Doing Due Diligence: EEStor, Mark Z. Jacobson and Greenpeace

Robert Rapier has posted an important essay on the Oil Drum titled "Doing Due Diligence." Rapier tells us,

To people who follow the energy industry closely, it’s a common occurrence to come across announcements from companies proclaiming to have developed the key to the ‘next big thing’ — for solving the world’s energy crisis. Maybe they say they can take any sort of waste biomass and turn it into fuel — ethanol, diesel, pyrolysis oil, mixed alcohols — at very low cost. Or they say they can produce renewable electricity at a price competitive with coal.

Roger points out that what is not being said about the energy future in press releases is often more important than what is said, and when the untold part of the story is revealed it turns out to be far less attractive that the story the press release tells.

The job of the energy futurest is to

peeled the onion a bit. There are technologies with real potential, and just because a company hypes their technology doesn’t mean it won’t work.

on the other hand there may be real reasons to suspect that the bad news is being withheld.

In my own experience, perhaps 90% of the stories you see promoting various technologies are at least exaggerated. So how do you separate fact from fiction and wishful thinking from reality?

In 2007, when I first began to look at energy future issues, I quickly discovered that some well regarded "experts" on the energy future did not have the slightest idea what they were talking about, and that press releases needed to be read carefully, in order to discover both what was being said, and what was not being said. A primary example is the ZENN-EEStor story which emerged in the early posts of Nuclear Green. ZENN was a Canadian start up that had the intention of building electrical powered cars. EEStor was an Austin, Texas company that claimed it had a break threw capacitor technology, that would enable it to produce capacitors capable of powering electrical cars for distances of more than 100 miles. ZENN Motors had bought part of EEStor and had announced its intention to power its future cars with EEStor capacitors. When I first investigated it quickly became clear that things were not adding up in the story. First EEStor had an agreement with ZENN to deliver a prototype EEStor Unit by the end of 2007. That did not happen. Subsequent promises were to fall through as well.

At the end of Spring, 2008 the GM-Volt Blog published an interview with Ian Clifford, the CEO of ZENN Motors. Clifford viewed the production of the ass of yet undelivered EEStor unit as a done deal. But some of the story's readers were skeptical. But some of the blog readers were skeptical. Raphael wrote,

But good physicist like me knows very well that capacitors physics under extreme conditions is not textbook straightforward. The dielectric constant involved will stay at indicated value until approximately 30000 V / sm electric field strength. This value is pretty high so measurements unlikely exceed this so they give high Eps value OK.

But to get claimed energy density you need approximately 100 times higher field strength. Getting such field strenght is extremely unlikely in the Eps measurements. But the reality is that exactly in this field strenght region electrical induction gets saturation because it reaches the interatomic field strength. This is well know effect to physicysts but not very widely known phenomenon to general public. Resulted effect on the energy could be described as if dielectric constant gets reduced in the formula. My estimations demonstrates that actual energy density would be 25 - 50 times less than a claim.

Resulted EEStore capacitor would approximately match currently available ultracapacitors by energy density per unit of mass making ~5 times better energy density per unit of volume. As such it would be marginal improvement over existing ultracapacitors technology. It surely would be a order of magnitude improvement for ceramic capacitors so it would have some use. But it would be nothing as bold as EEStore claims.

In 1 - 2 years from now we will see what would be the outcome of EEStore activity. Judgement day for EEStore would come when somebody would build a capacitor and try to store expected energy into it. It would be discovered that above
~100 V voltage would grow with charge much faster than expected and finally instead of ~15 kWh it would be ~0.3 kWh at the highest possible voltage. But powder alone would match all the promises. Who knows - they might even think it is a big discovery of new phenomenon. So they would explain the failure by claiming they run into truly unpredictable effect unknown to science. Irony is that 1947 year physics knows it and today it is forgotten.

There have as of yet been no announcements made from EEStor and no EEStor prototypes turned over to ZENN which has stopped making cars. Clearly then doing due diligence would have lead to skeptical conclusions, and indeed I was skeptical, although I continued to follow the story for some time after I concluded that EEStor would not come up with a game changer.

Mark Z. Jacobson has been another target of several of my my due diligence attempts. I
have commented,

I consider Mark Z. Jacobson to most likely be a competent scientist who has gotten sucked into the irrational renewables ideology. Jacobson has stopped being a scientist and has become a cognitive warrior for renewable energy. Cognitive warfare is about propaganda, not the judicious determination of facts.

