tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-75976564512054295152024-03-05T05:24:06.095-06:00The Nuclear Green Revolution"Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passion, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence." - John Adams, 'Argument in Defense of the Soldiers in the Boston Massacre Trials,' December 1770Charles Bartonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01125297013064527425noreply@blogger.comBlogger1325125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7597656451205429515.post-80357224159573253352019-10-04T23:04:00.001-05:002019-12-05T18:16:50.194-06:00Searching for Charles Barton (UPDATE 12/5/2019: found)UPDATE 12/5/2019: A long-time friend of Charles passed along his obit. He passed away August 24, 2018. Here is his entry at legacy.com:<br />
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<a href="https://www.legacy.com/obituaries/knoxnews/obituary.aspx?pid=190171959">https://www.legacy.com/obituaries/knoxnews/obituary.aspx?pid=190171959</a><br />
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4 October 2019 post follows:<br />
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This is Engineer-Poet. Charles gave me edit access to Nuclear Green some time ago to allow me to fix his typos. I did this for a while, but not recently.<br />
<br />
A while back, I noticed that Nuclear Green had not been updated in over 2 years. I have mailed my contact address for Charles but not received a reply.<br />
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I have searched for news about him. I found several hits for his name but not anything that I could identify as being about him. I fear that he is incapacitated or dead.<br />
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If anyone has news about Charles, I would appreciate being let in on it. If there is an obituary for him, I will post a link to it here.<br />
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Charles, wherever you are and whatever you are doing... I hope it's good.<br />
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<br />Engineer-Poethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06420685176098522332noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7597656451205429515.post-86555194393517565362016-02-17T07:38:00.000-06:002016-02-17T07:47:04.344-06:00Nuclear Industry Subsidies Part I: Definitions<h3 class="post-title entry-title" itemprop="name" style="background-color: white; color: #0c3019; font-family: georgia, serif;">
<span style="font-size: small;">Update: <i>I am reposting this series on Nuclear Power Industry subsidies in proper order. This reposting will serve as an introduction to a new series on subsidies which will look at the justification of subsidies as well as their motives. The primary focus of these new posts will be on the justification, if any, of nuclear power subsidies. </i></span></h3>
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Any analysis of nuclear industry subsidies should begin with definitions of the terms "Nuclear Industry" and "subsidy." We need to understand what it is we are talking about before we can talk intelligibly.<br />
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The broadest meaning of term "nuclear industry" can only be understood nominally. Both the medical uses of radioactive isotopes, and the manufacture of nuclear weapons are understood as activities of the Nuclear Industry, but they are very different sorts of activities, usually carried on by different industrial organizations. For example, some materials used in nuclear weapon are manufactured in specialized reactors, and <a href="http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf55.html" style="color: #3333ff; text-decoration: none;">medical specific radioisotopes are also manufactured in specialized reactors</a>. At one time the same reactors might have been used for both purposes, but current requirements lead to a separation of medical isotope and nuclear weapons manufacture technology, and those two activities may not be carried on by the same organization.<br />
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Nuclear medicine and nuclear weapons production are regulated by different sets of laws,rules and regulations. Thus, for example, reactors used in the production of medical radioisotopes are required by international regulation to use low enrichment uranium, while military reactors are not required to do so. The handling sale and use of reactor modified actinides used in weapons, is regulated by a different set of rules than those governing the handling, sale and use of fission products.<br />
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Thus statements true about set of economic activities - for example the production, sale and use of medical radioisotopes - may not be true about a different economic activity - for example the manufacture of reactor modified actinides for nuclear weapons use.<br />
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The government pays for the research and development of military reactors, but this is not a subsidy, since the government, through its military arm, intends to use the reactors. Many products developed under the auspices of military or other government programs, cannot be spoken of as subsidized. For example, the jet engine originated from civilian developed technology, but the first aircraft uses occurred in a military context. It would not seem however, that government investments in military jet technology was a subsidy for civilian military jet aircraft related industries.<br />
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<a href="http://www.answers.com/topic/subsidy" style="color: #339999; text-decoration: none;"><span style="color: #3333ff;">A subsidy is defined as</span>:</a><br />
<blockquote>
Monetary assistance granted by a government to a person or group in support of an enterprise regarded as being in the public interest.</blockquote>
Also:<br />
<blockquote>
assistance given by one person or government to another.</blockquote>
Barron's Business Dictionary defines subsidy as<br />
<blockquote>
Payment or other favorable economic stimulus (such as remission of taxation) given by government to certain individuals or groups of economic entities, usually to encourage their continued existence, growth, development, and profitability. In the United States, subsidies are given to the agricultural industry, the very poor, and many other groups.</blockquote>
The Barron's Real Estate Dictionary defines subsidies as<br />
<blockquote>
A transfer of wealth intended to encourage specific behavior considered to be beneficial to the public welfare.</blockquote>
The Columbia Encyclopedia states,<br />
<blockquote>
The term subsidy has had widely varied usage in the 20th cent. Subsidies may be granted to keep prices low, to maintain incomes, or to preserve employment. They are most important as grants to private corporations for performing some public service, such as to shipping companies and airlines for carrying the mail or to railroads for maintaining passenger service. These are often required where a necessary public service, particularly one that might otherwise not be profitable, is granted funds to remain in operation. . . Other commonly subsidized enterprises include agriculture (see agricultural subsidies), business expansion, and housing and regional development. . . . Medical and educational institutions are among the largest recipients of subsidies. . . Subsidies have also been granted by one country to another country to aid it in pursuing a war effort, to gain its goodwill, or to help stabilize its economy.</blockquote>
Thus subsidies are payments in which the payer does not receive goods or services, or payments in kind. Subsidies may be direct, or indirect. For example, government subsidies to farmers, intended to keep them in business even when food sells at a low price, in effect indirectly subsidizes me as a good purchaser.<br />
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In effect everyone is a recipient of indirect subsidies.<br />
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It this follows, that short of scrapping the entire system of government subsidies, singling out individuals, businesses or industries to question their subsidies may punish them, and indeed may punish them unfairly.<br />
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Now if a government gives an individual money or indirect and receives something, arguably of comparable worth in turn, the arrangement may not involve a subsidy. For examples government payments to sailors in the Navy, are salaries, not subsidies.<br />
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In many instances military financed Research and Development, has contributed to private Industry.<br />
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Radio is an example of how government sponsored development can set the stage for flourishing new markets. During World War I the United States government came ro regard radio as an important military tool. <a href="http://earlyradiohistory.us/sec014.htm" style="color: #3333ff; text-decoration: none;">The Government took over control of all aspects of radio, with notable long term results</a>.<br />
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During World War One the military took over control of the entire U.S. radio industry, and in conjunction with the major electrical firms made great strides in radio engineering using vacuum-tubes. In addition, wartime work exposed thousands in military service to the changes which were taking place, especially with respect to vacuum-tube equipment. The <a href="http://earlyradiohistory.us/1919war.htm" style="color: #999999; text-decoration: none;">Vacuum Tubes</a> entry by Major General George O. Squier, in the Signal Corps section of the 1919 edition of <i>War Department Annual Reports</i>, reviewed the advances made in vacuum-tube manufacturing and engineering from 1917 to 1919, with the prediction "That vacuum tubes in various forms and sizes will, within a few years, become widely used in every field of electrical development and application is not to be denied." And shortly after the war ended articles started to appear that showed a comprehensive scientific understanding and explanation of the design and operation of vacuum-tubes, for example L. M. Clement's <a href="http://earlyradiohistory.us/1920vacu.htm" style="color: #999999; text-decoration: none;">The Vacuum Tube as a Detector and Amplifier (extract)</a>, from the April, 1920 issue of <i>QST</i>. H. Winfield Secor's <a href="http://earlyradiohistory.us/1920au.htm" style="color: #999999; text-decoration: none;">The Versatile Audion</a>, which appeared in the February, 1920 <i>Electrical Experimenter</i>, reviewed the advances taking place in thirteen areas of vacuum-tube engineering. In April, 1919 American Telephone & Telegraph, employing vacuum-tube versatility from six of Secor's categories, transmitted speeches and entertainment by phone lines and radio to a Victory Liberty Loan drive, as reported by <a href="http://earlyradiohistory.us/1919vic.htm" style="color: #999999; text-decoration: none;">Speeches Through Radiotelephone Inspire New York Crowds</a>, from the May 31, 1919 <i>Electrical Review</i>. By 1922 vacuum-tubes had been firmly established as a major technological advance, and the <a href="http://earlyradiohistory.us/1922vac.htm" style="color: #999999; text-decoration: none;">Vacuum Tubes</a> chapter of William C. Ballard, Jr.'s 1922 <i>Elements of Radio Telephony</i> reviewed the device and its construction.</blockquote>
<a href="http://earlyradiohistory.us/sec013.htm" style="color: #3333ff; text-decoration: none;">Thomas H. White noted the emergence of radio as entertainment under government auspices</a><span style="color: #3333ff;">,</span><br />
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While radio remained off-limits for the general public during the war, there were occasional hints of what lay ahead. <a href="http://earlyradiohistory.us/1918sld.htm" style="color: #999999; text-decoration: none;">Wireless Music for Wounded Soldiers</a> from the April, 1918 <i>The Wireless Age</i>reviewed a short-range electrostatic induction system that could be used to entertain hospitalized soldiers with music and news. And between the cessation of hostilities in November, 1918, and the end of the civilian radio restrictions in 1919, there were scattered reports of military personnel firing up transmitters in order to broadcast entertainment to the troops -- for example a February 2, 1919 "Moonlight Witches Dance" transmitted from off the coast of San Diego, California by the battleship Marblehead, reported in<a href="http://earlyradiohistory.us/1919mwd.htm" style="color: #999999; text-decoration: none;">Music by Wireless</a>, in the March, 1919 issue of <i>Telephone Engineer</i>. In addition, the May 7, 1919 <i>Dallas Morning News</i>reported that <i>U.S.S. George Washington</i>, during its transatlantic crossing, had employed its radio transmitter to provide nightly a<a href="http://earlyradiohistory.us/1919entr.htm" style="color: #999999; text-decoration: none;">Concert by Wireless for Vessels at Sea</a>.</blockquote>
After the war, government controls of radio were lifted, and commercial broadcasting, boosted by war time government financed Research and development took off with astonishing speed. By some definitions, the government investment in radio R&D could be considered a subsidy to the commercial radio industry.<br />
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I have already noted the role that government subsidies played in the development of Jet Aircraft. It should be noted the extent to which the military development of jet aircraft lead to the emergence and growth of the modern commercial passenger Jet aircraft industry. <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_707" style="color: #3333ff; text-decoration: none;">Boeing designed the KC-135 aircraft in response to a military need for fast air tankers</a>, to refuel jet bombers in the air. The KC-135 was powered by the J57 turbojet, first designed for use by B-52 bombers. Although designed for military use, Boeing designed the KC-135 to be wide enough for 6 passenger to a row seating, a feature which Boeing engineers included for commercial rather than military purposes.<br />
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The design Boeing 707, the progenitor of the modern Commercial Passenger Jet Industry was derived from the KC-135. Thus it could be argued that the modern passenger jet industry was based on government subsidized research and development programs.<br />
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The development of the 707 was not the first time the United States government aided a transportation related industry. The government dredged harbors and navigation channels during the 19th century and continues to do so, thus subsidizing the the shipping industry. During the 19th century the government subsidized railroads by land grants, and though mail shipment contracts. During the early 20th century, airmail shipment contracts were given to early air lines under very generous terms.<br />
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Government subsidies have also played an important role in energy related industries. The domestic oil and gas industry was granted three tax code preferences, or subsidies: (1) expensing of intangible drilling costs (IDCs) and dry hole costs, introduced in 1916;<br />
(2) the percentage depletion allowance, first enacted in 1926 (coal was added in 1932);<br />
(3) capital gains treatment of the sale of oil and gas properties.<br />
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Oil depletion allowances ammount to a huge government subsidy of the oil and gas business. Robert Bryce described the operation of oil depletion:<br />
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An oilman drills a well that costs $100,000. He finds a reservoir containing $10,000,000 worth of oil. The well produces $1 million worth of oil per year for ten years. In the very first year, thanks to the depletion allowance, the oilman could deduct 27.5 per cent, or $275,000, of that $1 million in income from his taxable income. Thus, in just one year, he's deducted nearly three times his initial investment. But the depletion allowance continues to pay off. For each of the next nine years, he gets to continue taking the $275,000 depletion deduction. By the end of the tenth year, the oilman has deducted $2.75 million from his taxable income, even though his initial investment was only $100,000.</blockquote>
President John Kennedy was fighting to repeal the oil depletion allowance at the time of his death, and a Democratic attempt to repeal it was recently killed in the Senate.<br />
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Dot.com billionairs are the oilmen of the 21st century, and they seek tax advantages too. <a href="http://www.nashvillescene.com/nashville/the-messy-truth-behind-amazons-tennessee-tax-tradeoff/Content?oid=2450389" style="color: #3333ff; text-decoration: none;">Nashville Scene tels us</a><span style="color: #3333ff;">,</span><br />
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Amazon, as you may have heard, is sitting on a massive tax-abatement package and other incentives that could ultimately cost Tennessee more than $100 million in revenue over the next decade. In exchange, the company is offering to create about 1,200 full-time jobs at two distribution facilities in or near Chattanooga.</blockquote>
Of course Tennesseans who shop from Amazon benefit too, by avoiding taxes on locally bought goods.<br />
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<span style="color: #3333ff;">S</span><a href="http://www.columbiatribune.com/news/2011/apr/13/tennessee-is-no-model-for-missouri/" style="color: #3333ff; text-decoration: none;">ales Tax is hardly the only local and state tax that Tennessee forgoes in order to attract industry according to the Columbia Daily Tribune</a>:<br />
<blockquote>
Tennessee has given generous incentives to manufacturers — the usual free real estate, property tax abatements, infrastructure improvements and training for workers. In addition, the state has included the unusual and highly questionable behind-closed-doors private letter rulings to exempt new industries from collecting Tennessee sales tax or paying other taxes that long-established businesses pay.</blockquote>
If Dot-com billionaires are the new Texas Oil men, the renewables business is the new Texas oil business. Glenn Schleede has made important points about wind energy subsidies over the last decade, and the public should be listening to what he says.<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #3333ff;"> </span><a href="http://www.windcows.com/files/Glen_Schleede-Facing_up_to_the_true_costs_of_wind_energy.pdf" style="color: #999999; text-decoration: none;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #3333ff;">Mr Schleede has repeatedly argued that</span></a>:<br />
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<b>The true cost of electricity from wind energy is much higher than wind advocates admit. </b>Wind energy advocates like to ignore key elements of the true cost of electricity from wind, including:<br />
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*<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>The cost of tax breaks and subsidies which, as indicated above, shift tax burden and costs from “wind farm” owners to ordinary taxpayers and electric customers.</div>
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*<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>The cost of providing backup power to balance the intermittent and volatile output from wind turbines.</div>
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• The full, true cost of transmitting electricity from “wind farms” to electric customers. “Wind farms” are highly inefficient users of transmission capacity. Capacity must be available to accommodate the total rated output but, because the output is intermittent and volatile, that transmission capacity is used only part time. The wind industry seeks to avoid these costs by shifting them to electric customers.<br />
* The extra burden on grid management.</div>
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In response to a report on <a href="http://www.capewind.org/downloads/Final%20Cape%20Wind%20Report%20%202-8-2010.pdf" style="color: #999999; text-decoration: none;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #3333ff;">the Cape Wind project prepared by the Charles River Association</span></a>, Schleede disagreed with the claims,<br />
<blockquote>
<b>Adding Cape Wind would lead to a reduction in the wholesale cost of power averaging $185 million annually over the 2013-2037 time period, resulting in an aggregate savings of $4.6 billion over 25 years.<br /><br />With Cape Wind in service, over the 2013-2037 time period, the price of power in the New England wholesale market would be $1.22/MWh lower on average.</b></blockquote>
<a href="http://www.masterresource.org/2010/02/will-cape-wind-save-billions-on-electricity-bills-glenn-schleede-responds/#more-7417" style="color: #999999; text-decoration: none;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #3333ff;">Schleede argues in a letter to the Editor of the Cape Cod Times posted yesterday on MasterResources</span></a><br />
<blockquote>
Frankly, the numbers in the slick 9-page “consultant” study released by the developer of the Cape Wind project of $4.6 billion in savings over 25 years just don’t add up ,</blockquote>
Schleede notes,<br />
<blockquote>
The true cost of electricity from wind – particularly offshore wind — is huge. No one who is paying attention expects the price that Cape Wind charges for its electricity to be cheap. In fact, over 25 years, the wholesale cost to New England utilities for electricity from Cape Wind apparently will be well over $5.75 billion and probably much more.<br />
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The arithmetic is simple: The CRA “study” (table 1, page 6), shows that the developer expects to produce about 1,150,000,000 kilowatt-hours (kWh) of electricity per year. If utilities are forced to pay even $0.20 per kWh, the utilities cost over 25 years would be $5.75 billion. [1] The cost would be $6.9 billion if utilities have to pay the $0.24 per kWh that NatGrid apparently agreed to pay for electricity from the planned Rhode Island offshore “wind farm.”<br />
Does anyone in New England seriously expect that the WHOLESALE price of non-Cape Wind electricity in New England will average $0.20 or $0.24 per kWh over the next 25 years (up from about $0.08 per kWh in 2008.</blockquote>
Schleede also noted that the CRA study was flawed by a choice to use old rather than newer data, a doubtful assumption that a Federal tax of $30 to $60 per ton charge on carbon emissions. Finally the CRA study failed to account for many hidden costs of the Cape Cod wind project, including the cost of building transmission lines, for the Cape Cod Wind project, and the costs of various Federal and State Tax breaks, which ammounts to a huge subsidy for the Cape Code wind project. These Breaks include<br />
<blockquote>
a. Production tax credit (PTC). The Cape Wind project owners would be eligible to receive a federal tax credit, currently $0.021 per kWh for electricity produced during the first 10 years of the project life. Using the production apparently expected by Cape Wind (1,150,000,000 per year) a $0.021 per kWh credit (which is adjustable for inflation), would permit the owners to avoid federal corporate income taxes of $24,150,000 per year or $241,500,000 over 10 years.<br />
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The recent federal “stimulus” legislation– The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009–gives “wind farm” developers the option of selecting an investment tax credit in lieu of the PTC or electing to receive from the US Treasury a cash grant equal to 30% of eligible capital costs! Again, ordinary taxpayers pick up the tab.<br />
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b. Accelerated depreciation. “Wind farm” owners are also permitted by the IRS to use the lucrative “5-year double declining balance accelerated depreciation” (5-yr; 200%DB) to recover the capital costs from their otherwise taxable income. Depreciation deductions would permit the owners to avoid $490 million in federal corporate income taxes – in addition to the Production Tax Credit – again shifting the tax burden to ordinary taxpayers.<br />
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c. Additional [state] tax break</blockquote>
Thus the Cape Cod Wind Project is assured of at least a $730 million dollar subsidy from the Federal government, half of its total costs. In addition,<br />
<blockquote>
a study by the Beacon Hill Institute at Suffolk University</blockquote>
fond<br />
<blockquote>
Massachusetts green credits, totaling $1.7 billion over the entire 25-year lifespan [projected Cape Wind generator lifespan], would be worth $487 million.</blockquote>
Despite this huge subsidy, <a href="http://www.bostonherald.com/business/general/view/20100107cape_winds_big_secret_power_will_cost_millions_extra/srvc=home&position=also" style="color: #999999; text-decoration: none;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #3333ff;">Jay Fitzgerald reported to Boston Harold readers</span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #3333ff;">,</span><br />
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National Grid customers will experience sticker shock after the giant utility negotiates a long-term electric contract with Cape Wind developers, energy experts warn.<br />
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Business groups worry that a National Grid contract with Cape Wind, which needs a long-term deal to secure funds to build a giant wind farm off Cape Cod, could add tens of millions of dollars per year to electric bills.<br />
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They point to a recent price agreement between National Grid and a Rhode Island wind-farm developer as cause for alarm.<br />
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The Rhode Island deal calls for National Grid to pay an eye-popping 24 cents per kilowatt hour for electricity from Deepwater Wind’s proposed wind farm off Block Island for 20 years. That’s three times higher than the current price of natural-gas generated electricty – and the Rhode Island deal includes a 3.5 percent annual price increase over the life of the contract.<br />
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Rhode Island officials have estimated the small Deepwater contract will add about $1.35 per month in the first year to an average residental customer’s bill – and it will add far more to the bills of big energy-using companies.<br />
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Analysts say a Cape Wind contract could come in at about 15 cents per kilowatt hour – about twice as high as current prices for natural-gas generated electricity.<br />
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“It’s still double the price – and the ratepayers will be picking up the tab for it for 20 years,” said Robert Rio, a senior vice president at Associated Industries of Massachusetts.<br />
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One source, who supports the Cape Wind project, said officials are hoping National Grid can negotiate a price at about 12 to 14 cents per kilowatt hour in the first year – but that’s still far above today’s 6 to 8 cents for natural-gas generated electricity.<br />
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Dennis Duffy, a vice president at Cape Wind, cautioned that the price of natural gas is volatile and was much higher only a few years ago, before the global recession dramatically reduced energy prices.<br />
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Cape Wind stands by its assertion that it will eventually save customers an average $25 million a year, when the long-term advantage of free wind starts to exert competitive pressure on other power generators, Duffy said.<br />
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The $1 billion-plus price of building and installing Cape Wind’s 130 giant turbines on Nantucket Sound will have to be paid for, he said. But the long-term price and environmental benefits of wind farms will a huge plus, he said.<br />
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Peter Beutel, an analyst with Cameron Hanover, said he agrees wind farms are “worthwhile in the long run” for energy markets.<br />
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“But can I justify (wind energy) financially today? No I can’t,” he said.</blockquote>
The hoped for 12 to 14 cents per kWh for heavily subsidized Cape Wind electricity must be contrasted with<a href="http://www.emagazine.com/view/?2177" style="color: #999999; text-decoration: none;"> a statement which the American Wind Energy Association made in an attack on Schleede</a>,<br />
<blockquote>
“The cost of electricity from new wind plants is competitive with the cost of new conventional power plants, when the federal wind energy production tax credit is taken into account,”</blockquote>
This then is a context in which the topic of nuclear subsidies can be properly discussed.<br />
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In the second part of this discussion I will discuss the Analysis of nuclear subsidies made by Doug Koplow in "<a href="http://www.blogger.com/www.ucsusa.org/nuclear_power/nuclear_power.../nuclear-power-subsidies-report.html" style="color: #3333ff; text-decoration: none;">Nuclear Power: Still not viable without subsidies</a>."</div>
Charles Bartonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01125297013064527425noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7597656451205429515.post-42959497433075884462016-02-17T07:34:00.002-06:002016-02-17T07:34:56.859-06:00Nuclear Industry Subsidies Part II: The Mining Sector<h3 class="post-title entry-title" itemprop="name" style="background-color: white; color: #0c3019; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 22.4px;">
<span style="color: #30230c; font-size: 16px;">Doug Koplow, in a</span><span style="color: #30230c; font-size: 16px;"> </span><a href="http://www.ucsusa.org/assets/documents/nuclear_power/nuclear_subsidies_report.pdf" style="color: #3333ff; font-size: 16px; text-decoration: none;">Union of Concerned Scientists report titled, Nuclear Power: Still not viable without subsidies</a><span style="color: #3333ff; font-size: 16px;">,</span><span style="color: #30230c; font-size: 16px;">" has offered us an attempt to assess subsidies offered by the Government to the Nuclear Industry. Koplow charges that one form of government subsidy has to do with Uranium mining,</span></h3>
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The mining and milling stages have historically been environmentally damaging, and available data (Table 15, p. 61) indicate the taxpayer cost to address these issues has rivaled the market value of the minerals extracted.</blockquote>
Yet the sale price of Uranium made fuel an almost insignificant part of nuclear power costs. <a href="http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf02.html" style="color: #3333ff; text-decoration: none;">The World Nuclear Association notes,</a><blockquote>
Fuel costs are one area of steadily increasing efficiency and cost reduction. For instance, in Spain the nuclear electricity cost was reduced by 29% over 1995-2001. This involved boosting enrichment levels and burn-up to achieve 40% fuel cost reduction. Prospectively, a further 8% increase in burn-up will give another 5% reduction in fuel cost.<br /><br />Uranium has the advantage of being a highly concentrated source of energy which is easily and cheaply transportable. The quantities needed are very much less than for coal or oil. One kilogram of natural uranium will yield about 20,000 times as much energy as the same amount of coal. It is therefore intrinsically a very portable and tradeable commodity.</blockquote>
The WNA argues that increases in nuclear guel costs has little effect on the cost of nuclear produced electricity.<br /><img alt="The impact of fuel costs on electricity generation costs" src="http://www.world-nuclear.org/uploadedImages/org/info/finfuelcost.png" title="The impact of fuel costs on electricity generation costs" /><br />The WNA reports:<blockquote>
Doubling the uranium price (say from $25 to $50 per lb U3O8) takes the fuel cost up from 0.50 to 0.62 US cents per kWh, an increase of one quarter, and the expected cost of generation of the best US plants from 1.3 US cents per kWh to 1.42 cents per kWh (an increase of almost 10%). So while there is some impact, it is comparatively minor, especially by comparison with the impact of gas prices on the economics of gas generating plants. In these, 90% of the marginal costs can be fuel. Only if uranium prices rise to above $100 per lb U3O8 ($260 /kgU) and stay there for a prolonged period (which seems very unlikely) will the impact on nuclear generating costs be considerable.<br /><br />Nevertheless, for nuclear power plants operating in competitive power markets where it is impossible to pass on any fuel price increases (ie the utility is a price-taker), higher uranium prices will cut corporate profitability. Yet fuel costs have been relatively stable over time – the rise in the world uranium price between 2003 and 2007 added to generation costs, but conversion, enrichment and fuel fabrication costs did not followed the same trend.<br /><br />For prospective new nuclear plants, the fuel element is even less significant (see below). The typical front end nuclear fuel cost is typically only 15-20% of the total, as opposed to 30-40% for operating nuclear plants.</blockquote>
Kaplow claims that the Civilian Nuclear power industry is subsidized by government tax policies that benefit all mines.<blockquote>
Subsidies to uranium mining and milling come through three main routes. First, special percentage-depletion allowances for uranium allow highly favorable tax treatment for this mineral. Second,“hardrock” mining on public lands, including uranium mining, is governed by the arcane and archaic Mining Law of 1872. This law, which has withstood numerous attempts at modernization, enables extraction of hardrock minerals with very low payments and no royalties, and it includes patenting provisions that allow public land to be privatized for only a few dollars per acre. Third, there are bonding requirements for post-mining restoration, but they are too modest, resulting in significant residual damage at uranium mines—a public health and safety obligation that falls to the taxpayer. The government has also historically sought to main- tain a strategic stockpile of uranium, though the impacts of this effort on the industry have varied over time—sometimes reducing costs to users, and other times restricting cheaper supply and driving up prices (PNL 1978: 118–126).</blockquote>
But note that these government policies are not intended to subsidize the Civilian nuclear power industry directly.<br /><br />Terms like Uranium mine or uranium minor do not give us enough information to determine whether the mine operator should be classified as part of the Civilian Nuclear power industry. So who owns the Uranium mines. I noticed that two American uranium mines were owned by <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cameco" style="color: #3333ff; text-decoration: none;" title="Cameco">Cameco </a>, which also owns uranium mines in Canada and Kazakhstan. A glance at the Wikipedia reveals that Cameco stands for Canadian Mining and Energy Corporation. The Cameco web page reveals that Cameco would definitely belong in the Canadian Nuclear industry,<blockquote>
Refining & Conversion<br /><br />Cameco is a major supplier of uranium processing services required to produce fuel for the generation of clean electricity.<br /><br />Cameco's Port Hope conversion facility is one of only four commercial uranium hexafluoride (UF6) production plants in the western world. UF6 is exported to international customers, to be enriched for use in light water nuclear reactors. The Port Hope facility is also the world's only commercial supplier of natural uranium dioxide (UO2) conversion services needed to produce fuel for Candu nuclear reactors. Both processes receive refined uranium (UO3) feed from Cameco's uranium refinery located in Blind River, Ontario.<br /><br />Cameco also has access to additional UF6 capacity through a toll processing agreement with the Springfields Fuels Limited plant located in Lancashire, UK.<br />Fuel Manufacturing<br /><br />Cameco operates a fuel manufacturing facility in Port Hope, Ontario and a metal fabrication facility in Cobourg, Ontario. The company manufactures and sells the fuel bundles used in Candu reactors, serving nuclear utilities in Canada. The company also makes reactor components and provides nuclear fuel and consulting services to Candu operators around the world.<br />Power Generation<br /><br />Cameco produces nuclear electricity through our 31.6% share of the four Bruce B reactors at the Bruce Power nuclear power generating site, North America's largest nuclear generating station, located in Ontario, Canada.</blockquote>
