The Cost of Wind Part II

In Part I, we explored past and present wind costs and noted rapid inflation. This was the first step in an exploration of David Roberts' claim that renewable electricity was less expensive than nuclear generated electricity, but there are many other factors that I did not touch on or barely mentioned in Part I that require further exploration.

Nuclear reactors typically generate ninety percent of their faceplate electrical capacity. That ninety percent is called "capacity factor".  Reactors are typically taken off line for maintenance at periods when electrical demand is not at its peak, thus reactors are almost always available when consumers demand electricity.

In contrast, wind generators typically produce electricity at a capacity factor of about thirty percent. To equal the gross electrical output of a nuclear reactor, three wind generators producing equivalent nameplate capacity would be required, but it is more complex than that. If those three wind generators produce constant electricity ninety percent of the time, then the cost of wind would simply be three times the cost of one wind generator. This cost itself would take the cost of wind into the same range as the cost of nuclear power or higher, but there are more costs associated with wind. In the first place, wind does not blow at constant speeds even over a large area. More wind generators are required to compensate for periods of slow wind, but there are also periods of very slow wind or no wind at all. During periods of slow wind, more wind generating capacity is required to keep electrical output from wind installations up.

Mark Z. Jacobson claims that by spreading wind facilities over Texas, Oklahoma,  Kansas, and New Mexico and linking them with high voltage power lines something like a reliable power source can be accomplished eighty percent of the time. Five wind generating facilities with the same nameplate capacity as one nuclear power plant would be spread over the four states and linked by high voltage power lines. Even then it would fall short of goals twenty percent of the time. Jacobson does not tell us how much his scheme would cost, but it would be a pretty penny. Day time winds drop in speed as temperatures soar in Southwestern states such as Texas. As temperatures soar, the demand for air conditioning swells as well, thus the generating output of Jacobson's wind system is poorly matched to Texas electrical demand in the summertime. Some backup must be found to Jacobson's already expensive wind system.

In 2007, when I was arguing with Roberts, I pointed out the problem of wind fluctuation and the need for backup. One of Roberts' readers responded that the wind system could simply be connected to the grid and fluctuations could be covered as they already are on the grid. Fluctuations on the grid are covered by so called spinning reserve. That is, power plants that are kept running without covering load. If a power plant is suddenly taken off line, or if consumer demand rises quickly, spinning reserve is brought on line and begins to supply electrical energy, but spinning reserve requires fossil fuel backup. If our goal is to have one hundred present replacement of fossil fuels as the energy source for the grid, we will have to eliminate fossil fuels from our backup mix.

Furthermore, studies of wind penetration of the grid suggests that wind displaces natural gas at low levels of penetration and only begins to displace coal when wind penetration rises above twenty percent of electrical demand. When wind penetration arises above twenty percent, the cost of electricity begins to rise as well. For relatively small wind penetration levels, wind simply supplements other electrical generating systems. For example, in the Pacific Northwest, wind is matched to electricity generated by water driven turbines along the Columbia River. Wind, when it is blowing, is a useful tool in managing the Columbia River electrical generation system. Unfortunately, the wind stops blowing sometimes. Which means water pools created by Columbia River dams will have to be drawn down in order to meet electrical demand. Sometimes this wind failure lasts for a week or more. If the wind failed in other parts of the country where there is less hydroelectric generation capacity, relying on conventional grid resources would mean relying on fossil fuel generated electricity.

Since wind tends to displace natural gas fired generators first, it means very limited effect on grid CO2 output. As wind penetration rises, the cost of electricity rises as well. As wind penetration rises, the challenge of locating good wind generation facility sites becomes more and more difficult as the best sites are used first. Eventually, adding new sites means adding very little real world generation capacity. Adding new wind powered electrical generation facilities becomes more and more expensive per unit of output. Thus, continued use of the current grid system to backup wind does not offer a satisfactory and inexpensive means of shutting down the emission of greenhouse gases.

If the conventional grid offers no solution to the problem of wind in a post carbon world, are there alternative backup systems that can solve this problem? Several technologies have been proposed as offering means to backup wind. These include pump storage, compressed air storage, and batteries. Pump storage involves pumping water to the top of a mountain and storing it in a reservoir. As electrical demand rises, the water can be released back down the mountain to run through an electrical turbine at the mountain base. The water can be transferred between two pools, one at the base of the mountain and the other at the top of the mountain, however water evaporates from the pool therefore new water has to be added to the bottom pool. A huge amount of water would be required to provide backup electrical generating capacity to wind in the United States.