Renewable Energy World.com published a description of a Jacobson paper, Review of solutions to global warming, air pollution, and energy security. I had previously posted a review of the same paper and found its treatment of nuclear energy flawed to the point of being preposterous. The Renewable Energy World.com post drew 115 comments, many of which fit into the due diligence catigory.

"stop killin our wilderness" provided a devastating critique of Jacobson on Wind and Solar Thermal Power

obviously this person [Jacobson] lives in NORTHERN california, not southern california, or they would have a clue about how these technologies are vastly different here.

CSP uses nearly 90,000 gallons of water a year, just for rinsing mirrors (from a diesel truck), per megawatt - and that's for the inefficient air-cooled ones. water cooled use an additional 2,000,000 gallons of water/year per megawatt. 2 million gallons per year per megawatt!!! and the output declines as the temperature rises outside, right when we need the power most. idiotic. how can we justify these levels in SoCal, which is already on water rationing?

the land (10 acres/mw) is also permanently destroyed, and lengthy transmission means another 10% is lost.

to say "leave the rest as open space" around massive, inefficient wind turbines is also misleading. dynamiting, boring, trenching (so the turbines can pull power from the grid), concrete, roads, powerlines - all of these things add up to near-total devastation of the entire region when they are in SoCal deserts (which is usually where they are sited in SoCal). that means 45 - 70 acres per megawatt that is permanently decommissioned for all other uses. oh, and these turbines operate at roughly 16% of rated capacity, lower than rooftop solar, especially after transmission losses.

so, in terms of wasting HUGE amounts of water, killing habitats, destroying our carbon sinks (like the Mojave, which is a fantastic carbon sink, equal to temperate forest), massive roads and powerlines, and eminent domain, i beg to differ that these are reasonable solutions in SoCal. they are insane.

The same writer favors rooftop PV:

rooftop solar, at 18% and counting, destroys no land, requires no new roads or transmission, requires no water, forces no families from their homes, is MUCH less intermittent than Big Wind, and can be owned by PEOPLE instead of Big Energy is the only earth-and-human-friendly solution for SoCal. we are the land of sprawl and sun - let's make that a positive!

"Carolyn L" responded:

My rooftop solar still needs water for washing the panels, possibly at close to the rate of 90,000 gals of water per year per MW.

Richard Harding offered a well balanced assessment:

This is an extremely biased report, as are many in the field of alternative energy. The answer is that we can't meet all of our energy needs with a handful of fledgling technologies, we need a broadly diversified portfolio of energy sources, including renewables (wind, ocean, geothermal, solar PV, solar thermal, hydropower, biofuels, nuclear, and even fossil fuels (coal-to-liquids, natural gas). None of these are without impact on the environment, we just need to choose wisely in order to minimize environmental impact. Ultimately, the energy source with the least environmental impact is probably nuclear. Our goal needs to be energy independence and security with the least possible environmental impact.

"Steven" pointed to an obvious flaw in Jacobson's study:

It is also worth noting that cost was not considered as a factor in rating any of the energy generation methods studied. A study without an economic component is of very limited value....

"Steven" added

If I conducted a study for how I should get to work this morning in a similarly airy manner I might find that a helicopter ride or a chauffeur driven limo would appear as apt choices. Once I throw in economic considerations walking or taking the bus are the only viable candidates, and the earlier study does not help with that decision. Economic viability is a critical factor in evaluating energy generation schemes and if you leave it out of your study these is little value to any of the conclusions.

Ron Corso pointed to another flaw in Jacobson's analysis, namely his failure to appreciate the value of flexible energy output.

I don't know how the paper by Professor Jacobsen could possibly rank wind number 1 in his study. Wind is an unreliable source of energy varying dramatically from full to no output on the whims of wind currents that are totally unpredictable even sometimes within an hour. In addition, wind power equipment is notoriously unreliable and difficult to repair and maintain due to its location 100 to 200 feet elevated and is only viable economically with large subsidies. Hydropower on the other hand is dependable, easily maintained, very flexible in response to power demands, and has ancillary benefits unequalled by any other power source. If the Professor's paper does not discuss these important issues, it should do so to obtain a fair comparison

David Onkels suggests

The problem is that wind generation facilities are very inefficient producers of electricity, and owe their existence to government subsidies, tax preferences, or mandates on utilities to purchase the power. These investments drain capital away from more productive uses, reducing economic growth, employment, and wealth creation for us all.

