Big Ed's Pizza

One of my chief claims to fame is my status as one of Big Ed Neusel's earliest Oak Ridge customer. I was living in the Jackson Square area of Oak Ridge 39 years ago this month when the Oak Ridger carried a story about the opening of Big Ed'sPizza a few blocks away from my apartment. I ate a lot of Big Ed's pizzas during the next year and a half before I moved to Memphis.

I had no reason to go back to Big Ed's during my visits to my parents. It was, after all a pizza joint. I ate at joints in Memphis, and then in Dallas. But then some how Big Ed's got world famous. Not only that, it developed character. I recall finally returning to Big Ed's for sentimental purposes years later and discovering that it had gotten dingy. The dinginess was part of the reputation. My recollection of Big Ed's from the early days, was of the spring sun streaming into the window, lighting up Big Ed's face, as I ordered my pizza. In my memory Ed and I were the only people there. I do not recall a great tasting Pizza, but my mouth waters when I think of Big Ed's then. If I were in Oak Ridge now, I would be headed out the door, on my way to Jackson Square.

It did not take Big Ed's long to develop character, to become dingy. Oak Ridge was not exactly a center of world class dining, but scientists from all over the world did visit Oak Ridge, and no doubt Oak Ridge hosts of visiting scientists, and anxious to give their distinguished visitors a bit of local color, dragged their guest to Big Ed's for a local dining experience. I wonder if Alvin Weinberg ever treated Eugene Wigner to a Big Ed's Pizza. Somewhere along the line, Big Ed turned his Pizzeria into a hangout. Ed realized that the crowd was good for business.

Ed actually moved his family from Huntsville, Alabama to Oak Ridge because of the reputation of Oak Ridge schools system. Ed did not simply send his kids to Oak Ridge schools, he befriended the local high school student community. When he got enough customers to require a staff, Ed hired Oak Ridge High School students to take orders and bring beers and cokes to the tables. Big Ed's service has always been notoriously laxidasical. Of course the friends for Big Ed's staff came in and started hanging out. Hungry Oak Ridge kids had the had the money to buy Big Ed's pizzas. Once the students began to show up, their parents followed. Ed's reputation spread to outside Oak Ridge. Pretty soon people from Clinton, Oliver Springs and Knoxville started coming too. Big Ed's quickly became an institution, a place that could not be discovered because everyone knew about it.

There is still a Big Ed's Pizza in Huntsville too, and but it does not appear to have acquired the mystique that Big Ed's acquired in Oak Ridge.

Future power costs

It is impossible to determine the cost of commercial LFTRs with a high degree of certainty, although it is reasonable to assume that LFTR costs would be lower than LWR costs. LFTR costs are impossible to determine for a variety of reasons. First there are numerous design options, and each design has its own rationale and cost considerations. In addition to design options there are material options. Transportability would be an important consideration, but there may be important transportability options. For example, suppose that the largest truck transportable LFTR would produce 100 MWe, but for an added 25% of the cost of the smaller reactor, it would be possible to build a 400 MWe reactor. Further more the larger reactor although not transportable by truck is transportable by train and barge, and can be transported to 95% of the proposed sites. Most of the customers would prefer the larger reactor if it were available. The decision between the two options is clear and easy to make. Other choices might prove more difficult. Size might effect transportability, but that problem could still be solved. Function might point to design decisions. For example a reactor intended to provide summer peak power, might be built of less radiation resistant materials on the grounds that it will be used only 25% of the time, and thus parts would have a much smaller radiation exposure.

It is clear then that decisions about reactor function, materials, and design are made, no realistic assessment of cost would be possible. What can be asserted is that there is a considerable potential for producing lower cost nuclear power with multiple areas in which cost lowering is possible. These potential areas of cost savings would include lower manufacturing labor input per KW of power capacity, relatively simplicity of design, fewer parts, simplified assembly, shorter manufacturing time, simpler and lower cost housing, The potential to recycle old power plant facilities and grid hookups, faster building time, smaller capital risk, and lower financing cost. It would be impossible to quantify these savings, in any meaningful way, but the potential exists for the production of LFTRs at a cost that is significantly less than the cost of LWRs.

One further area of cost ought to be mentioned, and that is the cost of compliance with NRC regulations. The NRC or a successor agency would license LFTRs for construction.

We would have to know a great deal more about costs, before we can begin to pin down the costs of the LFTR. It should be noted however that it is not possible yet to estimate the cost of new conventional nuclear plants with any precision. At presence estimated cost ranges for plants to be completed in the middle of the next decade run from $4 to $8 billion per GW. It should be expected that cost estimates for a new technology would be far more inaccurate than cost estimates for a mature technology.

Nor is easier to project the price of renewables into the future. Indeed the current price of renewables power generating projects is not easy to find. One wind industry source suggested:

The costs for a commercial scale wind turbine in 2007 ranged from $1.2 million to $2.6 million, per MW of nameplate capacity installed.

This estimate should be considered outdated because the cost of many 2008 wind projects exceed this range. No industry source has estimated the 2008 cost range for wind turbines. I noted a range of reported costs for eight North American onshore wind projects of between $2200 and $3400 per KW of name plate capacity. Because these cannot be considered more than random cost estimates, and the sample was to small and arbitrary to be considered draw any conclusions from about 2008 prices, it is consistent with there having been a considerable cost increase for wing projects in 2008. The price of construction materials dropped dramatically during the second half of 2008. Whether this would have any impact on the cost of wind projects is still unknown. Thus it is impossible to determine current price for wind projects in the United States from sources available on the Internet. How much more then is the cost of future wind projects uncertain. It should be noted that we are here discussing the cost of wind projects without energy storage. Adding the price of energy storage undoubtedly will increase wind costs, but if anything adds a considerably greater measure of uncertainty to future costs.

If the future cost of wind projects is uncertain at best, it would be at least as difficult to project the cost of solar generation projects into the future. Although solar advocates repeatedly suggest that dramatically lower prices for new solar generation capacity is in the offing, this has yet to be observed in reported prices of actual solar generation projects. Still less has it been offered in projects with the energy storage required to make solar generated electricity reliable.

I have elsewhere in Nuclear Green offered prices estimates based on current wind costs with storage in order to suggests that the future cost of nuclear power most likely would be lower rather than higher than the cost of reliable renewable generated electricity.

My conclusion then is hat it is probable but not certain that the capital costs of conventional nuclear generation capacity will be lower than the capital cost of reliable renewable generation facilities. Further I have argued that the capital costs of LFTR based generation facilities will probably be lower than the cost of conventional nuclear generation capacity. I realize that these conclusions will be controversial, and I invite further research on the question.

The Era of Confusion Confirmed: The Energy Anabasis Begins

Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedies. - GROUCHO MARX

But to truly transform our economy, protect our security, and save our planet from the ravages of climate change, we need to ultimately make clean, renewable energy the profitable kind of energy. So I ask this Congress to send me legislation that places a market-based cap on carbon pollution and drives the production of more renewable energy in America. And to support that innovation, we will invest fifteen billion dollars a year to develop technologies like wind power and solar power; advanced biofuels, clean coal, and more fuel-efficient cars and trucks built right here in America. - Barack Obama

Unlike Rush Limbaugh I would very unhappy to see Barack Obama fail as President of the United States, but President Obama faces a steep learning curve during his early months at the White House. He has indeed found trouble everywhere, and in his energy policy he attempts to kill two birds with one stone, by investing tax payers money in the development of "wind power, solar power, advanced biofuels, and clean coal".

i did not really expect Mr. Obama to do better. I has, after all spent the last year and a half on his Anabasis to the White House. Mr. Obama's November, 2008 election was not the end of his journey. Indeed beginning in November a new march upcountry began, one which involved not 10,000, but a nation of over 300 million people, finding its way into the 21st century. The leader called us together, to speak of his understanding of the tasks we face and and the steps he believe we need to take. But the first seeps of the journey were exceedingly inauspicious.

Even if things seem tp work in the short run, the economy only works by borrowing money to pay for the can openers we buy from China. The Chinese lend us the money, but this cannot go on forever. At a certain point the loans may stop coming, and at that point the system will be in danger of collapsing. No diagnosis that does not identify the structual problems, is likely to do more than postpone the evil day of reckoning, and that postponement cannot and will not be for long.

The diagnosis of the troubles we face is wrong, and the remedies are wrong. But the leader is calm and self confident. He seems unlikely to loose his head in the midst of adversity. He is resourceful and capable of recognizing and acknowledging his errors. I did not expect more from Mr Obama, and indeed I expect most of his first administration to be spent in finding the proper diagnoses, and learning to apply the right remedies.

Depression or Recession? Too soon to know

I have posted a number of examinations of our present economic situation that raised the possibility that we might beheaded into an depression. I also have suggested that i lack the wisdom to determine if that were in fact the case. We have witnessed the collapse of a speculative bubble in the American Housing market. It would appear that this speculative bubble was accompanied by secondary bubbles in the energy and construction materials markets. The collapse of the latter bubble appears to have had little consequences, but the collapse of the housing bubble, appears to have destroyed numerous financial institutions, and to have had vast and disturbing ramifications that are still being worked out.

It is clear that President Bush's economic team was frightened in the fall of 2008, and believed that they needed to act decisively in order to avoid a collapse of the banking system, and indeed the whole economic system. We can assdume that what the Bush economic team feared was something far worse that an economic recession. if we look at what has happened in iceland e can see what the Bush team feared. The entire national banking system of Iceland has collapsed last October. Outside charities have acted to assure that food was avaliable for people whose finances were devistated by the banking collapse. The government of Iceland has defaulted on its bonds. Unemployment and prices are both rapidly increasing in Iceland.