Water is not a land efficient energy source. The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) has dammed virtually all of the rivers that flow through the Tennessee Valley. They allow their water to flow through turbines to generate electricity. These dams produce together about five percent of the electricity generated by TVA. In order to backup wind generation virtually every mountain top in Tennessee would have to leveled and turned into a lake. This would not entirely please conservationist and environmentalist. In addition, the waters of Tennessee's rivers are committed to a variety of uses including navigation, recreation, wildlife preservation, and household water. The pump storage approach would draw water from all of these commitments and utilize it to generate electricity. Because water evaporates from lake surfaces, the amount of water that the system discharges would be significantly less than the amount of water that currently flows through the river. If enough reservoirs were built, evaporation would greatly diminish the flow of water from the Tennessee River so that by the time the river reaches it's mouth, very little water would be released into the Ohio River. Thus, pump storage does not offer a suitable backup for wind generated electricity.

Compressed air storage is a second backup scheme proposed by wind advocates. In a compressed air storage system, air is drawn into an underground chamber under pressure. When the wind is blowing, but consumers do not want the electricity generated, then the electricity is used to pump air into a storage chamber. At the time that wind is not blowing, the air is released through turbines which then power generators. There is a major problem with the compressed air storage approach. Compressed air pumped into underground chambers heats up. As the air comes into contact with the walls of the chamber, some of the heat is released into the walls of the chamber and from the walls of the chamber into the earth. When the air is discharged, it expands and as it expands, its temperature drops. Humidity in the air freezes as the air chills. As the air blows through turbines. ice particles are blown along with the air. The turbines are struck by the ice particles and are damaged by them. Think of the compressed air system as a heat pump which chills the air to be discharged. The loss of heat in the stored air is an inefficiency that cost us forty percent of the electrical energy used to pump the air into the underground chamber. In order to increase the amount of energy into the exiting air and melt the ice particles, natural gas is burned in the air stream. This does increase the generating power of the system, but also leads us back to the problem of CO2 discharge. Thus, compressed air storage is expensive, inefficient, and not an entirely useful decarbonation tool.

Finally, wind advocates note batteries as the third backup technology, but current battery technology would be too expensive and otherwise unsatisfactory for a wind backup technology even when significant advances in battery technology are factored in. The battery backup picture does not look promising.

Highly efficient batteries are expensive, while inexpensive batteries are not efficient. For example, lead acid batteries i.e. batteries used in cars are heavy, that is, they use lots of material, but they hold a relatively small charge especially when their size is considered. It is certainly conceivable that the efficiency of lead acid batteries can be increased in the future, but even if they are ten times more efficient they still would be heavy and require a considerable amount of material. Lead batteries also do not have long useful lives and must be replaced every few years. Lead batteries even if made ten times more efficient would not be satisfactory power sources for automobiles or trucks.

High temperature batteries may weigh less and have longer lives, but like lead batteries, they may not be satisfactory energy sources. It remains to be seen whether high temperature batteries can be made efficient enough to serve as backup to wind generated electricity, but I am not going to put my money on it yet. At any rate, high temperature batteries are probably going to be quite expensive compared to nuclear sources.

Although lithium batteries are useful for small mobile devices, it is doubtful that they would be equally useful for large scale backup of wind generated electricity because of their cost. Lithium batteries are relatively lightweight, but improving their efficiency is proving challenging.

Are there any technologies that I have not mentioned that could backup wind generators? Some time ago, on "Nuclear Green" I offered a brief study on the use of Molten Salt Reactors as backup for wind. Molten Salt Reactors would seem to offer a possible route to solving all of the problems associated with wind backup, but they offer a problem as wind backup, namely that Molten Salt technology would not simply function as a wind backup, but as a wind replacement as well. Therefore, if you start building large numbers of Molten Salt Reactors there would be no need for wind generators which are not very useful to begin with.

The Cost of Wind Part I

I have said on numerous occasions that the inspiration for "Nuclear Green" came from David Roberts on Grist. Roberts maintained that the cost of nuclear energy was significantly higher than the cost of renewable energy. I decided to test Roberts' claim by investigating the cost of wind energy. I wanted to find a means of estimating the cost of a one million mega watt (Mgw) wind generator and compare that to the cost of one million Mgw of nuclear generation capacity. In fact, units of one billion watts are probably easier to calculate and determine than the one million unit, but the one million watt unit can be determined by dividing the one billion watt unit by one thousand.

I found it difficult to locate sources that would give me any idea of the future cost of wind generating facilities, but I did find press releases that dealt with newly announced projects; thus I could base my cost estimates on wind projects that were launched in 2008. I found press releases about new wind projects included information on the nameplate electrical output of the project and the cost of constructing the wind generators and the auxiliary facility equipment. These costs ran from $2,250.00 to $2,500.00 per one million Mgw nameplate capacity. Nameplate capacity refers to the maximum possible electrical output that could come from a single wind generator.

As I was discover, nameplate capacity was a somewhat deceptive measure of a wind units electrical output.  No wind generator produced one hundred percent of its' nameplate rated capacity over a one year period of time. A nuclear power plant produces about ninety percent of its' nameplate rated capacity over a year's period of time. Wind generators more typically produce thirty percent or less of their nameplate capacity.

