Second Annual Great Issues in Energy Symposium: The Nuclear Option

Comment by David Lewis on the Energy Collective:

When your colleague Joe Romm appeared onstage at Dartmouth with Ernie Moniz recently, he told the audience so many whoppers about solar power, whether baseload power was even required anymore, and about the cost of nuclear power, that Moniz, one of Romm's former teachers, felt he had to tell the crowd that what Romm was saying was "untrue". Romm kept on with the whoppers. Moniz used his last opportunity to speak to quote someone Romm respected to see if that would slow Romm down. The exchange between Joe Romm and Ernie Moniz:

Romm: "...you can do it by pushing that technology into the marketplace, and going down the experience of the learning curve, and learning how technologies work in the marketplace, and getting economies of scale, and that from my perspective is the best route and the most successful route - that was the point of the IEA report, that if you really want to bring down the cost of technologies, get them into the marketplace and do innovation...."

Moniz: "I will just "neutrally" quote my colleague John Deutch, who says, "learning curves are the refuge of scoundrels".

Looking at Romm, Moniz then says "you can argue with John".

Romm: "I would never argue with John".

Could you ask Joe Romm if this means he accepts that he is a scoundrel, and report back to us here at The Energy Collective?

A Hat Tip to David Lewis who has dared to say what many of us have thought about Joe Romm, and indeed the renewable energy crowd.

The Curious Green Gas Attack

Climate scientists agree that we need to decrease planet wide CO2 emissions by 80% as soon as possible. Because it will be very difficult to eliminate the use of fossil fuels in some economic sectors - air transport, shipping, the military, agriculture, mining, it would seem desirable to move as quicklu as possible to remove fossil fuels from areas where substitutes are readily available. These would include surface transportation, electrical generation, and space and water heating. The goal for electrical generation would seem to move beyond the use of fossil fuels as quickly as possible. This would represent a significant nove toward decarbonizing society. The great CO2 savings can be saved by electrifying surface transportation. Finally a combination of solar and electrical technologies can convert existing building heat use to either solar or electrical technologies. Thus natural gas use should be quickly curtailed as an energy technology because its burning produces CO2 which contributes to AGW. One would expect individuals and organizations tht claim to be pro-environment, climate progressive, pro renewables, pro clean energy, etc to favor the quick termination of natural gas use in electrical generation. Such expectations rest on the mistaken notion that Greens are sane.

Recently Greenpeace offered an energy plan that focused on closing down most of the 104 carbon free nuclear plants currently in use in the United States by 2020. The Greepeace plan actually called for their replacement by the construction of natural gas fired power plants. Clearly Greenpeace regards its nutty war against nuclear power as more important than the fight against global warming.

I recently pointed out the basic objection to the Greenpeace natural gas advocacy:

The whole problem with natural gas can be summed up with two words: carbon dioxide. Even though we might use natural gas more efficiently, it is still a carbon based fossil fuel, and when we burn it, we increase the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere. There are other issues. Natural gas is becoming more expensive to extract. Thus even when used efficiently, natural gas is regarded as a high cost fuel, and natural gas generators are usually treated as peak reserve power sources because utilities can charge more for peak power. Natural gas generating systems have low capital cost, but high fuel costs. Natural gas generators are also useful as load followers. This undoubtedly has a lot to do with why [r]evolution sees as many natural gas generators producing electricity in 2040 as were producing electricity. Grid instability caused by the intermittency of solar and wind generating sources has to be controlled, in order to keep the grid from constantly crashing. Gas turbines have enough flexibility to handle the load stabilizing task on a renewables dominated grid. Unfortunately we cannot speak of such a grid as a post carbon grid, since the [r]evolution grid will be still dependent on the burning of carbon based fuel in 2040. presumably after 2040 electricity from non-intermittent renewable sources - hydro, biomass, and geothermal - will replace replace natural gas, but this assumes that biomass and geothermal will be ready provide large amounts of reliable electricity in a generation. This is a risk of the [r]evolution plan, and quite frankly the odds at present run heavily against biomass, and geothermal, while hydro is not envisioned to expand enough to pick up the slack if biomass and geothermal fail to live up to the expectations which the [r]evolution plan places upon them.

Amory Lovins, of course has been a long time shill of the natural gas industry and a habitual greewasher of natural gas. It is not surprising that Lovins sycophant Joe Romm has recently joined the crowd of barkers outside the natural gas tent

have been researching what may be the single biggest game changer for climate action in the next two decades — U.S. natural gas supply. Last week I attended a workshop where some of the country’s leading gas experts presented the remarkable new projections for near- and medium-term supply and then answered questions from some of the country’s top energy experts.

The bottom line is staggering. As one of the presenters put it, “If the current trend continues” for production of unconventional gas, then by 2020 “natural gas could displace half of the coal burning power plants.” If that is true, and the projections by the other experts were comparable, then natural gas alone could essentially meet the entire Waxman-Markey CO2 target for 2020 — without requiring gobs of new power plants to be sited and built or thousands of miles of new transmission lines.

There is simply no doubt that, other than energy efficiency and conservation, the lowest-cost option for achieving large-scale CO2 reductions by 2020 is simply replacing electricity produced by burning coal with power generated by burning more natural gas in the vast array of currently underutilized gas-fired plants (as I will discuss in more detail in Part 2). Natural gas is the cheapest, low-carbon baseload power around.

And it’s not just suppliers and industry experts calling for a major expansion of natural gas. In its detailed analysis of how the U.S. can quickly slash CO2 emissions and transition off of coal without building new nukes, Energy [R]evolution, Greenpeace (!) projects a 50% growth in natural gas power generation by 2020.

There are several flaws to Joe's reasoning. The capital cost for switching to natural gas may be low, but the fuel cost may not be. Joe assumes that the natural gas supply is going to rise, but Oil Drum bad girl Gail the Actuary points to the what has recently been happening in the Natural Gas market.

At this point, natural gas prices are back at 2002 levels. This is too low a level to be profitable, and natural gas producers have reduced the number of drilling rigs by more than half since September 2008. With fewer drilling rigs, natural gas production can be expected to decline in the not too distant future, perhaps late 2009 or sometime in 2010.

So Joe is planning to switch from coal to natural gas generation just as natural gas production drops. Good show, Joe.

Joe also adds a further greenwashing to natural gas:

Everyone who cares about clean energy and climate issues needs to become knowledgeable on shale gas — both its supply potential and the environmental risks associated with extracting it. Where to start? I’m glad you ask

Now surely Joe know better. I have pointed out to Joe the radon problem natural gas extracted from thal. Radon is a naturally radioactive gas that is present in rocks. When natural gas is pumped to the surface, radon flows with it. So you have radioactive radon contaminating everything the natural gas touches, including gas generators. Joe does not want you to become knowledgable about the radiations issues of natural gas. Natural gas is us clean, safe, renewable, and planet friendly. Would I ever kid you? But if you doubt me, just ask Joe.

Not all of Joe's readers have been pleased with Joe';s natural gas advocacy. "jorleh" commented:

Once more. Is gas better than nuclear? I think even nuclear is better than fossil fuels.

Must hope Joe only had a minor stroke.

Answering Joe Romm questions

Joe Romm seeks inspiration for his plan to combat Global Warming.

I think that Joe Romm has offered the reductio ad absurdum of green energy policy. What Romm has demonstrated is that the Green approach can only be successful in a neo-Stalinist type economy.

Let me repeat the key point: It is utterly inconceivable that you could stabilize atmospheric concentrations anywhere near 350 ppm by using a carbon price as your primary mechanism […] A price isn’t what is needed to stop building any new coal plants and shut down every existing one in 10 years in rich countries and 20 years everywhere else — and replace all that power (plus growth) with carbon-free generation and efficiency. Plus you have to build all the necessary transmission […] How are you going to site and build all the alternative plants that fast? How are you going to site and build all the power lines that quickly? How are you going to allocate the steel, cement, turbines, etc? How are you going to train all the people needed to do all this? There is only one way. That is a WWII-style and WWII-scale government-led mobilization […] Well, we didn’t accomplish the WWII mobilization through a pricing mechanism.

The "Air High" plan and Nuclear Green have offered answers to Romm's questions. Romm offers an unreachable time frame, even with the socialist means he proposes, however if the time frame is to 2050, the task becomes doable, and doable without socialism.

How are you going to site and build all the alternative plants that fast?

Develop a factory built, transportable, modular LFTR and the factory to build it by 2020.

How are you going to site and build all the power lines that quickly?

By using existing power lines and existing access at coal and gas fired power plants that are to be recycled as LFTR sites.

How are you going to allocate the steel, cement, turbines, etc?

By making maximum use of existing power plant sites and facilities, and by housing LFTRs in underground homes rather than above ground structures, we will minimize structural steel and cement requirements. Closed cycle gas turbines will be mass produced at Jet engine factories.

How are you going to train all the people needed to do all this?

Through expansion of university and military training programs for nuclear scientists, engineers, managers, and workers. And by designing self controlling reactors that do not require on site operations staff. It is clear that within a doable time frame, all of our carbon containment goals can be meet without

a WWII-style and WWII-scale government-led mobilization.