Thus Cameco is a part of the Canadian Civilian Nuclear power Industry. Camieco owns about half of the Uranium currently mined in the United States of America. But the American uranium mining industry is small compared to the Uranium mining Industries of Canada, Australia, and several other countries. Thus the tax subsidy policies of the United States Government has little effect on the cost of uranium ore. However, in the past this might have been different.<br /><br />During World War II most of the Uranium used by the Manhattan Project came from Canada or the Belgium colony of the Congo. After World Wat II, the United States Government sought to develop domestic uranium supplies, for national security reasons. There is no doubt that during the 1940's and 1950's the United States Government heavily subsidized exploration for uranium as well as domestic uranium mining. <a href="http://blog.modernmechanix.com/2007/03/29/49-uranium-rush/" style="color: #3333ff; text-decoration: none;">The February 1949 issue of Modern Mechanix reported</a><span style="color: #3333ff;">,</span><blockquote>
the Atomic Energy Commission desires desperately to uncover any new sources of worthwhile ore and the commission has announced that a $10,000 prize or bonus will be paid for the delivery of 20 tons of ore or concentrates that assay 20 percent or more in uranium oxide, provided that the material comes from a new, previously unworked deposit. In addition the commission will pay for the ore at the ordinary price. The offer applies to any discoveries inside the United States, its territories, possessions and the Canal Zone. . . .<br /><br />The guaranteed minimum AEC price for uranium ores is at the rate of $3.50 per pound of uranium oxide that is recoverable from the ore, less refining costs, plus allowances for other valuable minerals that may be contained in the ore. Carnotite ores are priced on a different schedule at rates that vary from 30 cents to $1.50 per pound of contained uranium oxide, plus certain bonuses, plus allowances for other valuable constituents. Carnotite purchases are made in minimum lots of 10 tons. Ores that assay less than 0.10 percent uranium oxide or that contain excessive quantities of lime are not purchased.</blockquote>
<br /><a href="http://national-radiation-instrument-catalog.com/new_page_14.htm" style="color: #3333ff; text-decoration: none;">During the Middle 1950's the United States Atomic Energy Comission (AEC) paid out over $2,000,000 for new uranium discoveries</a><span style="color: #3333ff;"> </span>with some prospectors reportedly making $150,000 a month. For example uranium deposits were discovered <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2007/06/24/us-usa-uranium-rush-idUSN2220665420070624" style="color: #009900; text-decoration: none;">near Moab, Utah</a><blockquote>
in 1952 by Texan prospector Charles Steen, who went on to make millions of dollars . . .</blockquote>
The AEC financed uranium rush was not intended to subsidize the domestic nuclear power industry however, rather<blockquote>
large uranium ore deposits were first tapped for the voracious Cold War nuclear weapons program in the early 1950s, . . .</blockquote>
The AEC purchased uranium to go into nuclear bombs, nuclear warheads, and reactors meant to power submarines, not domestic power reactors. Thus past domestic uranium subsidies were intended to produce uranium for military use, and not to subsidize the Civilian Nuclear power industry. The subsidies did not in fact produce a flourishing domestic uranium mining industry, and indeed once the military demand for uranium slowed, the domestic Uranium mining industry withered on the vine, because American produced uranium was more expensive than military surplus uranium, much of it coming from Russia, that was offered to civilian power reactors bythe United States Government. The intent of this program was to dispose of unwanted Russian weapons grade U-235 which the United States government feared would fall into evil hands and then used by terrorists and third rate failed states, to attack more peaceful countries.<br /><br />Paradoxically if domestic uranium mining is to be counted as part of what is included in the American domestic nuclear industry. the sale of low cost Russian U-235 to the American Civilian Nuclear Industry has weakened the mining sector of that industry. But if the United States government had stockpiled Russian uranium which it purchased to keep it away from evil hands, the domestic uranium mining industry would not have profited nearly as much as foreign uranium mines, that do not receive receive U.S. Government subsidies. The price of uranium would have risen, but this would have little effect on the cost of producing nuclear power in the United States as we have seen.<br /><br />Thus past large U.S. Government uranium mining subsidy policy was related to national security concerns, and failed on a long term bases to offer positive economic benefits to the domestic uranium mining, reactor manufacture and nuclear power production segments of the domestic nuclear power industry. Thus the so called "legacy" uranium mining subsidies would have been paid whether on not there was a domestic nuclear power industry, and much of it was paid before the inception of the civilian nuclear power industry.<br /><br />The current subsidy to the domestic uranium mining industry large enough to effect its fate. Koplow acknowledges,<blockquote>
An estimate by the Texas comptroller (2008) pegged uranium’s share of this provi- sion at an insignificant $0.5 million for 2006, and that for coal at less than $30 million. In contrast, the Joint Committee on Taxation estimated total subsidies from percentage depletion flowing to fuels other than oil and gas to average $160 million per year between 2008 and 2012 (JCT 2008: 62). This figure, which applies to coal and uranium, is more than five times the Texas comptroller’s estimate.</blockquote>
Kaplow acknowledges the weakness of this data,<blockquote>
Three factors call both of these estimates into question.</blockquote>
And then plows ahead to claim on the basis of a guess that,<blockquote>
the subsidy value of percentage-depletion allowances for uranium is about $25 million per year.</blockquote>
Nor does Kaplow acknowledge the subsidies to the Oil, natural gas, coal, wind, solar thermal and photovoltaic industries.<br /><br />Kaplow notes<blockquote>
between 1994 and 2007 the share of domestic uranium purchased by the civilian sector dropped from more than 20 per- cent to less than 8 percent . . .</blockquote>
Then he observes,<blockquote>
Surging uranium prices in the past few years have greatly increased interest in uranium mining throughout the West . . .</blockquote>
But the few U.S based active Uranium mines produce only a tiny amount of the Uranium produced by the United States nuclear power industry, and half of the uranium produced comes from Canadian owned mines.<br /><br />Kaplow talks about legacy costs, for example claiming<blockquote>
Uranium-tailing remediation costs approach the value of ore. . . . The cost per pound of U3O8 produced, even using values only through 1999 (scaled to 2007 dollars), exceeded the average value of uranium during the period tracked by the EIA prior to the commodity price spikes that began in 2006. Even with surging prices included, socialized remediation costs were still more than 80 percent of the value of the ore produced during the period. Assuming full remediation costs, including all Title I sites, Title II sites, and unfunded liabilities associated with uranium mine and enrichment facilities, the degree of subsidy to upstream processes would grow even more substantially.</blockquote>
But most of those tailings were produced by the mining of uranium for military purposes. A small percentage of those tailings can be legitimately be assigned to to the nuclear power industry. Yet Kaplow appears to believe that every penny payed by the government for uranium mine site reclamation is a subsidy to the domestic nuclear power industry.<blockquote>
To cover the cost of proper mine reclamation, it is reasonable to assume that the price per pound of U3O8 would need to have roughly doubled. Based on data from the World Nuclear Association (WNA 2009b) on the contribution of raw uranium prices to the delivered price of nuclear power, the underpricing of uranium has generated a subsidy to nuclear power of 0.13 to 0.32 ¢/kWh of resultant nuclear electricity produced. It is striking that this range exceeds what the industry currently pays the federal government to take full responsibility for its nuclear waste from reactors.</blockquote>
Is government cleanup of domestic uranium mines that was on federal own lands, and were mined because the government was purchasing uranium for military purposes, really a subsidy? Or is the government taking care of a responsibility which was its all along. Kaplow argues that government policy should have included bonding of uranium mines for the environmental consequences of its mining, but the government through its various arms was the principal consumer of uranium during the uranium rush days, and it made the rules easy so that uranium would be easy to obtain. Thus the uranium tailings were the consequence of government desires to lower military costs, not to benefit a civilian nuclear power industry. Thus the tailings clean up responsibilities can be largely assigned to the United States government, and thus is not a legacy subsidy for the nuclear power industry.<br /><br />In the nest part of this review, I will look more carefully at <a href="http://www.ucsusa.org/assets/documents/nuclear_power/nuclear_subsidies_report.pdf" style="color: #3333ff; text-decoration: none;">Kaplow's claims about the complex relationship between United States national security interests and the civilian nuclear power industry</a><span style="color: #3333ff;">.</span></div>
Charles Bartonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01125297013064527425noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7597656451205429515.post-52142303034754563612016-02-17T07:31:00.002-06:002016-02-17T07:31:19.443-06:00Nuclear Industry Subsidies Part III: The Military Connection<div class="date-posts" style="background-color: white; color: #30230c; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 16px;">
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<span style="color: #30230c; font-size: 16px;">This is the Part III of my review of</span><span style="color: #30230c; font-size: 16px;"> </span><span style="color: #30230c; font-size: 16px;">Doug Koplow,</span><span style="color: #30230c; font-size: 16px;"> </span><a href="http://www.ucsusa.org/assets/documents/nuclear_power/nuclear_subsidies_report.pdf" style="color: #3333ff; font-size: 16px; text-decoration: none;">Union of Concerned Scientists report titled, Nuclear Power: Still not viable without subsidies</a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #3333ff; font-size: 16px;">. </span><span style="color: #30230c; font-size: 16px;">The</span><a href="http://nucleargreen.blogspot.com/2011/06/nuclear-industry-subsidies-definitions.html" style="color: #999999; font-size: 16px; text-decoration: none;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #009900;">Part I</span></a><span style="color: #30230c; font-size: 16px;"> </span><span style="color: #30230c; font-size: 16px;">offered some definition of subsidies, and noted that very large government subsidies to the renewable power industry had not made renewable generated electricity cheap. Part I noted that the definitions of subsidy and nuclear industry needed to be determined in any valid study of subsidies, and questioned whether Koplow had done so.</span><span style="color: #30230c; font-size: 16px;"> </span><a href="http://nucleargreen.blogspot.com/2011/06/nuclear-industry-subsidies-part-i.html" style="color: #999999; font-size: 16px; text-decoration: none;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #3333ff;">Part II</span></a><span style="color: #30230c; font-size: 16px;"> </span><span style="color: #30230c; font-size: 16px;">looked at Koplow's claims about subsidies to the uranium mining and determined that these subsidies were largely intended to support military uses of uranium, were typical of the energy and mining industry, had little effect on the cost of nuclear generated electricity, and had offered little long term benefit to the either the American uranium mining industry or to the American civilian nuclear power industry as a whole. At the end of Part II. I promised to look carefully at Koplow's claims concerning the relationship between military nuclear weapons programs, and the civilian nuclear industry.</span></h3>
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Although Doug Koplow frequently makes many factual and logical errors in his report "Nuclear Power: Still not viable without subsidises," he is sometimes on the right track. He correctly acknowledges military involvement with the United States Nuclear program as creating problems for the Civilian Nuclear power industry. Koplow quotes<br /><blockquote>
Sharon Squassoni, director of the Proliferation Prevention Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, the “dual-use [civilian and military] nature of nuclear technology is unavoidable. For the five nuclear-weapons states, commercial nuclear power was a spinoff from weapons programs; for later proliferates, the civilian sector has served as a convenient avenue and cover for weapons programs” (Squassoni 2009a). By artificially accelerating the expansion of civilian programs, subsidies to nuclear technology and fuel-cycle services worldwide exacerbate the already challenging problems of weapons proliferation. To date, the negative externality of proliferation has not been reflected in the economics of civilian reactors.</blockquote>
In fact there have been several attempts to serve military interests with ostensibly civilian oriented nuclear R&D programs. In other instances scientists diverted military programs to civilian purposes. The ORNL report,<a href="http://info.ornl.gov/sites/publications/Files/Pub20808.pdf" style="color: #999999; text-decoration: none;">AN ACCOUNT OF OAK RIDGE NATIONAL LABORATORY’S THIRTEEN NUCLEAR REACTORS</a>, by Murray W. Rosenthal demonstrates examples of both tedencies at ORNL. For example the ORNL gas cooled reactor was an attempted replication of the British dual purpose Magnox reactors.<blockquote>
The British wanted to produce plutonium for bombs and simultaneously generate nuclear power, and the 50 MW(e) Calder Hall power plants that they built used dual-purpose reactors that could do both. The British did not yet have enriched uranium and had no domestic source of helium, so the Calder Hall reactors were restricted to natural uranium and used carbon dioxide as the coolant. The metal fuel was clad in a magnesium alloy called Magnox, and from that they came to be called Magnox reactors. The Calder Hall reactors were the first to supply commercial amounts of power to a utility grid.<a href="http://www.ornl.gov/info/ornlreview/rev25-34/ORO-356.jpg" style="color: #999999; text-decoration: none;"><img alt="" border="0" src="http://www.ornl.gov/info/ornlreview/rev25-34/ORO-356.jpg" style="border-width: 0px; cursor: pointer; float: left; height: 194px; margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; width: 259px;" /></a><br /><br />The dual-purpose Magnox reactors were followed in the United Kingdom by larger gas-cooled power reactors. They were still cooled with carbon dioxide but used low-enriched uranium in stainless-steel-clad UO2 fuel elements that enabled higher temperatures and thus higher thermal efficiency.</blockquote>
The British attempt to kill two birds with one stone was much admired by some members of the United States Congress who probably thought the British approach would save money. In fact, the Magnox reactors produced plutonium of an inferior quality. British and American weapons testing involving the use of Magnox plutonium's, proved so disappointing that work on the Oak Ridge gas cooled reactor was terminated before the reactor could be tested. This was unfortunate because the gas cooled reactor was probably safer than conventional water cooled reactors.<div>
<br />The ORNL Aircraft Reactor Experiment was an example of the diversion of money from a purely military program to civilian oriented scientific use. The idea was to design a reactor to power large military aircraft - bombers. The reactor had to be light and compact, but it also had to produce a lot of power. Oak Ridge engineers came up with a novel idea, a high temperature salt cooled reactor, with the uranium fuel dissolved in the liquid salt. None of the scientists and engineers involved in the project believed that the ARE would serve a military purpose.</div>
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The ORNL Thirteen Reactor Report states,<blockquote>
The Air Force was pleased with the performance of the ARE and brought Pratt and Whitney Aircraft Company aboard to develop the indirect cycle power plant. ORNL began the design of a compact 60 MW reactor. And in spite of growing skepticism about success and the recognition that missiles might substitute for bombers, industrial and political support kept the national program going. But it was killed in March 1961 soon after John Kennedy took office.<br /><br />Thus ORNL’s ANP program came to an end, but in its 12-year run, it greatly expanded knowledge of the chemistry and technology of molten salts and made advances in materials, shield design, and other areas that enlarged the Laboratory’s ability to undertake new projects.</blockquote>
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So basically ORNL Director Alvin Weinberg tricked the United States Air Force into developing new civilian nuclear technology.</div>
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The Shippingport Reactor was an apparently successful dual purpose nuclear program, but one which was to have a serious long term consequences for the United States nuclear industry. The design of the Shippingport reactor emerged from the design of the of a reactor intended to power air craft carriers. Early in the Eisenhower the Navy was not yet ready to build nuclear carriers, so when President Eisenhower proposed the Atoms for Peace Program Hyman Rickover offered to build an experimental nuclear power plant based on the Navy carrier reactor design, but with low enriched fuel, rather than the highly enriched fuel. The beauty of the Rickover plan is that the Navy got a reactor it wanted to test for nothing while seemingly operating the test reactor as a peaceful atomic project.</div>
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While the Shippingport project probably proved useful to the Navy, it may have had a negative impact on the development of the Civilian nuclear industry. Everyone involved in reactor development understood that there were safety problems with the Light Water Reactor (LWR). The military realized that there were safety problems with its LWRs, but thought that it could solve those problems with careful designs, reactor operator training, and rule books that cover every possible aspect of reactor operation.</div>
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The Soviets did not take reactor safety seriously, used careless naval reactor designs, allowed untrained people operate its reactors, and had operation rule books that were no where as strict and comprehensive. The Soviets had far more accidents, and worse accidents, so the U.S. Navy's approach works, but the U.S. submarines were Cadillacs driven by engineers who followed precise rules, while the Soviet subs were probably cheaper to own and operate. Sure accidents in Soviet Subs would every now and then kill a member of the crew, but there were always plenty of farm boys who could take their place.</div>
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Unfortunately the Cadillac approach is required to keep the Light Water Reactor safe, so towards the Light Water Reactor safety ends up costing money, which the Civilian Nuclear Power industry has to pay. LWR operators are expensive to train, and everyone has to follow detailed rulebooks. All of which makes nuclear power expensive. Those expensive reactors frightened the public too. Of course, nuclear power while expensive, is not as expensive as making renewable generated electricity reliable. And a reliable no-nuclear, all renewable grid can be built with big enough subsidies, built that is, if society does not collapse under the weight of the subsidies to renewable power.</div>
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Edward Teller had a different approach to nuclear safety. He thought that reactors should b e buried deep underground and operate with out human intervention. That way if the reactor broke, you could throw in a few shovels of dirt, and that would be all it took to keep the reactor safe forever, or so Teller thought. Towards the end of his life, Teller realized that Alvin Weinberg's Molten Salt Reactor (MSR) was safe, and that if you built MSRs they would not have to be buried so deep in order to protect the public. The MSR was very stable, in fact so stable that no operators were required. Since the reactor core was a molten fluid, you did not have to worry about nuclear meltdown. Teller explained it all in his last paper, <a href="http://www.geocities.com/rmoir2003/moir_teller.pdf" style="color: #999999; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #3333ff;">Thorium fueled underground power plant based on molten salt technology</span></a>.</div>
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We don't have MSRs because the government preferred to subsidize a money pit called the Fast Breeder Reactor. People at ORNL knew that the MSR would be cheaper to develop, cheaper to build, and cheaper to operate. But the fast breeder was capable of producing bomb grade plutonium. Could the MSR be built without subsidies? Undoubtedly yes, it would be no more expensive develop than a modern large passenger jet is. It would probably be no more expensive to buy as well. A business would just have to be willing to take an unsubsidized risk.</div>
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Thus the statement<blockquote>
commercial nuclear power was a spinoff from weapons programs;</blockquote>
is undoubtedly true, but the statement<blockquote>
the civilian sector has served as a convenient avenue and cover for weapons programs</blockquote>
is quite problematic. Many of the dual purpose technologies proved quite useless for military purposes, and in other instances development of military technologies for civilian purposes proved quite expensive as well as militarily useless.</div>
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The claim that<blockquote>
By artificially accelerating the expansion of civilian programs, subsidies to nuclear technology and fuel-cycle services worldwide exacerbate the already challenging problems of weapons proliferation.</blockquote>
is more than questionable. The fact is that with the exception of India, nuclear power programs played no role in the development of nuclear weapons, and India should have never been excluded from the original nuclear arrangement. It is absurd to suggest that cost related to nuclear proliferation and its prevention somehow represent a subsidy to the nuclear power industry. The global spread of nuclear technology has not lead to nuclear proliferation. Most nations which have developed nuclear weapons without authorization by anti-proliferation treaties, have done so without possessing civilian nuclear power industries. Knowledge of nuclear weapons technology is sufficient to start a nuclear weapons program, and that knowledge can be found in physics and physics and engineering text books. South Africa demonstrated that a limited number of nuclear weapons could be built from scratch very cheaply. The nuclear proliferation problem will not go away, or lessen even if there are no civilian power reactors, as long as there are physic and engineering textbooks.<br /><br />Koplow boasts of his many reviewers,<blockquote>
We are grateful to the following people for reviewing versions of this paper: Michele Boyd (Physicians for Social Responsibility), Peter Bradford (University of Vermont Law School), Simon Carroll (Swedish Biodiversity Centre and Member, Nuclear Liabilities Financing Assurance Board, UK), Mark Cooper (University of Vermont Law School), Robert Cowin (UCS), Antony Frogatt (Chatham House), Ken Green (American Enterprise Institute), Autumn Hanna (Taxpayers for Common Sense), Dusty Horwitt (Environmental Working Group), Stan Kaplan (U.S. Congressional Research Service), Amory Lovins (Rocky Mountain Institute), Ed Lyman (UCS), Arjun Makhijani (Institute for Energy and Environmental Research), Alan Nogee (UCS), Doug Norlen (Pacific Environment and ECA Watch), Marcus Peacock (Pew Charitable Trusts/Subsidyscope), Mycle Schneider (Mycle Schneider Consulting), Henry Sokolski (Nonproliferation Policy Education Project), Sharon Squassoni (Center for Strategic and International Studies), and Steve Thomas (University of Greenwich Business School).</blockquote>
Didn't one of them catch the erroneous linking of the nuclear proliferation problem and subsidies? Of course most of these reviewers are strident critics of nuclear power, who may be emotionally incapable of spotting logically fallacious anti-nuclear arguments.</div>
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Thus the marriage of military and civilian nuclear technology proved to be quite unsuccessful, and in cases where it worked, expensive. Reactors that are both cheaper and safer are possible, and without subsidies. What is required is some investors who are bold and imaginative enough to take some risks. Government subsidies to the nuclear power industry have been relatively small, and have not enhanced nuclear weapons programs. A civilian nuclear power industry might flourish if left to its own devices and if it were willing to take a risk on the molten salt nuclear technology developed in Oak Ridge.</div>
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Charles Bartonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01125297013064527425noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7597656451205429515.post-83650092902259041602016-02-17T07:26:00.000-06:002016-02-17T07:26:05.373-06:00Nuclear Industry Subsidies Part IV: Conclusions on Koplow<h3 class="post-title entry-title" itemprop="name" style="background-color: white; color: #0c3019; font-family: Georgia, serif;">
<span style="font-size: small;">Update</span><span style="font-size: 22.4px;">: </span><i><span style="font-size: 22.4px;">I</span><span style="font-size: small;"> am reposting this 4 part series on Nuclear subsidies which critiques inaccurate claims about subsidies to the nuclear power industry, made by lobbiests for thev fossil fuel and the socalled renewable power industries. These two industries, often viewed as enemies, often appear to be joined together at the4 hip, by their shared hostility to clean, safe nuclear power. I am planning to begin a new series on subsidies, which explors the justification of subsidies in depth. </span></i></h3>
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<i> I am repostThis is Part IV of my review of </i><i>Doug Koplow's "<a href="http://www.blogger.com/www.ucsusa.org/nuclear_power/nuclear_power.../nuclear-power-subsidies-report.html" style="color: #3333ff; text-decoration: none;">Nuclear Power: Still not viable without subsidies</a>." In <a href="http://theenergycollective.com/charlesbarton/60186/nuclear-industry-subsidies-part-i-definitions?ref=user_profile_other_posts_by" style="color: #999999; text-decoration: none;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #3333ff;">P</span></a></i><i><a href="http://theenergycollective.com/charlesbarton/60186/nuclear-industry-subsidies-part-i-definitions?ref=user_profile_other_posts_by" style="color: #999999; text-decoration: none;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #3333ff;">art I</span></a>, I examined the definition of subsidies and looked at several limiting cases, including subsidies to an energy related project, the Cape Wind Project. <a href="http://theenergycollective.com/charlesbarton/60244/nuclear-industry-subsidies-part-ii-mining-sector?ref=user_profile_other_posts_by" style="color: #3333ff; text-decoration: none;">Par II</a><span style="color: #3333ff;"> </span>focused on Government policy toward the domestic Uranium mining Industry, and the National Defense context of that policy, and questioned both the intended and actual benefit of these policies for the nuclear power industry. <a href="http://theenergycollective.com/charlesbarton/60336/nuclear-industry-subsidies-part-iii-military-connection?ref=user_profile_other_posts_by" style="color: #999999; text-decoration: none;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #3333ff;">Part III</span></a> examined the relationship between United States military interest and the interest of the Nuclear power industry, and concluded that the relationship between the two had not served the interest of the Nuclear Power Industry.</i></div>
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Despite the fact that I disagree with many of Doug Koplow's contentions, especially with respect to his farcical account of the so called "legacy subsidies," and his utter failure to compare U.S. Government subsidies to the renewable power industry to subsidies to the nuclear power industry. Koplow is not entirely on the wrong track. Not entirely, but certainly partially.<br /><br />Lets look first at some issues that on which Koplow is clearly on the wrong track. First nany of Koplow's so called legacy subsidies are down right silly. For example, Koplow notes,<blockquote>
In enrichment, the federal government historically took on all financial risk for building up capacity, and for many years it sold the enriched fuel to commercial reactors below cost.</blockquote>
Koplow adds,<blockquote>
The U.S. enrichment picture, via the privatized U.S. Enrichment Corporation, now has a more complicated mix of policies that seem primarily aimed at keeping a U.S. firm in the enrichment market rather than keeping low-enriched uranium (LEU) prices low. Government subsidies to the sector globally, however, appear to spur overcapacity, generating artificially low fuel costs.</blockquote>
Koplow's argument seems to run close to the tail wagging the dog. We have seen in Part II of this review that nuclear generated electricity would continue to be competitive even if the cost of nuclear fuel was much higher. The primary enrichment technology which the United States Government has employed is the obsolete Gaseous Diffusion technology. The Gaseous Diffusion systems uses 50 times more electricity than the more modern gas centrifuge process. An even more advanced laser enrichment processes is being developed.<br /><br />The United States built three very large and expensive Uranium Enrichment plants during World War II and the Cold War. Even before the end of the Cold War the United States had acquired all the Highly Enriched Uranium it needed to fight several global nuclear wars. Thus objectively the continued operations of the American Gaseous Diffusion Plants was not a military necessity, and thus their continued operation was no longer required, but for both military and political reasons, the United States Government wished to maintain its uranium enrichment capacity. The huge World War II K-25 plant in Oak Ridge, was however in physically bad shape, due to its hurried World War II construction it had a leaky roof, that lead to all sorts of problems. Since K-25 was no longer required the decision was made to shut K-25 down and junk it. The life of the other two Gaseous Diffusion plants was prolonged by selling LEU to the nuclear power industry, although to do so, the plants had to operate at a loss. But was this intended as a subsidy to the American Nuclear Power industry, or an attempt to keep military assets available after the end of their useful life, as well as a pork barrel program. Keeping the Gaseous Diffusion Plants open meant thousands of jobs in industrially depressed Western Kentucky and Southern Ohio. Not only did Gaseous Diffusion plants play roles subsidising local economies, but the plants' voracious appetite for electricity, meant that several local coal mines would be kept open.<br /><br />Koplow's treatment of the Price-Anderson Insurance system is more subtle. He acknowledges that Price-Anderson creates an insurance pool that is not government subsidized. Thus the only subsidy which might be created by Price-Anderson is its liability cap. <a href="http://nucleargreen.blogspot.com/2008/09/energy-subsidies.html" style="color: #999999; text-decoration: none;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #3333ff;">Whether or not this is a real world subsidy, is a matter for debate</span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #3333ff;">.</span> (See also <a href="http://atomicinsights.com/2007/09/quantifying-the-price-anderson-subsidy.html" style="color: #999999; text-decoration: none;">here</a>, and <a href="http://www.stanford.edu/group/siepr/cgi-bin/siepr/?q=system/files/shared/pubs/papers/briefs/policybrief_jan02.pdf" style="color: #999999; text-decoration: none;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #3333ff;">here</span></a>. The second link is to a Policy Brief published by the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research, and titled "<a href="http://www.stanford.edu/group/siepr/cgi-bin/siepr/?q=system/files/shared/pubs/papers/briefs/policybrief_jan02.pdf" style="color: #999999; text-decoration: none;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #3333ff;">Does the US Subsidize Nuclear Power Insurance. </span></a>Geoffrey Rothwell concludes that the answer is no,<blockquote>
While there is the potential of federal payments to nuclear accident victims, there has been no direct subsidy of the nuclear power industry through the PAA.</blockquote>
Thus Koplow's inclusion of Price-Anderson in a discussions of nuclear subsidies is problematic. And his inclusion of the liability cap as a subsidy, with out noting Geoffrey Rothwell is simply in excusable. Koplow does note Rothwell research when it does support his nuclear subsidies contentions. This is called cherry picking. Koplow does some interesting things to say about potential reforms in Price-Anderson, but this properly belongs in another report, since he has not established that Price-Anderson is contains a nuclear industry subsidy.<br /><br />Koplow decision to base global recommendations about energy industry subsidies on the basis of one very flawed study of nuclear subsidies is, of course, a monumental error. Koplow claims<blockquote>
the industry received massive subsidies at its inception, reducing both the capital costs it needed to recover from ratepayers (the “legacy” subsidies that under- wrote reactor construction through the 1980s) and its operating costs (through ongoing subsidies to inputs, waste management, . . .)</blockquote>
This is not the case. Investments made for R&D for military nuclear programs were no more subsidies to the commercial nuclear industry, than military investments in aircraft technology during World Wat I, World War II, the Cold War and the post-Cold War era, were subsidies to the domestic air industry. Nor was government investment in radio technology R&D beginning in World War I and continuing into the 21st century radio industry subsidies. Koplow has not demonstrated his case, which he argues by compounding errors.<br /><br />Koplow claims,<blockquote>
In addition to legacy subsidies, the industry continues to benefit from subsidies that offset the costs of uranium, insurance and liability, plant security, cooling water, waste disposal, and plant decommissioning.</blockquote>
We have seen that Koplow ignores the role that national defense interest have played in establishing uranium costs, and the questionable nature of the case that the government subsidizes NPP insurance. NPP security is a national defense issue. It is appropriate for the national government to set security standards, and, even play a role in NPP security operations if that is needed. Water permits are hardly a big deal, in terms of economic benefits. Nuclear Waste disposal is primarily a political issue, and the current system is for the NPPs to play the national government for waste disposal services which it does not provide. This is not a subsidy by the government. In fact the NPP industry takes care of its own waste and most likely will do so for years to come. Finally NPPs pay a fee for plant decommissioning. It might be debated whether the fee is sufficient, but the current system does not involve direct government subsidies of decommissioning systems.<div>
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Koplow account of nuclear power industry subsidies is disingenuous if not dishonest. Furthermore Koplow knowingly ignores the relationship between nuclear subsidies and government subsidies to other energy forms. Government subsidies to the fossil fuel industries are much greater in terms of dollars spent, and government subsidies to to wind and solar industries are much higher per unit of energy those industries produce.</div>
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Koplow study singles out nuclear power for a mainly unjustified attack, and proceeds to launch that attack in a way that distorts and decreases the readers knowledge of the subject. Koplow's goal seems to be the crafting of <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2008/feb/16/society" style="color: #999999; text-decoration: none;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #3333ff;">Counter knowledge</span></a>.<br /><br />Both subsidies to energy in general as well as subsidies to nuclear power in particular ought to be the subjects of serious discussions. but subsidies to nuclear power should not be wholly separated from the wider topic. In addition the definition of subsidies should be clarified, alleged examples of subsidies examined, and rejected if they do not seem to fit within the topic. Furthermore, as we have seen supposed subsidies play complex roles in the operations of government. Government departments and agencies cannot subsidize each other, but they may transfer funds. Such fund transfers may have political purposes in mind. What may seem to be a government subsidy to an industry, may in fact be a transfer of funds to the workers in a different industry.</div>
