems for coal decades from now as I am about the projected whale oil crisis of the 19th century, and the projected horse manure disposal crisis of the early 20th century, and the predicted famine of the 1980s and 1990s, and the predicted global cooling crisis of the 70s.

Henry said
I am pretty sure all of this reasoning wrong.
You see, water (vapor) is a much stronger greenhouse gas than CO2. Nuclear power generates a lot of heat, which has to be led off by cooling with water, usually from the oceans.
When all of that water vapor (from the process) condenses, the heat is released in the atmosphere. I assume 50% goes to space and the other 50% is directed back to earth.
Mike Helfrich wrote
That may be true for the Uranium fueled Nuclear power plant. There was a competing fuel source in the early Nuclear industry called Thorium. But because the military wanted fissionable material, Uranium won. The reactor design called LFTR (pronounced Lifter) is a liquid salt Thorium reactor that is self regulating and does not require vast amounts of cooling water. I’ve read that a power plant can even be located in desert areas with no issues. One benefit of Thorium reactors is that it can eat nuclear waste from Uranium fuels plants, plus it’s waste has a short half life. I’m no expert on Thorium reactors, but it looks like a good road to take. But because it has the word Nuclear in it’s name, it’s looked in the same light as our current reactor population.
Regards..
Henry wrote
Interesting indeed. Why have I never heard of such an energy making process?
However, even on the grander scale of things: I doubt if nuclear energy would make any difference on global warming, if ever global warming is or does become a problem.
I did a simple experiment with my 50 m2 swimming pool here and came to some staggering results: 2500 liters of water evaporated in one week (no clouds, 31-34 C outside max during day, temp of water 25-26C). Now try and work out how much (shallow) water must be kept in store for every person on the planet, both for consumption and for irrigation for food, and remember that the heat that comes free when one mole of water (18g) condenses is 40.7 kJ…

Jim Cripwell,
Shell Oil bought a controlling interest in Iogen a few years back. They are looking for something they can patent. I don’t believe Shell has any interest in producing ethanol in “commercial” quantities at this time (or the near future.) Range went, in my opinion, the wrong direction. They went the “Thermal” route, and that process is looking problematic (expensive) when compared to the “Enzymatic” processes.
Keep an eye on Fiberight, Poet, and Inbicon (also, the Univ of Tennessee project down at Vonore, Tn.) They use enzymes from Novozymes, and Dupont Danisco (among others.) Poet is a very well-run company, and the world’s largest producer of ethanol. They’re hoping to begin construction on their first “commercial-scale” facility by the end of the year, and are looking to be profitable, sans any subsidies, at about $2.00/gal. I wouldn’t bet against them. They’ve been working on this for several years, and they know the business. They will utilize corn cobs, and part, about 1/3 of the “stover” (husks, leaves, stalks, etc.) As I said, this is a solid, superbly-run company, and they have the knowledge, and contacts to be successfu. They’ve never, as far as I’m aware, made any projections that they couldn’t accomplish.
Fiberight is composed of executives from the waste management, and brewing industries. They make ethanol out of Municipal Waste. They expect to hit max production in their first facility in 2011. They’re projecting profitability at $1.60/gal. – also, w/o any subsidies along the way.
Note: often overlooked in discussions of “Cellulosic” Ethanol is the great amount of lignin left over from the process, even after providing power for the plant, itself. It’s becoming accepted, now, that virtually all cellulosic plants will be co-located with (or built in conjunction with) Electricity Power Stations. This is Not a small thing.
Considering that about 5% of the average county planted in switchgrass would replace All of the “Imported” oil used in that county, and that you get as many btus for electricity generation from lignin as you get in btus from ethanol I would surmise, although I haven’t run the numbers yet, that you would replace a Large percentage of the fossil fuel-generated electricity for that region.
Of course, the neat thing about switchgrass, miscanthus, etc is you only have to replant every nine or ten years, they don’t require irrigation, and you only use nitrogen fertilizer the first one, or two years (you don’t have to do that, but it will increase the yields.)
Hope that helped a little.