Despite the apparent disaster to the Islandic economy the drop in the GNP is only 10%, enough to qualify as depression range if sustained. What happened to the japanese economy during the last 3 months of 2008, was even worse, loosing almost 13% of its economic activity if adjusted to an annual basis. The contraction of the American economy was not been that great yet, but the cost so far has been breathtaking. So far the downturn has cost Americans:

• An $8 trillion negative wealth effect from declining home values.

• A $10 trillion negative wealth effect from weakened capital markets

The misery is international. Stock markets around the world have collectively taken a terrific hit. The following stock markets data was published by The Economist (21 Feb. 2009) which shows the extent of the fall since Dec 31st 2007:

US (NAScomp) - 44.7%, US (DJIA) -43%, US (S&P 500), Japan (Nikkei 225) -41.3%, China (SSEA) -55.1%, Hong Kong (Hang Seng) -52.9%, Canada (S&P TSX) -53%, Australia (All Ord.) -61%, Britain (FTSE 100) -55.8%, Euro area (FTSE 100) – 59.5%, Euro area (DJ STQxx 50) – 58.7%, France (CAC 40) -56.1%, Germany (DAX) -55.3%, Greece (Athex comp) -73.7%, Italy (S&P/MIB) -63.1%, Netherlands (AEX) -60.4%, Norway (OSEAX) -64%, Denmark (OMXCB) -55.2%, Sweden (Aff.Gen) -57.7%, Russia (RTS, $ terms) -77.1%, Turkey (ISE) -70.3%, India (BSE) -64.9%, South Korea (KOSPI) -62.6%, Taiwan (TWI) -50.5%, Brazil (BVSP) -53%, Argentina (MERV) -56%, Mexico (IPC) -52.9%, Venezuela (IBC) – 55.6%, Saudi Arabia (Tadawul) -56.8%, South Africa (JSE AS) – 54.1%.... WORLD all (MSCI) -51.2%.

In addition to the loss of wealth we have rising unemployment.

It is clear then that the continuing economic disaster of 2007-2009 will have a long term effect on human society. Typically the economic down turn caused by a recession is over after a few quarters. After a a year or two of economic pick up, lost wealth begins to be recovered, as the price of homes and stocks begins to go back up. This does not seem likely under the present circumstances. The impact of such a significant loss of wealth seems likely to belong term, and to negatively impact the standard of living both in the United States and world wide.

Nuclear Green is an energy blog, not an economics blog. Yet the fact is that future energy projects both in the United States and World Wide are linked to the fate of the national and world economy. One of the assumptions which motivated me to start Nuclear Green was that post-carbon energy solutions have to be low cost yet must provide abundant, reliable and sustainable energy. To me this seems obvious, but many of my energy blogging peers are completely oblivious to the questions of cost. I do not for one moment think that I am smarter than they are, but for some reason and despite my limitations, I appear to be a step ahead by asking questions about energy costs, and the impact of the downturn economy on the future of the of energy.

My contention is that the future of energy, that is the future of post-carbon energy belongs to the technology that can deliver reliable, sustainable energy at the lowest cost. i believe that LFTR technology has the inside track to do that, but confirmation of my views cannot rest on my work alone. I lack the technical skills to make that case, although i can certainly point in the directions I think the case should take.

No one is talking about our problem

Todd Pitcher wrote:

Our outlook for the economy is borderline apocalyptic. We have this massive consumer infrastructure that has to get unwound and an economy that has come to depend on consumer spending as its lifeline.

Consumers represent more than 70% of GDP. This is a problem. This is the problem, and no one is talking about it. Our GDP is too big for consumers to be able to sustain this much of it. Just look at the fact that consumer savings, which used to range around 7% to 8% have fallen into negative territory for the past few years. This is not sustainable. The current meltdown is helping to prove that.

Now consumers are faced with increasing employment risk and job losses, and on the horizon, we are predicting that the impact of the massive debt being piled onto the national balance sheet will suck the value out of the remaining dollars in their pocketbooks. We will only mention here that there is $40 trillion in unfunded liabilities (Social Security and Medicare that are still looming).

We cannot go on forever consuming and not producing, and it is folly to believe we can. How did we ever get into a position in which consumers represented over 70% of the GDP? We most certainly had a national leadership who were utterly asleep to what was happening.

Liquid Fluoride Reactors: A New Beginning for an Old Idea

David LeBlanc has joined the Google Tech Talk roster with an excellent presentation on LFTR?MSR technology. David does an excellent job of exploring the diversity of technological options and their rational and value.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8F0tUDJ35So

From The Abstract:
David's Ph.d in physics was completed at University of Ottawa (1998) on high temperature superconductors. During this period, he developed a great interest to pursue both fission and fusion reactor design basics, which separately cumulated in a long term fellowship from the Canadian Fusion Fuels Technology Project (later ITER Canada) for his work on the use of high Tc superconductors in the fusion field and also work for Atomic Energy of Canada Limited on worldwide reactor design comparisons. Since then he has been teaching at the Carleton University physics department and continued his investigations primarily in the field of Molten Salt Reactors, also known as Liquid Fluoride Reactors. David founded Ottawa Valley Research Associates Ltd to expand these efforts and has completed a license agreement with a European firm with a goal of development of a new generation of Molten Salt Reactors.

Truth, Solar Costs, and David Biello

As a teen age boy, i often walked a mile and a half to the Oak Ridge Public Library on summer days. There I would read a number of magazines and journals, and from their contents i constructed my world. I held Scientific American in very high regard then, and read each issue eagerly. i always thought of Scientific American as the gold standard of reliability.

No more. Last week David Biello posted a story on reliable solar electricity in the SA electronic edition. The story offered an account of the Andasol 1 solar thermal power plant. The Andasol 1 facility represents an advance in solar thermal technology. It offers heat storage in low cost molten salts. The molten salt technology offers several improvement over conventional Solar thermal technology. Stored heat allows the facility to load follow and produce peak energy. It also allows operators to to smooth out the dips and spikes in electrical generation caused by alternatively cloudy and sunny conditions. With molten salt energy storage electricity can be generated at night. Biello tells us how much electricity Andasol 1 produces - 50 MWs - the number of hours it can produce electricity - 7.5 - and its cost - $380 million. But then something goes very wrong in Biello's account. Solar Millennium AG, Andasol'sbuilder acknowledges that Andasol is

currently remunerated with a feed-in tariff of just under € 0.27/kWh.

That is $0.34 a KWh. Indeed capital cost of the Andasol 1 facility is $7600 per KW, a 50% priemium over thye current high end estimate of the cost of conventional nuclear power.

Biello does not reveal this shocking cost to his readers. instead he inserts a completely misleading statement from National Renewables Energy Laboratory engineer Greg Glatzmaier suggesting that "Electricity from a solar-thermal power plant costs roughly 13 cents a kilowatt-hour, according to both with and without molten salt storage systems". This is of course utter nonsense, as anyone who would make the effort to check on the cost and generating capacity of recently constructed or proposed solar facilities. The NREL has a history of making highly optimistic statements about solar costs. Statements that appear to have no relationship to project balance sheets. According to Biello, Glatzmaier told him that Molten Salt storage only cost $50 per kilowatt-hour to install. This is very misleading. Storage may not greatly add to the cost of the facility, but increasing the amount of heat captured does. The daily electrical output of a solar thermal facility without storage is equal to about 4.5 hours of electricity at its rated capacity. In order to increase that amount to 7.5 hours at rated capacity, more heat has to be captured, and this is done by increasing the size of the very expensive array of mirrors used to reflect sunlight onto the heat capturing mechanism of Andasol 1. Rest assured that installing the extra mirrors cost more than $50 per kilowatt. Glatzmaier 13 cents figure is what is called a canard - something that leads us away from true knowledge of the cost of solar thermal generated electricity. The electricity from Aldasol 1 costs well over twice 13 cents.

Now it is clear that the proponents of a solar power would like us to believe that it can be delivered cheaply, if only a hugh subsidy is given to solar manufacturers. if only they are given a chance the manufacturers will bring the price down. This of course is a scam, at the tax payers expense. It is clear that Biello is promoting the scam. What is not clear is whether Biello is knowingly using the authority of Scientific American to promote the scam, or whether he lacks the intelligence to understand the deception. What ever is the case David Biello has no business writing about energy for a science magazine that wishes to maintain a reputation for quality.

People change, values change, institutions change. Sometimes the changes are for the better, sometimes the changes are neither good nor bad, but some changes are decidedly for the worse. It is clear that Scientific American has changed for the worse. It is no longer the reliable and responsible voice I put my trust in as a teen age boy. I previously pointed to the anti-nuclear propaganda of David Biello in the Scientific American Electronic edition. The rot of Scientific American is so far advanced that Biello has not been fired as his incompetence would require. Instead the editors of Scientific American allow Biello continues to disregard truth and behave like the hack he is, pretending that distorted, and dishonest propaganda is fact. It is to the everlasting shame of Scientific American that its editorial leadership has allowed this to happen.

How much would an all renewables electrical system cost?

The Gore plan, the Google plan, the energy writings of Joe Romm, the views of the Internet site Gristmill, and other self proclaimed energy authorities, all maintain the view that an all renewable grid is possible.  Some time  ago I attempted to evaluate the theory of reliable wind suggested by Mark Z. Jacobson.  Jacobson argued, based on empirical data from 17 sites in the southwestern Great Planes, that wind generation could be made reliable by building grid links between those sites.  Jacobson found that the linked sites could be expected to produce at least 20% of their rated capacity 80% of the time.  Jacobson further argued that this reliability approached that of base generated electricity.  My analysis, using a 2008 wind cost estimate of $2500 per KW, and evaluating the Google energy plan, found that the 380 wind GWs called for by the Google plan would cost $900 billion to install,    This estimated installation cost did not include the expansion of the grid that would be needed to transmit the electricity from the windmill array to consumers.   I found that the linked wind array could be counted on to produce about 80 GWs of electricity 80% of the time.  The linked wind system, however, had a serious flaw.  It could not deliver power on hot summer days when electrical demand peaked.  