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Much of what Koplow views as government subsidies to the nuclear power industry are not subsidies at all, but he is correct that the relationship between the nuclear power Industry and the government is an important area for study. It has been my conclusion, drawn from material I pointed to in this review, that we need to understand how government programs can damage as well as aid the interests of energy industries, and of energy consumers. This study would be useful if the goal of government is to better shape energy programs in order to serve the public interest.</div>
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Although he often misses his mark by a wide measure, Koplow's account is still not without its uses, as I have pointed out. Supporters of nuclear power should pay attention to its critics, just as supporters of renewable energy should focus attention on what their their critics have to say. The critics of the use of nuclear energy should listen to what its defenders say in response, especially when the defenders point out factual and thinking errors in the critics case.<br /><br />I had intended to wrap up my series on nuclear subsidies with this post, but I now believe that at least one further post is required. We need to examine the circumstances under which subsidies to the nuclear power industry might be or are justified.</div>
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Charles Bartonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01125297013064527425noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7597656451205429515.post-28546787350068756982016-02-11T07:18:00.005-06:002016-02-11T07:18:58.868-06:00E. F. Schumacher and the Retreat from Modernity<i><b>Update:</b> This post is a reposting of a December 2008 post. In that post I points to an outright coal advocate who has greatly influenced environmentalists thinking about energy, and arguably has influenced it for the worse. We will begin to see how E. F. Schumacher began to reconstruct economics to fit 19th century Roman catholic Dogma, but cleverly disguised what he did. We will also see how Schumacher influanced Amory Lovins, and how that influance may have led Lovins to serve the interest of coal over that of nuclear. I intend that all of this will unfold during the next few posts.</i><br />
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The Buddha was roughly a contemporary of the Judean thinker Jeremiah. Both were deeply concerned with the existential problems posed by human insecurity. The Iron age created the possibility of human wealth, but left human life highly insecure. The philosopher Karl Jaspers noted emergance of important thinkers and schools of thought in many human societies during the Iron Age.<br />
<blockquote>
... If there is an axis in history, we must find it empirically in profane history, as a set of circumstances significant for all men, including Christians. It must carry conviction for Westerner, Asiatics, and all men, without the support of any particular content of faith, and thus provide all men with a common historical frame of reference. The spiritual process which took place between 800 and 200 <small>B.C.E.</small> seems to constitute such an axis. It was then that the man with whom we live today came into being. Let us designate this period as the "axial age." Extraordinary events are crowded into this period. In China lived Confucius and Lao Tse, all the trends in Chinese philosophy arose... In India it was the age of the Upanishads and of Buddha; as in China, all philosophical trends, including skepticism and materialism, sophistry and nihilism, were developed. In Iran Zarathustra put forward his challenging conception of the cosmic process as a struggle between good and evil; in Palestine prophets arose: Elijah, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Deutero-Isaiah; Greece produced Homer, the philosophers Parmenides, Heraclitus, Plato, the tragic poets, Thucydides and Archimedes. All the vast development of which these names are a mere intimation took place in those few centuries, independently and almost simultaneously in China, India and the West…</blockquote>
If we are to understand the significant of the Buddha and his controbutions to human thought, we ought to begin by understanding the insecurities of the Iron age and the limitations of Iron Age solutions to those insecurities. In a way it was those insecurities that lead to an intellectual revolution in Europe that began with Francis Bacon. Bacon was the first thinker to observe that science could contribute of human security and material well being. Francis Bacon was undoubtedly the spiritual father of all true progressives. Bacon wrote<br />
<blockquote>
I would address one general admonition to all; that they consider what are the true ends of knowledge, and that they seek it not either for pleasure of the mind, or for contention, or for superiority to others, or for profit, or fame, or power, or any of these inferior things; but for the benefit and use of life;</blockquote>
Bacon signaled the beginning of a second axiel age in human history, one which has begun the problems of human insecurity in ways that thinkers of the first Axiel age did not. †he great accomplishment of the second Axiel Age has been the expantion of the power of ordinary people, and indeed both Bacor and DesCartes for saw this acomplishment. By expanding human power the second Axiel also lead inexorably to a more complex society. consider the the relationship between the American and Chinese currencies:<br />
<blockquote>
if the Chinese economy continues to deteriorate – a likely scenario as the deterioration just started – the Chinese government will stop buying US Treasuries and even worse, it will start digging into its US reserves. Since there are no other natural buyers (in size) of the US debt, our interest rates may actually skyrocket, the US dollar drops against Chinese currency, while our inflation may still remain low. This is bad for China twice:<br />
<ol>
<li>High interest rates mean even lower economic growth from the US and thus even lower consumption of Chinese-made goods.</li>
<li>China cannot afford a weak US dollar – its US dollar reserves are worth less, and more importantly, its product becomes more expensive for US consumers.</li>
</ol>
</blockquote>
In a complex economic environment war becomes more difficult. War becomes increasingly impossible in an international economy in which the wealth and prosperity of one nation is tied up with that of other nations. But complexity has its enemies. There are always those who long to return to simpler times. The Economist E. F. Schumacher was one. Schumacher wrote<br />
<blockquote>
What I’m struggling to do is to help recapture something our ancestors had. If we can just regain the consciousness the West had before the Cartesian Revolution, which I call the Second Fall of Man, then we’ll be getting somewhere.</blockquote>
One must understand that in energy matters Schumacher was a long time advocate of Coal. He consulted for many years with the British Coal Board, and no doubt his acknowledge opposition to both oil and nuclear power was in no small measure to his vested interest in the fortunes of coal. But <a href="http://www.religion-online.org/showarticle.asp?title=1151">Charles Fager pointed out something else about Schumacher thinking about economics</a>.<br />
<blockquote>
Small Is Beautiful -- a message so skillfully delivered that it has been absorbed by his audiences apparently without being noticed. What is the message? Nothing less than a passionate plea for the rediscovery of old-time Western religion -- Roman Catholic religion, to be precise.<br />
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That’s right: E. F. Schumacher is really an apologetical preacher, one of the rare breed whose experience has made it possible for him to employ effectively the language and concepts of economics as a medium for communicating what is essentially a sermon, a call for readers to repent, believe the gospel and reorder their lives accordingly.</blockquote>
Fager continues:<br />
<blockquote>
He readily owned up to being a Catholic, a certified convert as of five years ago. This item is not mentioned in his book; in fact, one of the most frequently cited chapters, “Buddhist Economics,” almost made it appear as if he were deeply involved in Eastern religions. But wasn’t this chapter, I inquired, really more informed by the Catholic writings and thinkers he mentioned so frequently elsewhere in the book -- the papal encyclicals, Newman, Gilson and, above all, Thomas Aquinas?<br />
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Schumacher grinned. “Of course. But if I had called the chapter ‘Christian Economics,’ nobody would have paid any attention!”<br />
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This is not to say that the reference to Buddhism was a sham; he is firmly convinced that the basic elements of a common religious outlook are to be found in all the world’s major religions. But it was done artfully, to help get his message across. “You see, most people in the West are suffering from what I call an anti-Christian trauma,” he explained, “and I don’t blame them. I went through that for 20 years myself.”<br />
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Paradoxically, it was Buddhism that opened the door to Schumacher’s return to Western religion, so his use of Buddhist concepts, besides being shrewd, is authentically based in his experience. “I was raised in Germany in the atmosphere of scientific materialism,” he explained, “though with a veneer of Christianity -- Lutheranism. But after I went to the university, I reacted very strongly, like many young people, against veneers of religion and culture, and that was the beginning of my own version of the anti-Christian trauma. There’s much truth to that reaction too, of course, because the churches have become associated with so much that’s wrong about our culture.”<br />
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But this scientific materialism was hardly a satisfactory alternative world view for a sensitive soul. “These attitudes,” said Schumacher, “all left the taste of ashes in my mouth,” and it wasn’t long before he was searching for some better view of life.</blockquote>
<span style="font-size: 12.48px;"></span><br />
Fager, relying on Catholic theologian John Coleman, pointed out the sources of the core concepts of Small is Beautigul, the neo-Thomistic philosophy of French Philosopher Jacques Maritain, who thought that small institutions were more humaine than large institutions, and English Catholic writers G. K. Chesterton, Hillaire Belloc and Eric Gill, who talked of decentralizing industry also appeared to have influenced Schumacher. Thus Schumacher can be claassified as a "conservative revolutionaries’ or ‘reactionary radicals’ but not a progressive.<br />
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It ought to be noted that Schumacher had a profound impact on the thinking of Amory Lovins who is a member of the board of the E. F. Schumacher Society. Thus Schumacher plsys a major and to my mind very wrong headed role in the development of "Progressive" thinking on the human relationship to the environment. Unfortunately for his "progressive" admirers, Schumacher is a reactionary, who utterly repudiates the ideas upon which matrial progress is built. Let me say first that I admire the intellectual accomplishments of Buddhism which I view as a sort of Asian mental health movement. I do not regard Buddhism as an anti-materialist philosophy. Far from it, Buddhism teaches people how to live in a world where their human and material expectations are likerly to be disappointed.<br />
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The Buddha would tell us that it is natural for people to desire things, and to to strive to have them, but that if we fail to expect material things to be more than temporary we are mistaken, ands likely to be disappointed. Disappointment is painful. Thus far from being anti-materialist, Buddhism accepts the existence of a material world, and teaches us how to come to terms with the fact that material things do not last forever. Do Buddhist enjoy, appreciate and desire material things? Yes indeed they do.<br />
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The Buddha createde his philosophy in the time of great material privation, and his followers followed a path that offered comfort to the deprives. Does Buddhism have a real coherant economic philosophy that is relivent to mordern society? <a href="http://ccbs.ntu.edu.tw/FULLTEXT/JR-ADM/pryor.htm">F. L. Pryor notes</a>:<br />
<blockquote>
the vagueness of the Buddhist canon on economic matters combined with its complexity and length allows room for quite different interpretations of an ideal economic system in modern times, especially since conditions are very much different than they were more than 2000 years ago when the Buddha lived. Of course, this situathon is little different from that of Christianity. The really difficult problem is to determine what part of the canon will be taken seriously under what circumstances, but this would require a much different kind of approach than the textual exegesis offered here.</blockquote>
Schumacher conceived of the ideas of Buddhists economics while serving as a consultant for the government of Burma in the mid 1950's. The Buddhist economic program of U Nu, who Schumacher advised failed, and the country has been rulled for many years by a corrupt and tyrantical military 7Junta.<br />
<br />
<span style="font-weight: bold;">BUDDHIST ECONOMICS</span><br />
by E. F. Schumacher<br />
<i>"Right Livelihood" is one of the requirements of the Buddha’s Noble Eightfold Path. It is clear, therefore, that there must be such a thing as Buddhist economics.</i><br />
<i><br /></i><i>Buddhist countries have often stated that they wish to remain faithful to their heritage. So Burma: “The New Burma sees no conflict between religious values and economic progress. Spiritual health and material well-being are not enemies: they are natural allies.” 1 Or: “We can blend successfully the religious and spiritual values of our heritage with the benefits of modern technology.” 2 Or: “We Burmans have a sacred duty to conform both our dreams and our acts to our faith. This we shall ever do.” 3</i><br />
<i><br /></i><i>All the same, such countries invariably assume that they can model their economic development plans in accordance with modern economics, and they call upon modern economists from so-called advanced countries to advise them, to formulate the policies to be pursued, and to construct the grand design for development, the Five-Year Plan or whatever it may be called. No one seems to think that a Buddhist way of life would call for Buddhist economics, just as the modern materialist way of life has brought forth modern economics.</i><br />
<i><br /></i><i>Economists themselves, like most specialists, normally suffer from a kind of metaphysical blindness, assuming that theirs is a science of absolute and invariable truths, without any presuppositions. Some go as far as to claim that economic laws are as free from "metaphysics" or "values" as the law of gravitation. We need not, however, get involved in arguments of methodology. Instead, let us take some fundamentals and see what they look like when viewed by a modern economist and a Buddhist economist.</i><br />
<i><br /></i><i>There is universal agreement that a fundamental source of wealth is human labour. Now, the modern economist has been brought up to consider "labour" or work as little more than a necessary evil. From the point of view of the employer, it is in any case simply an item of cost, to be reduced to a minimum if it can not be eliminated altogether, say, by automation. From the point of view of the workman, it is a "disutility"; to work is to make a sacrifice of one’s leisure and comfort, and wages are a kind of compensation for the sacrifice. Hence the ideal from the point of view of the employer is to have output without employees, and the ideal from the point of view of the employee is to have income without employment.</i><br />
<i><br /></i><i>The consequences of these attitudes both in theory and in practice are, of course, extremely far-reaching. If the ideal with regard to work is to get rid of it, every method that "reduces the work load" is a good thing. The most potent method, short of automation, is the so-called "division of labour" and the classical example is the pin factory eulogised in Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations. 4 Here it is not a matter of ordinary specialisation, which mankind has practiced from time immemorial, but of dividing up every complete process of production into minute parts, so that the final product can be produced at great speed without anyone having had to contribute more than a totally insignificant and, in most cases, unskilled movement of his limbs.</i><br />
<i><br /></i><i>The Buddhist point of view takes the function of work to be at least threefold: to give man a chance to utilise and develop his faculties; to enable him to overcome his ego-centredness by joining with other people in a common task; and to bring forth the goods and services needed for a becoming existence. Again, the consequences that flow from this view are endless. To organise work in such a manner that it becomes meaningless, boring, stultifying, or nerve-racking for the worker would be little short of criminal; it would indicate a greater concern with goods than with people, an evil lack of compassion and a soul-destroying degree of attachment to the most primitive side of this worldly existence. Equally, to strive for leisure as an alternative to work would be considered a complete misunderstanding of one of the basic truths of human existence, namely that work and leisure are complementary parts of the same living process and cannot be separated without destroying the joy of work and the bliss of leisure.</i><br />
<i><br /></i><i>From the Buddhist point of view, there are therefore two types of mechanisation which must be clearly distinguished: one that enhances a man’s skill and power and one that turns the work of man over to a mechanical slave, leaving man in a position of having to serve the slave. How to tell the one from the other? “The craftsman himself,” says Ananda Coomaraswamy, a man equally competent to talk about the modern West as the ancient East, “can always, if allowed to, draw the delicate distinction between the machine and the tool. The carpet loom is a tool, a contrivance for holding warp threads at a stretch for the pile to be woven round them by the craftsmen’s fingers; but the power loom is a machine, and its significance as a destroyer of culture lies in the fact that it does the essentially human part of the work.” 5 It is clear, therefore, that Buddhist economics must be very different from the economics of modern materialism, since the Buddhist sees the essence of civilisation not in a multiplication of wants but in the purification of human character. Character, at the same time, is formed primarily by a man’s work. And work, properly conducted in conditions of human dignity and freedom, blesses those who do it and equally their products. The Indian philosopher and economist J. C. Kumarappa sums the matter up as follows:</i><br />
<i><br /></i><i>If the nature of the work is properly appreciated and applied, it will stand in the same relation to the higher faculties as food is to the physical body. It nourishes and enlivens the higher man and urges him to produce the best he is capable of. It directs his free will along the proper course and disciplines the animal in him into progressive channels. It furnishes an excellent background for man to display his scale of values and develop his personality. 6</i><br />
<i><br /></i><i>If a man has no chance of obtaining work he is in a desperate position, not simply because he lacks an income but because he lacks this nourishing and enlivening factor of disciplined work which nothing can replace. A modern economist may engage in highly sophisticated calculations on whether full employment "pays" or whether it might be more "economic" to run an economy at less than full employment so as to insure a greater mobility of labour, a better stability of wages, and so forth. His fundamental criterion of success is simply the total quantity of goods produced during a given period of time. “If the marginal urgency of goods is low,” says Professor Galbraith in The Affluent Society, “then so is the urgency of employing the last man or the last million men in the labour force.” 7And again: “If . . . we can afford some unemployment in the interest of stability—a proposition, incidentally, of impeccably conservative antecedents—then we can afford to give those who are unemployed the goods that enable them to sustain their accustomed standard of living.”</i><br />
<i><br /></i><i>From a Buddhist point of view, this is standing the truth on its head by considering goods as more important than people and consumption as more important than creative activity. It means shifting the emphasis from the worker to the product of work, that is, from the human to the subhuman, a surrender to the forces of evil. The very start of Buddhist economic planning would be a planning for full employment, and the primary purpose of this would in fact be employment for everyone who needs an "outside" job: it would not be the maximisation of employment nor the maximisation of production. Women, on the whole, do not need an "outside" job, and the large-scale employment of women in offices or factories would be considered a sign of serious economic failure. In particular, to let mothers of young children work in factories while the children run wild would be as uneconomic in the eyes of a Buddhist economist as the employment of a skilled worker as a soldier in the eyes of a modern economist.</i><br />
<i><br /></i><i>While the materialist is mainly interested in goods, the Buddhist is mainly interested in liberation. But Buddhism is "The Middle Way" and therefore in no way antagonistic to physical well-being. It is not wealth that stands in the way of liberation but the attachment to wealth; not the enjoyment of pleasurable things but the craving for them. The keynote of Buddhist economics, therefore, is simplicity and non-violence. From an economist’s point of view, the marvel of the Buddhist way of life is the utter rationality of its pattern—amazingly small means leading to extraordinarily satisfactory results.</i><br />
<i><br /></i><i>For the modern economist this is very difficult to understand. He is used to measuring the "standard of living" by the amount of annual consumption, assuming all the time that a man who consumes more is "better off" than a man who consumes less. A Buddhist economist would consider this approach excessively irrational: since consumption is merely a means to human well-being, the aim should be to obtain the maximum of well-being with the minimum of consumption. Thus, if the purpose of clothing is a certain amount of temperature comfort and an attractive appearance, the task is to attain this purpose with the smallest possible effort, that is, with the smallest annual destruction of cloth and with the help of designs that involve the smallest possible input of toil. The less toil there is, the more time and strength is left for artistic creativity. It would be highly uneconomic, for instance, to go in for complicated tailoring, like the modern West, when a much more beautiful effect can be achieved by the skillful draping of uncut material. It would be the height of folly to make material so that it should wear out quickly and the height of barbarity to make anything ugly, shabby, or mean. What has just been said about clothing applies equally to all other human requirements. The ownership and the consumption of goods is a means to an end, and Buddhist economics is the systematic study of how to attain given ends with the minimum means.</i><br />
<i><br /></i><i>Modern economics, on the other hand, considers consumption to be the sole end and purpose of all economic activity, taking the factors of production—and, labour, and capital—as the means. The former, in short, tries to maximise human satisfactions by the optimal pattern of consumption, while the latter tries to maximise consumption by the optimal pattern of productive effort. It is easy to see that the effort needed to sustain a way of life which seeks to attain the optimal pattern of consumption is likely to be much smaller than the effort needed to sustain a drive for maximum consumption. We need not be surprised, therefore, that the pressure and strain of living is very much less in say, Burma, than it is in the United States, in spite of the fact that the amount of labour-saving machinery used in the former country is only a minute fraction of the amount used in the latter.</i><br />
<i><br /></i><i>Simplicity and non-violence are obviously closely related. The optimal pattern of consumption, producing a high degree of human satisfaction by means of a relatively low rate of consumption, allows people to live without great pressure and strain and to fulfill the primary injunction of Buddhist teaching: “Cease to do evil; try to do good.” As physical resources are everywhere limited, people satisfying their needs by means of a modest use of resources are obviously less likely to be at each other’s throats than people depending upon a high rate of use. Equally, people who live in highly self-sufficient local communities are less likely to get involved in large-scale violence than people whose existence depends on world-wide systems of trade.</i><br />
<i><br /></i><i>From the point of view of Buddhist economics, therefore, production from local resources for local needs is the most rational way of economic life, while dependence on imports from afar and the consequent need to produce for export to unknown and distant peoples is highly uneconomic and justifiable only in exceptional cases and on a small scale. Just as the modern economist would admit that a high rate of consumption of transport services between a man’s home and his place of work signifies a misfortune and not a high standard of life, so the Buddhist would hold that to satisfy human wants from faraway sources rather than from sources nearby signifies failure rather than success. The former tends to take statistics showing an increase in the number of ton/miles per head of the population carried by a country’s transport system as proof of economic progress, while to the latter—the Buddhist economist—the same statistics would indicate a highly undesirable deterioration in the pattern of consumption.</i><br />
<i><br /></i><i>Another striking difference between modern economics and Buddhist economics arises over the use of natural resources. Bertrand de Jouvenel, the eminent French political philosopher, has characterised "Western man" in words which may be taken as a fair description of the modern economist:</i><br />
<i><br /></i><i>He tends to count nothing as an expenditure, other than human effort; he does not seem to mind how much mineral matter he wastes and, far worse, how much living matter he destroys. He does not seem to realize at all that human life is a dependent part of an ecosystem of many different forms of life. As the world is ruled from towns where men are cut off from any form of life other than human, the feeling of belonging to an ecosystem is not revived. This results in a harsh and improvident treatment of things upon which we ultimately depend, such as water and trees. 8</i><br />
<i><br /></i><i>The teaching of the Buddha, on the other hand, enjoins a reverent and non-violent attitude not only to all sentient beings but also, with great emphasis, to trees. Every follower of the Buddha ought to plant a tree every few years and look after it until it is safely established, and the Buddhist economist can demonstrate without difficulty that the universal observation of this rule would result in a high rate of genuine economic development independent of any foreign aid. Much of the economic decay of southeast Asia (as of many other parts of the world) is undoubtedly due to a heedless and shameful neglect of trees.</i><br />
<i><br /></i><i>Modern economics does not distinguish between renewable and non-renewable materials, as its very method is to equalise and quantify everything by means of a money price. Thus, taking various alternative fuels, like coal, oil, wood, or water-power: the only difference between them recognised by modern economics is relative cost per equivalent unit. The cheapest is automatically the one to be preferred, as to do otherwise would be irrational and "uneconomic." From a Buddhist point of view, of course, this will not do; the essential difference between non-renewable fuels like coal and oil on the one hand and renewable fuels like wood and water-power on the other cannot be simply overlooked. Non-renewable goods must be used only if they are indispensable, and then only with the greatest care and the most meticulous concern for conservation. To use them heedlessly or extravagantly is an act of violence, and while complete non-violence may not be attainable on this earth, there is nonetheless an ineluctable duty on man to aim at the ideal of non-violence in all he does.</i><br />
<i><br /></i><i>Just as a modern European economist would not consider it a great achievement if all European art treasures were sold to America at attractive prices, so the Buddhist economist would insist that a population basing its economic life on non-renewable fuels is living parasitically, on capital instead of income. Such a way of life could have no permanence and could therefore be justified only as a purely temporary expedient. As the world’s resources of non-renewable fuels—coal, oil, and natural gas—are exceedingly unevenly distributed over the globe and undoubtedly limited in quantity, it is clear that their exploitation at an ever-increasing rate is an act of violence against nature which must almost inevitably lead to violence between men.</i><br />
<i><br /></i><i>This fact alone might give food for thought even to those people in Buddhist countries who care nothing for the religious and spiritual values of their heritage and ardently desire to embrace the materialism of modern economics at the fastest possible speed. Before they dismiss Buddhist economics as nothing better than a nostalgic dream, they might wish to consider whether the path of economic development outlined by modern economics is likely to lead them to places where they really want to be. Towards the end of his courageous book The Challenge of Man’s Future, Professor Harrison Brown of the California Institute of Technology gives the following appraisal:</i><br />
<i><br /></i><i>Thus we see that, just as industrial society is fundamentally unstable and subject to reversion to agrarian existence, so within it the conditions which offer individual freedom are unstable in their ability to avoid the conditions which impose rigid organisation and totalitarian control. Indeed, when we examine all the foreseeable difficulties which threaten the survival of industrial civilisation, it is difficult to see how the achievement of stability and the maintenance of individual liberty can be made compatible. 9</i><br />
<i><br /></i><i>Even if this were dismissed as a long-term view there is the immediate question of whether "modernisation," as currently practised without regard to religious and spiritual values, is actually producing agreeable results. As far as the masses are concerned, the results appear to be disastrous—a collapse of the rural economy, a rising tide of unemployment in town and country, and the growth of a city proletariat without nourishment for either body or soul.</i><br />
<i><br /></i><i>It is in the light of both immediate experience and long term prospects that the study of Buddhist economics could be recommended even to those who believe that economic growth is more important than any spiritual or religious values. For it is not a question of choosing between "modern growth" and "traditional stagnation." It is a question of finding the right path of development, the Middle Way between materialist heedlessness and traditionalist immobility, in short, of finding "Right Livelihood.</i>"<br />
<br />Charles Bartonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01125297013064527425noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7597656451205429515.post-76875554849396500172016-02-10T06:56:00.002-06:002016-02-10T06:56:45.300-06:00Sakib Hasan Comments on The Torch of 2011<br />
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I posted the original "Torch of 2011" on July 19th of that year. Within a few weeks, I received 12 comments in responce. The last responce came over two years later. I had not responded to it before, and beg to be excused from failing to perform that obligation at the time The comment was received. Today I will attempt, belatedly, to perform what I regard as an obligation to respond. I am thankful that I have reached te point where response is possible.<br />
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<a href="https://www.blogger.com/profile/03150282509486176469" rel="nofollow" style="background-color: white; color: #999999; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 16px; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;">Sakib Hasan</a><span style="background-color: white; color: #30230c; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 16px; font-weight: bold;"> said...</span><br />
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<dd class="comment-body" id="Blog1_cmt-8945602159196634411" style="background-color: white; color: #30230c; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 16px; margin-left: 0px;">The very heart of your writing shilst sounding agreeable at first, did not settle very well with me personally after some time. Someplace within the paragrap. I did not pay attention.hs you were able to make me a believer but just for a while. I nevertheless have a problem with your leaps in assumptions and one would do well to fill in those breaks. In the event you actually can accomplish that, I will definitely end up being fascinated.<br />
Its such as you learn my thoughts! You seem to grasp so much approximately this, such as you wrote the ebook in it or something. I think that you simply can do with some% to force the massage house a bit, however other than that this is magnificent blog. An excellent read. I will certainly be back.<br />
<br /></dd><dd class="comment-footer" style="background-color: white; color: #999999; display: inline; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 16px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 10px;"><span class="comment-timestamp"><a href="http://nucleargreen.blogspot.com/2011/07/nuclear-power-public-health-air.html?showComment=1379260245742#c8945602159196634411" style="color: #999999; text-decoration: none;" title="comment permalink">September 15, 2013 </a></span></dd><br />
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<span style="color: #999999; font-family: "georgia" , serif;">First let be say that I am greatful for this comment. I have always acknowledged to myself, if not my readers that I am not the best qualified person to do the work I do in my Nuclear Green, but at the time I did it, no one rlse was doing what I thought needed to be done, and so I stepted forward to do this. My only stipulation to my self was to base what I said on the work of scientists, and to craft a vision that rested on facts or science based speculation. For example my claims that MSRs could be built more cheaply than Light Water Reactors is based on Research by Per Peterson and David Leblanc as well as arguments derived from Robert Hargraves. If you are going to steal ideas, steal from the best thinkers. But since I acknowledge my flibility, I am always willing to acknowledge errors both factual and in my reasoning.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #999999; font-family: georgia, serif;">What I need from my critics is a detailed acount of what she or he sees as my mkstakes. It is not enough to say leaps in reasoning and missing accounts of assumptions. I may have covered the gaps in other posts. but it is certainly possible that I have not exploredall of my assumptions. Nuclear Green might be considered to be fragments of s vision of a future post carbon and world in which access to energy can be justly distributed to all human beings.</span></div>
Charles Bartonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01125297013064527425noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7597656451205429515.post-17888577689257422052016-02-10T06:10:00.002-06:002016-02-10T06:10:40.421-06:00The Torch of 2011 RevisitedThis post was inspired by my personal existential concern. I asked a very personal question of myself as I began to explore energy issues in 2007. That question was,"Can I survive climate change energy solutions?" I realized during That time that low cost, dispatchabel electricity played a vital role role in sustaining my life. During the often hot Dallas' summers, I was dependent on air condition. I had little doubt that I would not survive the strings of 100+ degree days that regularly regularly turn the Dallas ummers into visitations to hell. My Concerns were validated by the death tole cause by dallas like summer conditions in Europe during the Summer of 2004. The suffering and deaths fell disproportionally on the elderly and informed. .
Post carbon energy systems thus become a public health issue.