Thomas,
I appreciate your perspectives. I understand your point that energy demand and production continues to escalate, as the less developed portions of the planet strive for higher living standards. I don’t share as much concern about continued use of coal for energy production however.
Back in the ’80s, I regularly flew into LA from St. Louis. Each time we would descend for landing, we would descend into the orange brown cloud of pollution that was always hanging over LA then. My eyes would burn and my sinuses itch for the duration of my LA stay, from the irritation. On the ground, you couldn’t see the mountains just 20-30 miles away, the air was so opaque! As the 90’s rolled into 2000, energy consumption continued to increase…. but the LA air became cleaner and clearer. Today, when I visit LA, total energy use is higher than ever and yet there is little indication of air pollution, at least to one who has seen the full progression from its worst!
My point is this. Suitable applications of regulation and technology developments have proven effective at dramatically improving air quality there and elsewhere, even as total energy consumption has continued to rise. The LA basin is proof of that fact. With +200 years of proven coal reserves within the contiguous US, at 2007 energy consumption rates, our national energy independence is readily at hand. Proven gasification and catalysis methods for converting coal to nearly any synthetic form of fuel (gasoline, diesel/jet fuel, lubricants, natural gas, etc) at a cost ‘break even’ equivalent less than current oil price ($US/bbl) are being tested in progressively larger scale plants today. As such, coal is and should be one of our primary energy sources for the next 100 years!
With sizable additions of efficient nuclear power, reasonable regulation, and ever improving combustion, catalytic, and scrubber technologies, we already have a viable plan for US national energy independence with a cleaner environment to boot!

mkelly says:
October 8, 2010 at 1:13 pm
“I pointed out that Newton was by thier definition a creationist so do they deny F=ma. ”
Reminds me of the Pakistani school kid that asked his teacher whether Muhammad’s parents were Muslim.

Mr. Fuller you worry too much. Especially about things that are out of your control.
You are correct that nuclear power has been stymied unnecessarily and that further developed over the next thirty years it could provide a cornucopia of electricity.
You are too starry eyed about combined heat and power because the efficiency of modern plant means you have to sacrifice electric power for heat as well as balance the demand for the two in the short term and seasonally. It is inefficient and uneconomic to turn a third of your electric generation into about three to four times as much heat half of which is likely to lost in the steam heating line distribution. Thus it is impractical except for small scale applications or the colder reaches of the Northern hemisphere towards the Arctic circle.
It is notable that district heating in the UK vanished very quickly once the national natural gas grid was completed in the 1970’s, it is much cheaper and more efficient to pipe the gas and burn it on site where and when heat is wanted and leave electric generation to look after itself. For comparison in the UK coal fired district heat and power would increase electric costs by fifty percent, the district heating cost would be between two and three times the cost of burning gas directly, the CO2 output per unit of total useable energy delivered would be about one and a half times and the capital cost of the plant also about one and half times: these figures would be even worse for the modern gas/steam combined cycle generating stations.
Politicians and commentators either forget or do not know that all these solutions have been tried and tested and there is no universal panacea, local circumstance dictate what solution will be best in terms of cost and efficiency: and that gains are incremental over decades not instant at the snap of the fingers.
Thus except for small local uses wind is useless and solar power could be useful as a bit player in sunnier parts of the world especially for hot water. Major hydroelectric plant and pumped storage are efficient and useful but many rivers also need to supply irrigation. Small scale hydroelectric can also be handy but there is a limit to how much energy you can extract from a small river especially in winter for fear of freezing it up.
Tidal power is proven in terms of practicality if not economics, I note again the Severn barrage has been canceled, must be the fifth time since it was first proposed in the 1920’s: and at least tidal power is predictable. Wave power has possibilities because in effect it is collecting wind over a vast area of sea and is predictable to some extent but again remains to be proven. Geothermal power is fine if you live close to a volcano but not my choice: I prefer my local volcano extinct.
Nor do I think your projections of likely fuel consumption realistic. Much of the current economic development is in warmer climes where the demand for space heating is low: whilst there will be demand for cooling this needs much less power by a factor of at least five to one. Likewise development is occurring in very densely populated areas where demand for transport is much less than the USA.
Moreover I do not see why you should be frightened about the use of fossil fuels. If it is an idea that they will run out perhaps they will but not for several hundred years yet and who knows where we shall be by then? Extraction companies don’t bother to look beyond the medium term, one or two decades, because they don’t need to, sometimes governments try to but are hampered by not knowing what new technology will emerge to meet the need, and of course the reserves of coal and peat are not just vast so are those of oil and above all else natural gas. We shan’t be running out any time soon: it is just a question of the price and the ransom demanded by rapacious governments for producing and using them.
If it is CO2 well perhaps fossil fuel emissions affect the atmospheric levels and perhaps not. We shall find out in the next thirty years or so. Either way it does not much matter since we already know that the biosphere can easily cope with this: and it would almost certainly be beneficial. And we could do with a bit more warming if CO2 can do that: but I doubt it.
So Sir I repeat: you worry too much. It is all going to happen however much you might deplore it. The next few generations will take it all in their stride.
Kindest Regards.