The Aim High plan is explained in this video of Dr. Robert Hargraves "Aim High" presentation.

Nuclear Power: An Indispensable Climate Change Solution

I asked Edward Geist of Blogging About the Unthinkable for permission to cross post this post from his excellent blog. Geist is a graduate student who has limited time to blog, but when he does find time, his blogging is of very high quality. My interest is obvious, I have targeted Romm's grandiose renewable ideas on a number of occasions, as well as his misinformation on both renewables and his disinformation on nuclear energy. This post does an excellent job of pointing out flaws in Romm's thinking.

Nuclear Power: An Indispensable Climate Change Solution
By Edward Geist

Joe Romm clarifies his position on nuclear power:

Why not more than 1 total wedge of nuclear? Based on a post last year on the Keystone report, to do this by 2050 would require adding globally, an average of 17 plants each year, while building an average of 9 plants a year to replace those that will be retired, for a total of one nuclear plant every two weeks for four decades — plus 10 Yucca Mountains to store the waste. I also doubt it will be among the cheaper options. And the uranium supply and non-proliferation issues for even that scale of deployment are quite serious. See “An introduction to nuclear power.”

Note to all: Do I want to build all those nuclear plants. No. Do I think we could do it without all those nuclear plants. Definitely. Therefore, should I be quoted as saying we “must” build all those nuclear plants, as the Drudge Report has, or even that I propose building all those plants? No. Do I think we will have to swallow a bunch of nuclear plants as part of the grand bargain to make this all possible and that other countries will build most of these? I have no doubt. So it stays in “the solution” for now.

Romm's take on nuclear power is not particularlywell-informed, as I've discussed in the past. But examining its limited role in his proposed solution reveals that Romm has not seriously considered the physical limitations associated with his preferred energy options. For political, geographical, and practical reasons, nuclear power must ultimately play a vastly larger role in our energy future than predicted by Romm.

Romm describes his preferred future energy mix as follows:

1 of wind for power — one million large (2 MW peak) wind turbines
1 of wind for vehicles –another 2000 GW wind. Most cars must be plug-in hybrids or pure electric vehicles.
3 of concentrated solar thermal (aka solar baseload)– ~5000 GW peak.
3 of efficiency — one each for buildings, industry, and cogeneration/heat-recovery for a total of 15 to 20 million GW-hrs. A key strategy for reducing direct fossil fuel use for heating buildings (while also reducing air conditioning energy) is geothermal heat pumps.
1 of solar photovoltaics — 2000 GW peak
1/2 wedge of nuclear power– 350 GW

What's wrong with this picture?

4000 GW wind, 5000 GW solar thermal, 2000 GW solar photovoltaic. This is an increase of two orders of magnitude for wind and three for both types of solar. I notice that the capacity factor assumptions implied by Romm are quite high. Wind turbines are now a fairly mature technology, so its economics are increasingly apparent, but the costs solar thermal and solar photovoltaic are still unclear. But for the sake of argument I'm willing to grant Romm that maybe in 2050 these technologies will be cost-competitive. The important thing is that the qualitative limitations of these sources of energy go far beyond cost. With the possible exception of a handful of exceptionally well-endowed nations, investment in solar and wind can NEVER assure energy security.

Solar and wind generators depends on the ambient energy resources available in the locations where they are installed. There is, of course, no place on earth where the sun shines all the time, and not many where the wind always blows. So these are intermittent resources by nature. But some countries are better-endowed than others. Imagine, if you will, a future world of 2050 with the energy supply specified by Romm. Some nations, such as Russia, would be unable to meet their own generation needs through wind and solar power. They could import electricity from abroad, but they would have to compete with other markets such as India and China for it. Not only would this make energy expensive, but it would also place Russia at the mercy of its energy suppliers. Hostile states could cripple Russia's economy by interrupting its energy supplies. States exporting renewable energy would also have substantial incentive to underproduce to both encourage uncertainty and raise energy prices. There would be little incentive to produce enough energy for the have-nots, especially since electricity transmission would make them largely captive markets, unlike present-day oil importers. Countries without abundant renewable energy resources would therefore have a desperate need for more secure energy supplies.

Hence the reason why nuclear energy is likely to dominate our energy future. Because relatively few nations have the renewable resources needed to support their economies themselves (just how many depends on how these technologies develop), the most logical step for them to take to secure their post-carbon energy security is to invest in nuclear energy infrastructure. They would have every reason to doubt that other countries would build the infrastructure needed to provide them with affordable and reliable energy, as it would be in those states' interest to underfulfill their needs. Even in a world where renewable energy technology could fulfill all of the world's energy needs affordably, geographic realities would make nuclear power more attractive.

I do not actually believe that wind and solar power are cheaper than nuclear, but my point is that the barriers to a world powered by solar and wind are not merely technological, but geographical, political and economic. I do not expect that solar thermal electricity will cost less than nuclear electricity in 2050, but even if it did this would not translate into energy security for most of the world. Only the provision of non-intermittent energy sources with the ability to store months' or years' worth of energy will secure the interests of these nations. And nuclear power fits these requirements.

In 2050, I expect there to be far more than 350-700 GW of new nuclear plants in operation. In fact, I would not be surprised by 5000-6000 GW of new nuclear by this point. Most of this will probably consist of mass-produced Generation IV reactors, including ALMRs, PBMRs, and various kinds of MSRs. Not only can these technologies replace fossil-fuel electrical generation anywhere on earth at reasonable cost, but they also allow nations to stockpile decades or even centuries worth of fuel--meaning that even a war or natural catastrophe could potentially have minimal effect on energy production.

The real-world alternative to this is NOT an idealistic future of cooperation, windmills, and solar panels. It is a dystopian nightmare where most of the world continues to burn coal because they lack the ability to domestically produce or import environmentally benign energy. It is a world wracked by war, catastrophe, and want. Even if the myriad technological problems of renewable energy were solved, the simple geographic fact remains that some nations lack sufficient energy resources, be they oil, gas, sunshine, or wind. For this reason, nuclear power is indispensable for averting climate catastrophe. Those who pretend otherwise, such as Romm, are fooling themselves.

Note: I commented on Edwatd's original post:

What is most amazing about Joe Romm's plan is his utter disregard for cost. Reported costs for wind installations last year ran from $2200 to $2800 per kW, with 2009 estimates running as high as $3000 per kW. Four million MWs of wind generating capacity would run to $12 trillion. That is without storage.

The current cost of ST facilities without storage runs to $4000 per kW. 5000 GWs of St power would cost $20 trillion, again without storage.

Geothermal heat pumps are too expensive for more householders to afford, but probably would work for industrial and commercial buildings. Air Source heat pumps work better for residences.

God only knows how much the PVs will cost. So we get a price tag on Joe's energy plan of $40 trillion or so dollars, without assured 24 hour a day electrical reliability. Is that crazy or what?

Joe Romm and the Price of Sunshine

Joe Romm is a tireless critic of nuclear power, and the most vocal advocate of solar thermal power on the Internet. Romm pounds nuclear for what he views its high costs. But one thing you will not find Romm doing is offering a complarison between the cost of his much vaunted Solar Thermal base power, and conventional nuclear power. The reason why this is the case is as Ed Ring demonstrates, is because ST is hugely more expensive than nuclear.

The solar power sector would have to grow by 684 times before it would offset the CO2 emissions attributable to coal, more specifically, to offset 15.0 billion tons of CO2 emissions annually based on 1.0 ton of CO2 per 1.0 megawatt-hour of coal-fired electricity. Given the miniscule accomplishments of solar energy so far in the global power equation, and given that global energy output has to double as soon as possible, if the price keeps coming down solar energy as a sector has the potential to experience 50%+ annual growth for a very long time. How much would it cost today to install enough solar energy to offset 15 billion tons of CO2 emissions?

An all-in installed price of $5.00 per watt is still low by today’s standards, but probably represents the high end of eventual costs as technology and productivity improves in the solar sector. Increasing the 10 gigawatts of installed solar power worldwide by 684 times means installing a 6.8 terawatt distributed array producing 15 million gigawatt-hours of power per year, which at $5.00 per watt would cost 34 trillion dollars. For the perhaps 1.0 billion lucky residents of the fully developed, industrialized world to pay for this via offset fees and taxes and the like over 20 years, zero interest, would amount to $1,700 per household per year. Adding the grid and storage infrastructure should easily raise that price to $2,000 each - something like $7,500 per average household per year. And this sort of accomplishment is a vital pillar of Gore’s pledge. No more coal - twenty years. Shave a few more points on future cost and call it twenty years, twenty trillion, a trillion per year. Using these same assumptions, it would cost America $6.8 trillion to replace 100% of coal fired electricity with solar power, or about $23,000 for every person in the country.

Shaving costs any further on the future price of solar is a dangerous assumption, however. Even at a cost of $34 trillion to replace coal worldwide with solar, our calculations are based on a collection of very optimistic givens; $5.00 per watt installed including storage and distribution upgrades, a 25% yield, and 20 year zero-interest financing; resulting in $2.3 billion per gigawatt-hour or 2.3 cents per kilowatt-hour for future solar. We are nowhere near this, yet to precipitously phase out coal or to participate in a doubling of global energy production, or both, this is probably what the solar sector is going to have to do.