These investments also drain money away from research into potentially more productive ways of generating power and fuel.

As soon as governments enter the picture, existing inefficient technologies become enshrined and develop political constituencies that stifle innovation and redeployment of capital into more efficient uses. The production of ethanol in the US is a perfect example of this problem.

" Thousands upon thousands of people however have died as a result of exposure to nuclear radiation."

Bombs and Chernobyl aside, tell me where. The military budget is irrelevant. By rejecting this interesting technology out of hand with scare-rhetoric, you marginalize the rest of your arguments.

El Rucio criticized Jacobson's assumptions about how much land is disturbed by windmills.

Such analyses are useful and of course rely on assumptions and concerns that can be debated as to their validity. But it really is a glaring error to claim that up to 144,000 5-MW wind turbines would take up less than 3 km^2 of land. In fact, at 50 acres/MW, they would require 145,687 km^2. To consider only the actual tower and foundation is like planning an airport only according to the small patches of ground touched by the tires of a plane.

And the paper appears to work towards a carbon reduction goal rather than towards providing energy, so the author seems to have wrongly assumed a one-for-one substitution of wind for other sources that is not borne out by actual experience.

Jacobson simply did not respond to any of the 115 comments, and indeed this is Jacobson's pattern. Jacobson rarely responds directly to any criticism of his work, and needless to say there have been plenty of criticisms of Jacobson in Nuclear Green and elsewhere. Jacobson's critics have demonstrated that Jacobson has failed to preform his due diligence obligations. For example, by failing to include costs among his energy options ranking criteria. Jacobson's failure to fulfill the due diligence obligations normally expected of scientists raises trobling questions.

Greenpeace is an organization that place doing due diligence far below ideological correctness. i
have in several posts pointed out serious flaws in arguments offered by Greenpeace, die to a failure to do due diligence assessments. For example, I critiqued a Greenpease assessment of the 2050 cost of Concentrated Solar Power.

Greenpeace recently spoke of a glowing future for Concentrated Solar Power:

With advanced industry development and high levels of energy efficiency, concentrated solar power could meet up to 7 percent of the world's power needs by 2030 and fully one quarter by 2050.

The 3rd joint report from Greenpeace International, the European Solar Thermal Electricity Association (ESTELA) and IEA SolarPACES estimated that investment in CSP technology would increase to to $29 billion a year by 2015 and $243 billion a year by 2050. An investment increase at that rate would lead to installed CSP plant capacity reaching 1,500 GW by 2050.

The report states that "during the 1990's infrastructure was around €158-186 billion each year . . ." The report states that "the cost of CSP electricity is coming down and many developers say it will soon be cost-competitive with report estimates that with an all out investment program in CPS costs would drop 3,060 € ($4290) per kW by 2015 and 2,280 € ($3200) per kW by 2050.

The report, however, offers a confusing account of CSP costs that obscures important information about the CPS costs. The most conspicuous evidence for dropping CSP prices was based on a series of 7 small CSP plants built in California between 1986 and 1992. But rather than offer us real world information about construction costs the report offers us the information that operating costs are dropping. The report also offers an extremely obscure account of the cost of CSP with energy storage, noting for example the cost of Molten Salt heat storage, but failing to note the added cost of expanded heat gathering capacity required to provide electricity over a longer period of time. Thus for a 16 hour a day CSP with heat storage, the solar gathering capacity would need to be twice that of a no storage plant with the same rated electrical output. The report stated that molten salt heat storage cost costs $30 per kWh. So we not have all of the information we need to calculate the cost of 16 hour a day dispatchable CSP. Assume 2X the 2015 CSP cost of $4300 Per kW or $8600. Add to that $30 per kWh X 16 = 480. So we end up with a 2015 cost of $9100 for 16 hour a day concentrated solar power that is dispatchable and capable of generating electricity 16 hours a day.

In fact this cost seems to correspond to the cost of the Starwood 1 CSP facility.