Wind generation output varies according to the time of the day and the seasons of the year. Thus, for example, wind generation during August in Tennessee will typically produce less than ten percent of rated capacity. Coastal breezes may be stronger during the day time, thus wind will generate more electricity during the day in coastal areas. Inland breezes may be stronger at night and thus more wind generated electricity is produced at night.  Summer breezes generate less electricity while at the same time summer demand for electricity increases. This makes inland wind a poor match to summer electrical demands. Winds may drop during cold snaps when heating related demands for electricity increase. Thus installing wind generators that include the same nameplate generating capacity as nuclear power plants does not mean that the equivalent amount of electricity will be available from the wind generators when customers want it.

Wind generated electricity is in many instances poorly matched to consumer demands for electricity and these consumer demands may be inflexible. For example, the summer demand for air conditioning in Texas and in many other parts of the United States is inflexible. The demand for air conditioning is not simply a luxury, but a matter of public health. The same is true of winter heating. Thus, the electrical industry must deliver electrical energy to consumers when they need it. To fail to do so, would in many cases lead to problems in public health.

My studies of the cost of new wind power led me to conclude that the cost would be subject to considerable inflation. I noted that the cost of new wind generating capacity in 2008 was over twice its cost a decade ago. In 2009 there were further rises in the estimated cost of new wind construction. The most significant source of this dramatic inflation appeared to have been wind subsidies. The cost of new wind generating facilities was the lowest when there were no wind subsidies from the government. When subsidies kicked in, inflation of the cost for new wind generation facilities also kicked in. This appeared to contradict the argument for subsidies which stated the price of new wind generation facilities will drop as more facilities are built. Subsidies encourage the building of more new facilities. Advocates argue that increasing the number of facilities decreases the cost of further new facilities. Thus the subsidies of new facilities are justified as a means of decreasing the cost of new wind generation facilities. Powerful arguments emerged during the last decade that subsidies did not lead to lower wind facility cost. Quite the contrary, subsidies lead to increased costs.

When I reviewed plans for post carbon renewable energy without nuclear resources, I found that the estimated price of wind generation facilities ten and twenty years into the future were not much higher or even lower than current wind generation costs. At the very least the evidence for inflation was such that planners needed to take it into account in offering possible future scenarios. Yet future renewable energy plans consistently ignored the possibility of inflation in the price of new wind generators. Furthermore, this problem seems to have escaped the entire pro-renewable community. David Roberts, for example, expressed concern for inflation in the cost of nuclear power plants without recognizing that inflation could also take place in the cost of wind generators, but the evidence was not hard to come by. We have to wonder if people like Roberts simply don't think the questions through or whether they are aware of the problems, but for unknown reasons, avoid mentioning them.

Were this the whole story and wind generators produced equivalent amounts of energy to those produced by nuclear power plants, wind would still hold a significant advantage. This is not the case, however. In my next post, I will consider the crippling disadvantages of wind and how wind can never successfully compete with nuclear power.

Martin Nicholson critiques Australian Renewable Energy Report

Berry Brooks' blog "BraveNewClimate" is one of the best pro-nuclear blogs. http://bravenewclimate.com/

Berry does many of the same things I have done in "Nuclear Green", but he does them far better than I have. One of the things I did when I started "Nuclear Green" was a comparison of the relative costs of renewable energy and nuclear energy. I looked at the costs of conventional nuclear energy. Although I believed that the cost of nuclear power could be substantially reduced with the introduced of molten salt technology, but even without molten salt technology conventional nuclear energy would cost less and be far more reliable than renewable energy.

I also looked at planning studies that assumed only renewable energy and pointed out flaws in them. Soon Berry began publishing similar reports written by people far better qualified than I was that supported my conclusions. I thought that there was no need for me to continue this if Berry was covering it in a far more adequate fashion than I was. I must say that most of these studies were not written by Berry personally, but were written by collaborators who Berry encouraged to offer these reports. Taken together, the studies of renewable energy in "BraveNewClimate" have offered devastating critiques of the renewable energy concept. Berry's associates have shown that replacing fossil fuels with renewable energy would be far more expensive and problematic than replacing them with nuclear power. The latest study in BraveNewClimate is
based on a paper by Mark Nicholson :

100 Per Cent Renewables Study Needs a Makeover

According to Berry:

"Guest Post by Martin Nicholson. Martin studied mathematics, engineering and electrical sciences at Cambridge University in the UK and graduated with a Masters degree in 1974. He published a peer-reviewed book on low-carbon energy systems in 2012: The Power Makers’ Challenge: and the need for Fission Energy"


It would appear that Martin is far better qualified to make judgments about the relative costs of nuclear power and renewable energy than most of the "so called" renewable energy experts. Martin demonstrates that the reason why this fact is not general public knowledge is simple. Reports by governments and energy providers simply ignore comparisons  between nuclear power and renewable energy in a post carbon energy environment. Martin does this by looking at a draft report titled 100 Per Cent Renewables Study – Draft Modelling Outcomes.  This study by AEMO (Australian Energy Market Operator) and financed in no small measure by the Australian government looked at plans for creating a 100% renewable energy market for Australia by 2030 and 2050.