Thank you for a thought-provoking post, Mr. Fuller!
Indeed, these are interesting times….China is putting one new coal-fired powerplant online every week or so, and these are technologically more advanced than our grandfathered-in coal burners:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/11/world/asia/11coal.html
The USA has proven that, when the population gets behind something because of sound science, we all push together and good things happen. Look at the Clean Air Act and banning leaded gasoline…the quality of our environment has improved greatly from this single policy, cars run even better than before, emissions are down, etc. This all happened in a very short time period if you recall (catalytic converters in all cars).
When we want to change history, we do exactly that. I’m an optimist, there are many fine choices on the energy-plate for the American citizens to chose from. I think we’ll do fine, and I wouldn’t want to live in China (notice their latest raucous protest against the government of Norway regarding the Nobel Peace Prize?)
http://asiasentinel.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=2724&Itemid=171

Phillip Bratby and others are right about coal. Untreated, its flue gases contain real pollutants such as particulate matter, carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxides, sulfur oxides and mercury. That’s why you see grey skies and dangerous smog in, for example, Chinese cities. But new and proven technologies – now being adopted in China and throughout the West – virtually eliminate all this, leaving non-polluting CO2 and steam. Coal is a plentiful resource. So the optimum solution is to replace and supplement old coal plants with new, high efficiency fluid bed technology plants equipped with latest flue gas cleanup systems. Instead – at least in the UK – we are phasing out our coal use and moving instead to “renewables” (especially wind) and – possibly – nuclear. It’s an absurd policy.

Dear Mr. Fuller,
I do like your writing style, honestly. Unfortunatelly, I can’t agree with your cause.
Let’s wait for the coming winter, let us endure ’em and let’s talk again next april.
Regards
KlausB

Diversion of plutonium from “spent” nuclear fuel (SNF) is a bogus issue. cf. Why Modern Used Nuclear Fuel Cannot Be Used to Make a Weapon, Why You Can’t Build a Bomb From Spent Fuel. We’d built a reprocessing plant and were about ready to start it up when then-President Carter killed with an executive order “in order to set an example”. Well, no one followed our example. We’ve now got thirty-plus years worth of SNF sitting in ponds.
But it doesn’t have to be buried, it can be used in Molten Salt Reactors (MSRs), either as starter charges (LFTR) or fuel. The MSR was investigated by Oak Ridge back in the 1960s, the physics are proven, as is most of the technology. It would take some time and money to make it a commercial technology.
Non-Tokamak fusion reactor research is coming along, there are at least two or three projects with promise. The Polywell project is far enough along that we’ll know if it will be a viable power source within the next year or less. Dense Plasma Focus is being researched at Lawrenceville Plasma Physics. If either of these pan out (and we’ll know within a couple of years) then commercial fusion power will be a reality in perhaps ten years. And that changes everything.