Unlike Romm, who is constitutionally adverse to any real world discussion of the cost of coal replacement, Ring is willing to set down the numbers, and the numbers Ring give us are breath taking. During the last election cycle in California, voters were offered Proposition 7, an initive that would have increased the California renewables generated electricity goals to 50% of all electricity generated in California by 2025. Ring made clear both the implication of Proposition 7 and its cost:

since Californians by 2025 are going to be consuming about 1,000 gigawatt-hours per day, if proposition 7 is enacted, 500 gWh per day will have to come from wind and solar power.

Solar power, installed - not including transmission or storage infrastructure - costs about $7.0 million per megawatt of output; this equates to $7.0 billion per gigawatt. If this sounds expensive, it is, but to get a truly accurate price you have to also take into account yield. Even in sunny California, solar energy (in terms of full-sun-equivalent hours), can only be harvested on average for 4.5 hours per day, which means to get 500 gWh of solar generated electricity each day in California, you would need to install 111 gigawatts of solar arrays (500/4.5), which would cost $777 billion dollars.

Ring is not an enemy of renewables, far from it. Ring also wrote:

It is inspiring to hope California can eventually reach a 50% renewables standard, or more.

Now Joe Romm who has a PhD in Physics surely possess the math skills to preform the same sort of simple calculations Ring employs. If Romm disagreed with Ring's numbers, he has kept awful quiet about it. Ring is not nearly as fashionable a figure as Romm, and therefore his numbers do not get nearly as much attention as Romm's pretentious boasts. Romm knows that people, including politicians do not like to hear words like, "the numbers don't add up." Joe Romm is never going to say about solar thermal that "the numbers don't add up," even if there is overwelming evidence that this is the case. The question then is why does Joe Romm not tell the truth about the cost of solar thermal power?

The Sovietologist Wipes the Floor with Joe Room

Joe Romm recently launched a stunning attack on global warming standard barer Jim Hansen. Jim's crim in Romm's eyes was to advocate for a CO2 emission standard that would role back atmospheric CO2 levels to 350 PPM,

For Romm, Hansen is a heretic because he advocates rapid development of generation IV nuclear power technology including the LFTR. The Sovietologist puts his finger on the real issue:

With Romm's favored technologies, 350 ppm is impossible; with LFTRs and IFRs, 350 ppm becomes feasible and potentially not even that difficult.

Romm's fanatic opposition to nuclear power, inspired by soft path guru and pseudo-physicist Amory Lovins, far outweighs his commitment to fighting global warming. For Romm it is my way - the soft path - or the highway. Romm would far prefer to see global warming run away, than to see nuks in every back yard.

Romm uses the old bate and switch approach toargue against Generation IV technology asthe Sovietologist notes. Romm attacks Generation IV nuclear technology by a

critique of Gen III+ reactors . . .

The Blind Men and the Elephsnt

The Blindmen and the Elephant
By John Godfrey Saxe

It was six men of Hindustan
To learning much inclined,
Who went to see the Elephant
(Though all of them were blind)
That each by observation
Might satisfy the mind.

The first approached the Elephant
And happening to fall
Against his broad and sturdy side
At once began to bawl:
"Bless me, it seems the Elephant
Is very like a wall".

The second, feeling of his tusk,
Cried, "Ho! What have we here
So very round and smooth and sharp?
To me 'tis mighty clear
This wonder of an Elephant
Is very like a spear".

The third approached the animal,
And happening to take
The squirming trunk within his hands,
Then boldly up and spake:
"I see," quoth he, "the Elephant
Is very like a snake."

The Fourth reached out an eager hand,
And felt about the knee.
"What most this wondrous beast is like
Is mighty plain," quoth he;
"'Tis clear enough the Elephant
Is very like a tree!"

The Fifth, who chanced to touch the ear,
Said: "E'en the blindest man
Can tell what this resembles most;
Deny the fact who can,
This marvel of an Elephant
Is very like a fan!"

The Sixth no sooner had begun
About the beast to grope,
Than, seizing on the swinging tail
That fell within his scope,
"I see," quoth he, "the Elephant
Is very like a rope!"

And so these men of Hindustan
Disputed loud and long,
Each in his own opinion
Exceeding stiff and strong,
Though each was partly in the right
And all were in the wrong.

So oft in theologic wars,
The disputants, I ween,
Rail on in utter ignorance
Of what each other mean,
And prate about an Elephant
Not one of them has seen

I chose the old Asian story of the blind men and elephant is a metaphor of the energy crisis we face due are facing. It is a double chrisis of peak oil, avaliable byt expensive natural gas, and public rejection of conventional coal, and increasing anthropogenic global warming, which precludes continued reliance on fossil fuel even if it were to be available. The elephant represents the magnitude of the problem, and the the mystery of its solution. The blindmen are people, leaders and experts struggling to understand what we face and how to approach solutions to the problem. We are beset with the views of people who have limited perspectives, people who are running on ego, people who are rationally challenged, people who are to lazy to gather information and think things through, people who listen to the wrong experts, people who don't want to know, and people who are just plain mentally ill. All have joined a growing cacoughany of confused and confusing voices.

All Gore, who untill recently wasthe one eyed man in the realm of the blind, has clearly revealed to us what he does not see. "We have the technology", Gore tells us. "If we just had one week's worth of what we spend on the Iraq war we could be well on our way to solving this challenge." Would that it were so. Gore has grown intoxicated by breating the Rocky Mountain air, and has mistakenly confused a MacArthur Genius grant winner with an actually genus. When the "genius" is named Amory Lovins, the title MacArthur Genius does not actually vouch for genius.

No one has contributed more to the confusion than energy pundent/blogger Joe Romm. Romm has his prejudices, and this in no small measure keeps Romm from seeing the elephant. Romm recently proved the extent of his self imposed blindness by arguing vociferously against A paper by Roger Pielke, Jr., Tom Wigley, and Chris Green. Pielke et al argued in Nature that we were in deeper shit, that is we were going to have more emissions this century, than the IPCC assumed. They argued that the the IPCC made assumptions that were unreasonably optimistic. The further drew the implication that existing technology could not solve the problem. Pielke and his associated assumed the position which is closely associated with Joe Romm, that energy technologies would (should) be "frozen" in time. They then modeled the consequences. Pielke and his associated noted that the IPCC assumptions were already outdated becaused they failed to foresee Asian economic development. They noted "all IPCC scenarios predict decreases in energy intensity, and in most cases carbon intensity, during 2000 to 2010.) In fact, the opposite is the case. Pielke and his associated argued that most carbon control must come from greater energy efficiency or new technology. “Enormous advances in energy technology will be needed to stabilize atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations at acceptable levels," Pielke, Wigley, and Green concluded.

When Romm read the Pielke paper he had a conniption fit. Romm wanted to make sure that on one misunderstood the position he was taking in the argument with Pielke.

Why did Nature run Pielke’s pointless, misleading, embarrassing nonsense? Romm demanded.

Romm, without the slighest reference to rationality, maintained that Pielke et al had preached a "delayer message developed by Frank Luntz and perfected by Bush/Lomborg/Gingrich". Of course nothing was further from the truth, but the truth has never been the name of Joe Romm's game. I alway worry about what I am getting when I find the first 8 paragraphs of an essay are given over to a relentlessly hostile characterization of an essay that is only 19 paragraphs long. And then the author of the attacking essay adds 3 more paragraphs under the sub title Pointless Piece, follow by another section subtitled Misleading Analysis inwhich the writer actually starts to get down to cases.

Of course by this time, the reader reads through Romm's hysterical rhetoric, whatever content Romm's argument contained was hopefully lost. Peilke responded to Romm's attack by noting:

"Automatic decarbonization occurs in the IPCC scenarios not because of specific policies that the report discusses, but because of assumptions that it uses within individual scenarios (specifically, assumptions of decreasing carbon and energy intensities). Whatever policies are associated with these assumptions are not discussed by the IPCC. The decarbonization of the global economy reflected by the light blue portions of the bars in the figure above are indeed accurately characterized as being “automatic” or “spontaneous.”

In its editorial discussing our paper, Nature clearly understood this. Joe Romm apparently does not. He has confused the differences between aggregate emissions across scenarios with assumptions of automatic decarbonization within scenarios.

Now that Joe has released his original letter to Nature, it is clear why they asked him to correct his error of interpretation. It is also clear why his claims that we have made an error in our analysis is incorrect".

Romm's readers were not nearly as kind:

Paul K remarked: "Still attacking those with whom you should be finding common ground. The ad hominem has widened to the Editors and Reviewers at Nature".

Peter G. stated: "Aren’t you being a little hysterical? I read Pielke et al’s short article before reading yours, and came to the conclusion that strong immediate action is needed".

JHC retorted: "See Joe, we’re going to adapt to those suicidal conditions. You know, blow your head off and then stop the bleeding once you know where it’s bleeding".

Needless to say Joe Romm had done nothing to enhwnce his reputation for sanity. If anyone doubts where Joe is comming from. a few months later Romm was to write in another debate: Manzi might try reading Pielke et al.’s “Dangerous Assumptions,” in Nature — an analysis that I don’t entirely agree with — to understand where he went wrong". Talk about your flip-flops. Pielke remarks, "Joe never posted up an apology for mistakenly trashing our paper or a correction noting that in fact, he finds the analysis sound".