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I spent most of the last 37 years in Dallas, Texas. There is an old saying in Texas that Houston was built on oil, San Antonio was built on gold, and Dallas was built on paper. The truth is, however, that Dallas was built on chilled air. Dallas residents will endur day after day of heat from May to September, often long continuous runs of 90 degree plus days, and sometimes with long continuous runs of one hundred degrees plus days. The record numer of 100 degree or more days in one Dallas summer is 69. I lived through that summer, the summer of 1980.<br />
<a href="http://ellisac.com/beat-the-north-texas-heat-with-a-new-dallas-central-air-conditioning-system/" style="color: #3333ff;"><br />Ellis Air Conditioning & Heating tells us</a>,<br />
<blockquote>
With the heat indexes reaching into the hundreds from May to September, central air Dallas provides comfort to its residents, as well as safety to their elder residents, and small children who have less of a tolerance for high heat levels. . . .<br />
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Providing comfort via central air is a luxury most Dallas natives take for granted. That is, until the central air is not working. Living without central air in near 100 degree weather can be unbearable for some, and unsafe for others. It is important, as the hotter months approach in Dallas, to protect oneself from a situation where their central air unit may become disabled.</blockquote>
Ellis is not engaged in advertising hype. It is simply stating what everyone who has ever spent a summer in Dallas already knows. The Dallas heat can be unendurable for the healthy, and downright deadly for the old and unhealthy. Dallas is not the only place where summer heat kills people. <a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-07-12/heatstroke-deaths-quadruple-as-japan-shuns-ac.html" style="color: #3333ff;">That is happening in Japan right now</a>.<br />
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From June 1 to July 10, the latest period available, 26 people died from heatstroke, compared with six in the same period last year, according to the Fire and Disaster Management Agency. The number of people taken by ambulance to hospitals for heatstroke more than tripled to 12,973, with 48 percent in the most-at-risk group aged 65 years or older.</blockquote>
Now if those 26 people had died from causes that were related to radiation from nuclear accidents, headlines would have told the story all over the world. But those deaths were due to radiation from the sun, and to an absence of electricity due to the shutdown of nuclear power plants.<br />
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Of course global warming is also playing a role in the Japanese deaths,<br />
<blockquote>
Temperatures in eastern Japan, including Tokyo, were 3.8 degrees higher than the 30-year average in the last 10 days of June or the highest since at least 1961, . . .<br />
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Japan has shut 35 of its 54 atomic reactors for safety checks after the March 11 earthquake triggered the worst nuclear crisis since Chernobyl, reducing total power capacity by 11 percent. Conservation efforts amid hotter temperatures are raising concern of a repeat of last year, when a record 1,718 people died of heatstroke as the summer heat broke records.</blockquote>
Even last years Japanese heatstroke related death total pales to almost insignificance when <a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1631069107003770"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(51 , 51 , 255);">compared to the 70,000 plus heat related deaths</span></a> in Western Europe during the summer of 2003. Global warming skeptics call global warming realists, alarmists. Climate researchers suggests that within a few decades there will regularly be more summer heat related deaths in Europe, than cold related deaths. How many heat related deaths is it going to take before the skeptics acknowledge what is going on?<br />
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Well I am not going to further bash the climate skeptics after the thrashing I gave them on Friday. Today my targets are the anti-nukes.<br />
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In Texas it is realized that air conditioning is a matter of public health. Heat waves bring with them deaths as I have already noted. In particular the deaths of older people, the sick and of babies.. The way to control that is to being some means of staying cool into their lives. That means fans and often air conditioning. That, of course, also means electricity, since fans and AC require electricity to operate.<br />
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I must confess that I expected Greenpeace to stoically do without air conditioning, but this turns out to not be the case. <a href="http://www.terradaily.com/reports/Greenpeaces_Rainbow_Warrior_III_takes_shape_999.html" style="color: #3333ff;">The Greenpeace ship, the Rainbow Warrior III</a>, includes a diesel engine, an electricity generator, and air conditioning. <a href="http://www.energystar.gov/ia/partners/prod_development/revisions/downloads/room_air_conditioners/Greenpeace_Comments.pdf" style="color: #3333ff;">Greenpeace is recommending hydrocarbon technology that increases air conditioning efficiency by 10% to 20%.</a> Tht is hardly the sort of efficiency gain that Amory Lovins gets excited about. We are clearly going to see more demand for air conditioning, as matters of public health, not just in the United States, but in Western Europe, China, and indeed all over the world.<br />
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In Oklahoma the When a water main that supported state government office buildings bke,<br />
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13 state government buildings at the capitol were closed after a break in a water main that shut off air-conditioning systems.<br />
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Computer systems in Oklahoma's state agencies were turned off and 1,000 employees sent home, said spokeswoman Sara Cowden of the Department of Central Services.</blockquote>
Computers generate heat, human bodies generate heat.<br />
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This summer will not break most of the heat wave records established in 1980, but there is a hint this summer that it will not be many more summers before the 1980 records start to fall. Greenpeace knows this, yet in its energy plan, , <a href="http://www.greenpeace.org/raw/content/usa/press-center/reports4/energy-r-evolution-a-sustain.pdf" style="color: #3333ff;">Energy [R]evolution: A Sustainable U.S.A. Energy Outlook</a><span style="color: rgb(51 , 51 , 255);">.</span>Greenpeace anticipates far more electrical reduction through efficiency than the 10% to 20% improvement in air conditioning efficiency that the hydrocarbon technology it advocates would lead too. None of the electricity will be generated by low carbon nuclear power plants. Instead Greenpeace plans to rely on carbon emitting natural gas power plants to bridge the gap.<br />
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Climate scientist expect more extreme heat waves, and for them to get worse. Texas like heat waves are emerging in places that have never recorded such heat before. A year ago the city of Moscow, Russia, is reported to have reached an all time record of 102 degrees during an extreme heat wave. The extreme heat was accompanied by massive crop loss - 40% of Russia's grain harvest - and hugh wild fires - 1.600,000 acres burned.<br />
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Climate scientist Roger A. Pielke Jr. says<br />
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The IPCC [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] defines “climate change” as a change in the statistics of weather occurring over 30 years or longer and persisting for decades. Thus, the detection of a change in climate requires long-term records.</blockquote>
Pielke says,<br />
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It is true that overall damage from tornadoes, floods, and hurricanes has been increasing in recent decades. A recent literature review of extreme event impacts around the world found that everywhere that researchers have looked, this increase can be entirely explained by increasing value of property at risk and increasing exposures to these hazards.</blockquote>
The Insurance Industry disagrees with Pielke. Peter Höppe, head of Munich Re's Geo Risks Research/Corporate Climate Center states,<br />
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Our figures indicate a trend towards an increase in extreme weather events that can only be fully explained by climate change.</blockquote>
If Roger Puekle proves too conservative about climate change, he will still have tenure ands won't loose his job. Munich Re could go out of business if their climate change projections are wrong.<br />
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Like insurance companies, we cannot afford to take the risk that climate skeptics are wrong. The Torch of 2011 should offer us enough light to see that we should be trying to avoid climate change rather than waiting to see if it happens. As Oliver Cromwell once wrote to the Parlement of Scotland, I would say to the climate change skeptics,<br />
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Think it possible that you might be mistaken,</blockquote>
and if you are mistaken, what the cost of that mistake will be. You are gambling with peoples' lives. I would say the same thing to Greenpeace, but does Greenpeace really care about human life?Charles Bartonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01125297013064527425noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7597656451205429515.post-90717577323577521272016-02-07T08:20:00.001-06:002016-02-07T08:20:29.604-06:00Jumping the Track Revisited<i>Update: I think this text still holds up and can be applied to issues that we face in the 2016 election. My conclusions point to thinking errors that Bernie Sanders has inherited from a sorta pseudo liberal ideology that he calls Socialism, but is not in fact derived from classical Socialism. Indeed, Bernie's ideology owes much to the Distributionist ideology that in turn is based on Roman Catholic dogma. Distributionism was popular among American hippies during the 1970's and served as a basis of Amory Lovins' energy thinking and through Amory Lovins, it influences the work of Mark C. Jacobson. Thus, Sanders ideology might be described as "Hippie Socialism" and "Hippie Environmentalism".</i><br />
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I favor a two party or multiparty political system. The flaws of human beings are such that no single party is going to long persevere in power without flaws emerging. The greater the power, the more troubling the flaws. As Lord Acton reminds us:<br />
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"Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men."</blockquote>
The only protection we have against the corruption that power brings is a competitive political system, but an adversarial system brings with it the possibility of using hate as a motivating force in politics. It is easier to demonize an opponent by denigrating him to the electorate rather than to defeat his argument through the use of reasoned arguments. Thus laziness is a major source of fallacious reasoning in politics. Ideology is a system of reasoning that relies on a closed system of related or semi-related propositions to yield answers to all political questions. Again the expediency of ideology is the effort it saves in thinking though issues. In addition, a shared ideology allows for consistency and cooperation among people who share the ideology. Thus ideologies may be very useful to political parties. However, once an ideology is applied to a problem, the ideologue typically stops thinking. If the ideologically correct solution fails to correct the problem, the ideologue who focuses on ideology rather than fact, may fail to notice that the problem is not solved by the ideologically correct solution. Even worse, the ideology may make assumptions that are just plain wrong and lead systematically to political errors.<br />
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I take these problems to be both universal and human. The only way a political system can counteract these human tendencies to laziness, viciousness, and thoughtlessness is through a competitive system of leadership. I want to point to two political issues which illustrate the corruptibility of the politically minded and the inability of party and ideology to protect against that corruption. The issues are Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) and the use of civilian nuclear generated electrical power. In the former case the ideological sin is committed on the ideological right and is associated with the Republican Party. In the latter, the sin is committed by the political left and is associated with the Democratic party.<br />
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There is little doubt that Global Warming skepticism is a conservative/Republican political cause. Global Warming skeptics have control of numerous media organs associated with the Republican Party and global warming skeptics are common among Republicans. A Pew Research Center Survey found that Republicans were twice as likely as Democrats or Independents to be convinced that Global Warming is not caused by human action. The disparity is even more striking among college graduates. 75% of Democrats and 57% of independents with college degrees say that the earth is warming and that this is caused by human activity. In contrast, only 19% of Republican college graduates agree that AGW is a real problem. Both Democrats and Independents who lack a college education are less likely to be convinced by AGW than their college educated peers, while the opposite is the case among Republicans who are not college graduates.<br />
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Most of these college educated Republicans believe that there is a real scientific debate on the causes of Global Warming. Yet numerous scientific bodies have adopted statements endorsing the AGW construct. These include the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Meteorological Society, the American Geophysical Union, the American Astronomical Society, the American Physical Society, the American Chemical Society, the American Medical Association, and the American Statistical Association. In contrast, Senator James Inhofe of Oklahoma has prepared a list of 650 scientists who are alleged to be AGW skeptics. But Inhofe's list is conspicuously unimpressive. Some named on the list are not known to hold advanced degrees in science and have no peer reviewed publications. The list also appears to be padded with the names of TV weather forecasters who are at best Meteorologists rather than climate scientists. Inhofe also has included a number of right wind economists on his list, even though their professional training would not qualify them to make judgements about climate science.<br />
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Republican Global Warming Skeptics take their cues from supposed experts like Steve McIntyre of Climate Audit. <a href="http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2008/01/steve_mcintyre_defends_pat_mic.php">McIntyre's critics charge that his favorite tactic is to mis-represent his target and then, having set up a straw man, proceeds to demolish it</a>. It is not my intention to debate the quality of Mcintyre's work, but to point out that it has been the subject of controversy and that, outside of Republican circles, Mcintyre is not regarded as a serious voice in mainstream science.<br />
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<a href="http://www.globalwarminghoax.com/news.php">Republican AGW skeptics seem to explain the lack of credibility of their AGW skeptical position by there being a vast conspiracy through which "liberals" control the views of mainstream science</a>, and that the idea of AGW is part of the "liberal" conspiracy. I regard this as most unfortunate because I disagree with mainstream Liberal thinking about Global Warming Mitigation. My view, which I would characterize as radical, is that the main line "liberal" thinking about AGW is highly distorted by the same sort of ideological cant that has taken hold of Republican discourse on climate.<br />
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Democratic discourse on AGW mitigation is full of talk about "efficiency", "sacrifice", "renewable energy", and "clean energy". Readers of my blog might appreciate that I have attempted to analyze mainstream Democratic notions on AGW mitigation and to demonstrate that they are overly expensive, as well as unlikely to be effective. In addition, Democrats appear to assume far to much reliance on government regulation and subsidies and far too little on normal economic mechanisms. Let me hasten to note that as a Liberal Democrat, I by no means reject regulation out of hand, nor am I an uncritical admirer of free markets. I just happen to think that overly intrusive regulations are less likely to work as mitigation approaches than lower cost market based mitigation approaches that are also likely to win broad public acceptance.<br />
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Since Republicans are more amenable to the mitigation strategy that I favor, I would like to see them at the table when mitigation is discussed. Instead, like a group of defeated Japanese Samurai, Republicans seem to be lining up to commit political Harakiri via Global Warming denial. Indeed, the Republican Party would quickly be demolished due to Republican stupidity were it not for the fact that Democrats are equally stupid about mitigation issues.<br />
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So what is going on? Why do Republicans jump the tracks on Global warming and Democrats jump the tracks on mitigation? Are they simply crazy? Blogger Erich Vieth puts his finger on the problem, although being a Democrat, Vieth fails to apply the lesson to his own party.<br />
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Dogma wears two hats. . . . dogma facilitates bonding.<br />
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The assertion of group-approved-nonsense looks and sounds ridiculous to outsiders, but uttering it loudly in the presence of one’s group proves one’s loyalty to those insiders. The more nonsensical the dogma is, the tighter the bond it is capable of generating among those willing to utter it. . . .<br />
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Uttering officially-approved nonsense in front of one’s group identifies one as a bona fide member of that group. Uttering absurd things is a display that one desires to be a member of that group so incredibly much that one is willing to utter the sorts of things that will trigger social ridicule from learned outsiders. . . .<br />
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Therefore, uttering nonsensical dogma is not primarily about conveying the truth of the matter asserted. Rather, it’s about sending out a sonar signal in order to identify allies and enemies. It is a herding mechanism.This deep need to be accepted by a group is so deeply wired into humans that, in most people, it even overcomes the urge to follow evidence where it leads. Unfortunately, the literal meaning of the dogma doesn’t entirely dissipate. Therefore, we have lots of Republicans who still refuse to act on the threat of global warming. . . .<br />
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Raising one’s hand to swear allegiance to scientific nonsense is usually done in full view, but such it actually functions like a secret handshake.<br />
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If you want to feel the glow of acceptance by a big group of Republicans, all you’ve got to do is say the magic phrase: “Global Warming has not been proven.” Say it just often enough to piss off Democrats. Don’t say it too often or too loudly, or even the Republicans will think that you’re weird. With those magic words denying global warming, you’ll get smiles and pats on the back from total strangers who will buy you drinks and regale you with stories about how they outwitted stupid Democrats; they’ll laugh at your jokes and they’ll tell you that you’re smart. . . .<br />
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Here’s an experiment that demonstrates what I’m claiming. Take a Republican off to the side and talk to him one-on-one. Be cordial and non-threatening. He’ll eventually settle down and you’ll find him somewhat reasonable on many topics. Then allow him to wander back to his group of fellow Republicans and listen to the dogma start to fly again–the same guy who (minutes ago) was starting to make sense (when it was just the two of you) is now spouting nonsense like he’s absolutely sure of himself. . . .</blockquote>
When Democrats start talking about energy efficiency, clean energy, renewables, and dangerous nuclear power, they are being no more rational than Republicans are when they claim that "AGW is hype".<br />
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Edward Sapir noted 80 years ago that "the real" is to a large extent a socially constructed linguistic picture:<br />
<blockquote>
Human beings do not live in the objective world alone, nor alone in the world of social activity as ordinarily understood, but are very much at the mercy of the particular language which has become the medium of expression for their society. It is quite an illusion to imagine that one adjusts to reality essentially without the use of language, and that language is merely an incidental means of solving specific problems of communication or reflection. The fact of the matter is that the "real world" is to a large extent unconsciously built up on the language habits of the group.</blockquote>
One of my most telling formative experiences occurred on the first day of the school year in a high school Biology class. Several of the students in the class were to go on to win National Merit Scholarships, which makes what happened that day so remarkable. The teacher began the class by talking about the study of living things, which is the subject. He mentioned several living organisms. Then he began to point to a potted plant that sat on his desk. He asked a member of the class if the plant was a living organism. The answer was "yes." Several other students were asked the same question and each answered "yes". Then, the teacher pointed to a student in the back of the classroom and asked if the glass in the classroom window was a living organism. The student answered "yes". Then the teacher asked the student who was sitting next to the first student, if the window glass was a living organism. The answer again came back "yes". The teacher then very calmly began to work his way through the classroom, asking each student in turn if the window was a living organism. The answer was always, "yes". Eventually the teacher reached the front row, where I had taken a seat next to Vanda, a girl with a truly astonishing anatomy. The teacher finally asked me, "Mr. Barton, is the window glass a living organism?" I withdrew from my teenage revery on Vanda's most astonishing features long enough to say "No". I probably lost my chance with Vanda at that moment, but the teacher thanked me for the right answer. I did not make an "A" in Biology, but several of the students who had said the window was a living organism on the first day did. Once they figured out how to give the answers the teacher was looking for in class, they did fine.<br />
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Giving the true answer, instead of the answer my peers had adopted, marked me as a socially maladjusted teenager. I probably still am. Social groups can be corrupting because they have the power to make us deny truth.<br />
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<i>Update: I want to add a note about what I think happened to Bernie Sanders. Bernie was one of those students who hung out at the back of the Biology classroom and when he heard all of his pseudo liberal peers denouncing Vermont Yankee, Bernie came up with the same answers to the teacher's questions. When, Bernie heard Meredith Angwin </i><i>deny that Vermont Yankee was bad, he scoffed. When the teacher agreed with Meredith, Bernie thought the teacher was wrong. Bernie's ideological peers agreed with him and that is all Bernie needed to keep him from thinking.</i><br />
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Charles Bartonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01125297013064527425noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7597656451205429515.post-44738565576324322862016-02-06T08:44:00.000-06:002016-02-06T09:06:11.247-06:00Distributionism Revisited<i>My recent post on Bernie Sanders took me back to Nuclear Green Posts on Distributionism that began in December 2008. I was trying to explore the basis of the Green anti-nuclear stance. If the line of argument is correct, it was based on the work of two Roman Catholic intellectuals who ignored things like priests who screwed alter boys, and bishops who covered up their crimes. The same bishops conspired with local kings, to torture Jews in Catholic Church Inquisition tribunals, and burn them at the stake. No matter, for the early prophets of Distributionism, these were far more perfect times, when no one questioned the authority of the Church.</i><br />
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In my last post, I briefly mentioned distributionism, and noted the influence of distributionism on the anti-nuclear movement. Distributionism was a radical interpretation of a charter document <em>De Rerum Novarum </em>issued by Pope Leo in 1891. <em>De Rerum Novarum </em>was a significant attempt by the Catholic Church to come to terms with modern society while at the same time promoting social reforms that were viewed by the church as demanded by its moral teachings. The moral teachings of the Catholic Church were filtered through the thought of the Medieval Catholic philosopher, Thomas Aquinas. Thus <em>De Rerum Novarum</em> did not find itself at peace with the modernity of modern society, or with the modern social order.</div>
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<em>De Rerum Novarum</em> depicted the plight of the poor in late 19th century Europe and demanded justice for them. It supported the right of workers to organize labor unions and demanded that owners pay their workers fair wages:<br />
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<i>Let the working man and the employer make free agreements, and in particular let them agree freely as to the wages; nevertheless, there underlies a dictate of natural justice more imperious and ancient than any bargain between man and man, namely, that wages ought not to be insufficient to support a frugal and well-behaved wage-earner. If through necessity or fear of a worse evil the workman accept harder conditions because an employer or contractor will afford him no better, he is made the victim of force and injustice.</i></blockquote>
Distributive justice requires that<br />
<blockquote>
<span class="text">all citizens, without exception, are obliged to contribute something to the sum-total common goods, some share of which naturally goes back to each individual,</span></blockquote>
Yet, what Pope Leo XIII gave with his right hand, he took back with his left. Thus jusitice required workers to not disrupt social harmony as they sought a better life for themselves and their families.<br />
<blockquote>
The great mistake made in regard to the matter now under consideration is to take up with the notion that class is naturally hostile to class, and that the wealthy and the working men are intended by nature to live in mutual conflict. So irrational and so false is this view that the direct contrary is the truth. . . it (is) ordained by nature that these two classes should dwell in harmony and agreement, so as to maintain the balance of the body politic. Each needs the other: capital cannot do without labor, nor labor without capital. Mutual agreement results in the beauty of good order, while perpetual conflict necessarily produces confusion and savage barbarity.</blockquote>
But <em>De Rerum Novarum</em> went far beyond promoting what it viewed as a harmonious relationship between workers and owners in modern society. It offered an attempt to base an economic theory on the concept of distributive justice. Here we encounter a way that <em>De Rerum Novarum </em>comes into direct conflict with the modern because in modern thought there is a conceptual seperation between the economic order and the moral order. In modern society there is no one unifying theory of the just, and so communities do not attempt to imposes ethical obligations on their members, rather they filter their diverse interpretation of the ethical though a series of laws that imposes minimal aproximate standards of the ethical on their members. <em>De Rerum Novarum</em> went well beyound the modern, by laying out a theory of economic justice that drew on the very unmodern philosoply of Thomas Aquinas.<br />
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<em>De Rerum Novarum</em> assumes a world in which their are two classes, the rich and the poor. Both have obligations to the other. The rich are obliged to transfer some of their wealth to the poor as charity. The poor are obliged to not raise a ruckus if the rich do not prove to be as generous as they would wish.<br />
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<em>De Rerum Novarum</em> suggests that <span class="text">if a worker</span><br />
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<span class="text">saves something by restricting expenditures and invests his savings in a piece of land in order to keep the fruit of his thrift more safe, a holding of this kind is certainly nothing else than his wage under a different form; and on this account land which the worker thus buys is necessarily under his full control as much as the wage which he earned by his labor.</span></blockquote>
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<span class="text">The right to own land and enjoy its fruits is a major concern of <em>De Rerum Novarum</em>.</span></span><br />
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<span class="text">The land, surely, that has been worked by the hand and the art of the tiller greatly changes in aspect. The wilderness is made fruitful; the barren field, fertile. But those things through which the soil has been improved so inhere in the soil and are so thoroughly intermingled with it, that they are for the most part quite inseparable from it. And, after all, would justice permit anyone to own and enjoy that upon which another has toiled? As effects follow the cause producing them, so it is just that the fruit of labor belongs precisely to those who have performed the labor.</span><br />
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<span class="text">Rightly therefore, the human race as a whole, moved in no wise by the dissenting opinions of a few, and observing nature carefully, has found in the law of nature itself the basis of the distribution of goods, and, by the practice of all ages, has consecrated private possession as something best adapted to man's nature and to peaceful and tranquil living together. Now civil laws, which, when just, derive their power from the natural law itself, confirm and, even by the use of force, protect this right of which we speak. -- And this same right has been sanctioned by the authority of the divine law, which forbids us most strictly even to desire what belongs to another. "Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's wife, nor his house, nor his field, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor anything that is his."</span></blockquote>
What Distributionism did was to expand the connection which Leo XIII made between social justice and property ownership, by focusing the land owning rights of workers on farming. The Catholic writer Hilaire Belloc pushed <em>De Rerum Novarum</em> to a more radical view as Raymond Williams explained in "Culture and Society":<br />
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Belloc's argument is that capitalism as a system is breaking down, and that this is to be welcomed. A society in which a minority owns and controls the means of production, while the majority are reduced to proletarian status, is not only wrong but unstable. Belloc sees it breaking down in two ways — on the one hand into State action for welfare (which pure capitalism cannot embody); on the other hand into monopoly and the restraint of trade. There are only two alternatives to this system: socialism, which Belloc calls collectivism; and the redistribution of property on a significant scale, which Belloc calls distributivism.</blockquote>
Belloc worked in close intellectual collaboration with the better known writer G.K. Chesterton, but is regarded as laying the theoretical foundations for Distributionism. In a number of respects Belloc's thinking paralleled Marxism. He certainly held capitalism in low regard:<br />
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"The Capitalist state breeds a Collectivist theory which in action produces the Servile State".</blockquote>
and<br />
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"..a collectivist solution is the easiest for a Capitalist state to aim at, and yet, in the very act of attempting collectivism, the servitude of the many results and the confirmation of the present privilege of the few?.</blockquote>
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Distributionism thus went far beyond Pope Leo in focusing on the localization as opposed to the centralized as optimal. Thus individuals made better decisions for themselves than large organizations could. Small organizations were better equipped to make decisions than large organizations. Belloc and Chesterton also advocated the self sufficiency of families, even to the extent of growing their own food. They supported coops as opposed to corporations, and guilds as opposed to unions. They supported eliminating the role of the middle man in economic transactions. They opposed government welfare programs and social security schemes. They did not like the charging of interest on loans.<br />
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Distributionism is clearly reactionary and far less modern even than De Rerum Novarum. It views the just society as a community of artisans, small business people, and farmers. The ideal business is a family business and the ideal farm a family farm.<br />
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The notion that nothing good can come from large organizations including the state was not, however, driven by Balloc and Chesterton to its logical conclusion in the area of religion. The equivalent of Distributionism in religion is the principle of congregational autonomy, a principle that utterly undercuts the authority of the Roman Catholic Church. </div>
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Afterword: I have diverted from my usual course on Nuclear Green because I am trying to untangle some of the intellectual roots of the anti-nuclear movement, and in particular of Amory Lovins' anti-nuclear belief system. I intend to unpack the relationship between Distributionism and Lovins' energy theory. I will also intend to look at the relationship between Distributionism and anti-Capitalism in the the Green movement, and in the "relocalization" movement.</div>
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<i>I had three comments to this December 2008 post. </i></div>
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<dt class="comment-author " id="c179821991355626142" style="background-color: white; color: #30230c; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 16px; font-weight: bold; margin-top: 18.1938px;"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/profile/16245086958213100840" rel="nofollow" style="color: #999999; text-decoration: none;">Marcel F. Williams</a> said...</dt>
<dd class="comment-body" id="Blog1_cmt-179821991355626142" style="background-color: white; color: #30230c; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 16px; margin-left: 0px;">Remember those old SciFi films from the 1950's where all types of monsters and terrible phenomena resulted from radiation and radioactive material. Most Americans had already been introduced to radiation in a horrific manner after the dropping of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The SciFi films of the 50's only perpetuated that fear as did television when these films were later shown on the TV networks during the 1960s.<br />
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There was a frequent theme in these films 'that there are some things in nature that scientist really shouldn't fool around with' or we might get Godzilla, giant ants, giant people or shrinking men, etc.<br />
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So any incidents, no matter how minor, involving nuclear energy or material, revives those media perpetuated fears even though the human species has always existed in a naturally radioactive environment and are probably headed towards an even more radioactive environment in the the new frontier of space.<br />
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Marcel F. Williams<br />
http://newpapyrusmagazine.blogspot.com/<br />
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Axil Responded:<br />
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@ Marcel F. Williams -<br />
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Please allow me to put into perspective the background and history of the life and times of mid century America to add so small degree of perspective to your thesis.<br />
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A political movement oftentimes resorts to the motivating effects of fear in their pursuit of their goals. Being the mover most potent in political thought, the use of fear has become a high art in political activity at every level of discourse.<br />
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In the 50’s and 60’s there was invented the concept of the ‘Missal Gap’ to move the country and replace the political regime that had saved the world from the Nazi menace. The Kennedy political machine revised and extended the fear tactic begun by the Truman administration to motivate the American politic to gird themselves and the country against the new menace; Soviet Communism. In fact, America had many more planes, A-bombs, and missiles than the Russians and the Kennedy administration new it.<br />
<br />
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But the fear in that this line of propaganda engendered was very effective and had many other uses which included the excuse to test with abandon Atomic and later Hydrogen weapons of mass destruction at the expense of the general health and welfare of the world at large.<br />
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Patriotic citizens in the arts took it upon themselves to use and expand the fear campaign to reap profit at the box office in the process to turn the Russians into the new boggymen.<br />
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But as it always happens, a counter reaction set in and a reactionary fear campaign took root. And as it always happens, the fear campaign opposing nuclear power grew to include commercial nuclear power production. The green movement was initially a progressive movement that sprung up in reaction to the conservative political activities of the government at that time. The entertainment business naturally embraced the propaganda line to expand and extend the themes of nuclear reaction.<br />
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Thus, the green movement came into being and was nourished in this environment and it uses to this day the fear of nuclear power that was useful to establish itself as the main means to nourish it propaganda efforts wide and diverse as they have become. And to this day they cannot or will not distinguish between the old and dead phantoms of the past bygone era of fear and the new rebirth of the revitalized and much needed renaissance of the current nuclear revival movement. Such is the legacy of all those reruns on TV and in books, on DVD and on BlueRay, in video games in the myriad and sundry other venues of our media culture that continue to poison the minds and hearts of the young to the pressing needs that are required for our world to survive.<br />
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Axil</div>
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<i>Finally Axil added:</i><br />