“It’s been a lovely fall in many parts of the world, and a less than lovely spring in many parts down South. But overall, be prepared for claims of the hottest month leading to the hottest year on record.”
===
Let them say what they will, I’ll listen to this voice for the moment:
“A little maple began it, flaming blood-red of a sudden where he stood against the dark green of a pine-belt. Next morning there was an answering signal from the swamp where the sumacs grow. Three days later, the hill-sides as fast as the eye could range were afire, and the roads paved, with crimson and gold. Then a wet wind blew, and ruined all the uniforms of that gorgeous army; and the oaks, who had held themselves in reserve, buckled on their dull and bronzed cuirasses and stood it out stiffly to the last blown leaf, till nothing remained but pencil-shadings of bare boughs, and one could see into the most private heart of the woods.”
~Mr. Kipling

Eli Rabett says:
October 8, 2010 at 1:06 pm
FWIW, the issue with reprocessing is potential diversion to weapons which is why the US does not favor it….

Eli, that is just another one of the many urban myths that surround nuclear power.
Not one nation that posesses nuclear weapons has ever used reprocessed nuclear waste from power reactors as source material for bombs.
There’s a simple reason for that:
For an uranium based bomb it is far cheaper and less problematic to use natural uranium. The U235 content of nuclear waste is about the same as that of natural uranium, but natural urananium does contain highly radioactive fission products and is therefore far easier to enrich. And natural uranium does exist almost everywhere on earth in sufficient quantities to produce nuclear bombs if a nation really wants it.
The plutonium in nuclear waste from power reactors has a far too low an isotopic purity to be used for plutonium based weapons. Current enrichment technology does not allow to process reactor grade Pu to bomb-usable almost pure Pu-239. It can’t be done, even with todays modern technology. All the plutonium for Pu-based nukes has always been produced by specialized Pu production reactors, which are actually simpler to build than power reactors, but require far different construction.
The real reason the US abandoned reprocessing under Carter is that the enrichment infrastructure would be far less needed. And that infrastructure can be used for U-enrichment to bombs too. See the controversy around Iran.
BTW, the prohibition against reprocessing in the US has ended a long time ago. The reason the US does not reprocess today has more to do with NIMBY, anti-nuclear activists, and because the current price of uranium is to low to make it very economical in the US.
The Koreans are pursuing a different strategy:
The used fuel from light water reactors can be re-shaped into different sized fuel rods and can be used, without reprocessing, in CANDU heavy water reactors to produce again the same amount of energy.
And breeder reactors, like the IFR program that was stopped under Clinton, can use 60-80% of the energy of the raw uranium or reprocessed waste without producing long half-life waste. Same for the Thorium reactors like the LFTR.

PhysicsWorld.com has several articles on nuclear power, one of which is this overview on the next generation of reactors:
http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/indepth/43870

While I do understand the exasperation displayed in this post, this situation is not of our making. It has its roots in Kyoto, where instead of working out technology transfers with developing countries so that they wouldn’t pollute the way we did, the emphasis was put on CO2 and its control.
Energy use is inexorably linked to prosperity, and this will continue until population growth stabilises, and that won’t happen until there is more prosperity in the developing and underdeveloped countries.
When there used to be brownouts in the West, there was a statistically significant rise in the number of births nine months later. What’s your average Ugandan to do when night falls, and he can’t even play tiddlywinks because he has no light? Couple that with limited access to contraception, and you get lots of kids who need to be fed, clothed, housed and educated, all requiring even more energy.
In many western countries, we’re not even growing enough children to keep population at the same level, so if we can elevate the poorer countries, we’ll get to a situation where population stabilises and we’ll be recycling things like housing and other consumables, and not needing as much energy growth. So in a sense, it’s in our own selfish interest to help these people raise their standard of living.
Just twelve years ago, oil was at $10 a barrel. At that price, it wasn’t worth trying to be efficient with it. Nor was it worth looking for more as that would only depress the price further. Two years ago, oil hit $145 a barrel. People started downsizing their cars and turning their lights off. There were huge oil finds in the Gulf of Mexico and off the coast of Brazil, among others, because now it was worth our while to look for it. Renewables also became viable, and we started looking at and discovering other alternatives like tar sands, oil and gas shale, methane clathrates, etc, etc, etc.
There is no shortage of energy, it is really a matter of what price we are willing to pay for it.
The real dichotomy is, is that here in the West we can afford the higher price, but the poorer countries are not going to be able to raise their standard of living such that they can stabilise their populations. If we can solve that problem, then it’s very likely that we will not need to expand our energy use to the levels you’ve projected.