What got Joe Romm so hysteria? It must be more than the possibility that he and the Genus Amory Lovins are wrong about "freezing " technology. The ugly monster which lurks deep in Romm's soul, the monster that triggers his husteria, is something called alternative nuclear. What Romm fears more than anything else, in thousands of Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactors, churning out of factors and being set up in energy starved countries all over the world. That would be a technology that Romm intends to "freeze" out.

Thus we have a formula for blindness.

The Economist Energy Debate

A British Journal The Economist is sponsoring an Internet debate on 21st century energy issues. This is a step towards public recognition that the transition to a post-carbon economy is the most important issue facing human society during the first half of the 21st century.

There are problems with the debate, and this is to be expected as the media tries to formulate an understanding of the problems we face. The proposition or question is: “This house believes that we can solve our energy problems with existing technologies today, without the need for breakthrough innovations.”

Now the question is ambiguous, because it does not define what exactly constitutes a new technology, or a breakthrough innovation. In nuclear technology is a LFTR or a PBR new or old technologies. But Romm would view them as new technologies. The case would depend on definition.

A second misfortune is the assignment of a major role in the debate, that of arguing for the affirmative, to Joe Romm, who has been bitten by Amory Lovins and is now among the living dead. The topic looks like something of a Joe Romm setup. Joe has been arguing this position against Generation 4 nuclear technology advocates for sometime. This debate appears to be a part of the RMI (Amory Lovins) - Joe Romm attempt to exclude the rapid deployment of mass produced small reactors as a major part of the energy crisis solution. Romm would describe this as break through technology. I do not agree with that. Rapid deployment of Generation 4 nuclear technology is possible if we stop doing business asa usual. Romm's argument against the Generation 4 nuclear case is that it cannot be accomplished given a business as usual approach. But given an energy crisis of World War II type proportions, why would we not take World War II type approaches and commitments to accomplish a successful resolution?

Life Stands Explained

"We have meet the enemy and he is us." - Pogo (Walt Kelly)

“When we remember we are all mad, the mysteries of life disappear and life stands explained.” - Mark Twain

"I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible you may be mistaken". - Oliver Cromwell

Robert Merkel left a comment on Nuclear Green overnight, and by coincidence, this morning I came across a post on nuclear power by Robert at larvatusprodeo, an Australian blog. Merkel's post brought this very illuminating comment from carbonsink (David Michie):

Dr Merkel, for a “deluded leftist academic” you sure are keen on nuclear power. I like you lack of tribalism on this issue — independent thought is so rare these days. If there’s one thing that annoys me its the “nukes are bad” mantra you get at left-wing blogs, and the equally idiotic “nukes are good” mantra at right-wing blogs, and neither side can adequately explain why.

Anyone who thinks nukes should be ruled out completely really isn’t taking climate change or peak oil seriously. Nasty as it is, the alternatives are worse.

Mitchie's reference to tribalism is especially apt, because, ideology so far trumps information in many discussions on important issues.   Our first problem in discussions of nuclear power is to overcome the "my side is right" mentality and look at the facts.  The problem with the factual approach, is the depth of nuclear illiteracy.   I had the great good fortune to have grown up in a community of nuclear scientists, where reactor technology was discussed on the front page of the newspaper.   The newspaper editor/publisher happened to be the brother-in-law of a nuclear scientist, so he had to be well informed.  And of course my father was himself a reputable scientist.  That meant that I got great information.  

I know realize that the caliber of science that existed at ORNL from the 1940's to the 1970's was as high as anyplace in the world.  During the 4 years my father spent working along side George Parker from 1960 to 1964, the two of them certainly did world class work on reactor safety, and their peers recognized that.  Scientists came from all over the world to talk with them, and in some cases work with them.  This was but one of many ORNL accomplishments.  

During the 1970's ORNL was the first research institution to recognized the CO2/climate change problem.  I have noted else where, that I learned of the CO2/climate change problem in the spring of 1971, while I was a e supernumerary at ORNL. Thus my view of nuclear science and its rational was on an entirely different level that of the average people. 

I have elsewhere noted that nuclear critic Ralph Nader had access to first rate information about nuclear safety, through his sister Claire's friendship with Alvin Weinberg. Nader had direct contact with Weinberg on occasions, and would have been able to talk with him any time he wanted too. Nader had access to other ORNL scientists. Later Nader recorded a conversation he had had with an ORNL scientist about nuclear safety. Nader discounted the scientists discussion of "defence in depth", a key reactor safety concept, as jargon. As the mountain folk of East Tennessee say, that was plumb ignorant. Nader simply and willfully chose to be ignorant of the information ORNL scientist could give him.

The "Sovietologist" calls attention to a comment by 'Wolverine" about a debate on low level radiation that I triggered by challenging Joe Romm's assertions on low level radiation. (See here, here here, and here)
'Wolverine" wrote:
Joseph,

Good post until you got to the nukes v. coal issue. While I assume you oppose both coal and nuclear power, Oak Ridge is not a credible source for this information, as it is heavily invested in nukes, though probably more as weapons than as energy. Just as you would not use a "study" by the KKK to determine whether racism was worse in the U.S. or Africa, it's equally illegitimate to use the study you cited for the purpose you did.

The "Sovietologist" is, like me, an Oak Ridge boy, although from a younger generation. He was not amused by 'Wolverine" remarks. He wrote:
"Wolverine" apparently assumes that we Oak Ridgers are just Klansmen with radiation suits instead of sheets. I cannot help but be rather put of by the implications. After all, so many of my neighbors, friends, and relatives are being tarred by a very wide brush here. Especially given the lofty and humanitarian goals that ORNL researchers have put themselves to over the decades, and in many cases even achieved. Many of them were (and are) not just good, but great scientists. The work of ORNL researchers stands on its own merits--science does not operate on a principle of "appeals to authority."

I can only say, "amen". But I would like to call attention to the anti-scientific attitude that underlies "Wolverine's" statement. If ORNL researchers, whose have contributions of fundamental importance to many areas of science, have the same lever of credibility that KKK members have on race, what does that say about science as a whole. Is this not an expression of hostility to all science by implication?

Much of the low level radiation debate with Romm centered on the issue of natural sources of radiation.

Romm Made the following comment:
Radiation is not radiation no matter where it comes from. I’m rather surprised to see you say that. There are different types of radiation, and there are different exposure rates. There is, of course, internal and external exposure. It is entirely possible that humans have evolved to deal with the background constant rate of radiation, but would have difficulty dealing with repetitive dosing of a localized nature.

I prefer to rely on the decades long research synthesized by the decades long national academy panel.

Of course people who live near nuclear plants favor them more than people who don’t. I can’t think of anything more obvious. People who smoke favor smoking more than people who don’t smoke.

Romm's central claim is "humans have evolved to deal with the background constant rate of radiation, but would have difficulty dealing with repetitive dosing of a localized nature." But Romm seems only concerned about radiation from reactors. The radiation exposure of flight crews, people who live above granite or shale rock formations containing high levels of uranium and thorium, people who sleep with mates who who eat bananas every day, people who live in Denver, and people who receive large numbers of dental and medical X-rays and radioactive tracers in medical tests, would all seem to meet Romm's criterion of "repetitive dosing of a localized nature", Yet Romm repeatedly denies this, and insists that nuclear workers and people who live close to reactors are at uniquely risk for low level "repetitive" radiation "doses of a localized nature".

"Brad F." responded,
Joe, I hope you are still following this thread because I’m going to repeat my question from above and I think it deserves to be answered.

You have asserted that manmade radiation is somehow different, and worse, than natural background radiation. If this is not what you meant, then please clarify. When challenged on this, you have referred to methods of exposure rather than types of radiation.

To reiterate, in what ways are manmade alpha, beta and gamma radiation different than natural alpha, beta and gamma radiation?

DLH noted:
re: Backgound vs internal dosing - what about eating bananas, brazil nuts, drinking orange juice… all have low levels of radiation, and nothing to do with fallout, coal plants, or nuclear reactors. Is a diet rich in fruit and nuts risky and to be avoided?

Joe Romm seems to believe that there are no problems of nuclear power that can be solved. Thus if there is a danger from radiation to nuclear workers, there must be, in Romm's mind, no possible way to avert the danger. The only solution, according to Romm, is to not build reactors. 

Romm's basic difficulties were all identified by Francis Bacon nearly 4 centuries ago.  Bacon noted that four types of idols - that is mental images created by words - impair our thinking.   They are:

Idols of the tribe - "The idols of the tribe are inherent in human nature and the very tribe or race of man; for man's sense is falsely asserted to be the standard of things..... [They]...arise either from the uniformity of the constitution of mans spirit, or its prejudices, or its limited faculties or restless agitations, or from the interference of the passions, or the incompetence of the senses...." (

Idols of the den - "The idols of the den are those of each individual; for everybody (in addition to the common errors in the race of man) has his own individual den or cavern, which intercepts or corrupts the light of nature, either from his own peculiar and singular disposition, or from, his education and intercourse with others, or from his reading, and thre authority acquired by those whom he reverences and admires, or from the different impressions produced on the mind, as it happens to be preoccupied and predisposed...."