I undertook a comparison between the Google wind proposal and  an alternative scheme to build nuclear reactors at the same combined cost as the wind array.   I estimate at $900 Billion dollars would purchase 112 one GWe reactors.  At a .90 capacity factor, the reactors could be counted on to deliver 101 GW of electricity at any time.  Or a little over 20% more electricity at any given time than the wind array.  Unlike the wind array, the reactors could be counted on to deliver electricity at close to maximum capacity on hot summer days.  

In addition I offered evaluations of the cost of wind with three energy storage plans.  The use of batteries, to store wind generated electricity, the use of pumped storage, and the use of Compressed Air Energy Storage (CAES).  My CAES study was in turn based on  "The Economic Impact of CAES on Wind in TX, OK, and NM," by Ridge Energy Storage & Grid Services L.P, for the Texas State Energy Conservation Office. in 2005. I assumed .40 wind capacity factor and that 40% of the energy output from the CAES system would come from the burning of natural gas, a standard assumption for CAES systems. The Ridge Energy study showed that electricity could reliably dispatched on a 24 hour a day basis from a CAES system on a 24 hour a day basis, even during low wind summer days, demonstrating the viability of a Wind-CAES system, However, the energy output of CAES systems is .80 of energy inputs. This suggests that there are considerable in efficiencies in the use of wind generated electricity by the wind CAES system, and that at least 30% of the electrical input is lost to system inefficiencies. Ridge Energy estimated that the capital cost of a CAES system would run @$765 per KW, an exceedingly modest sum, but one which should be examined. The capital cost for source wind array combined with the CAES system is in fact much higher.

I stipulated a cost for new West Texas wind of $2250 per name plate KW in 2009. This price was at the low end of 2008 windmill costs in North America. Since the capacity factor of West Texas runs around .40, the adverage output West Texas wind producer can expect to pay $5625 for every KW of electrical producing capacity. Since only 70% of the electricity entering the CAES facility reaches the consumer, the wind producer must increase his wind generating capacity by 30% to compensate for the energy loss. Thus the price of the wind generated electry entering the CAES facility must compensate the wind producer for something like a $8000 capitol investment for every average KW sold by the CAES facility. When added to the $765 per KW capital investment in the CAES facility, and the cost of natural gas used with CAES technology, we get a very ugly picture, of the cost of wind generated electricity.

In my pumped storage study, I reviewed the cost of the Northfield Mountain Pumped storage facility in New England. I calculated the cost of the 1080 MW facility at 3.7 billion 2008 dollars using the 1972 cost and a standard conversion table. I noted that an estimated 2008 cost for a reactor of similar capacity would be around $5 billion. The pumped storage facility had the ability to deliver power for 10 hours at a tome, while the reactor could be expected to deliver power continuously at least 90% of a year.

In order to produce electricity for the pump storage facility, a wind generating array would have to be built. The cost of that array would be paid for when electricity from the pump storage facility was sold. Pump storage operates at 75% efficiency. That is 25% of the energy input is lost before electrical output. Thus assuming a very generous West Texas capacity factor of .40 for the wind array with a rated output of 1400 MWs operating 24 hours a day would be required to fill the pump storage facility. Lets assume costs at the low end of the 2008 range for windmills, say $2250 per KW. Thus the wind array required to fill the pump storage facility full would cost $3.150 billion. That would give us a figure of close to $7 Billion to be financed by the sale of peak electricity from the pumped storage facility. Seven billion dollars is a l;arge investment for electricity that would be only available for 10 hours a day. Since as reactor capable of producing a similar amount of electricity 24 hours a day could be had in 2008 for 2 billion dollars less, the reactor is the better deal.

Finally, I examined battery storage with wind. Battery storage appears to be the most expensive electrical reliability/storage systems. After producing an estimated cost of Wind + battery storage, i then looked at the cost of a non-storage backup system for wind, a conventional nuclear reactor. The reactor was actually less expensive than a combination windmill battery backup system In addition the nuclear system would be so reliable that wind generation could be dispensed with and the system rely entirely on nuclear power.

Post-carbon electrical generating systems require reliability. During the last few months I have produced 4 case studies of the cost of making wind generated electricity reliable through the use of different technologies. Renewable advocates often complain that nuclear power is too expensive. My assessments show that reliable wind capital costs would more expensive than the capital costs of nuclear generated electricity in any of the noted cases. Facility costs for PY and ST power would be considerably higher per KW than wind in any of the noted cases. Given that the capacity factor for Southwestern Solar is not much higher than .20, it seems likely that reliable solar would be even more expensive than reliable wind, however, since I have not studied the economies of solar storage systems this is impossible to confirm.

My current research has not focused on other hidden cost of renewables generation. These include the cost of new transmission lines that are required by renewable generation systems, to be born by rate payers, the cost of federal and states tax based subsidies, the cost of keeping grid voltage stable. None of my case studies would support the contention that the cost of reliable wind would be competitive with conventional nuclear as a source of reliable electricity.

My conclusions have been acknowledged by some of the more sober minded supporters of the renewables paradigm. It is my contention then conventional nuclear power will cost less than reliable renewable electricity in a post carbon grid, and that National energy priorities ought to be rethought in light of the evidence that conventional nuclear power is the lower cost option. If conventional nuclear power is too expensive, then renewables are even more expensive. Thus we need to find a lower cost electrical generation option.

The Era of Confusion Explained

We are living in an interregnum between the end of the old energy economy and the beginning of a new energy economy. As with many interregnums, this is a period of profound confusion. I have designated the current period which hopefully will be over by 2012, the era of confusion. Nothing illustrates the present confusion more than the Obama stimulus package. The stimulus was conceived of as a device to compensate for a decrease in consumer and business spending. In addition it is designed to prop up all sorts of failing businesses. Republicans charge that there is a lot of spending on projects that are more motivated by political than economic reasons. This is quite true, but also hypocritical considering the lavish way Republicans spent on their Pork Barrel projects during the first six years of Bush II.

Republicans were offered a chance to help shape the stimulus package, but chose to play politics with it. Republicans are right that stimulus package is not a good one, it was hastily conceived, as a response to an economic emergency. So much pork got into the package because the Obama team did not have a good understanding of the underlying problems that led us into the crisis.  The response is to simply misapply the pseudo-Keynesian formula to the present situation. Republicans have even less to offer, and unlike the Obama administration the Republicans are disinclined to learn from their mistakes.

Be that as it may, for all their faults, the Republicans were willing to offer limited support for conventional nuclear power in the stimulus package, the congressional Democrats, who have bought into the renewables idiocy, lock stock and pork barrel, played politics with nuclear power and shut it out of the final ill-conceived stimulus bill.

In February 2009, we have reached the low-water mark of rationality as far America's energy future is concerned. Not only were loan guarantees for reactors written out of the Obama stimulus package, but the stimulus package wastes billions on solar generators that produce electricity 20% of the time, and windmills that produce most of their electricity in the middle of the night when no one needs it. The whole renewables scheme is very poorly thought through as a plan for replacing fossil fuels. When confronted with the limitations of renewables, and the expense of overcoming them, renewables advocates always fall back on the idea of burning fossil fuels when renewables are not producing. The problem with renewables is simple, on their own, renewables will never stop global warming. Furthermore by asking the simplest questions like "where is the power going to come from after dark if the wind doesn't blow", or "how are you going to generate electricity on cloudy days", is a good starting point. People who have common sense understand these questions, but many people are afraid to ask them, because they are afraid of looking foolish. There are, after all, people who pose as experts, people who claim to have the answers, who will tell you that the questions are foolish. They, the experts, have it all figured out, just don't bother them by asking about details. The answers can all be written in bumper sticker slogans, and people who are confused don't need to ask for more information. More information will only add to your confusion.

Why aren't people asking the questions common sense dictates about renewables? The answer is simple:

Laziness and cowardice are the reasons why so great a proportion of men, long after nature has released them from alien guidance (natura-liter maiorennes), nonetheless gladly remain in lifelong immaturity, and why it is so easy for others to establish themselves as their guardians.

The problem is not the so called experts, who can easily be shown to be spreading ignorance and lies. The problem lies rather with those who willingly ignore the fact that the lies are not even very convincing lies. People who are deeply confused have difficulty acknowledging that they are being lied to, even when doing so should be a matter of simple common sense. As Pogo acknowledged years ago,

Until we are willing to wake up, and acknowledge our confusion, there is no way out of the mess we are in.

Aim High On Next Big Future.

Aim High got a good mention and a link on Brian Wang's blog Next Big Future. Aim High is he name Dr. Robert Hargraves gave to the plan to mas produce Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor. I have decided to endorse the "Aim High" name and of course I supported the plan before Bob coined the name. The Aim High plan is the only really viable plan to create a post carbon energy economy by 2050. The viability of the Aim High plan stems from its relatively low cost, and its potential to quickly build and set up large numbers of small safe, reliable and nuclear waste destroying LFTRs that can generate electricity anywhere 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.

Energy, Nuclear Power and the Future of the American Economy

I have argued since December 2007 that the future of energy lies with nuclear energy.
I have argued that this is the case even if the problem of Anthropogenic Global Warming is discounted. My argument in no small measure has rested on the limitations of renewable energy and the high costs of overcoming those limitations. Although my argument is not yet reflected in mainstream discussions of energy, there is growing recognition that the problems I point to cannot be easily solved.

