Much safer nuclear or alternatives....

Today's post: Wednesday, 3-23-2010

We need an 80% reduction in fossil fuel use by 2050 to avoid the worst global warming effects. And, practically speaking, we need to also double our electricity generation and double the useful work done per unit of electricity & other energy sources as well during that same time to have a decent economy.

At some point, the oil that we’ve been using to power much of our economy will begin to run low enough that our world economy will shrink due to lack of supply or excessive costs or both. Kuwaiti scientists recently predicted peak oil in 2014 – just 3 years from now.

And, once the demand for oil picks up again with the apparent economic recovery or supply begins to plateau or drop, the prices will again go back up. That will cause more hard times economically unless we have enough alternative sources of energy to turn to.

Today’s post:

Much safer nuclear or alternatives....

This week’s post is on the nuclear situation.

There are two responses that make sense for nuclear energy now that the Japan quake and some checking of other reactors since have found safety issues.

I think the best answer is to do both. BUT they are both challenging to do. So we need to tackle them with a lot of brains, knowledge, energy and, unfortunately, money.

But the alternative of building a supposed to be safe nuclear facility near population centers and farms that was inadequately designed for effective safety cannot be allowed to continue. The situation in Japan shows this.

1. Germany was downwind from Chernobyl a few years ago. They already have done a close to best in the world job of adding energy conservation upgrades and renewable energy sources for electricity. And that experience is one of the reasons.

Now in today’s news, AP, in a story datelined Berlin reports that Germany now plans to begin to wean itself from nuclear power entirely. This is of interest for two reasons. One is that anything effective they manage to do can be used here and around the world. The second is that the United States in just California has more potential to generate renewable sources for electricity. So if Germany can even come close, the United States can do even better.

So what would doing without nuclear or adding very little more in the United States require?

Quite a lot which I’ll list. But the more we do, the less nuclear we will need and the more likely it is any nuclear we do add will be done safely instead almost safely but not really as it has been so far.

a) In the important and very well researched book, Addicted to Energy, by Elton Sherwin, Jr, he makes the point that simply retrofitting existing technologies or replacing things with the existing technologies to increase energy efficiency throughout the economy in the United States would save more energy than all the oil we now import.

The book should have been titled something like, “Massive savings from energy efficiency using already available technologies.”

Doing what he recommends at a flat out fast speed all over the economy right away will return more money than it costs. And, the improved GDP per energy used will arrive far sooner than we can add more renewable energy or nuclear that is actually safe or far closer to it can be done.

So, whether or not we build more nuclear, this set of things has to be the number one priority.

b) We need to do dramatically more building of renewable energy sources than we have.

Following Germany’s incentive system to ensure this happens is a first key. They have roughly a half to a third of California’s solar potential and have been installing nine times as much solar as California for many years. We must find locally effective versions of these incentives and use them very soon in California and across the United States.

We need to build close to the maximum that is even close to environmentally safe of large thermal solar plants throughout the Southwestern United States and most of Mexico. And, we need to build the transmission lines and make the upgrades to the current transmission grid to get that electricity to where it will be used.

We need to do the same with wind generated electricity from Minnesota to West Texas and add wind energy in most of the other places that have wind.

We need to add photovoltaic solar in moderate sized but inexpensive locations near cities and existing transmission grids and make the process of doing so easy, cheap, and quick where permits and grid connections are concerned.

We need to install photovoltaic solar on close to every rooftop and cover every parking lot of reasonable size with a canopy and install photovoltaic solar on every square foot of these canopies.

c) We need to continue our development and roll out of much better batteries so that homes, businesses, and cities can store the irregular supply of electricity from renewable sources for when it is actually needed.

d) We need to convert coal to gas and use that and natural gas to generate electricity in Bloom Energy’s fuels cells or those of a set of competitors if Bloom Energy isn’t up to the job; stop burning these fuels; and feed the CO2 released to algae to make biofuels.

e) We need to find out how to use far more geothermal energy including drilling much deeper to access it and to find out how to do this without causing earthquakes. Once we do that, we need to multiply our supply because like nuclear and natural gas and coal, geothermal delivers energy as needed.