Idols of the market - "...formed by the reciprocal intercourses and society of man with man....for men converse by means of language, but words are formed at will of the generality, and there arises from a bad and unapt formation of words a wonderful obstruction to the mind. Nor can definitions and explanations with which learned men are won't to guard and protect themselves in some instances afford a complete remedy - words manifestly force the understanding, throw everything into confusion, and lead mankind into vain and innumerable controversies and fallacies."

Idols of the theater - "...there are idol which have crept into men's minds from the various dogmas of peculiar systems of philosophy, and also from the perverted rules of demonstration...for we regard all the systems of philosophy hitherto received or imagined, as so many plays brought out and performed, creating fictitious and theatrical worlds."

We all face a life long struggle with these idols, if we have the ambition to know truth. If I were perfect in this regard, I might have reason to mock. I am hardly perfect in matters of truth. Indeed is not the point of an education, to learn to give up on what we think we know, and settle for only that which lies within our grasp?

"We have meet the enemy, and he is us." 

Joe Romm gets hysterical over nuclear safety

Joe Romm went unbelievably over the top on nuclear power and nuclear safety. in his blog Climate Progress, and the equall;y rabbid anti-nuclear, Gristmill today. On Gristmill: BILL HANNAHAN, nedruod, Rod Adams, and vakibs all gave effective responses, and I responded to Romm on Climate Progress, so mainly recorder the Climate Progress exchange on Gristmill. Romm responded to my assessment of the danger posed my the trace level exposure of the French nuclear workers by stating:
JR: I just love people who are so willing to dismiss irradiation of other people. If your family were "contaminated with a low dose of radiation last week" somehow I don't think you would be mollified to learn that China's pro-nuclear news service asserted "their health was unaffected." And I seriously Doubt you would be delighted to send them back to the same place to work day after day for years.
Low doses of radiation typically take a long time to have an impact -- and, of course, cumulative exposures have cumulative and even nonlinear impacts. I reported what was in the news. If that makes me hysterical, I guess that means the facts are hysterical world.

CB: If your family were "contaminated with a low dose of radiation last week" somehow I don't think you would be mollified to learn that China's pro-nuclear news service asserted "their health was unaffected." - Joe Romm

Joe, I will not repeat the words that passed through my mind when I read that comment. You have absolutely no idea what you are saying. My father was a nuclear chemist who did up close and personal research with some very nasty radioactive materials in the 1950's. He use to order Plutonium from Los Alamos by the Kilo, for his research. Although my father was careful, he did receive much higher doses of radiation than any of the Fench workers. My father also went on to become an expert on nuclear and radiation safety safety. Despite his radiation exposures, he is still very much alive and active at the age of 96.

Joe if you are so concerned about people being exposed to radiation how come you never mention radiation from coal? According to a story in Scientific American, cola "fly ash--a by-product from burning coal for power--contains up to 100 times more radiation than nuclear waste." http://www.sciam.com/ article.cfm?id=coal-ash-is-more-radioactive-than-nuclear-waste
Why do you never mention radiation from burning coal?

Another common energy related source of radiation is Radon in natural gas. My farther who studied the transport of radon by natural gas, concluded that radon is transported into consumer homes by natural gas, but at concentrations so low, that it posed no danger to residents. http://nucleargreen.blogspot.com/ 2008/ 01/ cj-barton-sr-at-ornl-radon-in-home.html Never-the-less, with your even the slightest does is dangerous approach, your failure to notice the danger of natural gas born radon in the home as a source or radiation danger seems strangely remiss.

Joe, Your low doses over time assertion has been repeatedly falsified by empirical studies. You should know that all of the morbidity and Epidemiological studies show that nuclear workers live significantly longer than members of the general population. People are exposed to high levels or radiation by living at high altitudes, living over granite or shale, or by flying, yet research has not identified any radiation related health problems with any of these groups.

[JR: I don't waste time mentioning radiation from burning coal because I'm trying to get us off of coal. My "low doses" assertion has not been repeatedly falsified by empirical studies. I am aware that nuclear workers have fewer health problems than the general population -- that is the so-called healthy worker effect, which I'm sure you are aware of because you seem familiar with the literature. Everyone else can google it. My uncle was a nuclear physicist at MIT and then my family started a Radon gas testing company, which they later sold. I am quite familiar with the literature -- and yes, everybody should get their home tested for radon.]

CB: Joe then it is inexcusable that you never mention radiation dangers from natural and other human sources, or or offer comparisons between them and radiation exposure from reactors. Joe you simply ignore evidence that low level radiation exposers from nuclear plants do not cause significant increases in radiation related illnesses like leukemia, or increases health problems in the neighborhood of American reactors. Your argument is simply an appeal to irrational fears, and by your own admission you should possess enough knowledge to understand the irrationality of those fears.

Update August 2nd, 2008 at 7:15 am:
CB: Joe you have failed to bring specificity to your argument. For example you assume that reactor workers work under radiation conditions involving continuous exposure to reactor related low level ionizing radiation. But the original discussion was triggered by French incidents involving very low level exposure incidents. This would seem to suggest that low level radiation exposures were the exception rather than the rule. Even given the linear hypothesis, a single very low level radiation exposure would only cause small biological damage.

I personally regard any environmental release of radioactive materials as highly undesirable. I also believe that unintended radiation exposures of nuclear workers as undesirable as well. But unlike you I would see radiation exposure as problems to be solved. I have noted in my blog that there is a history of nuclear safety, and that history includes significant safety advances. There are still certainly safety challenges, but these can be resolved by further research, and a public demand for the highest possible level of nuclear safety.

I have noted elsewhere that a new reactor design, the ESBWR, is calculated to be likely to experience a core melt down once every 29,000,000 years. In contrast the Yellowstone super-volcano erupts once every 600,000 to 800,000 years. The Yellowstone super-volcano last erupted 640,000 years ago. Such an eruption could kill millions of people and do major damage to the American economy. The most likely number of casualties for the once every 29,000,000 year ESBW core melt down is zero.

Core melt down was many times more likely with early reactor designs than with the ESBWR, thus advances in nuclear safety are possible.

Joe you have in effect opposed nuclear safety research by discounting new technology that would improve nuclear safety. It is possible to greatly diminish the already small risk of reactor sourced radiation exposures, by continuously fission products from nuclear fuel, but you have on numerous occasions derided me, Kirk Sorensen, and others who have suggested that very promising technology to you. You simply discounted the suggestions that safer nuclear technology can and should be developed.

You cannot have it both ways Joe. If you are concerned about nuclear safety, it is rational for you to support nuclear safety research, and the development of the safest possible reactors. It is not rational for you to ignore solutions to the problems of nuclear safety and then hysterically complain about the dangers of radiation exposure as an excuse for your irrational opposition to nuclear power. (I would not be surprised if Joe censors this comment, as he censored ny last comment of yesterday.)

Update II: August 2nd, 2008 at 8:00 am
Joe censored my August 1st, 2008 at 5:57 pm comment, except for a couple of short passages which you found offensive. Of course by censoring 90% of my post you removed my remaining statements from their context. Did you learn this propaganda technique from Rush Limbaugh who also practices it?

Update August 3
In a previous post Joe responded to one of my comments: "If your family were “contaminated with a low dose of radiation last week” somehow I don’t think you would be mollified to learn that China’s pro-nuclear news service asserted “their health was unaffected.” And I seriously doubt you would be delighted to send them back to the same place to work day after day for years."

I am deeply offended by this comment, first because my father who is alive and well at the age of 96, was a nuclear researcher, who despite his came into contact with radioactive substances from time to time. Aside from that, and this is what makes Joe’s argument hysterical in my book, I myself have been contaminated by radioactive substances on a number of occasions been “contaminated” by radioactive substances in the course of medical tests. Of course the contamination was by “trace” amounts of substances which quickly left the body. But the French nuclear worker exposures also involved “trace amounts” or radioactive materials .

Joe makes a mountain out of a mole hill, by using these insignificant exposures to justify his opposition to nuclear power. This is a fundamentally irrational argument. And Joe is completely inconsistent, because he is not concerned about low level radiation from non-nuclear sources. He has claimed that low level radiation from non-nuclear sources is some how different from radiation from reactors without specifying the differences. He ignores the fact that radioactive tracer isotopes, used in medical tests are nuclear fission products produced in reactors, even though it is reasonable to assume that he knows this.

One is thus left with the following options when evaluating Joe’s arguments. Either he is being deliberately manipulative if forming his argument, or he suffers from some mental aberration which overrides his capacity for rational thought about the information at hand.

Joe says he worries about the health of nuclear workers despite their longer than average life span. The Connecticut Labor Commissioner lists dozens of occupations deemed to be at high risk or safety sensitive. http://www.ctdol.state.ct.us/wgwkstnd/highrisk.htm
Nuclear workers are not found on the Labor Commissioners list. British researcher Mark Little, of the Imperial College in London, has found that even among nuclear workers with the highest exposure to radioactive materials that the risk opf adverse health consequences are still low.
http://www.thecheers.org/ news/ Health/ news_1807_Nuclear-reactor-workers-at-dramatically-higher-risk-of-cancer.html

There is very strong empirical evidence that the health advantages of being a nuclear worker far out weigh what ever disadvantages radiation exposures impose.