Martin pointed out that no where in the report was the possible use of nuclear energy examined. He reported that the costs of replacing all of Australian coal fired electrical generation facilities with nuclear generated electricity would be less than half that of replacing them with renewable generating sources in the lowest costs renewable scenario. Martin also found that land use by renewable generation systems would be several orders of magnitude greater than by nuclear generation systems. In addition, renewable energy is likely to require changes in the grid system that will go well beyond those required by nuclear systems. Martin Nicholson concludes that the current draft study needs to be revised to include the use of nuclear power which would provide the lowest cost energy to Australia. 

Pebble Beds

I recently began to think again about the Pebble Bed Reactor. In the early days of Nuclear Green, I was encouraged by what I thought was the potential of the Pebble Bed Reactor. The Pebble Bed Reactor is cooled by a gas; most likely helium and the pebbles resemble tennis balls in size. They are made from graphite and other carbon based materials. In the Pebble based reactor, the helium coolant blows the pebbles up into the reactor core until they reach a critical geometry and begin to support a chain reaction. This heats the helium which exits the reactor core drawing off the surplus heat. The helium passes through a cooling system that transfers the heat to a secondary gas which then drives a turbine or in some cases the heat is transferred to water which turns to steam and the steam drives the turbine.

When I first began to think about post carbon energy, the Pebble Bed Reactor ranked high on my list of coal replacement candidates. Later on I was to discover there were problems. The Molten Salt Reactor always ranked high on my list and continues to do so, but I believe one of the primary functions of fourth generation nuclear technology is to lower energy costs. I held that the Molten Salt Reactor had real potential for doing so and I continue to hold this view. The Pebble Bed Reactor does not hold as much potential for lowering energy costs.

The core of the Pebble Bed Reactor must be quite large and strong enough to withstand the pressure of heated helium passing through the reactor core. The core of the Pebble Bed Rector may not be as heavy as the core of the commercial Light Water Reactor, but it is quite large. Larger in fact than the core of conventional reactors. There are other parts of the Pebble Bed Reactor that will be quite large. All of these large parts add up to a considerable cost disadvantage when it is compared to the Molten Salt Reactor.

Seven or eight years ago reactor scientists at Oak Ridge National Laboratory and at the University of California at Berkley came up with a solution to the problems of Pebble Bed Reactors. That solution was to replace the helium core coolant with a Molten Salt Reactor coolant. The core of a molten salt cooled Pebble Bed Reactor would be quite small compared to a helium cooled Pebble Bed Reactor yet the molten salt cooled Pebble Bed Reactor would have many of the advantages of a helium cooled Pebble Bed Reactor.

The molten salt cooled Pebble Bed Reactor could take advantage of research conducted in West Germany and South Africa on Pebble Bed Reactors as well as research done on molten salt coolant and molten salt cooling systems conducted at ORNL. The resulting reactor would be quite inexpensive and could be build in factories and transported by truck, railroads, and river barges. Most of the safety advantages of Molten Salt Reactors would apply to a molten salt cooled Pebble Bed Reactor. Pebble bed safety technologies could be used when molten salt technologies were not appropriate.

Small Pebble Bed Molten Salt Reactors could be build in factories and buried underground. Larger Pebble Bed Molten Salt Reactors could be constructed in factories through modular design and then assembled on site. Many of the safety regulations applied to light water cooled reactors are redundant for Pebble Bed Molten Salt Reactors. A nuclear regulatory agency ought to recognize the superior safety characteristics of molten salt nuclear technology and regulate accordingly.

What I Would Do, If I Were Kirk Sorensen

Kirk Sorensen has kept his cards very close to his chest since he and a business partner established Flive Energy. Officially, Kirk is as committed to the LFTR, Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor, as much as always. Long term, I would not expect that to change, but in the short term, if I wanted to make money, I would not focus much attention on LFTR development.

Before my illness, I focused a good deal of attention on uranium fueled Molten Salt Reactors with or without added thorium. Such reactors might require much less research and development than the LFTR. Uranium fueled Molten Salt Reactors have significant commercial potential. They probably can be build at a lower cost than commercial Light Water Reactors and can be housed underground saving on building costs. Small Molten Salt Reactors can be factory built and can largely be based on technology that has already been successfully tested by Oak Ridge National Laboratories' Molten Salt Reactor experiment.