I have also pointed to problems with the conventional nuclear option. I have defended the conventional nuclear option from the ritualized, mythic criticisms from anti-nuclear spokes-persons, but this does not mean that I think the the conventional nuclear option is without flaws. My view is that despite some flaws, the conventional nuclear option comes in at a lower cost than renewables, once the flaws of renewables are corrected and the corrections paid for. I have been criticised for taking this viewpoint. I have also been criticized for pointing to the flaws of conventional nuclear power, even though there is no real disagreement with my account of those flaws.

Now some of my critics, critics who would say I should not talk about the issues, are people I respect, including Rod Adams and Bill Hannahan. But they must understand that the issues that I raise are not new issues and they are not trivial issues. Nor do I view these issues as trivial in their implication. I will not shove issues-related technological progress in nuclear energy under the rug.

I have a stake in both sides of the issues I discuss. My brother David came by my apartment on Saturday. He brought with him two boxes of my father's publications which he had brought back from Oak Ridge. In one of the boxes was a letter acknowledging that my father's assignment of patent rights to the industrial process for the separation of zirconium and hafnium. This was an important patent for the development of conventional nuclear power. My father looked with satisfaction on this achievement, and his role in the development of conventional nuclear technology does give me something of a personal stake in conventional nuclear power production.

The two boxes of my father's papers contained copies of many of my father's papers documenting his Molten-Salt Reactor chemistry research. So I have another stake in that. Although my father's nearly 20-year involvement with Molten Salt research was not crowned with success my father never stopped believing in the idea and my LFTR advocacy gave him much satisfaction during the last year of his life.

My father also holds a patent for the fuel formula used in the first MSR prototype. As I have documented elsewhere in this blog, his Molten-salt research at ORNL included numerous accomplishments. Although he was proud of his accomplishment in the development of conventional reactors, even during the last year of his life, in conversations I had with him, he saw MSR/LFTR technology as the way into the energy future.

Thus even if I had no views independent of my father's views. I would still be forced to acknowledge his views, that the LFTR represents the future of nuclear technology. I simply, and in all honesty cannot keep quiet on the relative merits of the LWR and the LFTR, and it is not fair to ask me to do so.

The debate between the LFTR and the conventional reactor is far too important to be allowed to pass without noting. We are in urgent need of addressing the emissions of CO2 in energy because of global warming. The issue of peak coal was recently placed on the table. I am not convinced by the case for peak coal yet, but even without arguing either for peak coal or for Anthropogenic Global Warming, a strong case can be made for the elimination of coal use in the generation of electricity. I expect that energy concerns are very quickly going to become much more important in the public mind, and in the mind of decision makers. I also expect that there will be growing awareness of the short comings of renewables, and no small amount of dismay at the inability of renewables to cut the mustard.

Between Anthropogenic Global Warming, peak oil, and the liabilities of coal, society faces a looming energy gap. This will be no where more significant than in the United Kingdom, where the need to close reactors and old fired power plants in the next decade will almost certainly lead to significant electrical shortages. It is unlikely that the British Government's plan to build 33 GWs of wind powered generating capacity can be accomplished within the timeframe projected as a project goal. Constructing enough nuclear generating capacity to fill the gap would be a realistic alternative, if the British Government were willing to go beyond a business as usual approach, and assign the construction of nuclear power plants a war-time-like priority.

The case for urgency in resolution of the British power gap is very powerful, and it failure to do so would be a disaster for the political system. In the short run politicians who might be aware of the problem are afraid to get out ahead of the public. Thus national leaders are are failing to provide leadership. I am aware of the problem from the writings of Christopher Booker and Richard North, and discussions on the Oil Drum. A number of reports have also discussed the energy gap problem, but to date the problem has not gotten sufficient traction with the British public to become important.

But within less than a decade the British Energy Gap will begin to tell. Whatever else will happen, electricity will be in short supply in the UK. The insecurity of the British gas supply, which Mr. Putin demonstrated this winter, can potentially aggravate the problem. New electrical capacity, whether nuclear or wind, is likely to be more expensive than the old plants that are being shut down. The term "energy poverty" is beginning to pop up in discussion of the inability of the poor members of society to pay for electricity. Energy poverty is very much a life and death issue in the United Kingdom where winters, while hardly Arctic, can still be very cruel to those who cannot afford to pay for heat.

In addition, there are serious implications for the British economy. First the energy intensive industries that remain in the United Kingdom must look at the future reliability problems of the British electrical system. Chinese reactor costs are currently running between $1565 and $1760 per KW. The Chinese plan to have as many as 100 reactors under construction or completed by 2020, with the capacity to rapidly expand that number between 2020 and 2030. Yesterday I pointed out that Indian reactor costs appear to be even lower, with construction costs for Generation IV Liquid Metal Fast Breeders coming in at $1400 per KW. The Indians also possess an long term assured reactor fuel supply, and the Indian nuclear program, although complex is well thought out and technologically more advanced than the Chinese program.

Thus the British Industrialist, contemplating future energy shortages and electrical costs, might well be tempted to move his production to one of the emerging Asian superpowers. Such temptation is widely shared and acted on, would contribute to an economic decline for the United Kingdom. Even if the British government acquired the cojones needed to prevent the energy gap, the cost of a high priority nuclear solution would leave British electricity more expensive than Chinese or Indian electricity. Thus the Chinese and the Indians would possess a considerable competative advantage over the UK. Add to that advantage, the advantage of lower labor costs, and you get a formula for a long term economic decline of the UK. Of course this would not make the greens weep, not at first at least. But eventually the Greens would come to see that they did not solve the problems associated with human wealth, rather the problems would be transfered from Europe to Asia.

Unfortunately current understandings, or rather misunderstandings of American energy have distorted public thinking about our options. Renewable advocates are both dishonest and confused. I have on Nuclear Green, Energy from Thorium, and Daily Kos, explored the renewable options, and the cost of making renewable electricity dependable. Renewable advocates when confronted with the shortcomings of renewable electricity usually resort to talking about three options. They are:

1. Energy efficiency
2. the smart grid
3. energy storage

Separately, and in combination energy efficiency and a smart grid will not produce electricity if the wind stops blowing on a cold winter night. Curiously when confronted with these facts, renewables advocates fall back on the carbon emitting grid back up as if we will never dispense with it. When it comes to negative comparisons with nuclear, renewables advocates will argue that renewables electrical generation will always be supported by and will require the burning of CO2 emitting fossil fuels.

I have documented the conceptual problems involved in the claim that energy efficiency can fill the gap. Nothing about a smart grid allows it to deliver energy that is not produced or stored. I have looked at a number of proposed systems for storing electricity from wind generation under very favorable wind conditions. Even under favorable wind conditions, no wind energy storage system can make reliable West Texas wind cost competitive with conventional nuclear generated electricity. Nor will West Texas wind even with energy storage ever be as reliable or flexible as conventional nuclear. The problem then with conventional nuclear is not its cost competitiveness with renewables, rather it is the fact that both renewables and conventional nuclear cost too much.

My advocacy of the LFTR then is not simply motivated in my father's role in its development. My father never looked at the potential of the LFTR for lowering electrical costs. Thus in addition to solving the major issues of nuclear power, including outstanding safety, and largely resolving the problem of nuclear waste, cutting CO2 emissions to next to nothing, and eliminating the need to mine for nuclear fuel for thousands of years, LFTRs have the potential of being built at a fraction of the cost of renewables or conventional nuclear.

My view has always been that a rapid conversion to a post-carbon energy system that is safe, efficient, reliable and affordable is not an option. If the American economy is to have a future, and the American people are to live in relative prosperity, comfort, safety, security, and good health, then the potential of the LFTR is not an option. The only post-carbon energy source that has the potential to realize these goals is the LFTR. I believe then that it is appropriate for me to discuss the relative advantages of the LFTR over both conventional nuclear and renewable electrical sources.

A lot of people who are not very smart and the smart grid

A lot of people who are not very smart have decided that a smart grid will solve all of our problems with electricity. For example if the wind stops blowing while it is still dark, the smart grid will figure it out. If there are dark clouds over the Nevada desert the smart grid will find extra electricity, or will decide who needs to stop drawing juice. If it is night and there is no wind the smart grid will turn on some bright lights outside to get some PV cells going. The smart grid is going to figure out what it takes to generate electricity. You see why the experts think a smart grid would be useful. No matter how dumb people get, the grid can be smart.

Now you wonder how we can get going to find a smart grid. The answer is to advertise for it in Craig's List. Remimber you want a smart grid that is AC/DC. You want a smart grid that will take orders from you, and will do what you want without talking back. That sort of grid can be a real pleasure.

The learning curve for serial reactor production

One assumption of the Aim High concept directly challenges an assumption of the conventional nuclear industry. That is the Aim High concept assumes that there are major cost advantages for serial reactor manufacture at factories rather than custom onsite reactor manufacture. This argument might be challenged by reference to reported Chinese cost projections for factory produced Pebble Bed Modular Reactors that were recently discussed by Brian Wang. The Chinese do not assume that early factory built PBMRs will be lower cost than on site manufactured reactors. The Chinese envision manufacturing hundreds of PBMRs in their reactor factory. Thus it would appear that the Chinese do not anticipate that PBMR production will lead to significant savings. Not even the serial production of 248 PBMRs lead to significant cost advantages for PBMR. The Chinese do anticipate a significant 30% to 40% per unit savings from experience based learning.