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At the bottom of all considerations in the social organization of any group of people most purely reflected by and organized in the state is the exercise of power. Who has it, who doesn’t, and how the tools and the levers of power are exercised by the people at the top to control and direct society to the benefit of that ruling elite.<br />
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The exercise of power is never well ordered. There is always roiling tension, inner resistance, and convoluted counter flow that complicates and obscures the motivations and goals of individuals, sub-groups, classes, and organizations in society. Truly understanding the history, evolution, methods, procedures, and results of the projections of power is pervasive and universally attempted but seldom achieved; and when achieved quickly lost to the dustbin of history.<br />
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Power is and evolutionary force that directs the destiny of man and his societies and as such is constantly changing to adapt to the new situation in a eternal battle of good and evil in the world. The political condition is a quantum phenomenon that only becomes apparent as a probability summed over the path of all possible outcomes. To find the fundamental equation for all that can be is a noble but a daunting task reserved for only those who approach its study with no preconceptions and are totally open to all possibility. Even then, they will have only a brief and fleeting look at its course as it quickly recedes into the growing darkness of the uncertain future. To observe this quantum reality is to change it, to understand it in all it complexity is reserved only to the angels.<br />
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Axil</div>
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</dd><i>Axil was one of the deeper thinbkers of the early phase of the Thorium era.</i><br />
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<br />Charles Bartonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01125297013064527425noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7597656451205429515.post-42208446896402804482016-02-05T09:48:00.002-06:002016-02-06T08:04:52.844-06:00Is Bernie Sanders like Ted Cruz an enemy of Science?Aging, trouble plagued Presidential Candidate, Bernie Sanders, makes no bones about what he thinks of Nuclear Power. Sanders' stated about his home state's only Nuclear Power Plant, Vermont Yankee:<br />
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<span style="background-color: #f2f2f2; color: #2f2f2f; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px;">In my state there is a strong feeling that we want to go forward with energy efficiency and sustainable energy. I believe that we have that right. I believe that every other state in the country has that right, </span><a href="http://www.sanders.senate.gov/newsroom/recent-business/nuclear-power" style="background-color: #f2f2f2; color: #0079d3; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px; margin: 0px; text-decoration: none;">Sanders said</a><span style="background-color: #f2f2f2; color: #2f2f2f; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px;">. If we want to move to sustainable energy and not maintain an aging, trouble-plagued nuclear power plant, I think we should be allowed to do that.</span></blockquote>
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Needless to say Vermont Yankee was much younger than Senator Sanders. Now Senator Sanders appears to be in extremely good shape for his age, but the same could also have been said of Vermont Yankee. The reliance on the decrepit old age argument to attack Vermont Yankee's continued existence, was but a pretext to hide Senator Sanders' true motive, which lay in his view of Nuclear Power. His statement below reviews the emotional power of his views. <br />
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Unfortunately, Senator Sanders' statement is almost completely devoid of honesty, and offers a level of scientific and factual misinformation that is fully comparable to Tea Party standard bearer Ted Cruz. On Nuclear power, Burnie Sanders simply lies. First, the Fukushima Nuclear events, although spectacular were not the utter disasters Senator Sanders imagined. The disaster was very violent and destructive earthquake, that triggered a 50' high Tsunami that struck much of the east coast of Japan. <br />
Close to 20,000 people died as a result. The primary lesson from these events is that the Japanese were not prepared for an earthquake of such a magnatude, and their lack of preparation lead to all subsequent losses, including the Fukushima events. Considering everything, the Fukushima reactors stood up very well to both the earthquake and the Tsunami. Reactors that were operating shutdown as they were designed to. The reactors were not damaged by the earthquake, although a nearby dam collapsed. Nor did the force of a 50' high Tsunami damage the reactors. What suffered was the back up power systems that were required to keep reactor emergency cooling systems going. The primary back up system was the grid. The combined destruction created by the earthquake and the tsunami knocked the Japanese grid down. Finally, the diesel emergency plant backup system succumbed to the effects of the tsunami on its fossil fuel supply. Thus, the primary causes of the Fukushima events were the earthquake and subsequent tsunami. The secondary cause was the brake down of the conventional grid, and finally, the tertiary cause was the failure of the emergency power generation system.<br />
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Are there lessons that can be learned from Fukushima? There most assuredly are, but by no means do they give aid and comfort to the enemies of nuclear power such as Senator Sanders. The first lesson is that society needs to prepare for known, but infrequent natural disasters. Japan had not prepared for the earthquake and tsunami because until recently the potential of such events was not known and their destructive potential was not well understood. This lack of understanding extended to the design of the Fukushima nuclear facilities, which left a secondary back up system vulnerable to 50' tsunami waves. Before we judge too harshly we must first look at what else in Japan had gone wrong because of a lack of foresight. The answer is a whole lot and what had gone wrong cost 20,000 lives.<br />
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Senator Sanders' focuses on the supposed lessons of Fukushima, but how can you learn any lesson if you don't know what happened? The lesson from Fukushima is not that nuclear power is unsafe. It is that society must be prepared for the worst nature has to offer. And nature is fully capable of offering us a Fukushima type earthquake and tsunami, especially in the Pacific North West along the Washington, Oregon, and Northern California coast. This is the lesson we need to learn from Fukushima. As long as the name "Fukushima" is used as a cudgel for Senator Sanders' inglorious attack on nuclear power which is based on a very hasty and poorly informed generalization fight against nuclear power, nothing can be learned. Thus, by resorting to the "Fukushima" argument, Senator Sanders becomes a champion of ignorance.<br />
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Either Senator Sanders account of the nuclear safety implications of the Fukushima events is based on a very poorly informed and hasty generalization about nuclear power, or Senator Sanders is simply lying. Nowhere does Senator Sanders tell us why he believes that Fukushima means that Vermont Yankee is unsafe. Does Senator Sanders believe that Vermont Yankee is likely to be destroyed by a 50' tsunami? If not, how can Senator Sanders show that Fukushima meant that Vermont Yankee is unsafe? Did he consulted with the scientific community before he jumped to his conclusions? Or, is Senator Sanders simply lying?<br />
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Senator Sanders argues that there is a big problem with nuclear waste, however he never tells us who is the source of this information and if the argument is backed by the scientific community. Scientists tell us that there are many potential solutions to the so called problem of nuclear waste and some scientists say that the real problem is the classification of "once through" nuclear fuel as waste. I doubt that Senator Sanders has the slightest idea what the materials he calls "Nuclear Waste" really are. He further does not have the slightest idea what can be done with them. Bernie thinks that he does not need to anything more than say the magic words "nuclear waste" and immediately upset other poorly informed people. No further knowledge or thought is required.<br />
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Bernie also talked about the billions and billions of dollars of subsidies to nuclear power, but never did a fairly detailed study of spending by the United States government on nuclear technology. I have defined subsidies as money spent with the intention of benefiting the civilian nuclear power industry, which actually benefited that industry. This definition precluded spending for purposes related to national defense and spending for research that did not benefit the nuclear power industry. Thus, only spending by the government that directly benefits the civilian nuclear power industry which was not first intended for defense purposes, is a true subsidy. <br />
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Then, I looked at the Price Anderson Act, often sited as a form of nuclear subsidy, but what I found was that the primary beneficiary of Price-Anderson is the United States Government. Price-Anderson protects the government from the first ten billion dollars of liabilities related to a nuclear accident. It does this by creating a very large insurance pool, backed by reactor owners. In other words, the government does not have to pay a cent, until the entire $10 billion pool is exhausted. Then guess what? Congress can force the Nuclear Industry to increase the size of their pool to cover further losses. The United States Government has yet to pay a cent under Price-Anderson. How much do you bet the government eventually will pay out? So much for honest Bernie's billions of dollars in subsidies. <br />
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Finally, I would like to note that the science community, as a whole, has concluded that we can not win the fight against Anthropogenic Global Warming without nuclear power. That is what scientists are telling us. Does Bernie know? Does Bernie care? Or is Bernie a closet anti-scientist like Ted Cruz? Does Burnie only pretend to be progressive?Charles Bartonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01125297013064527425noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7597656451205429515.post-7575719317458331242016-02-04T06:22:00.002-06:002016-02-04T06:25:22.170-06:00Weinberg on Nuclear Safety<i style="color: #0c3019; font-family: georgia, serif; font-size: 22.4px;"><span style="color: #30230c; font-family: "georgia" , serif;">This post continues to be relevant, although it could be improved with some minor revisions. Hopefully, I can do that soon. But as G. K. Chesterton once said, "If a thing is worth doinng at all, it is worth doing badly." </span></i><br />
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<a href="http://blogs.knoxnews.com/munger/weinberg.jpg" style="color: #999999; text-decoration: none;"></a>By the middle of 1972 the handwriting was on the wall. Alvin Weinberg had some very powerful enemies, including<a href="http://nucleargreen.blogspot.com/2008/02/milton-shaw-part-ii_21.html" style="color: #999999; text-decoration: none;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #3333ff;">Congressman Chet Holifield, and AEC administrator Milton Shaw.</span></a> At the heart of their enmity was a distaste for Weinberg's view on nuclear safety. The official line of the Atomic Energy Establishment was that Light Water Reactor technology was mature and safe. Nuclear scientists who were worried about reactor safety were not sure. 7 years later the Three Mile Island-2 accident was to demonstrate that reactors, although not highly dangerous, were not as safe as they could be. Weinberg championed the cause of nuclear scientists who knew that more nuclear safety research was needed. The establishment, including Holifield and Shaw, found that Weinberg's stance was an unforgivable affront to their power and determined to fire him.</div>
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Weinberg's firing followed another incident, <a href="http://nucleargreen.blogspot.com/2008/04/k-z-morgan-angry-genie-of-ornl.html" style="color: #999999; text-decoration: none;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #3333ff;">the forced censorship of a K.Z. Morgan paper, with a threat that if Morgan presented a notion that certain parties in Washington, Chicago and Arco, Idaho did not like</span></a>, namely that the the Molten Salt Breeder Reactor (MSBR) was a safer and more acceptable than the Liquid Metal Fast Breeder Reactor (LMFBR), Laboratory funding, effecting the livelihood of hundreds of Laboratory employees would be cut. Alvin Weinberg came close to confirming Morgan's story that ORNL had been threatened with a funding loss had Morgan's uncensored paper been presented. This threat could have only been a serious threat if it came from Holifield and Shaw. As it was the staff of ORNL diminished from 5300 to 3600 during the late 1960's and early 1970's as the result of funding decreases including the termination of the Molten Salt Reactor development program.</div>
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As it turned out, censoring Morgan did not protect Weinberg, because Chet Holifield disliked Weinberg's stance on nuclear safety. Weinberg was later to be proven right on nuclear safety problems at a place called Three Mile Island.</div>
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From the late in the 1960's until the end of December 1972, Weinberg had worked to shift the direction of the laboratory focus away from reactor development and toward environmental issues. He succeeded in creating a major center for the study of carbon in the environment, at a time when so-called environmentalists favored burning CO2 to nuclear energy. Indeed because of Weinberg's intuitive,<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #3333ff;"><a href="http://nucleargreen.blogspot.com/2009/12/nuclear-energy-viable-alternative.html" style="color: #999999; text-decoration: none;"> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #3333ff;">ORNL moved a generation ahead of Snowmass and almost everywhere else in its thinking about carbon</span></a> and the environment</span>. In November, 1972 the recently-fired Alvin Weinberg, six weeks away from a year long terminal leave from ORNL, journeyed to Boulder, Colorado <a href="http://www.osti.gov/energycitations/servlets/purl/6237815-f2TXAN/6237815.pdf" style="color: #999999; text-decoration: none;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #3333ff;">to speak to Council for the Advancement of Science Writing about nuclear safety</span></a>. Weinberg, whose integrity on nuclear safety was unquestionable, took environmentalists to task for their preference for fossil fuels over nuclear power. Weinberg stated,<br />
<blockquote>
Nuclear power plants and their subsystems have caused less damage to human health and to the environment, per kilowatt-hour, than have fossil-fueled central power stations. Thus Professor Lester B. Lave of Carnegie-Mellon University points out that from mining alone the damage imposed by coal is twelve-fold greater, per kilowatt-hour, than is that imposed by nuclear energy. (Professor Lave's argument is based on the fact that some 120,000 coal miners today receive about $300 per month compensation as the result of black lung disease.) C. Starr, M. A. Greenfield, and D. F. Hausknecht writing in Nuclear News, Oct. 1972, have compared the radioactivity hazard from nuclear plants with that from oil- or coal-fired plants. Their results show that to reach air quality standards for oxides of sulfur and nitrogen and radioactivity in Los Angeles County one could tolerate 160,000 nuclear plants of 1,000,000-kilowatt capacity, but only 10 oil-fired or 23 natural-gas plants of this size.<br />
<br />
Granted that properly operating nuclear power plants and their sub-systems - including mining, transport and chemical reprocessing of used reactor fuel elements, and disposal of radioactive wastes - are benign and have been so demonstrated, are there concerns regarding the possibility that these systems may malfunction and cause hazard to people and to the environment? This is a perfectly legitimate question that deserves serious and thoughtful consideration; and it is this aspect of the matter that I shall address.<br />
<br />
A properly operating nuclear power plant and its subsystems is and can remain as innocuous a thermal power plant as man has ever devised. The whole safety issue then centers around the possibility that a nuclear plant or its subsystems may malfunction so grossly as to cause damage to the environment or to people.</blockquote>
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Weinberg has laid out the issues. The issue in November 1972 is the same which confronts us, 38 years later. The so-called "Greens" have made a secret alliance with fossil fuel interest that is to the detriment of all life forms on the planet Earth, including its human inhabitants. And no matter how much environmentalists profess to be concerned about the carbon problem, until they give up their anti-nuclear alliance with coal and natural gas interests, the safety of the planet is in jeopardy.</div>
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Environmentalists, who seemingly regard lies as a primary tool to further their anti-nuclear arguments, have long insisted that the scientific-technical community had ignored the issue of nuclear safety. Weinberg answered this slur,<br />
<blockquote>
At the outset, we must remember that the technical community has always recognized that a nuclear system is potentially a dangerous device.</blockquote>
This statement can be verified by anyone who would care to review the history of nuclear safety discussions and research, by pioneering nuclear scientists, as Weinberg pointed out,<br />
<blockquote>
I can assert that nuclear systems per kilowatt-hour have caused much less damage to the biosphere than have other sources of thermal energy, is a tribute to the ingenuity and foresight of the reactor engineer. From the earliest days of nuclear energy we nuclear people have been constantly reminded of this potential danger. (In 1942 one of the first jobs I did for the Manhattan Project was to estimate the hazard caused by minute amounts of radioactive carbon that would be emitted from the early air-cooled graphite reactors; and General Leslie R. Groves insisted that Enrico Fermi move his West Stands critical reactor from the center of Southside Chicago because of the potential hazard.) Being so sensitively attuned to this potential, we have developed techniques and methods for handling these materials safely. The question is, successful as we have been in the past, what can we say about the likelihood of our continuing success in the future when large nuclear energy reactors will dot the landscape everywhere?</blockquote>
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Weinberg in 1972 addressed what continue to be nuclear safety concerns of the public:<br />
<blockquote>
The whole nuclear power system involves four subsystems:<br />
(1) mining and refining uranium to fuel the reactor;<br />
(2) the reactor itself;<br />
(3) transport and chemical processing of radioactive materials from the reactor; and<br />
(4) waste disposal.</blockquote>
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After discussing research on cancer rates of uranium miners, Weinberg concluded,<br />
<blockquote>
the number of deaths caused by mining of uranium, per kilowatt-hour, is much less than those from mining of coal, simply because there are so many fewer miners involved per kilowatt-hour.</blockquote>
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It should be noted that changes in mining technology during the last 40 years have improved the health and safety of all miners, but this is particularly true of American uranium miners, because uranium mining technology now does not require miners to go underground. Coal miners still die in deep underground mines, and workers at oil and gas extraction facilities still die from natural gas explosions. So if anything there is an even greater safety advantage in uranium mining today than when Weinberg spoke 38 years ago.</div>
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Weinberg noted two safety concerns in connection with reactors,<br />
<blockquote>
There are two quite different potential hazards from a nuclear reactor.</blockquote>
<blockquote>
* First there are the routine effluents - including tritium which is a radioactive form of hydrogen, radioactive fission gases from possible leaking fuel elements, radioactive cobalt from corrosion products, etc.</blockquote>
<blockquote>
* Second there is the question of a major, catastrophic accident to a nuclear reactor that might result in an appreciable fraction of the radioactive inventory being released to the environment.</blockquote>
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Weinberg noted that the first hazard was itself controversial, but noted that even disregarding the controversy,<br />
<blockquote>
the current standards are now so low - 5% of the amount we receive from natural sources - at the reactor site boundary as to make the whole issue a non-issue. [By comparison, the added radiation one gets by sleeping adjacent to one's wife whose body (as does everyone's) contains radioactive potassium, is around 7% of the standard for the reactor site boundary. This is a classic case of balancing benefits versus risks!] And indeed, nuclear power plants are now designed to meet these very stringent requirements, and in fact are doing so; here a technological<br />
fix has completely resolved a controversy.</blockquote>
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Weinberg thus points out a reductio ad absurdum of the safety concerns of nuclear critics. It is, Weinberg argues, more dangerous from a radiation safety viewpoint to sleep next to your spouse than to sleep just outside the fence at a reactor site.</div>
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We now have reached a point where we should look for Alvin Weinberg's covert comments about his firing, which was a closely-guarded secret at the time. First it should be noted that ORNL had been between 1955 and 1965 a major international center for reactor safety research. A team of reactor chemists under the direction of George W. Parker had examined the circumstances of a potential reactor accident. My father from 1960 to 1965 had been a member of the team, and played a major role in writing a 1967 paper which described the team's work. I have noted elsewhere Milton Shaw's role in shutting down ORNL safety research. However, <a href="http://www.osti.gov/bridge/product.biblio.jsp?query_id=2&page=0&osti_id=4257388" style="color: #999999; text-decoration: none;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #3333ff;">in their swan song, the ORNL safety researchers noted</span></a>,<br />
<blockquote>
In conclusion, we wish to emphasize that there are many factors affecting the fission product source term and the amount of fission products which actually can escape the containment system of power reactors in reactor accidents. While the amount of fission products evolved from overheated fuel is highly useful information, it is now recognized that the hazard of reactor accidents can be fully evaluated only through sophisticated accident simulation experiments in facilities such as the Containment Research Installation (ORNL), the Containment Systems Experiment (Battelle Northwest), and the Loss-of-Fluid Test (Phillips-Idaho).</blockquote>
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This recommendation was important in Weinberg's thinking. <a href="http://nucleargreen.blogspot.com/2010/05/how-milton-shaw-blew-nuclear-safety.html" style="color: #999999; text-decoration: none;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #3333ff;">And it was a thorn in Milton Shaw's side</span></a>. The loss of coolant test was the critical issue for Weinberg, because speculation had held that once core meltdown had occurred, nothing could stop the molten mass of core materials from eating its way through the massive steel pressure vessel, the cement floor of the underneath the reactor, and into the earth, all of the way to China. This was the infamous "China Syndrome." The loss of coolant test proposed to sacrifice a built-to-purpose reactor under construction at INL. A loss-of-coolant accident was to be simulated, and the reactor was then allowed to experience core meltdown. The goal of the experiment was to discover if the "China Syndrome" could in fact happen. Weinberg argued that the loss of coolant experiment was rational.<br />
<blockquote>
As long as reactors were relatively small we could prove by calculation that even if the coolant system and its back-up failed, the molten fuel could not generate enough heat to melt itself through the containment However, when reactors exceeded a certain size, then it was no longer possible to prove by calculation that an uncooled reactor fuel charge would not melt through its containment vessel. This hypothetical melt-through is referred to as the China Syndrome for obvious reasons. Since we could not prove that a molten fuel puddle wouldn't reach the basement of a power reactor, we also couldn't prove whether it would continue to bore itself deeper into the ground.</blockquote>
Weinberg pointed to the consequences,<br />
<blockquote>
Whether or not the China Syndrome is a real possibility is moot. The point is, however, that it is not possible to disprove its existence. Thus, for these very large reactors, it is no longer possible to claim that the containment shell, which for smaller reactors could be relied upon to prevent radioactivity from reaching the public, was sufficient by itself. In consequence, the secondary back-up cooling systems, which originally were designed simply to prevent property loss and awkward clean-up, must now be viewed as the ultimate emergency protection against the China Syndrome and as an integral part of the reactor safety system.</blockquote>
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I have already pointed out that it was not Weinberg alone, but the community of Nuclear Scientists which did not accept Milton Shaw's judgment on nuclear safety. As Weinberg pointed out,<br />
<blockquote>
Very arduous and sometimes acrimonious [Congressional] hearings related to these criteria were held last year [1971]. During this time every aspect of the operation of the emergency core cooling systems both in pressurized-water reactors and in boiling-water reactors has been thoroughly re-examined. Although they are obviously cumbersome, the hearings have obliged all parties, intervenors, manufacturers, the AEC, safety engineers, to examine in excruciating detail the possible course of events following a loss-of-coolant accident. The criteria that have emerged represent additional conservatism in the design both of light-water reactors and of their emergency core cooling systems.</blockquote>
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There is little reason to doubt that Weinberg saw the "China Syndrome" controversy as the backdrop to his firing.</div>
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Weinberg then took up the issue of the transportation and chemical reprocessing of nuclear fuel. Weinberg argued that these problems should be addressed together because,<br />
<blockquote>
if reactors and chemical plants needed for reprocessing their fuel were built very close to each other (in nuclear parks) the transport problem as a separate safety hazard would largely disappear.</blockquote>
Weinberg knew of one such system, the Molten Salt Breeder Reactor that was being developed at Oak Ridge. Weinberg noted,<br />
<blockquote>
As for the chemical fuel reprocessing plants themselves, we at Oak Ridge National Laboratory are studying measures that might be taken to reduce radioactive emissions from such plants as low as those from light-water reactors - around 5% of radiation levels from natural sources at the plant boundaries. We believe that plants with practically zero release are actually quite feasible and would probably add around 0.5 mill per kwh to the cost of nuclear power.</blockquote>
Weinberg also reported that he had testified<br />
<blockquote>
before the Senate Interior and Insular Affairs Committee in October 1971, . . .</blockquote>
And his views had, no doubt given pain to Milton Shaw and Chet Holifield,<br />
<blockquote>
our present technology and philosophy of siting separates the chemical plants from the reactors, and so we are confronted with the necessity of transporting heavily radioactive materials. To estimate the hazard, let us suppose that by the year 2000, we have 1,000,000 megawatts of nuclear power, of which two-thirds are liquid-metal fast breeders. There will then be 7000 to 12,000 annual shipments of spent fuel from reactors to chemical plants, with an average of 60 to 100 loaded casks in transit at all times. Projected shipments might contain 1.5 tons of core fuel which has decayed for as little as 30 days (in which case each shipment while in transit would generate 300 kilowatts of heat) and 75 million curies of radioactivity. Present casks from light-water reactors might contain material that produces 30 kilowatts of heat and contains seven million curies of radioactivity.</blockquote>
It should be noted that sometime later, reactor researchers at Argonne National Laboratory redesigned the fuel reprocessing system for the LMFBR in order to keep it in the same location as the reactor. Not only did they tastily acknowledge that Weinberg was right, but they also managed to spend a huge amount of money to reinvent the wheel, that is to develop a technology that could do for LMFBR fuel what ORNL was developing technology for with the MSBR, using analogous molten-salt technology.<br />
<br />
Finally, Weinberg offered some observations on nuclear waste. Ironically, Weinberg did not realize that ORNL had developed a solution to the nuclear waste problem. My father had in the 1950's investigated the use of plutonium as a Molten Salt Reactor fuel. And the use of Plutonium as a molten salt reactor fuel had been demonstrated during the Molten Salt Reactor Experiment. Weinberg acknowledged the problem created by plutonium in used nuclear fuel,<br />
<blockquote>
Plutonium-239 has a half-life of 24,400 years, and wastes containing this nuclide will remain potentially dangerous for 200,000 years.</blockquote>
Ironically, if plutonium and the so-called minor actinides could be burned in a reactor, they would cease to be a part of the nuclear waste problem, the highly-radioactive fission products in nuclear waste would stop being dangerous after 300 years. Thus another solution to the nuclear waste problem was potentially available from Oak Ridge technology, but that had not been worked out yet. That solution could potentially produce a very large amount of new energy. Two decades later, <a href="http://home.earthlink.net/~bhoglund/uri_MSR_WPu.html" style="color: #999999; text-decoration: none;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #3333ff;">Uri Gat and J.R. Engel of ORNL and H.L. Dodds of the University of Tennessee, were to write</span></a>,<br />
<blockquote>
The MSRs, with their continuous processing and the immediate separation of the residual fuel from the waste, simplify the handling of the waste and contribute to the solution and acceptability of the waste issue.</blockquote>
<blockquote>
The on-line processing can significantly reduce the transportation of radioactive shipments. There is no shipping between the reactor and the processing facility. Storage requirements are also reduced as there is no interim storage for either cooldown or preparation for shipment. The waste, having been separated from the fuel, requires no compromise to accommodate the fuel for either criticality or diversion concerns. The waste shipments can be optimized for waste concerns alone. The actinides can be recycled into the fuel for burning and thus eliminated from the waste. While further work is required to fully analyze this possibility, several proposals to burn actinides have been made. The MSRs with on-line processing lend themselves readily to recycling the actinides into the fuel. Eliminating the actinides from shipments and from the waste reduces the very long controlled storage time of the waste to more acceptable and reasonable periods of time</blockquote>
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<div style="color: #30230c; font-family: georgia, serif; font-size: 16px;">
I must first state than nothing Weinberg had to say about alternative solutions to the nuclear waste problem was wrong. It is simply that using plutonium and other actinides from nuclear waste, as nuclear fuel, kills two birds with one stone. Not only does it turn what was considered dangerous waste into energy, but it will allow for hundreds and perhaps even thousands of thorium breeding molten salt reactors (LFTRs) to be started very quickly, since their initial fuel charge could be recovered from used nuclear fuel. Thus the supposedly terrible problem of nuclear waste, actually is part of a workable solution to the problem of post carbon energy.</div>
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Alvin Weinberg made important contributions to our understanding of the role of energy in our society, and those contributions have, as of yet not been fully appreciated. He understood both the problems and the potential of nuclear energy. In many respects Alvin Weinberg correctly saw path that society was taking, and gauged its consequences. Although not the first nuclear scientist to recognize the CO2 problem, <a href="http://nucleargreen.blogspot.com/2008/03/edward-teller-listens-as-eugene-weigner.html" style="color: #999999; text-decoration: none;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #009900;">that honor goes to Edward Teller</span></a>, <a href="http://www.aip.org/history/climate/Kfunds.htm" style="color: #999999; text-decoration: none;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #3333ff;">once Weinberg understood the carbon problem, he emerged as a leading voice in articulating it during the 1970's</span></a>.</div>
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What Weinberg failed to realize was the extent to which ORNL scientists, under his leadership, had found a way out of "the Faustian bargain" which he frequently referred to as a description of the relationship between the nuclear science community and society. Undoing Weinberg's "Faustian bargain" will thus be a topic for a further post.</div>
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<br />Charles Bartonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01125297013064527425noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7597656451205429515.post-59266080370037981352016-01-31T07:51:00.001-06:002016-01-31T07:51:28.058-06:00Panel 3: Putting Uncle Sam to Work: What is the government’s role in adv...<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="270" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/cM97K-9-Rxs" width="480"></iframe>Charles Bartonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01125297013064527425noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7597656451205429515.post-1568824778344575492016-01-30T07:14:00.001-06:002016-01-30T07:14:16.943-06:00Panel 2: Check, Please: Are private investors prepared to pick up the nu...<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="270" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/UE7s4N44tNo" width="480"></iframe>Charles Bartonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01125297013064527425noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7597656451205429515.post-48747404832256836232016-01-30T06:58:00.001-06:002016-01-30T06:58:36.572-06:00Panel 1: Let’s Get Real: When can we expect commercial advanced reactors?<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="270" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/NNbi4_EA3_U" width="480"></iframe>Charles Bartonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01125297013064527425noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7597656451205429515.post-88105222433508680452016-01-29T07:33:00.000-06:002016-01-29T07:33:45.819-06:00Google.org is still confused about paths to the energy future<i>This Nuclear Green Post is over 7 years old, and should be considered one of the core posts of Nuclear Green. Very often what I have to say is simply a repeat of things I have said already. I believe that Google put an end to the miserable existance of Google.org some time ago, suggesting that renewables do, indeed, face a very rocky road into the future. Google has not yet seen fit to endorce Generation IV Nuclear power.</i><br />
<br />
Computer modelers can trip up in two ways. The model may be poorly designed in the first place. Secondly the data input may be flawed. As the old saying goes, "garbage in, garbage out." Models need to be tested, but if your model is designed to predict the future. and you foresee major changes in the future, and you want to predict the outcome of those changes, how are you going to test the model?<br />
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Google, through its philanthropic endeavor, Google.org, does not have a very good track record for predicting the future. A few years ago, Google.org produced a future energy plan. To say that the google plan was not very good is an understatement.<br />
<br />
Google.org thought that 1100 GWs of mainly renewable generating capacity would be sufficient to run the American economy. Google believes that 360 new GWs of wind generating capacity will be needed along with 250 gigawatts by 2030 of solar installation. The rest is going to come from Geothermal, hydroelectric, and not more than 30 new nuclear plants. But where are we going to get the 1100 GWs of generating capacity? First hydro is not going to provide us with much new electricity, most of the best hydro sites are already in use, and environmental organizations have stopped hydro expansion for over a generation. We already have about 350 GWs of hydro generation capacity. Yet that hydro capacity only produces 6% of the electricity generated in the United States. Hydro generation capacity should have signaled Google.org that use that it had a problem with its model.<br />
<br />
No one at Google seems to have been aware of the problem of solar and wind indeterminacy. Solar power systems operate at 20% of their rated capacity in the desert southwest, and much less in the cloudy Southeast. Wind generators generate at best at a little more 40% of their rated capacity on the great planes. The electricity generated by renewables will not be reliable, and will not come simply if customers throw a light switch. Customers in New York City will have to wait until the wind picks up in Amarillo before they turn on the light. Making sure that you have renewable generated electricity when consumers actually want it is going to be hugely expensive. Google did not seem to have a clue.<br />
<br />
So I wondered why Google did not see its mistake. Then I watched a video of Google's Chairman and CEO Eric Schmidt, talking about the Google energy plan:<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
Son of a gun, Eric Schmidt had been drinking the cool aid with the oracle of Snowmass, Amory Lovins. The Google energy plan relied a lot on efficiency to bridge gaps in renewable energy output.<a href="http://nucleargreen.blogspot.com/2008/10/counterknowledge-google-and-amory.html" style="color: #3333ff;">This was straight out of the gospel according to Amory Lovins, but not at all realistic</a>. I am not an Amory Lovins fan. I am only one among a goodly numer of other reviewers have pointed to flaws in Mr. Lovins' thinking. In response to numerous criticisms, <a href="http://nucleargreen.blogspot.com/2009/08/amory-lovins-discredited-lovins-refuses.html"><span style="color: rgb(51 , 51 , 255);">Amory Lovins appears to have abandoned his defense of his efficiency theories, as well as many of his other contentions</span></a>. While Lovins has abandoned his defense of many of his energy related theories, he has not abandoned the theories themselves. One of Lovins pet theory is that nuclear power is too expensive. Eric Schmidt, however, still has faith in Lovins. And drinks the Kool air from cups marked "nuclear power is too expensive," and "efficiency will save us."</div>