Using successfully tested technology is the key to getting a new reactor concept on the market quickly and at a reasonable cost. Were I Kirk, I would be working towards the development of a uranium fueled Molten Salt Reactor that has potential for commercial sales. The uranium fueled Molten Salt Reactor has the potential for factory production and underground siting. This in turn could lead to a low cost reactor option that could be cost competitive with Light Water Reactors. The aim would be a relatively small reactor, something between 60 Mw and 250 Mw, that would be produced in factories and could be housed in abandoned salt mines,  underground silos, and other underground facilities and would be safe enough to site close to large cities.

Production of the first generation uranium fueled Molten Salt Reactor would lead to greater understanding of the MSR and could serve as a launching point for a more advanced Molten Salt Reactor design such as the LFTR. A successful profit making reactor business could finance its' own LFTR research through reactor sales, but the goal is not to produce LFTRs as much as to make nuclear power more competitive as a replacement for coal and natural gas in stationary generating plants. Therefore, were I Kirk Sorensen, I would not be working on the development of the LFTR, but on the development of uranium fueled Molten Salt Reactors.

Should Kirk then abandoned the use of the LFTR as the symbol of the Molten Salt Reactor? I think not. The uranium Molten Salt Reactor is likely to be only a bridge between the commercial Light Water Reactor and the LFTR. The LFTR offers several advantages over Light Water Reactors. One of the most significant being a solution to the problem of nuclear waste. Uranium fueled Molten Salt Reactors do not solve the problem of nuclear waste, but LFTRs can largely solve it. In addition, the most promising form of uranium fueled Molten Salt Reactor, the Denatured Molten Salt Reactor, operates with many times more thorium than uranium and is in effect a thorium-uranium hybrid. It produces a lot of nuclear waste, but less nuclear waste than a pure uranium Molten Salt Reactor.

At one time, I did not think that the DMSR was a good idea, but I now think that it is. The supply of thorium in the earth's crust is virtually unlimited and thus people can rely on energy from thorium for a very long time to come. This means in the discussions of the sustainability of nuclear power the supply of thorium is not likely to run out before the sun passes into the stage of solar evolution that does not support life on earth. The problem will in no way ever be a threat to the biosphere or human existence.

A number of years ago, Kirk and a couple of his fellow students in nuclear engineering at the University of Tennessee developed a pre-design of a small truck mobile Molten Salt Powered Reactor that could be used as a mobile electricity generation source. The design included the building of an underground silo in which the reactor would be lowered. Truck mounted generation units could  be located on the surface above the reactor. I believed, up until yesterday, that the small mobile reactor concept was the path that Kirk was following, but yesterday, April 1st 2013, I learned to my astonishment, that Kirk and NASA are designing small Molten Salt Powered drones which will be America's primary weapon in any future war.

Pope Francis and Nuclear Power

Before his election, Pope Francis had an interesting vocation for a Jesuit. In many respects his life style is closer to a Franciscan monk than a Jesuit. Franciscans are noted for their simple lifestyles and for their commitment to the poor while Jesuits are more committed to education and often hobnobbed with members of the elite. The nature of the Franciscan vocation is such that a Franciscan could loose sight of an important issue with respect  to the poor. That is, the ultimate service to the poor is to provide the poor with the means by which they can exit poverty. In this regard, the Jesuit vocation has contributed more to transforming the lives of the poor than the Franciscan vocation.

The Roman Catholic church is committed to the education of the children of its' members as well as the children of the poor. In this respect, the Roman Catholic church provides a great service to the poor because it provides a path out of poverty. I know this from personal experience because a friend of mine Kim B. came from a poor inner city family and was educated in Catholic schools and at a Catholic University. She has obtained middle class status as have some of her brothers and sisters. This is quite admirable and a pope who has dedicated his life to the well being of the poor and has a strong identification with the poor and is also a Jesuit is quite likely to continue the Churches' path to end poverty through education. As far as I know, Pope Francis has taken no stand on nuclear power, but he should, given the contribution nuclear power could make to improving the lot of the poor.

India and China have found that the use of nuclear power is consistent with improving the lives of their poor. Many critics of nuclear power complain that nuclear power is too expensive and thus would be removed from the grasp of the poor. In fact, both India and China have demonstrated that nuclear power can produce electricity at a cost that will bring it to the poor. American nuclear power is far more expensive than Indian and Chinese nuclear power for a variety of reasons, but the cost of nuclear power can be reduced quite substantially granted current technology and even more if generation four technology is introduced.

Much of the cost of nuclear power plants is due to federal regulations and safety requirements that are growing increasingly unnecessary. Advances in nuclear generation three plus safety technology makes some federal requirements unnecessary and some generation four technologies, including pebble bed reactors and molten salt reactors, make most current safety regulations unnecessary especially if reactors are buried underground. This in turn should make nuclear power costs substantially lower, placing nuclear generated electricity into the lives of the world's poor at very modest costs. This cannot be said with absolute certainty, but the amount of certainty we have is enough to make generation four reactor technology exploration a very worthwhile endeavor.