What then is responsible for the Chinese cost data? First, it should be observed that the PBMR has extremely low power density. Thus the PBMR pressure vessel is the same size as that of a Light Water Reactor which produces 5 times the power output. Thus the PBMR will require greater materials input for a given unit of power output than the LWR. This would suggest that PBMR components may be assembled in the factory but not the entire reactor. Even relatively small PBMRs would be too heavy and bulky for truck or rail transportation. Thus reactors would be assembled on site from factory manufactured kits. The Chinese probably anticipating on-site construction of LWRs from factory produced kits, so actual manufacturing conditions for PBMRs would not differ greatly from those of Chinese LWRs. It is also argued that PBMR simplicity would lead to lower reactor costs, but a glance at PBMR design suggest that it might not be all that simple compared to LFTR design.
Wang refers to production plans for about 250 reactors. While this is a very large number, it would not be large enough to justify the installation of large labor saving production machines. If reactos are manufactured in kit form at the factory, there would be no assembly lines. Thus many of the cost saving advantages of factory production would be lost.

The Chinese appear to anticipate that the primary savings from factory manufactured PBMRs would come from the learning curve. This would suggest low capital costs, since it would be assumed that the capital cost per unit would decrease over time as loans were paid off. Indeed financial costs, taxes, insurance and contingencies account for around 20% of Chinese reactor costs. This combined category is not significantly higher for Chinese built LWRs than for PBRs. We can assume then that manufacturing techniques for Chinese PBMRs do not differ significantly from those used to manufacture Chinese LWR, and that materials inputs will be, if anything more expensive per KW of electrical output than would be the case for Chinese LWRs. It would appear then that the cost advantages of serial production do not greatly outweigh the cost advantages of economies of scale.

Financial costs are a far less significant cost factor than they would be for reactors built in the other countries. Because financing costs are low to begin with the shorter PBMR construction time would not be translated into a significant cost savings. Finally any savings in PBMR labor cost would probably be balanced by the greater cost of materials.

It would not appear then, that Chinese PBMR costs would not provide us with a comparative insight into LFTR costs. Recent reports from China indicate that the Chinese are paying about $1.60 per watt for new reactors. This cost would appear to be less than half of the cost of reactors in Europe or North America. Recently Indian reports anticipate costs as low as $1.40 per watt for Indian manufactured LMFBRs. This would indicate a significant post-carbon electrical cost advantage for the emergent Asian economic super powers. This advantage does not stem from a potential cost savings in design or manufacturing techniques. Thus roads to greater nuclear cost competitiveness are still open to the North American, European, and North East Asian economies.

The Greatest Bargain of the 21st Century.

In May of 2008, I posted a series of posts on the cost lowering potential of LFTR technology for nuclear power. I was able to point to a number of areas in which significant cost lowering potential was present, especially in comparison with Light Water reactor costs. I did not attempt to assign a cost number but a figure of 25% of the cost of conventional nuclear power generating reactors seemed plausible. It is possible that LFTR costs might not be that low, if attention is not paid to rigorous application of the cost lowering potentials.

Why does the LFTR have such cost lowering potential?

First because its design is very simple compared to LWRs. LWRs require many hundreds of valves, miles of pipes, numerous pumps, thousands of supports, miles of cables, hundreds of embedded instruments and other parts, each built to very exacting specifications and requiring intensive highly skilled labor for their installation. Mistakes in parts installation may necessitate large scale rebuilding. Constant monitoring of the quality of reactor construction is of the utmost necessity, and consumes many hundreds of thousands of hours of supervisors time. The LWR has two active control systems. It has at least two cooling systems, and a massive 8" thick pressure vessel that surrounds the reactor. The LWR operates under high pressure conditions. Coolant water is pumped under high pressure through hundreds of channels in the reactor's core. The entire core coolant system is built to very exacting specifications. Even a minor failure of the coolant system could lead to core damage. Thus the LWR is a highly complex machine, requiring hundreds of thousands of parts and millions of hours of labor to construct. LWR construction requires great organizational skills, and extremely diligent supervision. It is relatively easy for very costly problems to emerge during the construction. For example, if cement used in the reactor construction does not conform to design specifications, structures built with inferior cement have to be torn down and rebuilt. Such problems can lead to delays in construction schedule, and significantly contribute to project cost. The construction method, which requires the use of a huge amount of on site labor , is very difficult to organize and control. Problems associated with the complex reactor construction labor system contribute to overall reactor costs.

In contrast Molten Salt Reactors including the LFTR are very simple. A liquid coolant fuel mixture is pumped through the reactor core and then through a heat exchanger and back into the reactor. There may be a secondary cooling system if the primary system breaks down, there would also be an emergency back up system that would automatically drain the core if both cooling systems failed. The core would be drained into specially designed tanks that would be passively cooled, by a naturally circulating air or water coolant system.

The LFTR reactor can be designed to include several small chemical processing units. These units greatly improve the efficiency of LFTR operations. While they add to LFTR complexity, even with a full array of chemical processing units, the LFTR is still far less complex than the LWR. One of the keys to lowering LFTR costs is the simplicity of the LFTR design.

The LFTR operates at a much higher temperature than LWRs. For that reason a small LFTR will operate with greater thermal efficiency than a very large LWR. This opens the door to greater design flexibility. With LFTRs, designers have significant design options related to size. LFTRs can be designed for modular use. Several small LFTRs can be clustered to produce the power equivalent of one large reactor. There are a number of advantages in doing so. Small reactors can be factory built, and transported by truck, train or barge to a final set up site. Factory production would use labor more efficiently, and product quality could be much more easily controlled. A serial production process would lead to rapid learning, improved quality and lower price. Reactors could be built in periods of a few months rather than several years. The significantly shorter construction time would have a positive effect on overall reactor costs:

A. The cost of accrued interest during the construction phase would be significantly less or factory built small reactors than for site-built large reactors.
B. Small reactors can be set up and brought on line within months of being ordered, thus quickly adding to the owner's revenue stream.
C. Small, low cost, quickly set up reactors have fewer risks. Lower risk premium, lower capital costs.

Small modular LFTRs allow greater flexibility in reactor siting and housing:

A. Old coal and natural gas power plant sites can be recycled with considerable economies.
B. New grid hookups would not be required. LFTRs sited at old power plant sites, could use the existing grid hookup.
C. On site facilities could be reused, decreasing construction expenses.
D. The location of small reactors close to electrical consumers would conform more closely to a distributive model, and would assure greater grid stability by bringing electrical production close to the customers. This reduces the necessity of making costly additions to the grid.

LFTRs do not require expensive, hard to obtain materials that could compromise LFTR production. In addition to materials options explored at ORNL between the 1950's and the 1970's a variety of other materials options appear to be available. These include Carbon-carbon composites which can be used with very high performance LFTRs that can produce industrial process heat, and commodity materials like stainless steel, that can be used to lower LFTR costs even further. Ultra low cost LFTRs might be used to replace natural gas fired generators that are currently used in peak reserve capacity.

The LFTR opens the door to relatively novel, innovative and low cost housing options, that can enhance reactor safety while lowering costs. Underground or underwater housing should be explored. LFTRs can be housed in underground chambers on existing power plant sites. Such chambers need not require massive amounts of steel, and concrete, as present reactor containment structures do. Underground reactors would have superior protection against terrorist attacks through car bombs or large aircraft attacks. They could easily be made relatively impervious to attempts by terrorists to seize the reactor. Finally underground reactor can be designed to include multiple anti-proliferation barriers, making the underground reactor a highly undesirable target for would be proliferating nuclear terrorists. These very desirable goals can be achieved without the high cost of above ground massive containment structures.

In addition to the use of recycled coal plants for underground sites, mines could be used for LFTR siting. Salt mines make a very interesting option, with the potential of clustering a relatively large number of modular LFTRs in salt mines, with no above ground structures required.

In addition to the many cost lowering options available to LFTR designers and operating utilities, the LFTR can be designed to operate without operational staff. Since the LFTR is highly stable under passive control, no operator input is required in order to assure the highest level of safety. Thus while security staff would be required to protect LFTRs from terrorists and misguided acts of vandalism, no operators are required for safe and efficient LFTR operation and an operational staff would be redundant. This would lead to further economies in LFTR design, construction and operation.

It is quite obvious that LFTR costs could be substantially less than Light Water Reactor costs. At the moment it is far future LWR costs that are far from clear. My own guess is that if all of the LFTR economies I have mentioned were implemented the relative cost savings of the LFTR would be greater than 50% of the cost of Light Water Reactors, and LFTRs might well cost 25% of the cost of LWRs. If we consider that large amounts of LFTR fuel has already been mined and is currently regarded as mine waste, the LFTR could well turn out to be the greatest bargain of the 21st century.

Advocating the Aim High Project as Policy

My advocacy for the Aim High concept is fundamentally political. Robert Hargraves named the Aim High energy concept and has explained it. The goal of the Aim High project is the rapid development and deployment of a very large number of Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactors not only in the United States, but in most of the world, between 2020 and 2050. I view the LFTR as a lowest cost potential energy source, that is safe, pollution free, and sustainable. This Aim High goal cannot be reached unless it becomes a matter of United States government and International policy. Thus my goal on Nuclear Green, and in my other postings is the adoption and implementation of the Aim High Project as National and International policy.

It would not be rational to promote the Aim High Project as good policy, without explaining why other competing policy options are less desirable than the Aim High Project option. The two options I have reviewed are the renewables option and the conventional nuclear option. My goal in these studies has been to demonstrate that both the renewables option and the Light Water Reactor option policy is unlikely to produce a post carbon energy system. I have argued for the desirability of this goal both because the use fossil fuels have undesirable consequences even if the Anthropogenic Global Warming issue is excluded. In addition a plausible case has been made that global oil production will soon begin to decline world wide. This concern leads to a policy consideration that electrical technology be substituted for Fossil Fuel technology in transportation. This possibility has not been well thought through by either renewables advocates or the conventional nuclear industry, but it could lead to a significant increase in electrical demand.