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<br /></div>
<div>
If Schmidt Googled nuclear cost he would have found that numerous reputable authorities disagree with his assumptions about nuclear costs. One way of measuring comparative energy costs, it to use <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Levelised_energy_cost"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(51 , 51 , 255);">the so called levelized cost measure</span></a>. The International Energy Agency has found that the levelized cost of nuclear power will be lower than the levelized cost of onshore wind generated electricity, even before the cost of making wind reliable is factored in. The EIA views Offshore wind and all forms of solar as more expensive.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.eia.gov/oiaf/aeo/electricity_generation.html"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(51 , 51 , 255);">The American Energy Information Agenc</span>y </a>theorizes that the levelized cost of wind generated electricity without the cost of measures required to make it reliable is competitively with nuclear, but cannot be expected to be substantially lower. <a href="http://www.pbworld.com/?doc=528"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(51 , 51 , 255);">A report coming from the UK, and published by Parsons Brinckerhof</span></a> estimated that the cost of onshore wind generated electricity would be the same as the cost of nuclear. A chart from Joe Romm reflects the reality of renewable nuclear and renewable costs:<a href="http://thinkprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/Screen-shot-2011-06-24-at-9.00.06-AM1.png" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img alt="" border="0" src="http://thinkprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/Screen-shot-2011-06-24-at-9.00.06-AM1.png" style="cursor: pointer; display: block; height: 585px; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; width: 719px;" /></a><b>Note: </b>Romm's <i>Chart includes the subsidized cost of renewables, as well as their unsubsidized cost. Of course even with subsidies someone pays the difference between the subsidized and the unsubsidized cost.</i><br />
<br />
Levelized costs reflect the cost of electricity as it leaves the generating facility, but not as it arrives at the consumer's business or home. If the electrical generation system is unreliable, some ways must be found to overcome that unreliability, and those ways usually cost money. The cost of making energy reliable will inevitably be passed on to the consumer. In the case of renewable energy this will include a system of back up generators, or redundant renewable generators, or energy storage. None of these come free, and the consumers will have to pay. Thus the cost of reliable renewable electricity is likely to be considerably higher than the levelized cost of electricity produced by renewable installations.<br />
<br />
It has recently been argued that low cost Chinese manufactured back up systems will diminish the cost of making renewables reliable, but the cost of Chinese labor is rapidly rising and Chinese labor is far less efficient than American or Western European labor. As a consequence jobs have already started moving backs from China to the United States, and this trend will probably continue for some time to come. Thus the use of low cost labor in China, will not decrease the cost of renewable energy backup in the long run.<br />
<br />
Renewables require higher material inputs than nuclear power, but currently have an advantage in labor input. However labor costs can be lowered by factory manufacture, but transportation will limit the size of factory manufactured reactors. Serial manufacture also lowers reactor costs.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div>
Small, modular, factory manufactured reactors are becoming the rage. Traditionally power reactors have been built in the on site, so they have primarily been viewed as construction projects. But there are problems with large site based manufacturing projects. Reactors have to be built to precise standards. It is not enough that all the parts get assembled, they have to be assembled to exacting specifications. And if parts or their assembly do not meet specifications, they have to be redone. In is not enough to assemble teams of skilled laborers, they have to be trained on reactor specifications and how to meet them, and then the contractor has to make sure that they have the parts and materials that meet specifications.<br />
<br />
Large reactors require a huge amount of labor, millions of work hours, to build. In a factory, the labor tasks that are preformed by skilled workers in the field assembly of large reactors, can be turned over to machines. The use of labor saving devices makes sense if you are going to build a lot of small reactors, so small factory built modular reactors are the way to go if you want to a lot of reactors in a hurry.<br />
<br />
The advantage of large reactors is that as reactor energy output rises, materials and labor per unit of input falls. This lowers price. There are ways to counteract this problem. As we have already seen labor costs can fall if you substitute mechanical slaves for wage earning human workers. Thus the labor costs for factory built modular reactors will decline especially as the number of manufactured unit rises. Secondly, materials can be used more if the reactor is designed to be compact. Conventional nuclear technology requires large amounts of steel in the reactor core, in pressure vessels, heat exchanges, in steam turbines, in generators and in outer containment structures. Conventional nuclear power plant design also requires a lot of concrete.<br />
<br />
Materials inputs into nuclear power plant can be controlled by compact design, simplicity, and by choice of nuclear technology. Increasing reactor operating temperature may increase the efficiency of materials use. Paradoxically, some low temperature reactors are materials hogs, while some high temperature nuclear technologies are very parsimonious with materials. <a href="http://www.blogger.com/www.nuc.berkeley.edu/pb-ahtr/papers/05-001-A_Material_input.pdf" style="color: #3333ff;">Per F. Peterson, Haihua Zhao, and Robert Petroski of University of California note,</a><br />
<blockquote>
analysis presented here suggests that the ESBWR uses 73% of the steel, and 50% of the concrete required to construct an ABWR. This suggests that new Generation III+ nuclear power construction in the U.S. will have substantially lower capital costs than was found with Generation III LWRs.</blockquote>
Then they add that closed cycle gas turbines<br />
<blockquote>
technology that will be demonstrated by the Next Generation Nuclear Plant (NGNP) has the potential to achieve comparable material inputs to LWRs at much smaller unit capacities, and when extrapolated to larger reactors, to further reductions in steel and concrete inputs.</blockquote>
In particular the University of California researchers like <a href="http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=FUf-fjlK_CEC&oi=fnd&pg=PA329&dq=related:GmejL2r6K9kJ:scholar.google.com/&ots=3ybuZ7xg2Y&sig=9LBz9xOWvw2qFro7bDlwXCQugWs#v=onepage&q&f=false" style="color: #3333ff;">Advanced High Temperature Reactor</a>, molten salt cooled, compact reactors.<br />
<blockquote>
In nuclear energy systems, the major construction inputs are steel and concrete, which comprise over 95% of the total energy input into materials. To first order, the total building volume determines total concrete volume. The quantity of concrete also plays a very important role in deciding the plant overall cost:<br />
<br />
• Concrete related material and construction cost is important in total cost (~25% of total plant cost for 1970’s PWRs [3]);<br />
• Concrete volume affects construction time;<br />
• Rebar (reinforcing steel in concrete) is a large percentage of total steel input (about 0.06 MTrebar per MT reinforced concrete for 1970’s PWRs [3]);<br />
• Rebar is about 35% of total steel for 1970’s PWRs [3];<br />
• Concrete volume affects decommissioning cost.</blockquote>
Not only reactors, but also generating turbines can be made compact. For example the super critical Carbon dioxide which are compatible with high temperature reactors will be extremely compact and highly efficient. <a href="http://www.blogger.com/%20http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.130.5385&rep=rep1&type=pdf.">V. Dostal, M.J. Driscoll, and P. Hejzlar of MIT state</a>,<br />
<blockquote>
The thermal efficiency of the advanced design is close to 50% and the reactor system with the direct supercritical CO2 cycle is ~ 24% less expensive than the steam indirect cycle and 7% less expensive than a helium direct Brayton cycle. It is expected in the future that high temperature materials will become available and a high performance design with turbine inlet temperatures of 700oC will be possible. This high performance design achieves a thermal efficiency approaching 53%, which yields additional cost savings.<br />
<br />
The turbomachinery is highly compact and achieves efficiencies of more than 90%. For the 600 MWth/246 MWe power plant the turbine body is 1.2 m in diameter and 0.55 m long, which translates into an extremely high power density of 395 MWe/m3. The compressors are even more compact as they operate close to the critical point where the density of the fluid is higher than in the turbine. The power conversion unit that houses these components and the generator is 18 m tall and 7.6 m in diameter. Its power density (MWe/m3) is about ~ 46% higher than that of the helium GT-MHR (Gas Turbine Modular Helium Reactor).</blockquote>
Simplicity can also lower reactor cost. Again high operating temperature and compactness are not necessarily enemies of simplicity in NPP design.<br />
<br />
Small compact reactors will be easier than large reactors to deploy. In order to replace fossil fuels in a little over a generation, post-carbon energy technology must be capable of large scale deployment. The nuclear manufacturing system that has been developed over the last 50 years, in addition to requiring a large skilled labor input takes several years from the time the first shovel full of soil is moved, until the electrical generators are turned on. Thus it is extremely desirable to develop energy technology that can be deployed rapidly during the next 40 years.<br />
<br />
The small reactor is drawing increasing attention. A recent report from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development titled "<a href="http://www.oecd-nea.org/ndd/reports/2011/current-status-small-reactors.pdf" style="color: #009900;">Current Status, Technical Feasibility and Economics of Small Nuclear Reactors,</a>" noted the potential of small reactors to be a game changer. Yet the latest Google modeling effort "<a href="http://www.google.org/energyinnovation/The_Impact_of_Clean_Energy_Innovation.pdf" style="color: #3333ff;">Examining the Impact of Clean Energy Innovation on the United States Energy System and Economy</a>," entirely ignores the possibilities opened up by small reactors and advanced nuclear technology.<br />
<br />
Matt Hourihan, a Clean Energy Policy Analyst at the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF) notes significant problems with the new Google report,<br />
<blockquote>
Of course, the big, obvious catch is that Google makes some fairly substantial assumptions about energy costs. Some of these are quite aggressive indeed. For example, under Google’s assumptions, onshore wind costs decline by more than 50 percent by 2050 – twice as much as the IEA has predicted. The assumptions for solar PV, CCS, and the other technologies are at least as aggressive – some would say unrealistic.</blockquote>
Despite these flaws, Hourihan sees some good things coming out of the Google Report,<br />
<blockquote>
But the efficacy of these assumptions are not the point of the report, nor does it mean the report doesn’t have value: it makes clear the enormous upside, economically and environmentally, of spurring breakthrough clean technologies -- so long as we get both the technology and the policy right. It’s not a question of either/or. Any efforts to mitigate emissions that don’t seek to accelerate energy innovation will likely end in failure, and miss an economic opportunity. Under Google’s model, neither the application of a $30 per ton carbon price nor a more robust set of policies and mandates to drive cleantech adoption reduced emissions as effectively on their own as when they were coupled with breakthrough innovations to drive cost declines. It’s a similar finding we published in a report a few months ago. And relying on these policies without also driving technology would lead to slower growth relative to the innovation approach. In terms of outcomes, the best policy mix thus appears to be one that incorporates an urgent push for radical technological innovation with a broad batch of policies.</blockquote>
This view is clearly consistent with the views I present on Nuclear Green. The Nuclear Green views are:<br />
<blockquote>
* Current renewable technology is too expensive<br />
* Technological breakthroughs are unlikely to drive the cost of renewables down<br />
* Large Light Water Reactors are and will be too expensive, as well as too limited to satisfy many energy needs<br />
* There are technology, product manufacturing and product packaging routs that will drive the cost of advanced nuclear power to a cost that is significantly lower than the cost of either conventional renewables or conventional renewables.<br />
* Small, low cost, advanced nuclear power plants can solve many post-carbon energy problems that are not solvable by solar, wind, or conventional nuclear technology.<br />
* Developmental paths that are likely to produce low cost, advanced nuclear technology have been known for over a generation, but have been ignored.</blockquote>
We are not at a place yet that will allow us to agree on a technology, but the time is near at hand when society must agree on its energy goals, and start to set policy. We are not there yet, but the time for confusion is clearly over. We must begin to act soon.</div>
Charles Bartonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01125297013064527425noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7597656451205429515.post-59486418514662445912016-01-24T10:07:00.001-06:002016-01-24T10:07:07.106-06:00Kirk Sorensen - The Promise of Thorium in Meeting Future World Energy De...<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="270" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/ODea3YaTmKw" width="480"></iframe>Charles Bartonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01125297013064527425noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7597656451205429515.post-73744507590591778822016-01-12T09:09:00.000-06:002016-01-12T09:09:53.757-06:00Three Case studies of Jacobsons 100% Renewables Mark Z. Jacobson continues to sture up a hornet's nest of 100% critics, all of whom seem to think that Professor Jacobson's 100% renewables plan is deeply flawed. A couple have produced brief case studies, that the 100% approach may not benefit all nations equally. Many of Jacobsons critics are moderate Renewables supporters, while none are Anthropogenic Global Warming deniers. Some of the most telling criticisms come from people who are not opposed to Renewable energy, who are in fact, renewable energy advocates. These advocates are not 100% renewables true believers. On of the most conspicuous critics of Jacobson is Blair, the Chemist of a Chemist from Langley B.C., who hapens to hold a PhD. in chemistry and Ecology. This certainly trumps Jacobson's rather slender environmentalist credentials. Of course Jacobsons championing of <a href="http://news.heartland.org/newspaper-article/2014/07/11/bird-conservancy-files-suit-against-wind-turbines" target="_blank">bird slaughtering machines</a> and <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/us/2014/02/20/solar-energy-plants-in-tortoises-desert-habitat-pit-green-against-green.html" target="_blank">the destruction of desart tortus habitat</a> raise questions Jacobson's commitment to wildlife conservation. "The Chemist" finds a lot to not like about Jacobson's ideas and has so far devoted 4 posts in his blog A Chemist in Langley. T<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Bitstream Charter', serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px; text-align: justify;">hree were previous blog posted:</span><br />
<br />
<ul style="background: rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Bitstream Charter', serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px; list-style: square; margin: 0px 0px 24px 1.5em; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<li style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="https://achemistinlangley.wordpress.com/2015/06/16/deconstructing-the-100-fossil-fuel-free-wind-water-and-sunlight-usa-paper-part-i-why-no-nuclear-power/" style="background: transparent; border: 0px; color: #743399; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Deconstructing the 100% Fossil Fuel Free Wind, Water and Sunlight USA paper – Part I Why no nuclear power?</a>,</li>
<li style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="https://achemistinlangley.wordpress.com/2015/06/18/deconstructing-the-100-fossil-fuel-free-wind-water-and-sunlight-usa-paper-part-ii-what-about-those-pesky-rare-earth-metals/" style="background: transparent; border: 0px; color: #743399; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Deconstructing the 100% Fossil Fuel Free Wind, Water and Sunlight USA paper – Part II What about those pesky rare earth metals?</a>, and</li>
<li style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="https://achemistinlangley.wordpress.com/2015/11/27/deconstructing-the-100-wind-water-and-sunlight-scenarios-part-iii-issues-with-energy-storage/" style="background: transparent; border: 0px; color: #743399; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Deconstructing the 100% Wind, Water and Sunlight scenarios – Part III Issues with energy storage</a></li>
</ul>
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The 4th Jacobson post appeared on A Chemist in Langley January 7 and laid out <a href="https://achemistinlangley.wordpress.com/" target="_blank">the flaws in Jacobson'2 100% Canada program</a>. I regard energy case studies as important because case studies can provide nice falsification tests of theories about energy. The Chemist tells us:</div>
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Reading back the last few paragraphs, I realize that I sound a lot less like a wet blanket and a lot more like the voice of doom suggesting we all abandon ship or die. The truth is that while the 100% WWS by 2050 plan is clearly not possible that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t work hard to achieve its underlying goal of low or no carbon energy with a strong renewable component. The problem with the 100% WWS proposal is that it is hobbled by some of the personal views of its creators. It omits some pretty obvious energy solutions like further large-reservoir hydro in Quebec, Labrador, Ontario and BC, run-of-the-river hydro across Canada and, of course, further nuclear power. A country like Canada that is blessed with an abundance of hydropower opportunities should not ignore those opportunities because one engineer from California doesn’t particularly like that technology. A fear of the risk of nuclear proliferation should not hinder nuclear savvy countries like the US, Canada, France and China from making use of nuclear power in their energy mix. It is not as if we have to worry that Iowa may get the bomb if the US builds a nuclear plant in Idaho.<span style="background-color: transparent;"> </span></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq" style="background: rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Bitstream Charter', serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px; margin-bottom: 24px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;">
As I have said more times that I would care to admit in this blog: I am a pragmatist. As a pragmatist I tend to live by the credo “moderation in all things”. The 100% WWS model fails because it does not believe in</blockquote>
<br />
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moderation. It places tight, and poorly supported, restrictions on a number of important baseline clean energy technologies and in doing so results in a proposal that is ruinously expensive. Looking at the numbers above, the costs would be prohibitive for Canada consuming over half our national GDP over the 34 year time frame proposed. While ruinously expensive is technically “doable”, the same can’t be said for countries like Zimbabwe or Ethiopia where the anticipated costs exceed GDP by orders of magnitude. Alternatively, Ethiopia could build the <a href="http://www.salini-impregilo.com/en/projects/in-progress/dams-hydroelectric-plants-hydraulic-works/grand-ethiopian-renaissance-dam-project.html" style="background: transparent; border: 0px; color: #743399; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam Project</a> which would provide it with ample, essentially carbon-free, electricity and raise its citizens out of abject energy poverty.</blockquote>
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Let’s be clear here, I believe strongly in renewable energy, but as I have written before I believe in <a href="https://achemistinlangley.wordpress.com/2015/03/26/on-soft-climate-denial-regionally-appropriate-renewables-and-marginalizing-potential-allies-in-the-climate-change-debate/" style="background: transparent; border: 0px; color: #743399; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">regionally-appropriate renewables</a>. I also believe that we cannot ignore the potential of nuclear and hydro energy in a post-fossil fuel energy mix. To summarize what I have written above: when an apparently innumerate representative from the Council of Canadians assures you that 100% WWS is “doable” the correct response is: “only in your dreams…only in your dreams”.</blockquote>
There are more protests aginst Jacobson's arbitrary and ruinous 100% renewables energy program. <span style="background-color: white; color: #545454; font-family: Verdana, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.16px; line-height: 6.8096px;">Olen</span><a href="https://passiiviidentiteetti.wordpress.com/about/sites.google.com/site/janipetrimartikainen/" style="background-color: white; border-bottom-color: rgb(207, 226, 229); border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-width: 1px; color: #006a80; font-family: Verdana, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.16px; line-height: 6.8096px; text-decoration: none;"> Jani-Petri Martikainen</a>, a phyicist who is a native of Finland, looked at Mark Z. Jacobson's treatment of Finland and asks, <span style="background-color: white; color: #141823; font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 7.728px;">Why does Mark Z. Jacobson hate Finland? </span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #141823; font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 7.728px;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: white; color: #141823; font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 7.728px;">Not only</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #141823; font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 7.728px;">does </span><a href="https://passiiviidentiteetti.wordpress.com/about/sites.google.com/site/janipetrimartikainen/" style="background-color: white; border-bottom-color: rgb(207, 226, 229); border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-width: 1px; color: #006a80; font-family: Verdana, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.16px; line-height: 6.8096px; text-decoration: none;">Martikainen</a> ask this question in a post on his blog <a href="https://passiiviidentiteetti.wordpress.com/" style="background-color: white; color: #006a80; font-family: Verdana, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 14.592px; text-decoration: none;" title="Return to front page"><span id="blog-title" style="border-image-outset: initial; border-image-repeat: initial; border-image-slice: initial; border-image-source: initial; border-image-width: initial; border: none; display: inline !important; font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; line-height: 36.48px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">PassiiviIdentiteetti</span></a> , but he justifies the question by pointing to some unplesant consequences for the finish people if they were to adopt Professor Jacobson's 100% plan for Finland. Here is the money quote:<br />
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<br />
In Jacobson’s vision employment in our energy sector grows from about 38000 to 130000. Doesn’t this mean massive productivity reduction in our energy sector? Isn’t that a bad thing? In the topsy-turvy world of 100% RES discussions this is of course not so. Jacobson instead talks as if we are winning by spending more. By inverting the logic of productivity increases that I suspect pretty much all economists (whether on the left or right) agree on, he talks of our $8.15 billion/year “earnings due to jobs” as if we are winning. Sweden would end up employing only about half what our energy sector would do (quarter on per capita basis) and they would get just 0.96 billion in earnings due to jobs. Take that Sweden!<br />
How does Jacobson actually end up with the claim that his vision would make any economic sense? He gets this basically by estimating body counts from PM 2.5 emissions and then multiplying this by “the statistical value of life”. In this way he claims that in 2050 Finland emissions would kill 600-6000 people and cost us maybe more than $100 billion or about 30% of our GDP every year. Wow! This is crazy on steroids. First of all I think this is inappropriate use of the concept <a href="http://yosemite.epa.gov/EE%5Cepa%5Ceed.nsf/webpages/MortalityRiskValuation.html#means" style="border-bottom-color: rgb(207, 226, 229); border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-width: 1px; color: #006a80; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">“statistical value of life”</a> and 2nd it doesn’t pass the sanity check. Here PM emissions have declined drastically in past decades thanks to cleaner fuels, filters, centralized power plants replacing small scale burning etc. What am I supposed to learn from Jacobson’s figures? That in 80s when emissions were much higher, we lost basically all our GDP because of pollution? Also, is there someone who has a life insurance for 17 million. Isn’t maybe 100000-200000 more typical…1% of their claim? Jacobson and his friends assign pollution problems to the energy system as a whole and ignore that lot of it here is actually caused by small scale burning of bioenergy. They also deny the existence of alternative ways to address pollution concerns. History already tells they are incorrect in this assumption.</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
So much for Finland. <a href="https://passiiviidentiteetti.wordpress.com/2016/01/03/part-2-he-also-hates-ethiopians/" target="_blank">Lets now look at <span style="color: #006a80; font-family: Verdana, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; border-bottom-color: rgb(207, 226, 229); border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-width: 1px; font-size: 12.16px; line-height: 6.8096px;">Martikainen</span></span>'s treatment of Jacobson on Ethiopia</a>. The title of Part II on Jacobson alleges that Jacobson hates Ethiopia too! </blockquote>
We find the following argument:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq" style="background-color: white; color: #545454; font-family: Verdana, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.16px; line-height: 1.4; margin-bottom: 1em;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: #545454; font-family: Verdana, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.16px; line-height: 14.592px;">Ethiopian energy “efficiency” today is poor presumably because of all that small scale burning, but by 2050 they will be among the most efficient ones. An improvement by a factor of 12. Since efficiency improvements typically require more capital, it is great that poor have loads of money.</span>How do capital requirements compare with todays GDP? Next figure shows that while Jacobson surely hates Finland more than Sweden, it could have been worse.<br />
. . . <span style="background-color: white; color: #545454; font-family: Verdana, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.16px; line-height: 14.592px;">we get to the important stuff, namely how he feels about Finns relative to others. Based on Jacobson’s figures we can compare how much energy a Finn uses compared to foreigners. Below I show it today and at 2050. Blue bar is the reality today and the red bar is what Jacobson has in mind. If red bar is lower than the blue bar, then he wants to improve the lot of that country relative to Finns (in terms of energy access).</span></blockquote>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #545454; font-family: Verdana, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.16px; line-height: 1.4; margin-bottom: 1em;">
</div>
<br />
<a href="https://passiiviidentiteetti.files.wordpress.com/2016/01/change_in_hatred.png" style="background-color: white; border-bottom-color: rgb(207, 226, 229); border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-width: 1px; color: #006a80; font-family: Verdana, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.16px; line-height: 6.8096px; text-decoration: none;"><img alt="Graph of hate relative to Finland. If larger than one Mark wants worse for them than he wants for Finns." class="attachment-auto size-auto" height="306" originalw="490" scale="3" src-orig="https://passiiviidentiteetti.files.wordpress.com/2016/01/change_in_hatred.png?w=490" src="https://passiiviidentiteetti.files.wordpress.com/2016/01/change_in_hatred.png?w=1470" style="border: 1px solid rgb(0, 106, 128);" width="490" /></a><br />
<br />
Thus by arguing that the Ethiopian economy will be among the most energy efficient in the world by 2050, Professor Jacobson, feel free to subjuct the poor Ethiopians with great energy poverty. It stands clear that JHacobson and his friends at Greenpeace and in Germany, stand firmly aginst the cause of Energy Justice, and are all in favor of imposing extreme energy poverty on the global poor. Thus Mark Z. Jacobson who pretends that by adding nuclear power into the post carbon energy mix we would with absolute cirtainty creat conditions that would lead to a nuclear war every 30 years, in<br />
fact will contribut to circumstances that might brinbg such a a war about.<br />
<br />
Thus we see that Professor Jacobson has allowed his personal prejudice to eliminate valuable carbon free technological solutions, while suggesting that impoverished, energy poor countries get by by generating huge ammounts of energy out of nothing more than Energy Efficiency. This is the reductio ad absurdum of the Jacobson - Lovins ant-nuclear energy power approach, !00% renewables lead to circumstances in which monumental energy poverty and injustice is to be covered with nothing more than the bandade of energy efficiency, unsupported by dispatchabel energy. If we are going to bring the Anthropogenic Global warming monster under control, we must start thinking about dispatchabel rather that intermittent electrical sources. Among dispatch able sources we must start thinking aboutr nuclear power as a probably indispensable resource.Charles Bartonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01125297013064527425noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7597656451205429515.post-68970914966513434512016-01-04T09:05:00.002-06:002016-01-04T09:08:23.436-06:00Addendum on IFR ScalabilityThis note is a follow up to my past post on IFR Breeding<br />
How long would it take to produce enough Plutonium to Power up an LMFBR such as the IFR. Well first that would depend on the quality of Plutonium you used. If you got to use fuel a bunch of Plutonium based nuclear weapons, it might take 10 tons of 97% Pu-239 for a 1 GWe reactor.. If you were to use RGP the LMFBR might require 18 tons of RGP for a 1 GWe IFR. That is because forms of Plutonium present in RGP do not fission after absorbing a neutron while present in the core of a reactor. <br />
<br />
RGP contains two isotopes of Plutonium that do not fission after absorbing neutrons, the other isotopes of Plutonium frequently fission after absorbing neutrons, and the faster the neutrons, the more likely Pu-239 and Pu-241 are to fission. Plutonium produces a lot of Neutronswhen it fissions, but bad things happen to well over a third of them. Serious efforts to produce Sodium cooled fast breeder reactors has usually lead to a breeding ratio of 1.2 fissionable atoms of Plutonium to every 1 plutonium atom burned by nuclear fission. <br />
<br />
There is a simple formula that burning 1 ton of fissionable atoms in the core of a reactor over a years period of time can produce 1 Billion watts of electricity for a year. Since LMFBRs operate at somewhat higher temperatures, this might formula might suggest a little higher efficiency, but would actually not improve the breeding ratio. Let us assume that our IFR produces 1.2 fissionable plutonium atoms per Plutonium atom burned. How long would it take to produce enough plutonium to start a plutonium breeder? Well we are producing 2400 lbs of plutonium a year in our breeder. We require 2000 pounds of that to keep our initial breeder going at an optimal rate. The other 400 pounds can go into reserve for the start up of a second breeder. How long would it take to collect enough fissionable Pu to start a second breeder. <br />
<br />
We are calculating that 10 tons of Weapons grade plutonium would start up our breeder. Given an accumulation of 400 pounds a year, the answer is an astonishing 25 years. That will never do is we wanted a scalable reactor system to rescue the planet from AGW. Is it possible to scale up Plutonium production?<br />
<br />
IFR advocates have claimed to me that breeding ratios as high as 1 to 1.7 our possible with the IFR. This seems improbable, but if possible, might well require considerable R&D. But consider how long it would take to accumulate a start chsarge for our second IFR, given a 1 to 1.7 conversion ration. A 1.7 conversion ratio gives us 3400 pounds of fissionable plutonium. That gives us about 7 years to accumulate a start up charge. This is much better than the 25 years, but hardly leads to a planet saving rate of reactor startup. Furthermore we do not even know if this conversion rate is possible, with appropriate nuclear safety.<br />
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So lets talk about the indian approach. First the Indian government assumes that the domestic Uranium supply is large enough to develop a uranium industry. Thus in order to accumulate enough nuclear waste to get a large number of LMFBRs going, the indian government is required to import a large number of reactors, together with their uranium based fuels. Unfortunately Indian law discourages foreign reactor manufacturers from selling new reactors to India. At any rate Indian fast reactors are designed to produce both plutonium and U-233. The first indian fast reactor produces Plutoniam at a 1 to 1.04 ratio. It transforms Thorium 232 into fissionable U-233 at a 1 to .14 ratio.<br />
The Nice thing about U-233 is that it can be used to start up thermal thorium breeders with very good neutron efficiency. One ton of U-233 will generate billion watts of electricity for a year. And it can potentially produce 1,07 pounds of U-233 for every pound burned, although a 1 to 1 conversion ration would be sufficient. It takes 7 years to save enough U-233 produced by an indian fast breeder, to start an Indian 1 GWe thermal breeder. This is as good as the supposed super breeding fast breeder, with added safety measures. <br />
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However we do not need to go the fast breeder route. We could start up thorium fuel cycle thermal breeders using U-235 or even RGP as its fuel. Once we get the breeding cycle going, we would rely for thousands of years on the global supply of thorium, which is quite common, and virtually unused. There is a lot more energy avaliable in thorium, than in the global petroleum supply, but the oil companies are too stupid to recognize the potential binanza under their feet.<br />
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Unlike Uranium Plutonium cycle fast breeders Thorium cycle thermal breeders do not require huge ammounts of fissionable uranium and/or plutonium to start their brrding cycle. Thus the fuel required to start one fast breeder can start 10 thermal thorium cycle breeders. Given this disparity, if we want to save the planet with breeder reactors, LFTRs or heavy water thermal breeders are the routev to follow, and the LFTR is expected to be the lower cost design of the two.<br />
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<br />Charles Bartonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01125297013064527425noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7597656451205429515.post-8157743337892322592016-01-03T09:08:00.001-06:002016-01-03T09:08:45.274-06:00IFR breeding, LFTR breeding.<h3 class="post-title entry-title" itemprop="name" style="background-color: white;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><i><span style="color: #0c3019; font-family: Georgia, serif;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">This 6 year old post continues to be relivant. Among nuclear advocates, I am probably regarded as an extremest, because of my advocacy of MSR technology as offering advantages over other reactor technologies. This would include both Light Water Reactors, and Sodium Cooled Fast Breeder Reactors. My contention is important because, MSR technology is highly scaleable, and we need a highly scalable nuclear technology if we are to bring AGW under control by 2050. My argument raises questions about the scalability of IFRs, the Liquid Metal ast breeder alternative currently being touted. My contention is only directed to sodium cooled fast breeders. </span></span></i></span></h3>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><i><span style="color: #0c3019; font-family: Georgia, serif;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">I did not intend that the case I argued in this essay should preclude the development of the IFR, however. First because I might be mistaken. But also because even if more MSRs and/or LFTRs are built, the IFR could still prove useful. We need to hedge our nuclear bets. Thus just as it would be a serious mistake to put all of our eggs in the IFR basket, it would also be a mistake to put all our eggs into a MSR basket.</span></span></i></span></div>
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<span style="color: #30230c; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 16px;">I set out the argument here. There is some good natured rivalry, and perhaps some not so good natured rivalry between the backers of the Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor (LFTR) and the backers of the Integral Fast Reactor (IFR). Both are so called Generation IV technologies. Each technology is associated with an American national laboratory. The LFTR is the linear descendant of the Oak Ridge National Laboratory Molten Salt Reactor research. The IFR is an advanced Liquid Metal Fast Reactor. IFR technology was developed at Argonne National Laboratory. Readers who are interested in the backgrounds and relative merits of LMFBR and MSR technologies can consult an essay titled,</span><span style="color: #30230c; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 16px;"> </span><a href="http://www.nautilus.org/archives/papers/energy/LidskyPARES.pdf" style="color: #999999; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 16px; text-decoration: none;">Nuclear Power and Energy Security: A Revised Strategy for Japan</a><span style="color: #30230c; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 16px;">, or</span><span style="color: #30230c; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 16px;"> </span><a href="http://nucleargreen.blogspot.com/2008/10/is-there-point-to-sodium-cooled-fast.html" style="color: #999999; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 16px; text-decoration: none;">my review of that essay</a><span style="color: #30230c; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 16px;">. The essay authors, Lawrence M. Lidsky and Marvin M. Miller of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, do an excellent job of laying out the issues, and offer some very real insights onto some of the problems of the current nuclear industry, and also, issues related to the major technological options available to break out of those problems. For example, Lidsky and Miller,</span></h3>