If our expectations on the cost lowering capacity of Molten Salt Reactors is fulfilled, then the world's poor stand to benefit. The Catholic Church should look at the relationship between the needs of the poor, including the need to leave poverty, in the context of the potential of nuclear power to fulfill those needs. Given Pope Francis' commitment to the well being of the poor and his presumed commitment as a Jesuit to their education, the increase and spread of Post Carbon energy should be part of the Church's agenda.

Energy Risks and Rewards

Part I Fossil Fuels Rewards and Risks

Energy is transformative for human society. Energy inputs have transformed the way of life of high energy societies. During the middle ages, low energy input was associated with great poverty and a few wealthy persons who commanded the labor of other people as an energy source. Natural energy sources such as windmills and the use of the sun for drying food and clothing did not bring people out of poverty.

In Holland, wind driven pumps kept the sea from overwhelming land that was under sea level. Dikes kept the sea out. In many countries, windmills were used to grind grain. Water powered mills were also used to grind grain. Wind was also used to power ships. Sunlight was used to dry food and cloths. In addition to these natural energy sources many countries began to use coal for heating and cooking. In the eighteenth century, James Watt discovered how to build efficient steam engines that were powered by coal. This began the Industrial Revolution. The energy produced by Watt's steam engines was harnessed by increasingly sophisticated technology that was used to pump water out of mines, to drive ships previously driven by sails and to drive mobile transportation in the form of railroads. In addition, the energy was captured by factories that began to produce useful items in large number, for example weaving cloth. Since energy harnessed from coal was replacing human labor, reliance on coal increased the wealth of society as less and less labor was required to produce more and more goods.

At the beginning of the twentieth century it was discovered that crude oil could be processed to produce   fuel for automobiles, farm implements and eventually railroad trains. Oil based fuels could be used to power ships. The advantage of oil over coal was that it took less labor to produce and use oil rather than coal. Industrial use of coal began to decline.  Oil products began to replace coal as a source of energy for factories and heat for homes and commercial structures. Oil recovery led to the production of large amounts of natural gas which is flammable gas. At first the natural gas was burned off, but then it was discovered that natural gas was an excellent replacement for coal and oil products in the home. Natural gas could be used for heating, cooking, and heating water.

The use of coal, oil, and natural gas have produced a revolution in human way of life. Workers who's ancestors a few generations ago performed unskilled labor in fields all of their lives, are now performing jobs that require high skill levels. The advances in human skills have been so great that tools that we now use have great power, but require very little energy input in their manufacture. There are still technologies that will not easily be replaced that rely on fossil fuels. In particular, oil and oil products are likely be required by the air industry for some time to come because no viable technology exists to meet the energy of flight.

The use of fossil fuels during the last three centuries has produced revolutions in human life, but there is a risk. Ultimately the risk must be addressed. At one time it was believed, by some, that the fossil fuel supply was so limited that we would run out of it by 2050. This is no longer the case. New technologies have emerged during the last decade that have increased the reserve of natural gas and oil. It seems unlikely that we will run out of fossil fuels over a period of time of at least a hundred years. This would be good news were it not for the fly in the fossil fuel ointment. The carbon dioxide pollution and it's climate consequences.

Scientists have postulated for well over a hundred years, that the release of carbon dioxide and other green house gases associated with the fossil fuel industries will lead to an increase to what is called the "Greenhouse Effect" on the atmosphere. Carbon dioxide tends to trap energy from solar radiation inside the atmosphere. This in turn increases energy trapped in the atmosphere and in the seas. Scientists are not quite sure how this trapping of energy will effect human life. Some are concerned primarily with the warming effect of green house gases while others foresee increasingly powerful weather events. The sort of weather events that concern scientists are very large rain storms, tornadoes, and powerful hurricanes.

During the last four years, the city of Nashville was devastated by what atmospheric scientists described as a thousand year weather event. An extremely large and powerful rain storm that extended from central Kentucky through the Nashville basin on to the Tennessee River west of Nashville. There was very considerable flooding in Nashville as a result of this weather event. There had been a similar event in Atlanta the previous year. Weather scientists calculated that the Nashville event was a once in every thousand year event, but the Atlanta event was a once in every ten thousand year event.

We are witnessing in the twenty-first century an increasing number of catastrophic weather events. I heard all of this foretold at Oak Ridge National Laboratories, ORNL, in the spring of 1971. There are those who claim that even if carbon dioxide is having a greenhouse effect, that the claim, that this is catastrophic, is to make one an alarmist. The warnings about alarmist discount the risks that we face even if there is a probability that climate will not change and that weather events are not indicators of things not getting worse, there is a risk that things will get worse. I am calling attention to the risks; to the dangers we face. Anyone who dismisses what I say as alarmist is simply being dishonest.