I believe that Joe to be both a highly intelligent man and a well informed man, who is capable of logical thinking. Thus when he makes such irrational statements, and maintains them, even though he is aware of strong evidence to the contrary, I can only conclude that this is evidence of a thought pathology.

Killing the Holy Cows of Renewable Energy

"the blame [for bad movies and poorly performing sports teams] can be laid at the feet of the people of South Asia, whose tolerance of mediocrity knows no bounds." - Chan Akya

"Leadership is not just charisma or showmanship. It means consistency, being forthright, having no tolerance for mediocrity, and not compromising integrity." - Rahul Bajaj

Chan Akya an Indian writer pointed out the consequences of a lack of critical standards. If people are tolerant of mediocrity, mediocrity is what they will get. When I began to read discussions of renewable energy sources as couple of years ago, I noticed that these discussions invariably left important questions unanswered. Pro-renewable environmentalists like David Roberts basically wrote public relations copy for the renewables industries. Needless to say they left many questions unanswered. I started to look for answers, and the answers I found, the things that Robers, Romm and others were trying to sweep under the rug, were disturbing.

The basic question with renewables is how much is is it going to cost. Other questions include where is the power going to come from if the wind does not blow and the sun goes down. Renewables advocates seldom provide satisfactory answers to these questions. Indeed they seemed to sweep these very real questions under the rug. Or offer answer that said in effect, "Don't worry, every thing will turn out oK." Eventually I began to find answers that were less comforting. For example, I discovered the question of summer wind. At first I found a reference to the problem in California, then New England. Senator Lemar Alexander was upset because wind generators only provide electricity 7% of the time during August in Tennessee. Texas has a summer wind problem too, including windy Amarillo, and so do the Northern Great Planes and Ontario. Nowhere in North America seemed safe from the summer wind scourge.

So there was a wind reliability problem even when during the summer. There are other issues. The cost of windmills has been going up. Yet none of the windbags seemed to be talking about that, There is a disconect, because the cost of reactors have been going up and all of the windbags seem to be talking about that.

We have similar issues with solar. While solar generators have the potential of generating electricity for up to 8 hours a day, But depending on where you live, and that includes 75% of the United States, it could be 5 to 6 hours a day. So what do you do for electricity for the other 18 to 19 hours a day. Solar advocates will talk about various storage schemes, none of which have been demonstrated to be practical and cost effective on a massive scale. When I examined the costs of storage schemes such as giant batteries, and pump storage facilities, they turn out to be as least as expensive as nuclear plants. Why build storage facilities that do not produce electricity when for the same amount of money you can build a nuclear plant that does produce electricity?

I have been posting recently on the cost of solar power. I have not based those cost estimates on information found in glossy handouts written by PR people, but on information from people who are actually building or paying for solar generating facilities. i am not trying to make the solar industry look bad. I am not cherry picking data. The information I have found, does not look as good as the information from the glossy handouts.

Tuesday I wrote about the costs of BrightSource solar facilities:
"A further consideration would be that BrightSources own estimated cost estimates falls within the cost range of current cost estimates for nuclear power plants costs. For the basically the same price as a 1 GW BrightSource generating facility PG&E could buy a 1 GW reactor that would generate power day and night, rain or shine with 3 times the daily electrical output of the BrightSource facility."

No one has disputed my calculations or conclusions. Yet in a comment posted on "Energy from Thorium", sam j demanded to know, "Why denigrate renewables?" Sam followed, of course, with the tired anti-nuclear line that we are running out of uranium and there is of course no other possible reactor fuel - I wonder what he thinks the "Energy from Thorium" title is about. Sam appears to believe that the problems of Renewables should be swept under the rug.

Jesse Ausubel has raised questions about the land use requirements of renewables. (Also see here, here, here, here Ausubel is a conservationist in the traditional sense, but not a green, and not a Amory Lovins clone. (also see here)  Jesse Ausubel is the Director of Rockefeller University's human environment program.  He looked at how much energy a given unit of land produced through different technologies.  His conclusion was that hydroelectric power made the least efficient use of land.  

Ausubel argued if the entire provence of Ontario Canada was surrounded by a 60 foot high dam, and the water behind the dam were used to produce electricity, the amount of electricity generated would only equal 80% of the electricity generated by Canada's nuclear 25 power plants.  

If American energy needs were meet by wind power, Ausubel argued that an area the size of Texas, would need to be covered with windmills.

To power New York City by electricity from solar cells, an area the size of the entire state of Connecticut would have to be covered by the solar array. 

Ausubel has argued that:

* renewables are not green
* nuclear is green

Needless to say, Ausubel's argument has driven the supposedly pro-environmental, anti-nuclear greens crazy, and no one went crazier than Joe Romm.  

Romm seems willing to sacrifice every tree in the forrest, if it means that we don't rely on nuclear power.    In his attack on Ausubel, Romm engaging in spin doctoring, worthy of an Exxon employed climate change skeptic. He accuses Ausubel on not mentioning climate change in a speech he gave in which he sumerized his findings. He accuses Ausubel of thinking that "if decarbonization is all but inevitable, then global warming will mostly take care of itself. He doesn't come out and say this, but his talk never discusses the threat of climate change, which is much more likely to rape nature than renewables."

Say what?

If we decarbonize society, that is we stop using carbon based fuels. then we stop adding greenhouse gases to the atmosphere. Once this happens the processes that lead to anthropogenic global warming are interrupted, and eventually the climate change will no longer be driven by increasing levels of greenhous gases. So it would seem that there is no problem with this assumption. It is tasit in Ausubel's thinking. Ausubel is addressing the issue of how much land would be required to impliment various post-carbon energy schemes. We understand the reasons for wanting to do this. Romm is not pushing a weak case against Ausubel. He has no case at all, and simply substitutes words for statements containing substance.

Romm quibbles about land requirements for various renewable options. He argues, for example, that Windmills only occupie 5% of the land on which they are placed. The other 95%, the rest of the land could have alternative uses, Rumm argues. The issue is not just the question of competing land use, each installed wind generator must be connected by a service road and a power line. Thus an area larger than Texas must be densely packed with wind generating towers, service roads and electrical lines. This would represent an enormous investment for what is at best intermittant electrical service. But for windmills, roads and electrical lines, vegitation must be cut back, and maintance must be given, The impact on the environment will be considerable, and as yet largely unacknowledged by Greens like Romm. 

Bill Hannahan: So where is the fundamental limitation

Introductory Comment: Joe Romm has been barking for his Lovinsesque nuclear limitations Party line all over the Internet. He posted reruns of the Salon "Bomb" on Climate Progress and Gristmill. David Roberts gave a responding bark of delight. But Bill Hannahan is nobodies fool, and he added his own "Fisking" of Romm's arguments in response to Romm's post of on Gristmill.

Bill does first rate work, and his latest comments on Romm deserve a wider hearing. Hence with his permissions I am cross posting them:

So where is the fundamental limitation?
By Bill Hannahan

To say that it is impossible to build nuclear power plants in large numbers is like saying that it is impossible to send a human to the moon; it ignores the fact that it has already been demonstrated.
" Yet nuclear power's own myriad limitations will constrain its growth, especially in the near term. These include:

Prohibitively high, and escalating, capital costs ....

So what would be the cost of electricity from new nuclear plants today? Jim Harding, who was on the Keystone Center panel, was responsible for its economic analysis, and previously served as director of power planning and forecasting for Seattle City Light, emailed us in early May that his own "reasonable estimate for levelized cost range ... is 12-17 cents per kWh lifetime, and 1.7x times that number [20 to 29 cents per kWh] in first year of commercial operation."

At these rates a 1.5GW plant with a 0.9 capacity factor, would earn $3.4 billion in the first year, and $2 billion per year after that.

Operation and maintenance cost are about 2¢ per kWh,

http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electricity/epa/epat8p2.html ...

and should be less for next generation plants because they're greatly simplified, with fewer pumps, valves, and less piping. To be conservative lets assume that O&M cost doubles. The O&M cost would be $237million per year.

Even at the highest cost estimates the plant would pay for itself within 10 years, and then produce very cheap reliable electricity for another 50 years.

Show us a cost estimate for a 1.5 GW solar or wind array with reliable dispatchable power and a 0.90 capacity factor. Now show us a cost estimate for an array east of the Mississippi river with the same specifications. How many such arrays are in operation now? Where can we review their actual performance, construction cost, O&M cost, reliability, emissions, capacity factor, life expectancy and cost per kWh?

Show us a cost and reliability estimate of the required grid for moving the energy from where wind and solar sources are best to where most people live.

" Production bottlenecks in key components needed to build plants...

Twenty years ago the United States had 400 major suppliers for the nuclear industry. Today there are about 80. Only two companies in the whole world can make heavy forgings for pressure vessels, steam generators, and pressurizers. "

Before the first round of construction that were zero suppliers. There's no reason we cannot build another supply chain. Inherently safe plant designs do not require as much safety related equipment as older plants.