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The cost and complexity of the systems needed to deal with the danger of severe accident makes the LWR a poor choice for large central station power plants. Ironically, it is the LWR’s high power density, the very reason it was chosen for submarine use, that is its Achilles heel. Even a 10-second interruption in the supply of cooling water at the surface of a fuel rod can lead to local overheating and irrevocable, cascading damage to the reactor core. As a result, the LWR must rely on defense-in-depth, a system of diverse and redundant backup devices, to guard against such an event. This is a widely used technique, but defense-in depth can not, by itself, guarantee absolute safety; it can only reduce the probability of a serious accident. All nuclear power plants,because of their cost and potential for off-site hazards, have a very low “acceptable” probability of failure. The larger the plant, the lower the acceptable probability of failure. Because the consequence of failure is so large in gigawatt-scale plants, LWR’s have been forced to employ engineered safety systems that promise unprecedentedly, and perhaps unattainably, low probability of failure.</blockquote>
The safety related requirements of the LWR drives up its cost. Lidsky and Miller, who were undoubtedly aware of the IFR and would have included it in their LMFBR class, wrote:<blockquote>
The sodium-cooled LMFBR was the device that was intended to replace the LWR when mined uranium supplies became prohibitively expensive. The LMFBR was chosen over other breeder reactor designs because it was, in theory, capable of very short fuel doubling times, shorter than that of any competing reactor design. The doubling time is the time required to produce an excess of fuel equal to the amount originally required to fuel the reactor itself. In other words, in one doubling time there would be enough fuel available to start up another reactor. In the absence of mined uranium, only a short doubling time would, it was believed, allow nuclear power to grow fast enough to compete with alternative sources of power. Unfortunately, the theoretical advantages of the LMFBR could not be achieved in practice. A successful commercial breeder reactor must have three attributes; it must breed, it must be economical, and it must be safe. Although any one or two of these attributes can be achieved in isolation by proper design, the laws of physics apparently make it impossible to achieve all three simultaneously, no matter how clever the design. The fundamental problem originates in the very properties of sodium that make the short doubling time possible. The physical characteristics of sodium and plutonium are such that a loss of sodium coolant in the center of the core of a breeding reactor (caused, for example, by overheating) would tend to increase the power of the reactor, thus driving more sodium from the core, further increasing the power in a continuous feedback loop. The resulting rapid, literally uncontrollable, rise in reactor power is clearly unacceptable from a safety standpoint. This effect, the so-called “positive void coefficient” can be mitigated by, for example, changing the shape of the core so that more neutrons leak out of the core, but this immediately compromises the reactor’s breeding potential. Safety and breeding are thus mutually antagonistic. This situation can be alleviated to some extent by making radical design changes, but these changes lead to greatly increased costs, and make the reactor prohibitively expensive. Even if the LMFBR could meet its original, highly optimistic, operating goals and the LWR/FBR power cycle were put into operation, it is unclear that the goal of energy security would be achieved. As discussed in the following sections, the measures that would have to be put in place to protect all parts of the fuel cycle against terrorism would have very high social costs. Equally important is the increased risk of accidental or maliciously-induced technological failure. Compared to light water reactors operating on the once-through fuel cycle, the breeder fuel cycle is much more complex and error-prone. This implies a higher probability that the entire nuclear system or a significant fraction thereof might need to be shutdown because of a generic problem, e.g., with sodium containment, in the reactors or an accident in one of the reprocessing or fuel fabrication plants that serve the system.</blockquote>
They conclude,<blockquote>
Strong support for plutonium recycle, with its associated technical risks and societal costs, in the face of increasing evidence that alternative strategies are superior, is clearly counterproductive.</blockquote>
There was an alternative to the plutonium breeding LMFRB as Lidsky and Miller note:<blockquote>
Thorium fuel cycles have also been promoted on the basis of lower long-term waste toxicity and greater proliferation resistance, . . . The initial rationale for introduction of the thorium cycle was the perception that it was more abundant than uranium, and that it could be used to breed U-233, an isotope with superior properties for use in thermal reactors. However, Its terrestrial abundance is not germane to Japan’s energy security concerns because Japan has no indigenous source of thorium and it is hard to imagine a scenario in which uranium is cut off but thorium is available. Conceivably, the use of U-233 in an advanced reactor could reduce the possibility of a common mode failure of a reactor fleet consisting of LEU-fueled LWRs and HTGRs. The Molten Salt Reactor would be a strong candidate for consideration for this role, with a solid research base and an international support group, . . .</blockquote>
IFR backers would counter that they have greatly improved LMFBR safety. I would agree with the claims that the IFR has a number of natural (passive) safety features, which coupled a system of barriers, makes the IFR reasonably if not totally safe. But the totality of IFR safety features would tend to make IFR construction more expensive, and would tend to increase IFR construction price. In addition one IFR safety feature, a large pool of liquid sodium which surrounds the IFR core, appears to be a double edged sword as far as safety is concerned. Although the pool contributes to core temperature stability in case of a coolant system failure, the presence of such a large amount of highly flammable sodium in close proximity to the IFR core, could lead to a huge disaster in the event of a core rupture. Core ruptures would not happen often, but never is a very strong word. Only offensive nuclear safety coupled with passive safety, can come close to guaranteeing "never," and if you out sodium into a solid core reactor, offensive nuclear safety is clearly impossible.<div>
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Of course, there are added barriers that could be erected to prevent disaster in the event of an IFR accident. The IFR can be placed in a metal egg, with an internal atmosphere that would not burn when it comes into contact with Sodium. This would add to the expense and complexity of the IFR, and while diminishing the danger, it will not make it go away completely.<br /></div>
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One of the technological advantages of the LFTR is its relatively small size. Small size means relative small containment area. That means a lower construction cost. The IFR includes a tub full of molten sodium that is many times larger than the core. In addition machinery to defuel and refuel the TFR core must be included in the inner containment area. The same is true for the primary heat exchange, and the control rod mechanism, and some arrangement for shifting the "spent fuel" out of the core area. All in all we have got quite a lot going on in the containment parameter, which means that the outer containment structure would have to be large.</div>
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Further, even if IFR components could be factory built, a lot of onsite assembly would have to go on. Thus the IFR would quite possibly end up being as expensive or more expensive than light water reactors.</div>
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There are other issues that point to higher prices, if not higher than LWRs, at the very least, higher than LFTRs. Fast reactors require higher inventories of fissionable materials. I addressed this issue in a previous post, <a href="http://nucleargreen.blogspot.com/2009/06/s-prism-scalability-repost-for-steven.html" style="color: #999999; text-decoration: none;">S-PRISM Scalability a Repose for Steven Kirsch</a>.</div>
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In that post I noted:</div>
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In S PRISM related study "<a href="http://www.sustainablenuclear.org/PADs/pad0305dubberly.pdf" style="color: #999999; text-decoration: none;">S-PRISM Fuel Cycle Study: Future Deployment Programs and Issues</a>," suggested that as of the year 2000, four hundred tons of plutonium could be recovered from spent nuclear fuel. This in turn would provide enough plutonium to supply start up charges for twenty-two, 1520 MWe S-PRISM facilities with ab output of 33,440 MWe. That is about 12 tons per 1 GWe of reactor capacity.<br /></div>
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Clearly then neutron speed has an adverse effect on reactor scalability.<br /></div>
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On the other hand neutron speed also influences the fission rate per neutron absorption, this in turn influences neutron production. Pu-239 fissions 25% more often in a fast reactor than in a thermal reactor. On the other hand it still take more Pu-239 to maintain a chain reaction in a fast reactor than in a thermal reactor. Reactor physics tricks and fuel cycle also seem to influence start up charge size.</div>
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A recent discussion on the EfT form produced quite a lot of useful information. "Jagdish" reported that<blockquote>
Indian 500MW PFBR is designed to use only two tons of plutonium.<a aws="" class="postlink" fns="" href="http://www.iaea.org/inisnkm/nkm/aws/fnss/fulltext/28014318.pdf" inisnkm="" nkm="" org="" pdf="" style="color: #191919; text-decoration: none;"></a></blockquote>
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<a href="http://www.iaea.org/inisnkm/nkm/aws/fnss/fulltext/28014318.pdf" style="color: #191919; text-decoration: none;">It should be noted that the PFBR uses both radial and axil thorium blanket</a>s.</div>
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"Honzik" pointed to French research of epithermal/fast Thorium Molten Saalt Reactors. The French, modeling the use of transuranium materials from spent nuclear fuel, in a 1 GB reactor had calculated a need for 7.3 tons of fissile elements (87.5% of Pu (238Pu 2.7%, 239Pu 45.9% , 240Pu 21.5%, 241Pu 10.7%, and 242Pu 6.7%), 6.3% of Np, 5.3% of Am and 0.9% of Cm). Alternatively the reactior would require a start uo charge of 4.6 tons of U-2330.</div>
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Lars reported that<blockquote>
The minimum for unity breeding from the French group is 1.5 tonnes u233 / GWe.</blockquote>
Alex P noted:<blockquote>
the french design has an only radial, not axial, blanket, so for comparison I'd think that the fissile start-up in a LFTR with a fully encompassing blanket can be at least one tonn of u-233 per GWe, or even lower</blockquote>
David LeBlanc noted:<blockquote>
The French TMSR design running without graphite moderator needs upwards of 5 tonnes of U233 or 8 or more tonnes of fissile Pu. They could drop this somewhat if they just wanted to barely break even but not very much since they'll start losing too many neutrons that would migrate into the axial reflectors. In designs in which the blanket is nearly fully encompassing you can get by with much lower fissile concentrations. It is only speculation for now but based on early Oak Ridge studies using sphere within sphere designs I think we could probably get things down to 500 Kg of u233 or maybe even lower but 1000 kg is a fine for a conservative estimate. These designs with lower fissile concentration would also be fairly soft spectrums since the salt itself can do a modest job at moderating the neutrons.</blockquote>
The problem of plutonium in nuclear breeding should be noted. In thermal breeders plutonium suffers from poor neutron economy, while in fast neutron reactors plutonium neutron economy improves but does not compensate for the added requirement for fissile material. Radial and axial thorium blankets in a breeder appears to lower fissile demand by as much as 300%, <i>but this principle appears to have been applied in S-PRISIM design</i>.<br /><br />The S-PRISM design would appear far less scalable than Epithermal or thermal MSRs. David LeBlanc's estimates are based on the use of blankets with Epithermal MSRs. If we estimate that 2 kgs of reactor grade plutonium from spent nuclear fuel about 1 kg of U233, 500 kgs of U-233 would be a similar startup charge to a ton of RGP. Thus the same amount of RGP that will start 33 GWe worth of S-Prism FBRs will also start 400 GWe worth of LFTRs. Clearly the LFTR offers scalability advantages over the IFR/S-PRISM.</div>
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The issue of core inventory places the IFR at a double disadvantage. First, it greatly limits the the number of IFR that can be started from existing inventories of spent nuclear fuel. Secondly, It increases core size. Larger core size means a larger containment structure, and, of course, higher costs. What of the potential for a small IFR?<br /><br />I briefly reviewed the recent Argonne plan, <a href="http://www.ipd.anl.gov/anlpubs/2008/12/63007.pdf" style="color: #999999; text-decoration: none;">Advanced Burner Test Reactor Preconceptual Design Report</a>. This turned out to be something of a surprise, because it was something that IFR backers are telling us is not needed, a "proof of concept" project. It seems to me that we have been told that the IFR is ready for a commercial prototype. If the IFR is at the proof of concept stage, the argument that LFTR technology is less advanced, because the MSR technology is at a stage where a proof of concept reactor is possible, There are some significant differences. A LFTR of similar output is possible, but it might be considered to be not only a proof of concept, but also a commercial prototype. The ABTR appears to be a burner, designed to use primarily military grade Pu-239, with a little RGP thrown in. Further more it appears to be an old design that has been dusted off. Although the ABTR is capable of breeding with substantial core modifications, Argonne's primary intent is to run it within the conversion range. The highest breeding ration the ABTR is capable of is 1.07, no better than is anticipated for the LFTR.</div>
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Thus while IFR advocates such as Y. I. Chang, speak of high breeding ratios, in fact the first IFR prototype will likely not even break even in its typical operations, will not use typical Reactor Grand Plutonium (RGP) as fuel, and can only breed at best in a similar range to that of the LFTR. It does have a far lower inventory of fissionable materials than would be expected in a pure breeder. Don't get me wrong, the ABTR is an impressive reactor with ingenious safety features,. The core is placed underground, and the tub of "cold" liquid sodium is above the core, giving the ABTR a small foot print. I was frankly quite impressed with the ABTR safety features, and I would feel almost as comfortable living next door to it as I would living next door to a LFTR. But the ABTR is simply not a high breeding ratio, LMFBR. If the ABTR is the IFR prototype, a commercial prototype would have to follow, because a high breeding ratio RGP burner would be sufficiently different from the ABTR to require significant tests before the design is released for commercial operation. Of course an IFR R&D program could skip the ABTR entirely and build a high breeding ratio, RGP burning prototype. Y. I. Chang claims both high breeding ratio and a low inventory IFRs are possible, but would require larger cores than the ABTR. No doubt, but larger cores mean larger buildings, less factory based as opposed to field based manufacturing, and thus higher costs. The high breeding ratio IFR will experience some trade offs, and one of them might be proliferation concerns. I might be easier to convince about safety, than other potential IFR critics.</div>
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Thus it seems unlikely that the IFR could compete with the LFTR in terms of manufacturing costs or in terms of scaleability. The claim that the IFR represents a more mature technology than the LFTR, appears vastly over blown. Indeed, the LMFBR appears to represent a significantly greater technological challenge than MSR technology, and given the effort that went into the development of the ABTR, a proof of concept reactor, the very large American and world wide investment inLMFBR technology, has yielded far fewer results than a similar investment in MSR technology would have.</div>
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What is problematic about the ABTR is its complexity. Complexity makes for expensive manufacture. Because the ABTR study assumes a high percentage of Pu-239 in its fuel, and a not very impressive conversion breeding ratio, it has been impossible for me to determine the actinide inventory for a high breeding ratio, RGP burning IFR. I might review other Y. I. Chang reactor studies, for further information, but I would note that IFR advocates are starting to claim that the LFTR cannot breed, or at least a that a breeding commercial LFTR is impossible. These root of these claims appears to be concern because the LFTR can be scaled to large numbers just as fast as it can be churned out of factories. I am unaware of any documented rational to back up the LFTR can't breed claim.</div>
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The IFR backer attitude is understandable. Just two years ago, the MSR was considered dead, and suddenly, out of left field comes a grass roots movement calling for LFTR development, a movement which at the moment appears to rapidly be gaining traction. Suddenly at the very moment when the energy situation appears to be demanding the IFR, the LFTR appears as a candidate energy black swan. LFTR advocates are pointing to a relatively mature energy technology that is more sustainable than the IFR, can be built in large numbers at a low price, and holds the potential to revolutionize the world energy picture. A bunch of unknown upstarts are threatening to take the keys to the candy store away from the IFR community. There must be something wrong. If the LFTR cannot breed, the the keys stay in the hands of the IFR community. Well maybe. IFR costs and scaleability are still are open questions.</div>
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Charles Bartonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01125297013064527425noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7597656451205429515.post-24830429877840646592016-01-02T07:59:00.002-06:002016-01-02T07:59:59.284-06:00MOLTEN SALT REACTORS - SAFETY OPTIONS GALORE<h3 class="post-title entry-title" itemprop="name" style="background-color: white;">
<span style="color: #30230c; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: small;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><i>This is a repost of a paper that I recently linked to in discussing recent approaches to MSR safety. In that Instance I discussed the Moir-Teller approach to MSR safety. The Moir-Teller system uses both ORNL MSRE safety technology and a system of Barriers that included underground housing of MSRs. I concluded that the use of the Moir-Teller safety system made MSRs, "super safe" But underground housing may not be possible. ORNL MSR safety researcher explored taking the </i></span></span><i style="color: #30230c; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: medium; font-weight: normal;">MSR safety system embodied in the MSRE. This paper by Gat and Professor Dodds of the University of Tennessee, explores how MSR safety can be pushed beyond MSRE safety levels. It is far from clear that the added safety would be required, because the ORNL safety system pushes nuclear safety to seemingly desirable levels, even without the Moir-Teller additions.</i></h3>
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<span style="color: #30230c; font-size: 16px;">MOLTEN SALT REACTORS - SAFETY OPTIONS GALORE</span></h3>
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<br />Uri Gat<br />Oak Ridge National Laboratory<br /><br />H. L. Dodds<br />University of Tennessee at Knoxville<br /><br />ABSTRACT<br /><br />Safety features and attributes of molten-salt reactors (MSR) are described. The unique features of fluid-fuel reactors of on-line continuous processing and the ability for so-called external cooling result in simple and safe designs with low excess reactivity, low fission-product inventory, and small source term. These, in turn, make a criticality accident unlikely and reduce the severity of a loss-of-coolant accident to where they are no longer severe accidents. A melt-down is not an accident for a reactor that uses molten fuel. The molten salts are stable, non-reactive and efficient heat-transfer media that operate at high temperatures at low pressures and are highly compatible with selected structural materials. All these features reduce the accident plethora. Freeze valves can be used for added safety. An ultimate-safe reactor (USR) is described with safety features that are passive, inherent and non-tamperable (PINT).<br /><br />I. INTRODUCTION<br /><br />The Molten-Salt Reactors (MSR) that are the subject of this paper, are fluid-fuel reactors (FFR) that utilize primarily fluoride salts as their working fluid. These reactors have the fissile material, as a salt, homogeneously mixed in the carrier salt. Fluid-fuel reactors differ fundamentally from solid-fuel reactors. Some of the more important differences are that the fuel can be readily processed on line to<br />remove, or add, selective components. This processing differs from solid-fuel reprocessing where the entire fuel (elements) must be removed, treated, remanufactured into elements, and reinserted in the reactor. In contrast, the processing of fluid fuel can consist of continuous removal of gases and volatiles in an on-site processing of a selected side-stream. Another important difference is the fact that the fuel itself can be the coolant and circulated to a heat exchanger that<br />is external to the core. This cooling method is referred to as external cooling. External cooling and on-line processing are contributors to unique safety features of FFRs.<br /><br />II. FLUID FUEL REACTORS<br /><br />It was recognized from their inception that FFRs possess unique and desirable safety features. Some of these features are: Simple structure - this is particularly applicable for external cooling. The core can be optimized for nuclear and safety, and there is no need for compromise to accommodate coolant and heat exchanger surfaces. FFRs can have continuous removal of fission products. This feature dispenses with the need for excess reactivity to compensate for burnup and poisoning, removing the source of reactivity excursions, and reducing the source term and driving force (after-heat) for an accident. They also possess, "Inherent safety and ease of control." The inherent safety refers to the high negative reactivity temperature coefficient associated with the expansion of the fluid upon heating and resulting in the expelling of fuel from the core to reduce the reactivity. This response is limited by the speed of sound propagation (shockwave). Combined with low excess reactivity the FFRs can be self-controlling. They can operate with no externally operated controls, thus the safety can be passive, inherent and non-tamperable (PINT). Control rods may be used in FFRs to control the operation temperature. Ultimate shut-down is accomplished by draining the fuel, by gravity, from the critical configuration in the core to guaranteed sub-critical configurations in drain tanks. These features have been demonstrated in the operation of the Molten-Salt Reactor Experiment (MSRE).<br /><br />There are safety concerns associated with FFR: "Possible fluctuations of reactivity caused by density or concentration changes in the fuel, e.g., bubbling." For MSRs this concern is primarily the coalescence of dissolved gas into large bubbles and their collapse, or in some concepts, such as the MSBR, the expansion of bubbles. To assure that this does not occur, continuous removal of gaseous (fission products) must be employed, usually through sparging. Early concerns of loss of delayed neutrons, which are carried out of the core in external cooling, turned out to be of no significance.<br /><br />III. MOLTEN SALT REACTORS<br /><br />The molten salts considered for MSRs are chemically stable. They do not react rapidly with moisture or air. Their chemical inertness precludes accidents that are due to chemical interaction. There is no fire hazard or explosion hazard. They are also compatible and are non-corrosive with respect to suitable structural materials. The experience with the MSRE has shown that high-nickel alloys, combined with adequate oxidation potential balancing of the salt, can result in low corrosion of the structural materials.<br /><br />The molten salts considered for the MSR are stable to high temperatures at low pressures. This feature allows for high efficiency with no extreme safety demands from the structure materials. Being a liquid system at low-pressure eliminates the storage of potential energy or other risk of an energetic burst or explosion. Molten salts are often used in industry as heat transfer media for their inertness and safety. There is ample experience in handling molten salts.<br /><br />Small spills are not a source of a major accident as there are no violent reactions that can accompany a spill. As a spill occurs, the salt is spread out and cools more efficiently than in the insulated pipes. The salt freezes in place without spreading and is available for recovery operation. The freezing process is inherent and passive. Should there be some residual heat sources in the salt, it will stay molten until it reaches a configuration in which the thermodynamic equilibrium brings it to a freeze.<br /><br />IV. FREEZE VALVES<br /><br />The MSR can utilize freeze valves in critical locations or where desired. Freeze valves can be ordinary sections of pipe which are exposed to a cooling stream of environmental gas to the extent that it creates a frozen plug that blocks the flow and acts as a valve. Where such a valve has a safety function, as in draining the fuel to the storage tanks, it is prudent to design it such that the required flow is<br />gravity-driven. The frozen valve itself can be designed such that when the salt rises above a certain predetermined temperature the heat overrides the cooling, melts the frozen plug and opens the valve. Such an arrangement is passive, inherent and non-tamperable (PINT-safe).<br /><br />Furthermore, the properly sized external cooling of the freeze valve cooling drive, such as an electric driven fan, will cease with any failure of the power and release the valve to melt and perform its safety function. This mode of operation is again PINT-safe.<br /><br />V. SEVERE ACCIDENTS<br /><br />For nuclear reactors it is common to consider three types of severe accidents: criticality accident, failure to remove after-heat and a meltdown. The meltdown is not an accident by itself but rather a description of a consequence of an accident. The concern with a meltdown is the possibility of breach of containment and release of the source term, and also a rearrangement of the fuel into a re-critical configuration. For the MSR the fuel melting is, of course, a moot issue since the fuel is in a molten state in its normal operating configuration. A possible advantage of the MSR is that the fuel is subject to freezing, upon breach of a vessel or pipe, and its dispersement. The fuel will disperse, and thus increase its cooling geometry, until it reaches a freezing configuration and thus will be confined to that location and configuration. The design of the MSR must account for such a situation so that recovery, by collecting the fuel and correcting the failure that led to the dispersal, is simple and readily possible. The issues of the source term, re-criticality, and after-heat removal are discussed in the respective following paragraphs.<br /><br />VI. THE SOURCE TERM<br /><br />The source term, which is the inventory of radioisotopes in the reactor available for dispersion to the environment, contributes two-fold to an accident. The source term is the measure of the radiation which needs to be contained from reaching any sensitive location or target. The energy contained in the source term also provides the driving force for the dispersion of the source term as it is also a measure of the after heat, or the energy, to damage a reactor in the event of heat-removal failure or loss-of-coolant accident (LOCA). For an MSR, as for any fluid fuel reactor, on-line fuel processing can be applied. The on-line processing, at the least, removes the gaseous and volatile part of the source term. This part is the most likely to be dispersed when there is a breach of containment. Fuel processing also reduces the inventory of longer and long-lived isotopes as their accumulation is time dependent. The MSRs processing can be adjusted to have a small source term. The safety advantages of this small source term are many fold: The driving force for dispersion is reduced; the gaseous and volatile components, which are the most likely to disperse, are essentially all but eliminated; the long half-life isotopes (elements) are reduced such that the long-term effect of even the most unlikely accident is not severe; and, the short-lived isotopes require a proportionately short-term protection time till they decay. Thus, even a hypothetical severe accident is ameliorated a priori.<br /><br />A properly designed processing facility quickly removes the separated radioisotopes from the purview of the reactor. This makes them totally unavailable to the reactor source term even under the most extreme hypothesized circumstances.<br /><br />VII. CRITICALITY ACCIDENT<br /><br />In MSRs with processing, the criticality accident is essentially eliminated (See concerns section for exceptions.). There are two factors that make an excess reactivity incident unlikely, temperature control and optimized geometry. The MSR can be temperature-controlled. The large negative temperature coefficient allows for control without control rods or other mechanically operated control mechanism. The operability of the reactor under temperature control has been demonstrated on FFR(HRT). The control rods can be used for temperature regulation. Continuous fuel<br />processing, with the ability to externally add fissile material when needed, reduces the need for excess reactivity inventory. There is no need to compensate for burnup as the poisoning fission products are kept at (low) equilibrium. The simple design, particularly when utilizing external cooling, eliminates the possibility of shifting or rearranging materials to result in an increased reactivity. The absence of coolant per se does not provide room that could be filled with shifting fuel to increase reactivity. The MSR can be designed so that bred fuel, at a breeding ratio of 1.0, keeps the reactor at equilibrium with fertile-material feed and with no need to add fissile material. Since the fuel is also the coolant, the reactor is largely temperature-controlled regardless of the power.<br /><br />The adequately-designed MSR has an optimum geometrical design for criticality in the core. The externally-cooled reactor has neither coolant nor structural materials in the core that may require design compromises and thus can truly be optimized for safety. This core optimization also assures that no criticality, or re-criticality, outside the core can occur.<br /><br />VIII. AFTER HEAT ACCIDENT<br /><br />The MSR can be designed, with sufficiently rapid processing, that it can contain adiabatically the entire inventory after-heat without reaching boiling. Furthermore, since the fuel is the coolant, in external cooling, a LOCA has no meaning. As a rule, natural convection cooling could be designed but may not be desirable as the temperature-controlled reactor will maintain its design temperature regardless of the power. The reaction needed is to drain the fuel, by gravity, into dump tanks<br />that are assured to retain subcriticality and have sufficient natural cooling to assure cooling of the fuel. The activation of the draining can be done by means of freeze valves that assure PINT safety for after heat removal.<br /><br />IX. CONCERNS<br /><br />There are two safety concerns for the MSR that can lead to a power excursion. The first of these concerns is the accumulation of gases and volatile materials in the fluid fuel that would coalesce into bubbles that could then collapse at once in the core, resulting in a reactivity excursion. A careful design will ensure that such an event is avoided. The dispersed gases must accumulate over an extended period of time, which allows for removal by sparging, and recognizing and noticing the failure of the gas and volatile removal system. By removing the gases early in the cycle of the fuel from the core to the heat exchanger, the likelihood of the collapse of a bubble in the core can be minimized. The geometrical design of the core can also assure that the added volume has a small reactivity contribution.<br /><br />The second concern is the cold slug accident. A core with little or no fuel circulation will remain at criticality, while the external fuel can cool down to low temperatures. A sudden reestablishment of the circulation will introduce a slug of cold fuel to the core. Due to the large negative temperature coefficient, this cold fuel represents a reactivity excursion that will result in a power burst. The primary pump, or absence thereof, must be carefully sized to assure that such an<br />excursion does not exceed the design margins of the reactor.<br /><br />X. THE ULTIMATE SAFE REACTOR (USR)<br /><br />The Ultimate Safe Reactor (USR) is a special concept of a molten-salt reactor with prime and complete emphasis on safety. The USR uses a processing frequency, yet to be developed, that is about an order of magnitude higher from that contemplated for the molten salt breeder reactor (MSBR). The MSBR had a ten-day inventory turn around in the fuel processing. The USR uses a one day or less of turnaround of the fuel<br />inventory. This rather fast turnaround reduces the build up of all fission products with half-lives of a few days or longer. The reactor is an epithermal spectrum reactor and uses no moderator per se in the core. The clean core consists solely of a low-pressure vessel. Freeze valves are used throughout. The prime circulating pump is sized to assure no critical cold slug accident can occur. Furthermore, the USR uses the Th-U fuel cycle with a breeding ratio of exactly one. Thus, the USR has all the safety benefits that are passive, inherent and non-tamperable and, in addition, has proliferation-resistant attributes and simplified waste that is free of fissile material, which can be transported in any arbitrary size or quantity from the processing part of the plant.<br /><br />The USR has no control rods and is temperature controlled by elevation of fuel in the core. The start-up procedure is the pumping of the fuel from its storage or dump tanks into the core. The small pump that accomplishes this transfer is sized such that at maximum capacity the temperature rise rate of the core is within the design limits.<br /><br />XI. THE ABSOLUTE AND ULTIMATE SAFE REACTOR (A+USR)<br /><br />The absolute and ultimate safe reactor (A+USR) is a special concept of the USR which utilizes natural convection to transfer the heat from the core to the heat exchanger. The A+USR has no safety-related mechanical operating parts nor any externally-actuated controls, it becomes the ultimate in PINT-safety. The reactor responds internally and inherently to a change in power demand via its temperature response.<br /><br />Frequent processing of the fuel increases the fuel inventory in the processing part and puts high demand on the performance of the processing units. The removal of the fission products from the fuel stream occurs at low concentrations, which requires precision and sophistication. In an actual plant, an optimization between performance, inventory and safety is needed.<br /><br />XII. SUMMARY<br /><br />The molten-salt reactor with fuel processing can be designed to be almost as safe as desirable. The basic features of fluoride based molten salts allow for a high temperature, and thus efficient, operation at low pressures. The molten salts are inert and well compatible with selected structural materials. The MSR is not subject to safety concerns from chemical or mechanical violent reactions or explosions. External cooling results in a simple design with few structural requirements that permits optimization of the design for safety-eliminating compromises. The on-line processing results in an equilibrium fuel that requires no excess reactivity for burn-up or poison compensation. The fission product inventory, and therefore the source term, is held low. The severe accidents of uncontrolled super-criticality or loss-of-cooling that fails to remove the after-heat can become a hypothetical accident.<br /><br />The dreaded meltdown looses all its meaning in a fluid-fuel reactor. In an MSR, a spill may be self-containing by the freezing of the fuel upon cooling. Freeze valves are one more feature that can make an MSR PINT (passive, inherent, non-tamperable) safe.<br /><br />The USR and the A+USR are concepts that bring together the safety features of an MSR and result in a reactor with safety features that are beyond current requirements and expectations.<br /><br />ACKNOWLEDGMENT<br /><br />The authors wish to express their thanks and gratitude to J. R. Engel, who has reviewed this paper and provided extremely valuable comments and corrections. Many of the ideas expressed in this paper were developed by Dick and were explained to the authors over the course of many years.<br /><br />REFERENCES<br /><br />1. J. A. Lane, H. G. MacPherson, and F. Maslan, <a href="http://www.energyfromthorium.com/FluidFuelReactors.html" style="color: #999999; text-decoration: none;">Fluid Fuel Reactors</a>, Addison-Wesley, Reading, Massachusetts (1958).<br /><br />2. P. N. Haubenreich and J. R. Engel, "<a href="http://www.energyfromthorium.com/pdf/NAT_MSREexperience.pdf" style="color: #999999; text-decoration: none;">Experience with the Molten Salt Reactor Experiment,</a>" Nucl. Appl Technol.,8, 118 (1970).<br /><br />3. H. E. McCoy et al., "<a href="http://www.energyfromthorium.com/pdf/NAT_MSRmaterials.pdf" style="color: #999999; text-decoration: none;">New Development in Materials for Molten Salt Reactors,"</a> Nucl. Appl. Tech. 8, 156 (1970).<br /><br />4. Uri Gat and H. L. Dodds, "The Source Term and Waste Optimization of Molten Salt Reactors with Processing," GLOBAL '93, September, 12-17 1993, Seattle, Washington.<br /><br />5. M. W. Rosenthal et al., "Molten Salt Reactors," Proc. Int. Conf Constructive Uses of Atomic Energy, Washington, D.C., November 1968, ANS, March 1969.<br /><br />6. Uri Gat and S. R. Daugherty, "The Ultimate Safe (US) Reactor," 7th Int. Conf. Alternative Energy Sources, Miami Beach, Florida, December 9-11, 1985.<br /><br />7. Uri Gat, "<a href="http://www.energyfromthorium.com/pdf/ultimateSafeReactor.pdf" style="color: #999999; text-decoration: none;">The Ultimate Safe (US) Reactor - A Concept for the Third Millennium</a>," 4th Int. Conf. Emerging Nuclear Energy Systems, Madrid, Spain, June 30- July 4, 1986.<br /><br />8. M. E. Whatley et al., "<a href="http://www.energyfromthorium.com/pdf/NAT_MSBRrecycle.pdf" style="color: #999999; text-decoration: none;">Engineering Development of the MSBR Fuel Recycle,"</a>Nucl. Appl. Tech., 8, 170 (1970).</div>
Charles Bartonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01125297013064527425noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7597656451205429515.post-32080751991647131152015-12-25T07:38:00.001-06:002015-12-25T07:38:28.997-06:00Jim Sweeneyon Efficiency | Energy Seminar - November 30, 2015This is a little Christmas gift I offer my readers and viewers. I probably don't talk enough about efficiency, but in addition to its importance in past and future decarbonization, efficiency is the royal road to the creation of greater wealth for societies. With greater efficiency, everyones labor is worth more, and the things we buy with that added wealth can contribute far more to our well being .