Anthony,
Thank you for your open venue, I cannot criticize your self stated values here in your own home.
At the same time, on the height of achievment, the course becomes more dependent on a long view . . . . . at the height of achievement philosophies, civilizations, businesses decline . . . . . thus the meaning of “the height of acheivement”. Can we re-invent ourselfs at the self defining moment of our success? Ahhhhh . . . . not so obvious.
Sincere good luck to you. Your achievement has been unquestionable.
John

a jones says:
October 8, 2010 at 3:46 pm
KLA says:
October 8, 2010 at 3:19 pm
Eli Rabett says:
October 8, 2010 at 1:06 pm
FWIW, the issue with reprocessing is potential diversion to weapons which is why the US does not favor it….
Eli, that is just another one of the many urban myths that surround nuclear power.
Not one nation that posesses nuclear weapons has ever used reprocessed nuclear waste from power reactors as source material for bombs.
_______________________________________________
I beg your pardon Sir but the whole UK Magnox reactor programme was not only for producing civil electric power but to provide easily refined plutonium essentially for military use in atomic bombs. The reactors proved hugely successful as a civil power programme, but in an age of fission/fusion weapons the amount of plutonium produced turned out be a costly embarrassment.
Kindest Regards

You are proving my point.
The Magnox reactors were designed as Pu production reactors. That their waste heat was also used for electricity production is more of a “side business”. They were also a unique UK design. That they were more succesful as electricity producers than as weapons grade Pu producers is a function of their use.
But the majority of nuclear power reactors in the world are light water reactors designed for electricity production.
When I was talking about reactor waste from power reactors I mean exactly that:
Waste from reactors designed to produce electricity, not from reactors designed to produce plutonium.
This means they are run with high fuel “burnup”, which means the uranium fuel rods are irradiated in the reactor for years. And that means that those Pu isotopes that make the Pu unusable for bombs builds up to a level where it can’t be used for weapons.
Refueling such a reactor shuts it down for electricity production for a week or two. But to produce weapons grade Pu you need to limit the irradiation of uranium to a month or so. Not a way to produce electricity if you have to shut the reactor down 50% of the time it could produce electricity.

When diesel can produced from cyanobacteria for less than fossil deposits using waste water at sewerage plants these petty anxieties will be over – we’ll all enjoy energy security, coal and oil will just be raw material for plastics, and uranium can sit in the ground. Utopia is just a gene tweak away.

Sorry if someone has commented on this already.
I scream BS on this!

The Green Consortium that has been yelling at us about climate change and energy has ignored all of the technologies that could make a difference. And skeptics have been too busy noting all of their errors, personal quirks and logical absurdities to notice that yes, people, we have an energy problem coming down the road.

Sceptics have all along been saying research nuclear, greens have consistently denied that research!
That’s as far as I got before I just HAD to scream.
Sorry, back to reading the story.
DaveE.

The reason for the resistance to change can be found in the Declaration of Independence:
“that Mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed”.
While that applied to governments, it is equally applicable to current methods of energy production.
Until the day comes that it finally dawns on the average person that things need to be fixed nothing will really be accomplished. Over-hyping, exaggerations and manipulations are counter productive. People resist government intervention because most people believe governments to do what they do for political gain of those in power and nothing else. The people will get it when they get it and not a minute sooner. When they do, a way will be found to make it better. It’s been that way throughout history, it’s the nature of mankind. Or perhaps the time of men is over.

I personally think shale gas will be the energy source of the next generations simply because it is cheaper than coal.
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Well that takes care of the USA, most/all third world countries don’t have shale gas, and so in 30 years the developed countries will use shale gas and produce less pollution and the third world countries will pump use coal (only they’ll use 1960’s technology).