Insurance companies know that our risks are real and the consequences of greenhouse gases have arrived. They look at the bills they face for events like Hurricane Sandy, an unusual weather event, that is costing the insurance industry billions of dollars and shake their heads at the global warming skeptics. We simply have no choice but to think about replacing fossil fuels with other energy sources. The costs of failing to do so will eventually become unacceptable. We need a plan to do this and we need to begin the plan quickly. The risks of continuing down the path we are following now is too high.

In addition to global climate change engendered by carbon dioxide released by fossil fuel related technologies, there are other significant risks from the fossil fuel industry. Extraction of fossil fuels carries with it a significant risk to human life and human health. The coal mining industry still looses thirty thousand lives every year world wide. The Gulf oil drilling disaster of two years ago killed eleven workers. In addition, it caused billions of dollars of damage to wildlife and the deep sea environment of the Gulf of Mexico as well as creating economic costs running into the billions of dollars with respect to economic use of the Gulf area for recreation, tourism, for fishing and other activities contributing to the local economy.

Oil and natural gas pipeline explosions have injured and killed people as well as damaging property. Gas fired power plants have exploded killing and injuring workers. Natural gas explosions in the home are consequences of heating, cooking and other uses of natural gas in the home. Byproducts are carcinogenic and are sometimes released in urban areas. Burning coal releases different pollutants which kill an estimated fife hundred thousand people world wide each year. In addition, burning coal releases radioactive materials that are embedded in the coal. Burning natural gas also releases radioactive gases and materials into the environment. The adverse human and environmental consequences of fossil fuel use are risks that must be weighed against their benefits.


Part II Green Energy Risks and Rewards

If fossil fuels are unacceptable, some people think that we should revert to earlier energy sources: water, wind, and sunlight to replace fossil fuels. There is little doubt that energy can be produced through the use of wind, water, and sunshine, however it is not clear that wind, water, and sunshine will produce all of the energy we need when we want it or to produce the energy so reliably as to meet the needs of society. Among the advantages of fossil fuels, is their relative flexibility. In comparison, natural energy sources are to a certain extent predictable, but not dependable. The sun usually shines in the daytime, but not at night. The sun will shine almost 100% of the time in the desert Southwest while in East Tennessee where I live, the sun cannot be depended on to shine many days of the calendar year. Furthermore, many other days are partially cloudy. This makes East Tennessee a poor candidate for solar energy.

On the Northern Great Plains wind powered generators will produce between forty and fifty percent of their rated capacity.  Meanwhile, in East Tennessee where I live, we may be lucky if local wind generators produce ten percent of their rated generating capacity during the month of August, thus, East Tennessee is not a good candidate for green energy. When this fact was brought to the attention of self styled Greens they suggested that we cut down our trees and burn them for energy. That is, we use Iron Age technology. Of course East Tennesseans are green to the extent of loving their native forests and would prefer not to cut them down for energy related purposes. The Greens will tell us, of course, that we all have to make sacrifices at which point we have to say: "Whoa, wait a minute, what does it mean to be green? Doesn't being green mean protecting nature and the environment; our environment, including our forests?!" This seems to be a case of "in order to save the village, we had to destroy the village". So, we are left with the choice of destroying nature in order to protect nature or alternatively continuing to use fossil fuels as a means of "backing up" green energy.

The Green solution simply does not offer us a solution for solving the carbon dioxide problem, at best it may offer us a means of partly mitigating the carbon dioxide problem. We would have to ask the Greens themselves why they find nuclear energy so unacceptable, in fact many Greens have reached the pro-nuclear conclusion as the only solution consistent with Green values. At the outset, there is no risk involved in Green energy as a solution to carbon dioxide dumping into the atmosphere. At best, the green solution would mean a little less carbon dioxide would go into the atmosphere. This is what the pro-nuclear Greens themselves have concluded and explains why they accept the necessity of nuclear power.

The risks entailed by Green energy are of a different nature.  Wind generators are not entirely safe. Workmen fall off them repairing problem parts. A fall from a wind generator is going to be fatal. Wind generators can be toppled by tornadoes and other strong winds. Sea based wind generators might be vulnerable to large storms. Dust storms can affect solar electrical generating facilities. Solar PV cells can get dirty over time due to dust and other materials in precipitation. This dirt on solar cells in turn impairs their efficiency so that they gradually loose generating capacity. Cleaning solar PV cells that are placed on the roof involves danger as cleaners may fall off the roofs where the cells are placed. Fire departments have identified solar PV cells as a risk for firefighters. The cells generate electricity and firefighters on building roofs fighting fires may be shocked by contact with solar PV installations. Concentrated solar installations also require considerable cleaning which in turn requires a lot of water. They also use water to remove heat from mirrors and other parts of the installation and to operate steam turbines as part of the electrical generation process. Other technologies are possible, but,at the end of the day, desert placed concentrated solar installations require a considerable amount of water.