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Published on Dec 4, 2015
Energy efficiency -- economically efficient reductions in energy use – supports three goals fundamental to US energy policy: the health and growth of the economy, the domestic and international environment, and domestic and international security. Although barriers still keep the United States from full implementation of energy efficient options, energy efficiency improvements since the oil crisis of 1973-74 have had more beneficial impacts on US energy security and on the environment than any of the increases in domestic production of oil, gas, coal, geothermal energy, nuclear power, solar power, wind power, plus biofuels, put together. Progress has been based on cumulative small changes, broadly distributed throughout the economy, and thus difficult to notice.
The cumulative, broadly distributed growth in energy efficiency resulted from many factors working together, not simply one factor -- energy prices, attitudes, energy efficiency regulations, governmental and utility-based subsidies, governmental organizations and nongovernmental organizations, nudges, managerial changes. For some companies energy efficiency became a profit strategy. Technology innovations and innovations of energy management and utilization have been central. These factors in many cases were mutually reinforcing.
Jim Sweeney is director of the Precourt Energy Efficiency Center, professor of Management Science & Engineering at Stanford University. Recommended reading: https://stanford.app.box.com/s/buieb2...
Stanford Energy Seminar: http://energyseminar.stanford.edu/
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Charles Bartonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01125297013064527425noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7597656451205429515.post-53875811029218129312015-12-22T06:53:00.001-06:002015-12-22T06:55:52.884-06:00Alvin Weinberg Speaks to Our Time<b>December 2015 Update: Becky has called my attention to the continued relevance of this post. It is foundational to the project I undertook when I started the Nuclear Green Blog. </b> In addition I have renamed the essay.<br />
<span style="font-weight: bold;"><br />2009 Update Note: This post was one of the first I wrote for Nuclear Green in December 2007. Because it deals with the early history of studies of carbon mitigation and Alvin Weinberg's far sighted views on post-carbon energy forms are still relevant to recent discussions on energy, I felt reposting a slightly revised version of my original post was in order.</span><br />
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I have told the story before of my proto-internship in the <a href="http://www.ornl.gov/">ORNL</a>-<a href="http://www.ornl.gov/info/ornlreview/rev25-34/net725.html">NSF Environmental Studies Program</a> in 1970-71, and hearing there, for the first time about the problem of CO2 emissions and AGW. I no doubt heard it first from<a href="http://www.ornl.net/info/ornlreview/rev28_2/text/egc.htm"> Jerry Olson,</a> an ecologist, who was part of an ongoing ORNL research effort on the global carbon cycle. In addition to alerting me, Olson appears to have been the first to alert <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alvin_Weinberg">Alvin Weinberg</a>, who was the Director of ORNL until his politically inspired firing in 1973. When, in 1974, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dixy_Lee_Ray">Dixie Lee Ray</a> brought Weinberg to Washington to serve as Director of the Office of Energy Research and Development, his focused shifted from reactors to the relationship of energy to CO2 emissions. I have recently started looking at a collection of Weinberg's papers that is available online. Weinberg's papers reveal him to be a thinker of great depth, and range. What I find most interesting about Weinberg's papers is the role that CO2/global warming played in his discourse after his firing from his position of Director of ORNL in 1973. For the rest of his progessional life, Weinberg warned us, of the dangers that we faced from CO2. In 1974 Weinberg published a major paper on the energy economy is the prestigious journal Science. In "<a href="http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/citation/186/4160/205">Global Effects of Man's Production of Energy</a>," Weinberg set out his case on the long term consequences of the human commitment to carbon based fules. In 1975 during testamony to congress, Weinberg again laid out his global warming concerns. In 1975 Weinberg returned to Oak Ridge where he led the Institute for Energy Analysis until his retirement in 1984. During that period, the IEA was a major center for the study of energy on climate, and of energy alternativives. In 1977 Alvin Weinberg was named the chairman of a National Study Group on the Global Effects of Carbon Dioxide.<br />
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Today Weinberg's views on CO2 and global warming seem prophetic. In a 1976 paper "<a href="http://www.osti.gov/bridge/servlets/purl/7219049-2fc7wn/">Economic Implications of A US Nuclear Moratorium. 1985 to 2010</a>," which Weinberg co-authored with Charles E. Whittle, Alan D. Poole, Edward L. Allen, <a href="http://www.orau.org/about/history/pollard.htm">William G. Pollard</a>, Herbert G. MacPherson, Ned L. Treat, and Doan L. Phung, reveal to us exactly how accurate Weinberg's vision into the future was. In the paper Weinberg and his associates assessed the the economic and environmental consequences of moratorium on nuclear construction in the United States. He assumed that no new reactors would be ordered after 1980, but that reactor construction would continue till about 1985. He then looked at the consequences to allow continued operation of reactors on line by 1985. Weinberg tried to think out the implications of the cessation of new reactor construction.<br />
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Weinberg and his associates understood that if reactor construction ceased, power companies would construct more coal fired power plants to meet consumer demand for electricity. Weinberg assumed that consumer demand would be driven by two factors population growth, and economic growth. He also assumed that technological changes would increase the efficiency of electrical use, but that these efficiencies would not offset the increase in demand.<br />
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Weinberg saw<br />
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"four levels of environmental trade offs as a result of shifting the additional fuel requirements from nuclear to coal after 1985."</blockquote>
The first level of effect was what he called global. There were two componants:<br />
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(1) Proliferation: Countries wishing to rely primarily on the nuclear option can do so whether or not the United States abandons nuclear power. Thus, a domestic moratorium on nuclear energy would have little effect on proliferation unless the rest of the world abandoned nuclear power.<br />
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(2) CO2: Should 20 percent of the world’s fossil fuel be burned, the CO2 concentration might double; this could lead to unacceptable changes in the world’s climate. A U.S. moratorium per se would have little effect on this possibility; however, loss of the nuclear option through much of the world,’which is a conceivable consequence of a U.S. moratorium, might make it more difficult to respond quickly to a perceived danger from higher CO, levels in the atmosphere.</blockquote>
Weinberg and his associates believed that<br />
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the effect of a moratorium (on reactor construction) adopted only by the United States would be marginal and secondary: marginal because reactors would be available from other countries, secondary because of the influence of the United States on world nuclear energy policy (including decisions by others to follow suit).<br />
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It is no longer possible for a single nation to influence significantly the possibility of proliferation through a unilateral capacity to supply nuclear power systems. On the other hand, the extent to which the U.S. influence on worldwide nuclear policy would be diminished by its withdrawal from nuclear power development could result in less rigid international regulation and inspection.</blockquote>
But their observations on CO2 were extraordinary:<br />
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The ultimate constraint on the burning of fossil fuel may be the climatic impact from atmospheric CO, buildup. This, of course, is a global problem; what the United States does during the next 30-50 years is likely to contribute little to total global atmospheric levels. Nevertheless, increasing reliance on fossil fuel by such a large consumer as the United States poses a prospect of severe climatic shifts that cannot, in principle, be dismissed. The extent to which a nuclear moratorium would aggravate the buildup of CO, must therefore be examined.<br />
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Carbon dioxide in the atmosphere affects the thermal radiative balance of the planet and through this balance the global climate. On the basis of the best atmospheric models now available, a doubling of the atmospheric CO, would result in a global average surface temperature increase of 1.5-2.4 C, w<span style="font-style: italic;">ith greater increases in the high latitudes</span>. Although models of the type used in these studies predict present global climate surprisingly well, a number of significant variables are not included. Consequently, the results must be regarded as preliminary until additional information and more reliable climatic feedback mechanisms can be properly included.<br />
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During the past hundred years, the annual global production of CO, by burning fossil fuels has grown nearly fiftyfold. It now stands at 18 x 10(9) tons, which is about one-tenth the amount accounted for by the annual net primary fixation of carbon by terrestrial plants. This production appears to have caused an increase in the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere. Since 1958 observers at the Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii have monitored atmospheric CO2 content, and the 1975 measurements show an average CO, concentration of 330 ppm (in the latter part of the nineteenth century it was 290-295 ppm). The measurements show annual increases for each year, averaging about 0.7 ppm during the late 1950s and early 1960s and up to 1 .O ppm or more in recent years.<br />
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The cumulative production of C02 since the end of 1957 and the observed increase in CO2 are plotted in Figure 8. The upper set of points indicates the increase in concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere that would have occurred if all CO, produced from fossil fuels and cement since 1957 remained airborne. The lower set of points represents the observed increase in atmospheric CO2 concentration at the Mauna Loa Observatory.</blockquote>
The paper added:<br />
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Almost any reasonable scenario for future global energy demand yields continued increases in atmospheric C02, but the resulting concentrations do not appear to reach levels that will cause severe climate alterations before 2000. However, little complacency should be derived from this, since continued energy demands during the first few decades of the next century will push atmospheric C02 concentrations to levels which warrant serious concern, even for the low energy growth case. The inertial effect in energy supply systems makes it clear that decisions made now on the nuclear/nonnuclear issue will have an impact reaching many years into the future.</blockquote>
The authors also observed<br />
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that the time when atmospheric CO, concentration will become crucial is early in the twenty-first century.</blockquote>
They expected<br />
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"an increase of 62-73 ppm over the 1958 value of 315 ppm by 2000. "</blockquote>
Then they added,<br />
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"atmospheric concentration of 375-390 ppm may well be a threshold range at which climate change from C02 effects will be separable from natural climate fluctuations. "</blockquote>
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An increase of 150-225 ppm by 2025 (concentration of 465-540 ppm) should certainly result in recognizable climate change if such changes are ever to occur. The consequences of an increase of this magnitude in atmospheric C02 make it prudent to proceed cautiously in the large-scale use of fossil fuels."</blockquote>
In both nuclear proliferation and CO2/global climate change Weinberg and his associates were clearly correct. In 1974 India exploded its first nuclear device bomb without possessing American reactors. Other nations followed in developing nuclear weapons programs without relying on American designed and built power reactors. South Africa which actually assembled 6 nuclear weapons during the 1980's, using a locally designed uranium seperation technology. Pakistan built nuclear weapons without using American reactor technology from the 1980's onward. Pakistan is believed to have stolen technology from the West, and also received some technological help from China. North Korea was able to construct nuclear weapons with Pakistani help. Iraq's nuclear weapons programs were blocked by Israeli military action in the 1980's, and by international pressure and military actions since the 1990's. Iran received Pakistani help in developing an apparently ongoing nuclear weapons program. Libya also received Pakistani help on developing a nuclear weapons program, but is believed to have dismantled that program a few years ago, after an agreement with the United States. Israel acquired nuclear weapon making capacity during the 1960's with some French assistance, but without American reactors.<br />
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Weinberg was also correct about the implications of an American reactor construction moratorium for CO2 emissions. The world wide demands for energy has increased rapidly, and as of December 2009, with that demand predominately having been filled by coal burning power plants.<br />
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Weinberg and his associates foresaw the possibility of reactor accidents including a core melt down. He also envisioned the deaths of coal miners in accidents.<br />
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Some of their predictionsd are amazingly accurate. For example, they foresaw that<br />
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The decade 2000-2010 is the period of rapid deployment of the new supply technologies and/or stringent conservation measures. In this period world oil and gas production is expected to peak and begin to decline.</blockquote>
They predicted that in 2000 the price of oil would be $25 a barrel. The price actually ranged between $22 and $28 a barrel. They foresaw that a moratorium on reactor production after 1985 would increase OPEC's power.<br />
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The paper suggested<br />
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In the very long run, the society may have only solar energy and nuclear power as its major energy options. Solar energy, especially as a stand-alone electric system, presently appears to be much more expensive than nuclear energy.<br />
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This study disclosed several areas where additional research is needed: (a) specific regional impacts from alternative energy strategies; (b) the feasibility of mining multibillion tonnages of coal; (c) potential long-range environmental impacts, particularly that of CO, ; and (d) long-range asymptotic energy supply and demand beyond 2010.</blockquote>
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and noted some implications of the solar choice, that are still not addressed by the current energy discussion:<br />
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insofar as solar may impose an intermittency on our pattern of living, an all-solar energy system would seem to be far from a totally “free” society. What may ultimately be at issue is freedom in the use of time. The nuclear society, with its high energy potential, allows us to use our time without regard to energy availability. The price we pay for this freedom is the necessity to organize and manage the nuclear system so as to avoid recognized potential hazards.</blockquote>
The consequence of failing to listen to Dr. Weinberg's excellent advice in the 1970's is that the world faces a global CO2 - energy crisis in 2010 without the tools to take deal with it. Continued hysteria about the alleged liabilities of nuclear power still block our path to a low carbon future, and so called energy experts have as of yet not come to terms with <a href="http://theenergycollective.com/TheEnergyCollective/52871">the solar cost issues</a> that <a href="http://www.osti.gov/energycitations/product.biblio.jsp?osti_id=5248737&query_id=1">Alvin Weinberg pointed to a generation ago</a>.Charles Bartonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01125297013064527425noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7597656451205429515.post-83244837559961878952015-12-20T07:24:00.001-06:002015-12-20T07:24:45.002-06:00Simon Irish - Value of Molten Salt Design in SMR InnovationSimon Irish is the CEO of Terrestrial Energy. Terrestrial is very nuch a going energy business, with 30 employees and associates. They plan to build a Small Molten Salt Reactor, with a core that can be transported from factory to home site. The IMSR is now expected to produce around 400 MWT or a little less than 200MWe. Which makes the iMSR core only a little less powerful than the ThorCon core, but the iMSR willachieve its fuel economy by a very different fuel system. Terrestrial is planning to go through the canadian Regularatory system, which is designed to work with innovative reactor designs. The NRC is not designed to license innovative reactor designs, and it has thousands of regulations, that simply are inappropriate for MSR safety determinations.
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="270" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/zsAfUBzRp3M" width="480"></iframe>Charles Bartonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01125297013064527425noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7597656451205429515.post-18096455641704549982015-12-17T16:50:00.002-06:002015-12-18T08:54:26.391-06:00Naomi Oreskes and the Pseudoscientific War on Nuclear Power<h1 class="index-page-header__title" data-test-id="header-title" style="background-color: white; color: #00456e; font-family: 'Guardian Egyptian Web', 'Guardian Text Egyptian Web', Georgia, serif; line-height: 1.75rem; margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-size: x-small; font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: #767676; line-height: 1.25rem;"><span style="font-size: small;">Professor Naomi Oreskes is a Harvard historian of science who has made a career studying the pseudoscientific opposition to the</span> </span></span><span style="color: #767676; line-height: 1.25rem;"><span style="font-size: small;">A</span><span style="font-size: small;">GW Hypothesis. This is useful work. Her work has undoubtedly been of value in exposing what are less than honest motives of the anti-AGW pseudoscience community. However, Professor </span></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="line-height: 1.25rem;">Oreskes' </span><span style="line-height: 1.25rem;">recent attack on four distinguished members of the community of science which acknowledges the </span><span style="line-height: 1.25rem;">truth of the </span><span style="line-height: 1.25rem;">AGW Hypothesis is shameful. Professor </span><span style="line-height: 1.25rem;">Oreskes</span><span style="line-height: 1.25rem;"> claims:</span></span></h1>
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "guardian text egyptian web" , "georgia" , serif; line-height: 13.7143px;">There is also a new, strange form of denial that has appeared on the landscape of late, one that says that renewable sources can’t meet our energy needs.</span><span style="line-height: 1.25rem;"> </span></blockquote>
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Lets look at this. First while the professor is familiar with the history of AGW skepticism, she appears to be far less familiar with the history of AGW awareness. This is most unfortunate, because <a href="http://www.theenergycollective.com/charlesbarton/27816/alvin-weinberg-prophet-co2-driven-global-warming" target="_blank">The energy issues which the scientists raise were first raised by Alvin Weinberg</a> over thirty years ago. In the paper I link to, Alving Weinberg demonstrates amazing historical insight into the likely consequences of a reactor building moratorium in the United States. Given what France demonstrated was possible with nuclear power, and the subsequent Asian turn to coal for electrical generation, Weinberg's foresight has proven to be amazingly accurate.<br />
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In "<a href="http://www.osti.gov/scitech/servlets/purl/5248737" target="_blank">Can the Sun Replace Uranium"</a> Alvin Weinberg argued that Breeder Reactors could produce electricity at a significantly lower costs than solar and/or wind generated electricity with adequate storage and transmission. Numerous researchers have tested Weinberg's hypothesis, and there are numerous studies that appear to confirm Weinberg's findings. A number of these papers are posted on Barry Brook's blog BraveNewClimate. Brook, after initially supporting the 100% renewables position, came around to a pro-nuclear position. He has posted a considerable number of papers that tend to support the Weinberg position. BraveNewScience adopted the open science model. Frequently papers that test the 100% renewables hypothesis, only to demonstrate that it produces high costs, and inadequate energy received hundreds of comments. Many comments were by scientists and engineers. The comment pages are of course completely open to pro-100% renewable participants. Although their ability to answer the anti-100% renewable arguments has proven to be weak, and after discovering that their observations have received critical responses, the anti-nuclear greens usually withdraw from the debate. <br />
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Professor <span style="background-color: white;"><span style="color: #767676; font-family: "guardian egyptian web" , "guardian text egyptian web" , "georgia" , serif;"><span style="line-height: 20px;">Oreskes appears to hold the work of professor Mark Z. Jaboson in high favor. Jacobson's attitude toward nuclear power would appear to be far from objective. Jacobson claims that the acquisition of civilian nuclear power plants increases the likelihood of a nuclear exchange every 30 years. There is no historic evidence that this is in fact the case. In fact, with the possible exception of India, no state has acquired a nuclear weapon after developing a civilian power reactor installation. Thus from the historical perspective, acquisition of nuclear weapons precedes acquisition of civilian nuclear power, rather than the other way around.</span></span></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="color: #767676; font-family: "guardian egyptian web" , "guardian text egyptian web" , "georgia" , serif;"><span style="line-height: 20px;"><br /></span></span></span>
<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="color: #767676; font-family: "guardian egyptian web" , "guardian text egyptian web" , "georgia" , serif;"><span style="line-height: 20px;">Thus Jacobson's assumption that civilian nuclear power will probably lead to nuclear war, lacks historic evidence. Once we demonstrate the weakness of Professor Jacobson's case for including the carbon emissions of an imaginary nuclear exchange, in any rational evaluation of the carbon benefits of nuclear power, we find that Professor Jacobson's evaluation of nuclear power as a tool for fighting climate change is fatally flawed. </span></span></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="color: #767676; font-family: "guardian egyptian web" , "guardian text egyptian web" , "georgia" , serif;"><span style="line-height: 20px;"><br /></span></span></span>
<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="color: #767676; font-family: "guardian egyptian web" , "guardian text egyptian web" , "georgia" , serif;"><span style="line-height: 20px;">As for Jacobson's most recent project, the 100% state by state study, Jacobson, of course, excludes nuclear power. Why? <a href="https://achemistinlangley.wordpress.com/2015/06/16/deconstructing-the-100-fossil-fuel-free-wind-water-and-sunlight-usa-paper-part-i-why-no-nuclear-power/" target="_blank">"The Chemist" explain the justification</a>. Jacobson relies on circular arguments that lead back to an old friend, his energy source review. M<a href="http://nucleargreen.blogspot.com/2015/11/a-review-of-mark-z-jacobsons-review.html" target="_blank">y review of Jacobson's "Review."</a> offers an extended discussion of Jacobson's treatment of nuclear power. Needless to say, Professor Jacobson has not seen fit to challenge my critique of his reasoning about nuclear power. As "The Chemist" points out, the argument, that the United States should not acquire new reactors because this will lead the Congo and Algeria to engage in a future nuclear exchange, is irrational. Yet, every other time Professor Jacobson tells us that we should not build nuclear power plants, he points back to his 2009 "Review paper. In addition to the irrational and circular arguments, Jacobson also relies on a paper by Benjemin Sovacool, which offers a metastudy of a number of highly selected papers, including the notorious StormSmith nuclear lifecycle "fudge". When one reads of the hedges which Sovacool offers to his study, one is forced to conclude that this paper is worthless if used to formulate anti-nuclear arguments. But hey, most people have to make do with Sovacool's far more biased online summery. Unfortunately, in ordinary science, sources don't always say what other researchers say they say. I would hope that Professor </span></span></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #767676; font-family: "guardian egyptian web" , "guardian text egyptian web" , "georgia" , serif; line-height: 20px;">Oreskes knows this.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #767676; font-family: "guardian egyptian web" , "guardian text egyptian web" , "georgia" , serif; line-height: 20px;"><br /></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #767676; font-family: "guardian egyptian web" , "guardian text egyptian web" , "georgia" , serif; line-height: 20px;">"The Chemist" raises further questions about Jacobson, "100%, state by state." (See <a href="https://achemistinlangley.wordpress.com/2015/06/18/deconstructing-the-100-fossil-fuel-free-wind-water-and-sunlight-usa-paper-part-ii-what-about-those-pesky-rare-earth-metals/" target="_blank">here,</a> and <a href="https://achemistinlangley.wordpress.com/2015/11/27/deconstructing-the-100-wind-water-and-sunlight-scenarios-part-iii-issues-with-energy-storage/" target="_blank">here</a>.) </span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #767676; font-family: "guardian egyptian web" , "guardian text egyptian web" , "georgia" , serif; line-height: 20px;">A paper By Jacobson and Delucchi, titled </span><span style="background-color: #c7eee6; color: #2c3e50; font-family: "source sans pro" , sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 8px;">“</span><a href="http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/a-path-to-sustainable-energy-by-2030/" target="_blank">A path to sustainable energy by 2030</a><span style="background-color: #c7eee6; color: #2c3e50; font-family: "source sans pro" , sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 8px;">”was reviewed by </span><br />
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<span style="background-color: #c7eee6; color: #2c3e50; font-family: "source sans pro" , sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 8px;"><a href="http://bravenewclimate.com/2009/11/03/wws-2030-critique/#comment-34345" target="_blank">BraveNewClimate in November 2009</a>.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #767676; font-family: "guardian egyptian web" , "guardian text egyptian web" , "georgia" , serif; line-height: 20px;">There were 199 comments on the BraveNewClimate post, one by Jacobson. None of the commenters felt Jacobson's response was adequate in response to a detailed paper and even more detailed comments. Electrical utility engineering professionals felt that Jacobson failed to appreciate some of the challenges to grid stability that his approach would impose. For example, <a href="https://bravenewclimate.files.wordpress.com/2009/09/lang_solar_realities_v2.pdf" target="_blank">Peter Lang, an electrical industry professional, linked to a personal paper on solar costs</a>.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: "guardian text egyptian web" , "georgia" , serif; line-height: 13.7143px;">The reason is simple: experience shows that nuclear power is slow to build,</span> </blockquote>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: "guardian text egyptian web" , "georgia" , serif; line-height: 13.7143px;">expensive to run </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: "guardian text egyptian web" , "georgia" , serif; line-height: 13.7143px;">and carries the spectre of catastrophic risk. It requires</span></blockquote>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: "guardian text egyptian web" , "georgia" , serif; line-height: 13.7143px;">technical </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: "guardian text egyptian web" , "georgia" , serif; line-height: 13.7143px;">expertise anorganization </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: "guardian text egyptian web" , "georgia" , serif; line-height: 13.7143px;">that is lacking in many parts of the</span> </blockquote>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: "guardian text egyptian web" , "georgia" , serif; line-height: 13.7143px;">developing </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: "guardian text egyptian web" , "georgia" , serif; line-height: 13.7143px;">world (and in some part of the developed world as well). As one of</span> </blockquote>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: "guardian text egyptian web" , "georgia" , serif; line-height: 13.7143px;">my </span> <span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: "guardian text egyptian web" , "georgia" , serif; line-height: 13.7143px;">scientific colleagues once put it, nuclear power is an extraordinarily</span> </blockquote>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: "guardian text egyptian web" , "georgia" , serif; line-height: 13.7143px;">elaborate and expensive way to boil water.</span></blockquote>
Except, of course, you do not need to boil water. You can provide heat to an air breathing turbine and drive a generator with the turbine. If you pull power off the turbine and use it to run a generator, you have a nifty generator system without water. And, if you wanted to get twice the heat that a water cooled reactor would produce (and high heat is useful in running an air breathing turbine engine) you can use molten salts to cool the reactor and transfer the heat from the core to the turbine. With heat efficient molten salts, you can build a really small core, and it will be very cheap to build. A lot cheaper than the big old water cooled reactors, but has the good professor payed the slightest attention to what was said in the White House Conference on Nuclear power last month? That is very doubtful indeed.<br />
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So wqhy is the good professor so down on Nuks? It would seem that she has embraced a new religion, one which holds that it is unquestionable that Renewable energy is all good, and all powerful. Mark Z. Jacobson is the infallable prophet of renewable energ. Anyone who douts the all powerful nature of renewable energy, or the all knowing nature of Mark Z. Jacobson is the most evil sort of human low life, a denier. Any scientist who questions the gospel of mark Z. Jacobson, is to be instantly of the rank of respected scientist, and condemedto be cast out into outer darknes because he or she is a denier.<br />
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Well there you have it. One more thingf. considering the low quality of trhe faculty of Harvard and Stanford University, it is highly recomended that you not send your offspring to either of those schools.Charles Bartonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01125297013064527425noreply@blogger.com2