Oh one more thing. I have a nasty feeling that wind power will be the next major real genuine global catastrophe.
You can’t suck oodles of energy out of the plantary system without an effect, and wind is part of the here and now (as opposed to stored, as are fossil fuels). Extracting large amounts of energy from wind WILL have an effect, though god knows what it will be.
In my most fevered imaginings it will slow planetary rotation. That’s probably fanciful. But I suspect there will be at least localised weather system changes where there are substantial installations of wind generation. In rough (engineering “order of magnitude is good enough”) terms – once you alter something by about 10% the effects can be seen. Once installed wind capacity gets to about 10% of the potential energy at a site, there has to be an effect at that site. (Based on the principle that there is no such thing as a perpetual motion machine, also known as the law of conservation of energy.)

Re solar only producing power 4 hours per day – I suppose that is true depending on the location and season. But, in California, the link below shows much longer times per day. There is apparently some storage that allows solar power generation after sunset.
Note also that the wind, on that particular day (10-7-2010) was fairly steady in generating power.
http://www.caiso.com/green/renewrpt/DailyRenewablesWatch.pdf
@ Harry the Hacker: I gently disagree with you on this one. Extracting energy from the wind has, and will have, no measurable effect on anything. This is because there is an unbelievable amount of energy in the wind, and our puny wind-turbines extract a miniscule amount of power from it. Air masses flow thousands of feet into the atmosphere, and our wind-turbines reach barely a few hundred feet.
Also, re the engineers. Engineers have the knowledge, and it rests on immutable constants – that is why bridges (properly built) don’t fall down. Politicians, on the other hand, have policies that come and go. We are going through a temporary phase of a form of insanity with their policies. Those will change as their bad effects become more and more apparent. Even California, the land of fruits and nuts, will eventually realize that the over-zealous environmental regulations are less important than jobs for the citizens. Engineers go where there is work, and if that means to other states or other countries, we go there. I did. Others did, too.
To the topic of energy, and providing long-term energy, policies that require 33 percent renewables (as in California) soon will be shown to be untenable. Policies that require CO2 capture and storage for coal-fired plants will produce very expensive electricity, and un-competitive products made with that electricity. The same is true for any new nuclear power plants in the USA – the power will cost too much. Stupid policies like those will be self-correcting. The evidence is there before us today: After a disastrous round of building 100 nuclear power plants in the USA, utilities came to their senses and stopped doing that. The resulting power prices were just too high, and their customers quit buying utility power and built their own power plants based on natural gas – which was (and still is) abundant and cheap. Some of those new power plants were co-generation, or what is sometimes referred to as combined heat and power. No laws required that, but simple economics made it inevitable.
Engineers will be there to pick up the pieces and fix the problems resulting from idiotic policies. We always have been. And we always will be.

I don’t like telling others what they should read or discuss, but, for personal reasons, I’ve given up reading Thomas Fuller’s posts.
However, I couldn’t help but note his urging (again) to stop piling on with criticism of 10:10, Michael Mann, Joe Romm etc. (Thomas Fuller actually does like telling others what they should read or discuss.)
Well, I come to WUWT, probably more than any other site, for a reason. If I want to be tricked, fudged and manipulated on climate issues, there’s the whole MSM, from the Guardian, Spiegel and NYT, right through to Australia’s ABC and Fairfax press.
To all WUWT contributors and commenters: I’d like to read many more criticisms of the people mentioned above, piled as high as you can go, and please single out those who are paid to be scientists for your special attention. It would be greatly appreciated by this layman and regular reader of Anthony’s invaluable blog.

Henry Pool:

So nuclear energy does not solve the warming problem. In fact it makes it worse.

There is no problem.

This is what really causes global warming: the condensing of water from water vapor that was evaporated from nuclear energy, burning (including fossil & rocket fuel), boiling, cooking, bathing, etc.

You have it wrong by some orders of magnitude, aren’t you?