While desert based concentrated solar installations may be safer than urban rooftop PV installations, they are very limited by geography. Thus desert placed concentrated solar installations compete with other industries, with farmers, and with urban dwellers for the very limited amount of water that is available in the desert. To maximize the solar generating potential of desert areas the human use of those areas for other purposes may be excluded and we are left with little choice except to evacuate the human population since no water would be available for other purposes.

Green energy schemes that are based on natural areas where green energy is likely to be produced require the transmission of electricity from the electrical production facilities to consumers. This requires the building of large and long transmission lines and the creation of a continent wide grid. Even with these transmission lines, the supply of electricity would clearly be inadequate and unreliable. Energy storage facilities would have to be added in order to increase the reliability of any natural electrical generation scheme.  These facilities would be quite expensive if the goal is to produce 100% of the nation's electricity.

There were extensive discussions of these problems in Berry Brook's Blog BraveNewClimate a few years ago. Anti-nuclear Greens offered defenses and were trounced by supporters of nuclear power in these discussions. The approach of anti-nuclear Greens is to simply ignore BraveNewClimate papers and discussions on the problems with green energy and continue their loyalty to green energy as if a green solution to the carbon problem were possible. I have argued in Nuclear Green Revolution repeatedly that the green solution is not green and not a solution. Although I would not claim to be on the same stature as Berry Brook, I would claim that my arguments have been respectable.  I did offer critique to works of individuals such as Mark Jacobson. Jacobson has never responded to my criticisms although he did offer a complaint to the inclusion of one of his pictures in one of my posts. I removed the picture, but Jacobson did not offer any defense of his own work.

I also offered numerous criticisms of Amory Lovings. The work of Amory Lovings has been criticized by many energy writers and by many supporters of nuclear power. Lovings has responded frequently by ignoring the criticism; occasionally by promising a response that would never be delivered on or by offering a partial response. Lovings titles himself as the chief scientist of the Rocky Mountain Institute, but real scientists defend themselves from criticism and, indeed, their professional stature stand or fall on their willingness to respond to criticism.

We are forced to conclude that there is no risk with green energy. Green energy has been rejected in the past and will continue to prove unsatisfactory in the future. We simply cannot power a Post Industrial civilization with green energy.


Part III The Complexities of Nuclear Risks and Their Rewards

Critics of nuclear power often conceive of all reactor types as carrying the same risks. This is not, in fact, the case. The topic of reactor risks contains many complexities. During World War II, Manhattan Project scientists noted that many different reactor types were feasible and that they might not all carry the same risks and rewards. The Pressurized Water Reactor, the most common sort of reactor, is inherently dangerous because it's design requires running a large amount of water through the reactor core. The heat from the reactor when it contacts water creates complex safety issues. These issues lead to major design features of Light Water Reactors that are intended to allow for safe operations of water cooled reactors. Engineers who design this sort of reactor take safety risks. These are calculated risks and depend on design, material quality, and operator training to assure reactor safety. Since 1954 the United States Navy has operated hundreds of water cooled reactors in submarines and in surface ships. None of these reactors has undergone a major accident. Their safety is dependent on the quality of their design, the qualities of the materials from which they are built and the expert training of their operators.

The United States Navy's experience with water cooled reactors suggest that safety is the norm and that reactor accidents are at worse rare exceptions. Major accidents have occurred in early water cooled reactors. In particular in the Three Mile Island and the three reactors at Fukushima Daiichi. The Three Mile Island accident was the result of both design and operator errors. The more recent Japanese reactor accidents were the result of unanticipated natural events. None of these accidents produced reactor related deaths although they did include substantial release of radioactive materials. From a rational view point even the early designs of the Three Mile Island and the Japanese reactor power plants were safer than any green energy solution except for perhaps concentrated solar generation a technology that is confined to desert areas.

The Light Water Reactor gives us evidence that some reactors entail risks because of risky features in their design. Another such reactor would be a sodium cooled reactor such as the Integral Fast Reactor because sodium poses handling difficulties, which, if not overcome, can lead to highly dangerous consequences. Such an event would probably be very rare and should not be considered a major reason for failure to consider the use of sodium cooled reactors.

Molten Salt Reactor technology does not offer a path to the future with a hundred percent assurity, but it does seem to offer a path worthy of exploration. A path that might well lead us to a high energy tomorrow. Graphite reactors, whether cooled by gas or by molten salts are highly safe. I offered a number of discussions about the safety of graphite reactors in previous posts on Nuclear Green. My conclusion was that graphite is a highly safe material which tends to impede rather than promote accidents. Finally, Molten Salt Reactors offer few risks. They are chemically stable and operate at a one atmosphere pressure making explosions not just unlikely, but impossible. Molten salts are not flammable and can be used to facilitate safety systems that are largely controlled by the laws of nature rather than by technical interventions. The engineering required to make water cooled reactors safe increases their costs, but since Molten Salt Reactors do not require the same technical interventions in order to maintain safety they are likely to cost less than water cooled reactors.