Renewables advocates appear to believe that a large power production gap will exist in a renewables generating system and that the gap will be filled through greater efficiency. This would appear unlikely if transportation is electrified to any considerable extent. Thus the renewables option would appear to open an energy gap, especially if transportation is electrified.

The French model demonstrates that conventional nuclear power can takeover providing electricity on a national scale. The French nuclear model also provides for some use of electrification in transportation. However, American nuclear advocates have not advanced the claim that the American electrical system can or should be entirely converted to conventional nuclear technology.

Both the renewables model and the conventional nuclear model leave significant questions to be answered, before they can be considered good policy options. Among the most serious questions is that of cost. I have tried to show that making renewable generated electricity reliable raises its costs. Indeed the cost of reliable renewable generated electricity appears higher than nuclear units with comparable electrical output.

Even the highest estimated cost of nuclear generated electricity appear to be lower than the likely costs of reliable renewables. Thus there ought to be a considerable policy preference for conventional nuclear generation of 24/7 base electricity. There are never-the-less problems with a nuclear base. First, the economies of nuclear power are such that running LWR's at full power on a 24/7 basis yields the best return. While conventional reactors can produce power on a 16/7 or 16/5 basis, this would increase the cost of power from high priced nuclear facilities to customers. On exception would be the use of older reactors for 16/7 0r 16/5 electrical generation, since older reactors are already paid for. Conventional reactors do not make a good fit to peak reserve requirements. Peak reserve capacity is usually characterized by low capital cost and high fuel costs. In addition older and inefficient coal powered generation facilities are also assigned peak reserve roles.

Wind powered generation facilities without storage are inappropriate for any generation role requiring reliability. In most localities peak wind capacity of ten occurs during the night when electrical demand has ebbed. During day time however wind speed often slackens in many localities, while electrical demand increases. Finally over much of North America, wind produces almost no electricity during the hottest days of summer. Only with electrical storage does wind emerge as an important post carbon power source. But while storage adds to the reliability of wind it also increase wind's capital costs. With power on demand 16 hours a day reliability wind does not have a cost advantage over nuclear, and with 24 hour a day reliability, wind is at a decided cost disadvantage compared to conventional nuclear.

Solar generated electricity has many liabilities even where compared to wind even in most favorable localities solar facilities only produce about 20% of their rated power a day and then only under very favorable climatic conditions. Both clouds and winter adversely effect solar output. It is sometimes suggested that wind and solar compliment each other; solar having its peak output during days while wind at night, and so on. The disadvantages of such a hybrid system become apparent when the cost of redundant capacities are calculated and the number of hours during a year during with neither wind nor sun alone or in combination will generate enough electricity to satisfy consumer demand. Thus without storage renewables are not reliable. With storage, renewables are are more expensive than nuclear. Renewable advocates sometimes attempt to solve the problems of renewable limitations by pointing to the grid as a adjunct to renewable power. But this would assume that carbon based power would continue to be available in a post carbon energy era, and actually quite a lot of carbon based power. This leads us to the paradox that renewables in a post carbon energy scheme would continue to require the presence of carbon based generating capacity in order that the grid be reliable.

My conclusion then is that neither the mostly renewables grid nor the mostly conventional nuclear grid work well and would not provide low cost electricity. In contrast the LFTR grid would work well and at a far more modest cost. Thus advocating a Aim High oriented energy policy can and should include a discussion of the cost, reliability and other advantages of the Aim High option compares to the conventional nuclear or renewables options.

I have been criticized for discussing the disadvantages of both renewables and conventional nuclear power especially in comparison to Aim High LFTR technology. But it is difficult to portray the advantages of the Aim High project without pointing to the cost other advantages over the conventional nuclear and the renewables options. What sort of advocacy would refrain from pointing to the advantages of the preferred course?

Part of the Aim High project is the development of cost savings that are not possible with other energy approaches.

We should not plan the energy future without acknowledging economic fact.

Not your ordinary, run-of-the-mill recession

"This is not your ordinary, run-of-the-mill recession. We are going through the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression." - Barack Obama

"The big problem is Geithner is acting as if the crisis we are facing is a crisis of liquidity when, in fact, it's a crisis of insolvency." - Arianna Huffington

"Much of Wall Street is effectively insolvent. It's not that these banks lack cash or capital -- it's just that they're never going to meet all their financial liabilities -- i.e. repay their debts. Ever." - Ann Pettifor

But Arianna it is not only the banks. The banks failed because cheap and easily available credit spread the insolvency around. But the money to finance the credit came from the Chinese who loaned us the money to buy all of those consumer goods their factories were building. The question is not who is to blame, it is what is to blame. What is to blame is an untenable economic situation that was allowed to develop and run away. What is to blame is a lack of vision, a lack of common sense. We should not continue to let this happen. If the banks are allowed to fail, all of those bad debts are going to come to place somewhere. The economy is going to take a hit that would almost certainly throw us headlong into depression. There is something to be said for not facing up to a problem, when the consequences of facing up will be a reck. Sometimes it is better to isolate problems to sick institutions like banks, rather thn to let them loose to create havoc for society.

Consider the Japanese Banking crisis of the late 1990's. From 1994 to 2003, 180 Japanese banks failed. Total cost of the credit losses: $950 billion, and the Japanses bubble might have been small compared to the what we face.
What would a depression look like?

A response to Axil on Economic Cycles

Axil commented on my yesterday's post on the possibility that we wereentering a depression:

What is your opinion of the Kondratieff Cycle? IMO, there may be something to it. If the 54-60 year cycle is based on generation aspects, then it would naturally be 'stretched' beyond 60 years. Since these cycles of wars and economic birth and renewal occur every 2-3rd generation, we can say that when the generation to last see a depression dies off, it's time for another cycle to begin. Our great credit bubble of the last 60 years is being washed away at the very trough predicted by the Kondratieff wave.

Here is my response:
Axil, an interesting idea. It is clear to me that during the 19th century, there were several waves of investment driven economic growth followed by sharp and painful contractions. The expantions ended when capacity grew to such a point that investments failed to return borrowed money. At that point investors lost significant amounts of money, and no further investments in capacity were undertaken, because it would have ben highly irrational to do so. The last such episode was the great depression of 1929. Boom and bust cycles did not stop, but they became localized. I witnessed one such cycles in the Dallas real estate market during the late 1970's and early 1980's. The Dallas economy at that time was dominated by three big banks and smaller but ambitious savings and loans. Dallas was growing so banks began to make more and more loans for speculative construction of office towers while the S&Ls financed a speculative housing market. Loan officers completely lost sight of the probable future demand. The speculative economy convinced everyone that the boom would go on forever, and that there was no downside. Eventually it became clear that office and home construction in Dallas greatly exceeded the demand. The Banks and S&Ls went bankrupt, and the banking insurance agency drained their funds bailing out Dallas depositors. Had that boom been national This contraction hurt the Dallas economy for anumber of years, but eventually a new wave in telecommunications picked up the slack. That wave in turn went through its own boom and bust cycle. Huge amounts of money were lost in fiber optics investments, for example. Cell phone manufacture was a booming business for a while in Dallas, until production shifted off shore.

Spy argues that our problem is not too little production capacity but too much. Too much investment in under utalized production capacity, with Americans borrowing too much in order to consume. But the Chinese save too much while under consuming.

My assessment of the current cycle is that Asian investments in production capacity have exceeded the saturation point. Asian economies are frequently characterized by irrationally high saving rates, so they lack the economic development to consume goods produced locally. As a consequence goods must be sold abroad, but there is a limit to the ability of non-Asian markets to consume Asian made goods. The united States was exporting industrial jobs to China, thus giving up the ability to pay for the goods it bought from China through trade. The Asians basically loaned the money to their customers to pay for the Asian produced goods. American financial institutions turned to speculative investments to make profits. The ultimate driver for those speculative investments was the loans from China, secured by the credit of the United States Government. Eventually foreclosures of speculative subprime housing loans, started a collapse of the speculative investment driven economy. At that point, it seems to me that conditions were ripe for an international depression, of which we are now seeing the early stages. I lack the wisdom to say that this account is certainly true, but this is the way I try to make the events in my world intelligible to myself.

The solution would be for China to develop a consumer economy, so that the people of China will drive in their EVs to Wal-Mart to buy all those 60" LCD TV sets and microwave ovens that China now produces. 1.3 billion Chinese consumers can certainly pull the world out of depression. Meanwhile the United States should put up trade barriers and begin rebuilding its economy. (Did I just say that? Did I just utter the "P" word?)

Recession Or Depression?

I do not know if we are headed towards a depression but I cannot dismiss the possibility. I do not claim to be a prophet. Indeed since the old Jewish saying says that since the time of the second temple the gift of prophecy was taken from the wise and given to fools, I prefer to not classify myself among fools. So I am going to speak of probabilities rather than certainties. Never-the-less things look grim. The Banks - American Banks - are widely reported to be holding a trillion dollars worth of bad paper, and it could get much worse. If the banks wrote down all of these bad assets, they would have to admit that they are bankrupt.

Unemployment is rising

Consumer spending is falling

There is at least a trillion dollars of excess capacity in the American economy.

The Gross domestic product is down but would be much worse if businesses were not lying in inventory.

The savings rate is up, while housing prices are down, more and more home owners are underwater.