The other good news besides the massive amount of usable electricity these steps can net our economy is that as expensive and time consuming as doing them all well is, it likely is cheaper and faster than building truly safe nuclear plants.

So, this is the better choice that we should rely on most and do the most and do the fastest.

2. But the recent TED talk by Stewart Brand supporting nuclear power make some good points.

Nuclear power uses dramatically less land than all of the renewable sources of any size and delivers power as needed as renewable energy sources do not – at least so far.

And, it deliver so much less air pollution and CO2 than burning coal it’s scary to contemplate.

To avoid having unbreatheable air as early London had and part of China do now, we need to burn dramatically less coal. (Gasifying it and using fuel cells to make electricity solves that problem.) But Brand has a legitimate point that so does using nuclear power instead.

And, if we really have already used up the safe limits of sending CO2 into the air as the evidence increasingly says we have, his point that nuclear can solve that problem and may well be badly needed to do so, is also legitimate.

So, I agree with Energy Secretary Chu and President Obama that we should keep nuclear power as an option.

But it’s only worth doing at all if it is done far more safely than it was recently in Japan and that level of safety likely is not in our existing reactors.

The reason is that the downside is so dreadful.

There are two problems that need to be solved every single time and solved far better than they have been.

Yes that will make nuclear far more expensive and slower to get more of. But no nuclear plant should be built or kept long in operation without it.

1. Nuclear plants should only be built in politically stable and relatively sane countries. Countries such as Iran and North Korea should have none based on their current politics. They should have nuclear power but from other countries that can afford to build safe reactors and won’t weaponize them. South Korea or China can supply North Korea and Russia can supply Iran.

In addition, every reactor should get extremely tight 24/7 security from the military of the country where they are located every single day they operate.

If that’s too expensive, don’t build nuclear. I think it is that simple.

2. Building safe reactors we are now seeing is much harder and expensive than was initially thought as the Japan experience has shown.

Here are just a few ideas I’ve had since the Japan situation has revealed the need for them.

Going forward, I think no reactor should be built that doesn’t have all of these needed steps in place that the Japanese reactors did not have.

a) Radioactive steam was released into the air and then spread out. They did not have a superfort sized building encasing the entire site that would have allowed that steam to enter there but not the surrounding community. The VAB, vehicle assembly building that was used for the Saturn moon rockets show we can build such structures.

That will be expensive to do for each reactor; but it can be done.

b) Many of the things the workers in these reactors could not do because of high radiation can be done by robots controlled from safer locations. Such robots are just now arriving in Japan to the stricken sites. That’s unacceptably unsafe, they should have already been inside and ready to use. Every nuclear site should have them & likely doesn’t now.

That will be expensive to do for each reactor; but it can be done.


c) The cooling that didn’t happen caused the problem in Japan and its severity.

Better reactor design and fuel rod storage design going forward can make this problem less likely. But dramatically better electric power backup within each site and of the coolants needed as well must be in every site.

They should have a mini-reactor that is even better protected than the main reactors that can supply the electricity needed to run the plant and its cooling systems – at least in shut down mode for the main reactors.

And, if that fails, they also need the natural gas and fuel cells to make electricity onsite with at least 3 weeks of supply necessary to maintain the controls, robots, and shut down mode cooling.

There would have been no problem in Japan if they had all these things ahead of time.

Doing all these things for every reactor built or retrofitted to those we will keep will be expensive to do for each and every reactor; but it can be done.

My position is that we need the nuclear reactors; but we should not use them or build more without these safe-guards. It will make them a lot more expensive and make them take longer to build.

But better that than nuclear accidents that happen near people and farmland. And, without these safeguards we run a very large risk.