" Very long construction times "

We can dramatically reduce construction time and cost by mass producing floating nuclear power plants.

http://www.atomicinsights.com/aug96/Offshore.html

" Concerns about uranium supplies and importation issues "

This is a red herring; the uranium supply is effectively unlimited.

http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2008/5/2/75132/75324#com ...

" Unresolved problems with the availability and security of waste storage "

Nuclear waste is largely a political and educational problem. The most rational solution for nuclear waste is deep seabed burial, but almost anything will work if carefully implemented.

" Large-scale water use Amid shortages

"few realize that electricity generation accounts for nearly half of all water withdrawals in the nation." At the same time, "existing nuclear power stations used and consumed significantly more water per megawatt hour than electricity generation powered by fossil fuels," "

This is another red herring, and even mentioning it completely destroys the author's credibility. The author talks about water withdrawals, but fails to mention that almost all of that water is returned to the source, in sharp contrast to agricultural withdrawals, in which none of the water in returned. The average reader does not understand the difference between water withdrawal and water consumption. The author deliberately takes advantage of the readers limitation to mislead them. This is totally unethical.

http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2008/5/2/75132/75324/#32 ...

Floating nuclear power plants will use the ocean as a heat sink, and can produce huge volumes of fresh water. The authors vaunted solar thermal plants located in the desert will have a lower thermodynamic efficiency than nuclear plants and will require more fresh water per kWh than the nuclear plant. That water will have to be diverted from other uses, or made from sea water, using energy, and transported into the desert using energy.

The release of huge quantities of water vapor in the desert may result in increased cloud formation and reduced plant output. The author does not mention these very real water problems with his proposed solution.

" High electricity prices from new plants...

Nuclear power is therefore unlikely to play a dominant -- greater than 10 percent --
"

The author's conclusions are based on the assumption that there are other technologies that can produce reliable, predictable, controllable, baseload power at an affordable cost. So why aren't we tearing down coal fired power plants and replacing them with this new technology? Why are countries all over the world building more coal plants?

Denmark has been pushing wind extremely hard since 1979, yet they get most of their electricity from fossil fuel and have the most expensive electricity in the world. Residential electricity in Denmark cost 1.92 DKK/kWh in 2007, 40 cents / kWh. In the U.S. it was about 9 cents / kWh.

http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/cache/ITY_OFFPUB/KS-SF-0 ...

Wind power in the state of California, was down to 4% on peak for several days during the 2006 heat wave.

http://www.ecolo.org/documents/documents_in_english/Wind- ...

The entire U.S. wind output was down 20% below average during the heat wave while the demand was 20% above average. Nuclear power was 10% above average because outages are scheduled for spring and fall when demand is low.

http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electricity/epm/table1_1_a.h ...

We should increase R&D to $90 billion per year (only 2.25 cents/kWh) and push every technology as hard as possible. That would include building at least one full scale commercial size plant of every promising technology. Actual performance data would give companies and individuals confidence to make large scale investments rapidly in new and proven technology.

This would accelerate the introduction of practical solutions and is much more sensible than providing feed in tariffs to mass produce expensive immature impractical technology that raises cost enormously while remaining largely dependent on fossil fuel, as Denmark and Germany have proven.

This proposal maximizes the probability that we will develop better technology than fission, which makes it the most anti nuclear recommendation that is practical.
Reducing U.S. emissions is not important. Developing a low cost replacement for fossil fuel that the entire world can afford should be our goal. Wasting money on mass production of impractical expensive systems is counterproductive.

Research and development should not be considered a subsidy. It is an investment in the future, like medical research. Our R&D investment over the last 30 years was barely a token amount; which is a major factor contributing to our energy problem.

Acolytes

(Hat tips to the Sovietologist, who referred to Lovins acolytes last year, and to Red Craig who pointed me to an article by Ferdinand Banks, that elaborates the Lovins, Romm link.)

My last post on Joe Ramm raised for me the question about where Ramm is coming from. I had never looked at Romm's Wikipedia page untill this morning. When I did I found that"from 1991 to 1993, he was a researcher at the Rocky Mountain Institute. He co-authored the 1994 Rocky Mountain Institute Report, Greening the Building and the Bottom Line: Increasing Productivity Through Energy-Efficient Design." Romm and Lovins co-authored a Winter 1992-1993 Foreign Affair essay, ‘Fueling a competitive Economy’. s in which the two energy "experts" maintained,
"For example, the Swedish State Power Board found that doubling electric efficiency, switching generators to natural gas and biomass fuels and relying upon the cleanest power plants would support a 54 per cent increase in real GNP from l987 to 2010 – while phasing out all nuclear power. Additionally, the heat and power sector’s carbon dioxide output would fall by one-third, and the costs of electrical services by nearly $1 billion per year. Sweden is already among the world’s most energy-efficient countries, even though it is cold, cloudy and heavily industrialized. Other countries should be able to do better. "

Energy economist Ferdinand E. Banks stated that the statement "and similar contributions are misleading bunkum." Ah well isn't misleading bunkum par for the course for a pseudo-physicist who claims to have repealed Jevons Paradox, and for his follower, who stops thinking whenever his master orders it?

Romm appears to be a Amory Lovins acolyte who follows the masters line no matter how crazy it is..

Romm's frequent cross posting on the Gristmill Blog, is also suggestive. Last year NEI Nuclear Notes made some interesting observations concerning Roberts. The comment first quotes Roberts: "The question is not whether nuclear power is "acceptable" or "good" by some subjective standard -- economic, moral, or otherwise. It's not even whether investments in nuclear power could lead to emission reductions. The question is: what is the maximum amount of climate change mitigation we can get for a given dollar of investment? Nuclear fails that test."

Then NEI Nuclear Notes asks, "where have we heard that before? Oh yeah, Amory Lovins. Roberts quotes him in the post but that last sentence from Roberts above looks like he’s pawning Lovins’ words as his own."

Googling "Roberts and Lovins" brings up multiple instances in which Roberts has serves as a Lovins literary acolyte. Roberts like Romm then should be considered as Amory Lovins' intellectual stooge.

I recently noted that a former California Energy Commissioner John Geesman, Roberts and Romm almost symaltaniously launched very similar attacks on nuclear power. All three focused on cost issues. I had previously done a little research on Karl Rove's use of symaltaniously attacks by Bush administration media stooges, against Al Gore in 2004. The type off to the existence of a coordinated was that numerous media personalities were saying the same thing at the same time. The likelihood that as many as a dozen people would independently have the same idea was low. None of them acknowledged a dependency one someone else for the idea through a quotation, and their language was not consistent with a common literary source. The most likely explanation was that someone had contacted each of them and planted the idea in each head. My suspicion was that the coordinator was Karl Rove.

We must ask then if we are looking at a similar situation, a propaganda campaign conducted by Lovins acolytes, and coordinated by Lovins.

Update: The other shore dropped, the master just posted a 52 page Anti-Nuclear scree.

Joe Romm Bombs on Salon

I once thought Joe Romm to be a man of some intelligence and intellectual depth. His repeatedly took on global warming skeptics, and demonstrated the weakness of their arguments. I was aware that Romm believed that nuclear power could only play a limited role in our energy future, but I believed that with new information, Romm might become an advocate for a more progressive approach for nuclear power. I was quite wrong. I presented to Romm arguments that the LFTR could solve the problems of nuclear power, and he rejected them out of hand, on the grounds that that I was writing about technology that had not been developed yet.

My point with Romm was that the LFTR was promising technology that should be explored as a sustainable energy source that could serve as the basis for the human energy economy into the a very long future. Romm in effect repeatedly dismissed the argument as being not worthy of his consideration. Kirk Sorensen, attempted to run similar arguments past Romm. Both Kirk and I eventually got frustrated with Romm. 

In an article on nuclear power published this week on Salon, Romm sets out his case against nuclear power. Romm is not quite an anti-nuk, but he is a kindred spirit. According to Romm, nuclear power is the "Ishtar" of power generation.

Romm's case against nuclear is fairly simple, "nuclear plants have become so expensive that cost overwhelms the other problems." In contrast to nuclear power, Romm argues that Renewables are far cheaper. Romm tells his readers, " Jigar Shah, chief strategy officer of SunEdison, explained to me that he could guarantee delivery to Florida of more kilowatt-hours of power with solar photovoltaics -- including energy storage so the power was not intermittent -- for less money than the nuke plants cost."

Romm adds, "Many other forms of carbon-free power are already cheaper than nuclear today, including wind power, concentrated solar thermal power and, of course, the cheapest of all, energy efficiency. Over the past three decades, California efficiency programs have cut total electricity demand by about 40,000 gigawatt hours for an average 2 to 3 cents per kilowatt-hour."

Many Salon readers of Romm's nuclear article responded to it in the comment section. In fact these comments are an indicator of the extent to which public opinion has shifted against nuclear nay-sayers like Romm. Jeffrey Radice summed up the general concensus of many Salon readers:

"Romm had his thesis a priori, and pigeonholes the facts to support his opinion."

Radice adds, "It's heartening to see that salon readers are not so gullible to swallow this anti-nuke diatribe without critique."