Finally the debt to income ratio is bad.

People are losing jobs at a steady pace. As people lose their ability to pay, more and more Americans are tempted to walk away from their mortgages. As people lose their jobs, more and more will be unable to pay credit card debts.

More and more big name American corporations are virtually bankrupt. More and more business are going under.
Over 40% of stock market values have been wiped out. American investors have lost over two trillion dollars and there is reason to worry about more losses. What do you think?

Will the stimulus package work?

What will be the consequences of the financial situation for the future of American energy?

The Pressurized Water Reactor and the LFTR: Some Comparisons

In 1948 exploration of reactor technology was well underway. Most reactors had cores made of solid materials, for example uranium metal clad in aluminum. A second line of reactor development, the which began with the original chain reactor experiment at Cavendish Laboratory and continued with a reactor experiment at Los Alamos, involved the use of uranium compounds dissolved or suspended in water. The reactor was called the Aqueous Homogeneous Reactor. In 1948 reactors were cooled by air, some other gas, or water. Research was underway involving the use of molten sodium metal as a reactor coolant. Alvin Weinberg had proposed the use of water under pressure as a reactor coolant. This concept had the potential to control the heat produced by the reactor and put it to useful work powering ships, or driving electrical turbines. This technology attracted the attention of the United States Navy, and eventually led to the development of the nuclear-powered submarine. Naval reactor technology also had potential for electrical production, and the Navy set up the first project to demonstrate civilian electrical production at Shippingport, Pennsylvania.

Meanwhile the Air Force, which was also interested in its own reactor technology to power bombers, sponsored aircraft reactor research in Oak Ridge. The original aircraft reactor concept explored by engineers at the K-25 facility in Oak Ridge involved the use of liquid sodium as a coolant. The original K-25 aircraft reactor concept had a very significant safety defect, and in 1947 three K-25 engineers, V.P. Calkins, Kermit Anderson, and Ed Bettis began to explore a radical reactor concept involving the use of hot liquid fluoride salts. This was a natural concept, because in 1947 K-25 was the largest industrial facility using fluoride chemistry. The three engineers researched the possibility of using liquid fluoride salts as a reactor moderator, fuel carrier and reactor coolant. The K-25 research lead to the Molten Salt Reactor concept. When the aircraft reactor project was transferred to ORNL in 1950 and assigned to the brilliant chemist Ray C. Briant, Ed Bettis pitched the Molten Salt Reactor to Briant. Briant and Bettis pitched it to Weinberg, and it was agreed that the defective K-25 sodium-cooled aircraft reactor concept should be scrapped, and the promising liquid-salt reactor concept become the focus of ORNL Aircraft Nuclear Propulsion research.

During the next few years a radically different reactor concept was to emerge in Oak Ridge. Conventional reactors are much-evolved versions of Alvin Weinberg's water-cooled reactor. They feature complex cores which contain a ceramic uranium dioxide clad with zirconium metal. This fuel system prevents the escape of radioactive fission products into the cooling water, but creates considerable difficulties for processing the fuel for fuel recycling and the extraction of fission products. The UO2 fuel is also a very poor heat conductor, and the fuel pellets inside conventional reactors become very hot, so much so, that there is a danger if the reactor cooling system fails that the UO2 fuel could melt at 2800°C and create an unholy mess.

The water-cooled reactor is just that, water cooled. A system of pipes carry the water through the core where it extracts heat from the fuel pellets. Water boils at 212 degrees under atmospheric pressure, but scientists had long ago discovered that if water can be kept under high pressure, its boiling point goes up. Engineers had discovered that power conversion becomes more efficient if water is pressurized and prevented from boiling at 212 degrees F. In order to prevent the water from boiling inside the sort of pressurized reactor that the Navy uses, the reactor is placed inside a massive steel pressure vessel, and water is pressurized in the reactor. The pressurized water is superheated, and because it is under pressure it does not turn to steam inside the reactor. A second type of reactor, the boiling water reactor, operates under a little lower pressure, and pressurized water begins to turn into steam in the upper part of the reactor.

Reactors that are cooled with pressurized water are quite complex and can be quite large and pose a number of problems. The presence of pressurized water leads to the danger of a steam explosion. Pressurized water can also leak from pipes outside the reactor, creating a danger that the reactor might not receive coolant water. Coolant failure can lead to core meltdown as it did at Three Mile Island. Core meltdown can lead to containment breach, either by melting through the steel pressure vessel, or by releasing hydrogen gas which in turn can explode with enough force to rupture the pressure vessel.

Pressurized water reactors and their cousins boiling water reactors can be made safe, but at a significant price in terms of complexity and weight. Light water reactors have control issues. Chain reactions may not be uniform throughout the reactor. Operators may need to employ control rods to prevent excess reactivity in parts of the reactor which can lead to local overheating and core damage. This necessitates an elaborate system of internal sensors inside the reactor along with an equally elaborate instrumentation, designed to provide operators detailed information about core conditions. During the 1970's reactor operators could be swamped with information leading to confusion and operator errors. This happened at during the Three Mile Island accident. Computer systems are now in place to manage the flow of information from inside the reactor, and to assist human operators in managing pressurized water reactors. Recent designs of pressurized water reactors have impressive safety features and can be described as demonstrating revolutionary improvements in safety over earlier generations of water-cooled reactors. They are also very expensive, and still use enriched uranium dioxide fuel that is expensive and difficult to reprocess. Pressurized water reactor technology is stuck with once-through fuel technology and the problem of nuclear waste.

When Ray C. Briant and Ed Bettis approached Alvin Weinberg in 1950 to discuss the Molten Salt Reactor concept, Weinberg was already aware of the shortcomings of his invention, the pressurized water reactor. Weinberg's mentor Eugene Wigner believed that the Aqueous Homogeneous Reactor was a better route to low-cost electrical energy than the Pressurized water reactor, and Weinberg was pushing Aqueous Homogeneous Reactor research at Oak Ridge. Ed Bettis' Molten Salt Reactor had many of the attractive features of the homogeneous reactor without some of its drawbacks, but it was to take Weinberg some time before he realized that the MSR represented the preferred route to the pressurized water reactor alternative.

Both the Aqueous Homogeneous Reactor and the Molten Salt Reactor featured a liquid fuel-coolant mixture. The mixture was pumped into and out of the core where moderation and geometry enabled criticality. Eugene Wigner had been attracted to the Aqueous Homogeneous Reactor because its fuel could be continuously run through chemical processors outside the core. This meant that neutron-eating fission products could be removed, making the neutron economy of the Aqueous Homogeneous Reactor so efficient that it could breed Thorium to U-233 advantageously. ORNL reactor designers were to design an Aqueous Homogeneous Reactor with a thorium-containing blanket surrounding core containing a heavy water with a dissolved uranium compound. Before his death Ray C. Briant suggested to Weinberg that a Molten Salt Reactor with a thorium blanket, similar to that designed for the Aqueous Homogeneous Reactor would have superior performance to the latter reactor. Thus Briant can be considered the father of the Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor, but in many respects the LFTR had many fathers at ORNL.

Compared to the Light Water Reactor the MSR/LFTR had many safety features, the most outstanding of which was its strongly negative temperature coefficient of reactivity. The liquid salt fuel mixture of the LFTR responds to slow and then stop chain reactions as heat within the reactor increases.

The liquid salt in the LFTR core expands as it heats. As it expands there is less liquid salt in the core, carrying with it fissionable fuel. As fissionable fuel leaves the core, the fission reaction rate slows. At maximum core heat, enough fissionable fuel leaves the core to bring the fissionable mass left in the core down below the amount needed to maintain criticality, The chain reaction stops. Core salts retain heat, and heat is also replenished by the radioactive decay of fission products within the core.

What first attracted Ed Bettis and his associates to the Molten Salt Reactor idea was the way it would respond to a pilot's throttle use.

When the pilot demanded more power for his jet engines, heat is drawn out of the reactor core and transferred into the jet engine where it produces jet power. Heat from the LFTR core can also power powers closed-cycle gas turbines in electrical generating systems. As core temperature decreases, core salts shrink, and more salt is in the core, thus increasing the fission reaction rate. The greater the demand for power for a jet engine or a generator the greater the amount of heat generated by the core, and as a consequence the reaction rate within the core increases. The limitation of power output is determined by the heat removal rate, which in turn is based on the limitations of the turbine generating system.

The reaction rates slow down and then stop as heat withdrawal is decreased, or as temperature increases in Molten Salt Reactors--they basically control themselves. Thus while Pressurized Water Reactors require constant operator monitoring and operator input into its control system, MSRs including the LFTR, basically control themselves. The potential instability of the PWR is simply not present in the LFTR.

Compared to PWR, the LFTR has superior peak load reserve and load-following capacities. Since a LFTR's salts are at maximum heat when a LFTR is on standby, the LFTR can produce maximum power as quickly as its turbines can go to full generating speed under load. Thus the LFTR can not only load follow but can serve as peak demand reserve.

In the case of decreased load demand, less heat is drawn from the core, and the fission reaction rate slows. Thus the same feature that gives the LFTR superior safety over the Pressurized Water Reactor also gives it superior flexibility in generating electricity.

Some basic considerations

I don't always lay out my assumptions. I accept the reality of Anthropogenic Global Warming, and have done so since I first heard Jerry Olsen talk about it in the spring of 1971. Jerry was articulate enough to have convinced Alvin Weinberg and just about everyone at ORNL during the 1970's. My father was writing about AGW by the late 1970's and of course you are never going to convince me that my father was a member of a fringe pseudo-scientific cult which the AGW skeptics would suggest.