As usual advocates of CSP are keeping quiet about the cost of Starwood 1, a CSP facility with molten salt storage. But it appears to be $2.7 billion for a 290 MW facility, or about $9300 a kW. This cost tracks closely with my estimates of the cost of CSP with storage, and while it gives me a certain satisfaction to have accurately predicted CSP costs, the magnitude of those costs give me no satisfaction. The bad news, and it is very bad news, is that CSP will be significantly more expensive than conventional nuclear power,

As I noted the Greenpeace report on solar power claimed without evidence that the cost of solar power was dropping, and claimed that it would drop even more by 2050. Let us examine the cost of CSP if the price of CSP does not drop between 2015 and 2050, and then look at costs if CSP drops as projected by Greenpeace. Greenpeace estimates that CSP could be responsible for as much as 25% of global energy output by 2050 or 1500 GWs of generating capacity. Given the no price drop assumption the cost of the 25% assumption would be around $13.5 trillion. If the average cost of the CSP generated power dropped by 1/3 as Greenpeace assumed, the total cost for the 25% CSP system could be as low as $9 trillion. Remember that $9 trillion is a low cost, based on the most unlikely of assumptions. There is by the way no assurance that the cost of CSP will not be higher than the Starwood 1 costs.

Now lets look at some nuclear costs. Indian LMFBRs are expected to cost $1200 per kW in serial production. 1500 worth of indian LMFBRs would run $1.8 trillion. Chinese LWRs have an estimated cost of $1750 per kW or $2.624 trillion for 1500 GWs. American factory built modular LFTRs could run as low as $1200 per kW or $1.8 trillion for 1500 GWs. The maximum estimated costs for Westinghouse AP-1000s in the United States is $7000 per kW or 10.5 trillion for 1500 GWs generating capacity which would be the lowest end of the CSP price range to 2050.

The conclusion is that AP-1000s may have a cost advantage over CSP facilities until 2050, and will remain at least cost competitive. Generation IV nuclear technology could cost as little as 20% of the cost of CSP facilities at least until 2050. Chinese reactors are likely to cost more than Indian or American Generation 4 reactors, but will still be inexpensive compared to European or American CSP.

Were I to write this post today, I would revise some of my figures, for example the current estimate cost of Indian LMFBRs now probably runs in the $2 billion per GW range, but that leaves the cost of Indian LMFBR far below the cost of Concentrated Solar Power in 2050. It is clear however, from this post that the failure of Greenpeace to perform its due diligence obligations could lead to troubling consequences were its advice followed.

I have yet to discuss the concept of due diligence as it relates to nuclear power. This will require a separate post.

Further Jacobson objections to Consideration of Nuclear Power: Safety and Uranium

In his new paper on post carbon energy sources ("Providing all Global Energy with Wind, Water, and Solar Power, Part I: Technologies, Energy Resources, Quantities and Areas of Infrastructure, and Materials," Energy Policy in press), Mark Z. Jacobson refuses to consider nuclear power as a future energy source:

For several reasons we do not consider nuclear energy (conventional fission, breeder reactors, or fusion) as a long-term global energy source.

in previous posts, I have offered an extensive analysis of two major parts of of Jacobson's objections. By far the most serious objection is the claim that the spread of civilian nuclear power technology would lead to the development of nuclear weapons by states which currently lack them. This argument is speculative, and the evidence from actual instances of attempted our actual proliferation is that nations that lack a civilian nuclear power program are more likely to seek to acquire nuclear weapons, than nations which operate civilian power reactors.

A second Jacobson argument focused on CO2 emissions associated with civilian nuclear electrical generation. Jacobson's argument rested formally on two meta-analytic studies of nuclear associated emissions, but those studies in turn relied on a questionable source, and both appeared flawed by anti-nuclear biases. But Jacobson's argument appears to go beyond what could be asserted on the basis of his sources, and appears to rest on a previous Jacobson Paper in which he asserted a causal connection between the spread of civilian nuclear power technology and future nuclear wars every 30 years. Since the claimed connection between civilian nuclear power and nuclear weapons proliferation appears to have been falsified, the connection between the spread of civilian nuclear power and nuclear war appears to lack support. indeed it might be anticipated that nations which lack a civilian nuclear power program are more likely to engage in nuclear exchanges, than nations which possess civilian power reactors.