Rabe says:
You have it wrong by some orders of magnitude, aren’t you?
Henry@Rabe
I’m not sure what you mean. I am saying if global warming is -or becomes – a problem then Co2 is most probably not what is causing it, e.g.
http://letterdash.com/HenryP/more-carbon-dioxide-is-ok-ok
I am saying it probably comes from the water vapor when it traps heat from earth or when it condenses and releases its heat into the atmosphere….
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/10/08/avoiding-the-guilty-pleasures/#comment-502841

Like mountain fruits enjoyed out of season and shipped long distance, there are climate pleasures I need to avoid, such as piling on with criticism of 10:10, Michael Mann, Joe Romm and my beloved late, great state of California.
So now instead of leading to the loss of “all our civil rights” it’s your “guilty pleasure”? Tom, you are the one who keeps bringing it up after we’ve previously just about talked it to death, and likewise you also still seem obsessed with trying to mischaracterize the main issue, which is that ipcc Climate Science is not real science but instead only a massive Propaganda Op. directed at looting and controlling as many people as possible, which must be stopped by disabling the Propaganda Machine, which does involve effectively dealing with people like Mann and the 10-10ers’! – a necessary process which does divert Society from a rational approach to real problems, but which you now try to also blame on sceptics, when the sceptics are in fact trying to argue mightily for a return to a rational, truely scientific approach to these real problems!
So why don’t you just stop bringing it up over and over? Because by now it’s clear, imo, that you are only still talking to yourself about your own ongoing internal wrestlings with the various issues, which you haven’t been able to resolve.
You might also try to reduce the hyperbolic, disasterizing thinking.

WHAT JPEDEN SAYS!! Fuller appears to be full of Fuller, and can’t give up on even ONE little point, it appears! It reminds me of the One in Washington, for crying out loud!

Doug Proctor says:
October 10, 2010 at 10:02 am
Doug, first of all, population growth slows dramatically with economic development. Data is clear on that. There are no exceptions, unlike the fairly-tale scenarios from Malthus, Ehrlich, the Club of Rome, and others. Therefore, MORE development means LOWER population growth. MORE development will mean new technologies to allow greater efficiency of food production — the increase in the efficiency of which has outstripped the need for food by population growth dramatically in the last 50 years. Or, haven’t you noticed? And that was before bio-technology, which will make Norman Borlaug’s “green revolution” look so, well, 20th Century.
If we follow what “the greenies” want, there will be LESS development (due to restricted energy use — restrictions in the use of nuclear being the most egregious and obvious example to date), and LESS development will mean GREATER population growth.
Malthusians and Luddites are so wrong for so many reasons… Stop wringing your hands and your psyche. Humanity is doing pretty darn well — in case your haven’t noticed the increase in life-span, education, reduction in hunger, etc. over the last 400 years — except for the misguided impacts from the misanthrops among us, whether religious or secular; with and from whom we will always suffer.
But, do not fear, we do have problems on which folks with your desire to improve humanity through social action (if you are incapable of technical invention) ought to focus your attention. And CO2 and nuclear bombs are not among them. How about raising your voice against the degradation of society in Venezuela being perpetrated by Hugo Chavez? How about raising funds for mercenaries to defend the people of Darfur from the rape of the Sudanese government? I could go on, but I think you get my point. Those are REAL human tragedies occurring in the real world today, not the ones of your imagination, which is what they are: imagined futures that, no, will never be as you fear because the world does not work they way you believe. It doesn’t.
As for nuclear bombs, yes, they are horrible. But, they exist; get over it. That genie isn’t going back into that bottle any time soon no matter what anyone does. The best we can do is to keep them out of the hands of misanthropes and fools (which means a strong national defense — yes, warriors and spies) and threaten anyone else with certain annihilation if they imagine using them would be in their self-interest.
The world is a dynamic cauldren of energy and change and technology that, net, has made the lives of people more meaningful, self-satisfying, and enriching for others, and which allows the good any one person can do to be spread to billions of others through global communication and commerce. Embrace it, make it better. Don’t fight against it. Doing so is tantamount to fighting against what it means to be human; unless, of course, you’d rather have us back in pre-industrial times with a societal requirement to kill anyone who dares to invent something new…. for that is the ultimate conclusion to your logic.