Brian from Seattle wrote, "this article really just chooses one dimension of policy analysis to beat up on Nuclear power again, which makes little sense. You need a full spectrum of criteria to analyze, then create a final conclusion taking into account all criteria for a particular energy policy. This certainly does not do it."

Bspeakmon noted, "Among the many other problems, Romm seems to think that the only possible nuclear reactor design is a submarine reactor scaled up. Ridiculous.

There are many new designs, . . ."

Willard Roker wrote, "It is time to get pass the knee jerk reaction we have to nuclear power. It is a vast, clean energy source that can produce all the electricity needed by the US and do it in the foreseeable future."

Roker added, "You do more environmental harm just getting oil and coal out of the ground than a nuclear power plant will ever do and when you figure in process and burning nuclear power is many time cleaner. It is time to embrace the future not wallow in the past."

Skeptical Scientist commented sarcastically, "Mr. Romm argues convincingly that it is impossible to generate affordable nuclear power. This is, of course, much like "proving" bumlebees can't fly (er, they do.) Most electricity in France is from nuclear power. Perhaps the "can't do" Americans need to get a helping hand from the "can do" French."

Ssgman noted, "According to my (conservative) calculations, the 2,200 megawatt plant costing 14 billion will generate power at 2.42 cents per kw hour, if it runs for 30 years. If it runs for 50 then it will be almost half of that. A solar installation will cost about $5,000 per kilowatt and that it only runs during daylight so it really costs about 10k. So Romm's math is really wrong."

Many of the Salon commenters seconded Ssgman in questioning Romm's calculations.

Jeffrey Radice complains, "The fact of the matter is that all alternate energy technologies have hidden costs. Romm either purposefully ignores those of solar and wind, or he has seriously underthought these issues."

I might add that Romm has been confronted in the past about his once over lightly approach to renewables' costs, by Kirk Sorensen, by me and by many others.

Radice notes what he describes as a disingenuous statement by Romm:
"In fact, from 2000 through October 2007, nuclear power plant construction costs -- mainly materials, labor and engineering -- have gone up 185 percent!"

Radice asks, "How about providing comparable numbers for the costs of wind and solar construction?" Radice retorts, and then adds, "Is steel not a primary component in wind turbines? How much has the material cost of steel gone up since 2000? I'd be willing to bet well in excess of 185% The same could be said for polysilicon. I would not at all be surprised to find that construction costs for wind and solar per watt have escalated in excess of 185% since 2000. Yes there have been dramatic technological advances improving the efficiency of both power sources, but at what cost?"

Finally Radice castigates Romm, "Casting stones at viable nuclear power while downplaying the inefficiencies of competing wind and solar does nobody a favor."

In addition to the Salon comments, bloggers are beginning to "Fisk" Romm's latest "Bomb."

Clearly then Joe Romm received thrashing at the hands of Salon readers. Romm needs to pay attention to what his critics say. Romm's approach to energy issues is based on confirming his a priori theories, without a careful review of what the data really shows. Romm has been confronted about his intellectual short comings in the past, so his failure to change his views in the face of telling criticism is either a manifestation of arrogance or of intellectual incompetence.  Romm needs to clean up his act, or he will be left behind, just as global warming skeptics are being.

The Salon readers' comments on Romm revealed that there is a well informed group of people who access the internet, and who know far more about energy issues than most policy makers. People like them should undoubtedly be given a voice in future national energy debates and discussions.

Are Renewables Cost Competitive with Nuclear Power?

Update on future energy 

Last year on my other blog, bartoncii, I undertook a study of future post-carbon energy sources.  I focused primarily on solar and wind generated electricity.  My research method was fairly simple, and is based on Karl Popper's theory of knowledge.  I set out to test what renewable advocates were saying about solar and wind generated electricity, by looking for information that would tend to disprove their claims. Evidence had to be reasonably construed as factual and had to clearly contradict the claims of wind and solar advocates.

The starting point of my investigation was the intermittent nature of solar and wind power. Could the problem of intermittency be overcome? If not, what would justify a massive implimentation of solar and/or wind power generation sources be justified? Another question had interesting implications. Would some of the objections to nuclear power also apply to "renewable electrical resources.

What I found was that installation costs of renewable electrical generation was not cheaper than nuclear energy if judged by actual electrical output rather than name plate generating capacity. nuclear power plants are simply more reliable producers of electrical energy. In order to make up for the unreliability of renewable electrical sources, generating capacity needs to be replicated from 2.5 to 5 times, and the surplus energy placed in storage, to be retrieved for electrical generation when energy output drops. The cost of such redundancy was such that it costs as much to build solar and wind generation capacity that would actually have the potential to displace current fossil fuel generating systems, as it would to displace those systems with nuclear power, without factoring in the cost of energy storage and retrieval, required to compensate for intermittency.

None of storage options I looked at were inexpensive. In fact, options like battery storage or pump storage were not significantly cheaper than the cost of constructing nuclear power plants, and offered inferior benefits. The rub was that if one took the superior nuclear option - superior in terms of energy returned for the investment dollar, and superior in terms of EROEI - there was little room for solar and wind generated electricity in the post-carbon energy world.

Hence the renewable electrical generation systems I looked at were going to be far more rather than less expensive than nuclear electrical generation systems. Let me look at for a moment comparative costs. The cost of an installed large land based wind generator is now running at around $2.00 per name plate watt. The cost of a sea based wind generator is considerable more expensive. The most regular winds in the United States will produce about 40% of a windmills rated energy. So if you want to average producing 1 billion watts of electrical energy from a wind generating system that produces at 40% of name plate capacity, you will need to build windmills with a name plate capacity of 2.5 billion watts. This would be the best case scenario. At $2.00 a watt, the generating system would cost $5 billion. In addition, if you wanted to produce electricity 24 hours a day with this system, you would need a storage system capable of storing the equivalent of 15 GWh of electricity. A pump storage system would to that, but at todays construction cost, that pump storage system could well cost another 5 billion dollars.

Hence the cost of a carbon free wind generating system under a best case scenario would be around 10 billion dollars per GW of electrical reliably delivered. This would be overnight costs, and does not factor in the cost of interest. Systems using offshore winds would be considerably more expensive.

What would building the equivalent nuclear generating capacity cost? Paul Bowers of the Southern Co., which owns Georgia Power, in early April estimated that building Westinghouse's AP1000 reactors would cost Georgia power between $2,500 and $3,500 per kilowatt. Westinghouse has recently estimated the kit price of AP-1000s to be something more than $1.50 per watt. An estimated 16 million to 20 million man-hours to build an AP-1000 reactor according to Bowers. TVA estimates that the cost of its first two AP-1000's will run between $2.5 and $3.0 billion on partially prepared sites. Thus $3 per watt overnight cost will get you a reactor, and of course interest must be added. Thus reactors are 40% less expensive than equivalent wind generating capacity, and three times less expensive than a system that would deliver an equivalent amount of carbon free wind generated electricity 24 hours a day.

Similar cost problems confront PV electrical generating systems, and many ST - also called CSP - systems.

Not all of my conclusions about renewable energy were negative. Solar systems are cost effective for water heating in much of the United States and for space heating in parts of the United States. The use of solar heating for space and water heating would tend to decrease the difference between day and night electrical demands.

Since I did this assessment, new claims are being made about other renewable electrical generating technologies. In a recent article in Salon, Joseph Romm argued for the economy of CPS. Romm claimed "According to a 2008 Sandia National Laboratory presentation, costs are projected to drop to 8 to 10 cents per kilowatt hour when capacity exceeds 3,000 MW."

The Sandia cost estimates are not backed by published data, and significant questions remain. Construction costs including the price of building materials have doubled during the last five years, and can be expected to continue to rise. It is not clear to what extent Sandia based their cost estimate on building realistic cost estimates. Romm claims, "[t]he technology has no obvious bottlenecks and uses mostly commodity materials -- steel, concrete and glass." but that is exactly the rub, the cost of steel, concrete and probably glass have doubled in the last 5 years and can be expected to inflate rapidly. Research on CSP technology and construction of CSP facilities are regionally concentrated in the American Southwest. In fact the desert climate of the Southwest means that useful sunshine will be available for an average of 8 hours a day or even more. In other parts of the country the availability of sunshine drops. Two thirds of the United States can expect an average of 5.5 hours of sunshine a day or less. Even worse cloud cover is not uniformly distributed in time, so in many locations clouds may obstruct the sun for several days at a time.

Thus CSP, even if it turns out to be a cost effective electrical generating source for the Southwest, still might turnout to be not cost effective for the rest of the country. Romm in the best tradition of renewable energy advocates, completely ignored the regional nature of CSP. Romm tells us, Finally, we will need more electric transmission in this country. "The good news is that because it [CPS] matches the load most of the day and has cheap storage, CSP can share power lines with wind farms. When the country gets serious about global warming, we will need to get serious about a building a transmission system for a low-carbon economy. "

In short good old Joe wants to build a lot of extremely expensive and highly vulnerable to terrorist attack electrical transmission lines to export CSP generated power from the Southwest to the rest of the country. How much would Romm's national CSP electrical generation system cost? No one knows, but it is a good assumption that building a thousand or so AP-1000 would be cheaper, and building several thousand LFTR's in a factory and using innovative siting approaches would be cheaper still.