A great majority of all scientists including climate scientists, are convinced by the evidence for AGW, The credentials of scientists who accept AGW are far more impressive than the credentials of the AGW skeptics. I also find the arguments of climate scientists who accept AGW persuasive, and the evidence for a scientific case against AGW to be weak.

I regard the notion that AGW is a hoax designed to advance a Liberal political agenda to be completely wrongheaded. Chinese scientists operate in a political environment in which state controls far in excess of those attributed to the so called liberal political agenda. They have no motive to want to increase state power beyond those already claimed by the Powerful Chinese Communist party. Yet Chinese scientists accept the reality of AGW, and have recommended that the Chines state integrate AGW as an assumption in areas of state planning, such as future agricultural output.

Chinese climate scientists believe that by 2019 the atmospheric CO2 level will reach between 440 and 429 PPM, and the average temperature in China will rise by 1 degree C. By 2080 chines scientists believe that atmospheric CO2 levels will rise to 721 PPM, without mitigation, with mitigation CO2 levels are still expected to rise to 561 PPM. the Chinese scientists expect 2080 temperature rises by 3.89 degrees C without mitigation and by 3.20 degrees C with mitigation.

What concerns me is the dogmatic certainty of AGW skeptics, that the future projected by the Chinese scientists, as part of Chines agricultural planning must be wrong despite the widespread agreement by climate scientists that it is very probable, and would have serious consequences not contemplated by Chinese agricultural planners.

My goal is to insure that even if the scientists are wrong about AGW, that society would benefit from mitigation efforts, that personal freedom would be enhanced, that the collective wealth would be greatly enhanced, and that the distribution of that wealth would be far more equitable than it is today. As I have said, these goals make me a Liberal, but are not antithetical to a conservative output. If the climate scientists are correct about AGW, my view is that mitigation efforts should be underway in ernest, by 2020, with a goal of transformation electrical production into a post carbon mode by 2020, and at least an 80% reduction of CO2 emissions by 2050. I actually believe that these goals are potentially attainable, provided the Aim High program is adopted. I must add that the Aim High plan is the only plan that would have a reasonable likely hood of complete and successful carbon mitigation by 2050. The Aim High program would also be compatible with my "Liberal" goals,and would contain nothing that reasonable conservatives would find objectionable.

Further by ending American reliance on imported oil, and lowering the price Americans pay for energy, the Aim high program would benefit American businesses. What's there for conservatives not to like?

Thus my assumptions are that the Aim High program would mitigate AGW, but would produce beneficial economic effects even if AGW mitigation were to prove unnecessary. I believe that conservatives out to admit to the possibility that they are wrong about AGW and to to back the AIM High program. The alternative would be that in 2050 Conservatives might discover that they are wrong about AGW, but by 2050 it will be far to late, and conservative will also discover that they and an unprepared society will be up shit creek without a paddle. (Pardon my French)

I believe that the Green program of AGW mitigation through efficiency and renerable energy sources will fail because it is far to expensive and accomplishes far to little. It is also exceptionally illiberal, because it would greatly decrease the amount of wealth producing energy available to society, and increase the cost of that diminished energy, This would create hardships for poor persons and people living on fixed incomes, and would most surly be oppressive to the poorest and most vulnerable members of society. Excuse me but the energy schemes of Amory Lovins and company would oppress the poor and the elderly. Lovins and Joe Romm are reactionaries not progressives. Lovins and Romm basically never take the interests of the poor or the elderly into account, in their energy schemes.

Texas Wind Still More Expensive with CAES than Nuclear

When I presented my cost study of "reliable Texas wind using batteries, several of my critics complained that alternative energy storage systems, for example pump storage or Compressed Air Energy Storage (CAES) . My analysis of the cost of Pumped Storage indicates that the capitol costs were comprable to those of batteries once uncertainties were taken into account.

However, CAES does appear to lower the cost of energy storage, but at the cost of a considerable inefficiency in the use of wind generated electricity, CO2 emissions, and a surprising environmental issue. CAES increases the reliablity of wind generated electricity, but may not greatly increase the value of off peak hours generated electricity to the producer, despite the delivery of more hours of electricity during day time and peak demand hours. Even with its ability to deliver electricity at times when utilities pay for it at optimal rates, CAES systems appear to only bring a modest return to their owners. I will presently argue that CAES could be more profitable without its coupling with wind using an alternative post-carbon energy stratigy.

This assessment is based on "The Economic Impact of CAES on Wind in TX, OK, and NM," by Ridge Energy Storage & Grid Services L.P, for the Texas State Energy Conservation Office. in 2005 .

The Ridge Energy study focused on atwo alternative hypothertical projects invloving the use of CAES thenology coupled to several wind generating facilities in West Texas, Western oklahoma, and New Mexico. These facilities have some of the most reliable wind in the United states, with average capacitiy factors of around .40. In addition, wind generation does not take place symultaniously at all of these facilities, thus coupled together they produce electricity with greater reliability than their average capacity factor might suggest. The use of CAES would enable the ability to guarantee the dispatch of both base electricity, and 16 hour a day week day electricity. The use of CAES would enable wind producers to sell electricity produced at night at day time prices, but with some fairly significant inefficiencies.

A significan amount of heat energy is lost during the air storage of the operation that aas the air decompresses, it comes out of the ground at below 0 C (32 F). Moisture in the decompressed air condensed and freezes. The resulting ice would damage generation turbines, necissitating the heating of the ait by burning natural gas to melt the ice. 40% of the energy converted into electricity in conventional CAES systems comes from burning natural gas. Energy output of CAES systems is .80 of energy inputs. This suggests that there are considerable in efficiencies in the use of wind generated electricity by the wind CAES system, and that 30% of the electrical input is lost to system inefficiencies.

Ridge energy stimatrd that the capital cost of a CAES system would run @$765 per KW, an exceedingly modest sum, but one which should be examined. The capital cost for electricity produced by the Wind cAES system is in fact much higher. Last week I discussed recent wind costs as reported by Bryan Layland, a electrical systems engineer from New Zeeland. Some commenters rejected Leylands cost figures on the wholely irrational grounds that he was a global warming skeptic. Looked for cost figures for North American Wind projects, in order to evaluare Leyland's numbers, and found 4four projects costing between $2200 and $3200 per name plate wind KW. For the sake of simplifying the argument I will stipulate a cost for new West Texas wind of $2250 per name plate KW in 2009. Since the capacity factor of West Texas runs around .40, the adverage output West Texas wind producer can expect to pay $5625 produce KWs of electricity his windmill will average producing. Since only 70% of the electricity entering the CAES facility reaches the consumer, the wind producer must add 30% more capacity to compensate for the energy loss. Thus the price of the wind generated electry entering the CAES facility must compensate the wind producer for something like a $8000 capitol investment for every average KW sold to the CAES facility. When added to the $765 per KW Capital investment in the CAES facility, we get a very ugly picture, of the cost of wind generated electrity. but one which is still less than our battery based system, about which I made some slightly different stipulations, Since the 2008 cost oh nuclear power is somewher between $4000 and $5000 per KW (as opposed to an estimated $8000 to 12,000 figure during the middle of the next decade).

I would next like to turn to what might be considered a suprising consequence of the use of CAES technology, that is a radiation problem. The same problem also exists, largely unrecognized with all gas fired electrical generating systems. The origin of the problem comes from the more or less uniform pressence of U238 and Th-232 isotopes in more or less uniform amoumnts in crustal rocks. Both isotopes are slighltly radioactive, and as they breakdown through alpha partical radiation, they under go nuclear mutations that eventually leads to the production of radsio-active radon gas. Radon present in rocks is known to escape with natural gas, and wiyh other gases, trapped underground, Salt is known to be relatively impermniable to the transportation of radioisotopes. And there is no uranium or thorium in salt domes. Thus air drawn from sali caverns should not posae radiation danger, as long as the salt has not been evaculated to the rock walls of the cavern. However there would be some question of radon pollutionof stored air in natural caverns, or in mines. There is an even more significant radon danger in deep underground aquifers, which have also been proposed for CAES. Greens, of course, will not see the sligest danger from radon escaping through the operation of CASES fascilities even though they would see far less radon escaping from reactors as an extreme and very dangerous environmental hazard. Radiation is not radiation if it comes from "natural" sources in the Green propoganda. Of course green advocates of CAES technology, all of whom are total hypocrites on radiation issues, have totally ignored the radon problem with natural gas and with many proposed CAES systems.

It is possible to recover at least some of the waste hear usually lost to cavern walls in CAES storage. Compressed air can be run through heast exchanges, just like air from super chargers is sometimes run through intercoolers to cool it before it enters an engine. Heat storage systems using rocks, mineral oil, or molten salt would have to be fairly masive, and would add complexity to the CAES system. While they might lesson the amount of heat lost to cavern walls, heat storage systems do not repeal the second law of thermodynamics, and at least 25% of the energy used to compress the air, is still lost in the process. It is not at all clear that the added capital expense of heat capture and release systems would cost less than the cost of the added wind capacity necessitated by CAES inefficiency.

Finally, it ought to be noted that a potential day carbon free power system for producing day time power with CAES without windmills is possible. It seems to have escaped the notice of most CASE advocates that CAES casn be teamed with nuclear power plants in innovative ways. Since it is more economical to keep reactors running at full power all night, suplus electricity produced at night could be used to store compressed air. During the day, compressed air can be used to expand the reactors daytime power output by as much as 40%. The air does not have to be heated with natural gas. Indeed the compressed air can be heated from the reactors waste heat, killing two birds with one stone, and conserving the water used for daytime reactor cooling, and the use of compressed air in cooling the reactor, would creat significant water use savings, allowing reactors to run even during drought conditions.