I mentioned one further Jacobson objection to nuclear power, the time required to construct nuclear power plants. Jacobson calmed,

The overall historic and present range of nuclear planning-to-operation times for new nuclear plants has been 11-19 years,

Yet the transformation of French electrical generation technology to 75% nuclear took place over a period of 19 years and involved the construction of no less than 54 reactors. Thus Jacobson once again offers assertions against which clear and powerful evidence support contradictory conclusions.

In addition to these objections Jacobson objected to consideration of nuclear power on the grounds of safety and the future nuclear fuel supply.

conventional nuclear fission relies on finite stores of uranium that a large-scale nuclear program with a “once through” fuel cycle would exhaust in roughly a century (e.g., Macfarlane and Miller, 2007; Adamantiades and Kessides, 2009). In addition, accidents at nuclear power plants have been either catastrophic (Chernobyl) or damaging (Three-Mile Island), and although the nuclear industry has improved the safety and performance of reactors, and has proposed new (but generally untested) “inherently” safe reactor designs (Piera, 2010; Penner et al., 2010; Adamantiades and Kessides, 2009; . . .

Since Jacobson passes over the whole safety issue with a relatively few words, I will deal with his assertions on nuclear safety briefly. First, nuclear power has proven itself to be by far the safest energy technology. Conventional Light Water Reactors have proven themselves to be extremely safe, with an unprecedented record of operation without a major accident since 1979. The only serious LWR accident failed to produce injuries or deaths, despite long standing, but unsuccessful efforts by nuclear opponents to argue that there were Three Mile Island accident casualties. This contention was rejected by a court decision. Thus, the safety of nuclear power has been established by thousands of years of Light Water Reactor operation without a single casualty producing reactor accident.

Jacobson's treatment of “inherently safe reactor" is very problematic. Jacobson asserts, although

the nuclear industry has . . . i proposed new (but generally untested) “inherently” safe reactor designs . . . there is no guarantee that the reactors will be designed, built and operated correctly.

In fact several “inherently safe reactor" have been tested. these include the Pebble Bed Reactor, the IFR prototype, the EBR II, and the Molten Salt Reactor prototype, the MSRE. These tests demonstrated that inherently safe reactors are possible, and can be built with proven technology. Thus we can point to reasonable assurance that inherently safe reactors will be in fact safe.

In the case of all three prototypes, inherent safety features were tested and performed as expected. In the case of the molten salt reactor, the stability and safety features are so inherent in the reactor concept, that an unsafe MSR design is highly unlikely. The inherent safety of the Molten Salt Reactor is a byproduct of the basic reactor concept. Further molten salt power generating reactors can be designed to produce power without any operator input. Hence operator errors would be impossible in normal operation situations. Hence Jacobson's claims about inherent nuclear safety are contradicted by reactor prototype safety experiments, and the basic nature of the inherently safe reactor concepts.

Next we turn to the Jacobson claim that

a large-scale nuclear program with a “once through” fuel cycle would exhaust [uranium supplies] in roughly a century

This contention is decisively refuted by a recent MIT report "The Future of the Nuclear Fuel Cycle," That report states,

There is no shortage of uranium resources that might constrain future commitments to build new nuclear plants for much of this century at least.

The benefits to resource extension and to waste management of limited recycling in LWRs using mixed oxide fuel as is being done in some countries are minimal.

Scientifically sound methods exist to manage spent nuclear fuel.

it is often recognized that long term, nuclear technology needs to shift from once through Light Water reactors, to more advanced uranium and thorium breeder reactors. Since the dawn of the nuclear age, reactor scientists have understood that the long range development of nuclear power would require breeder reactors. The possibility of using advance technology reactors to breed uranium and thorium has been frequently discussed. Jacobson rejects the possibility of nuclear breeding with a the simple claim that there is no proliferation proof nuclear power cycle. While this is true, as we have already noted a commitment to nuclear power generation appears to decrease rather than increase proliferation risks. Thus there is no clear evidence that nuclear breeding technology will actually lead to nuclear proliferation in practice. Jacobson relies entirely on speculative, untested and untestable arguments in making the claim that breeder reactors pose significant proliferation risks.

Jacobson also briefly reviews the use of thorium breeding as an alternative rout to sustainable nuclear power but ultimately rejects it:

A related proposal is to use thorium as a nuclear fuel, which is less likely to lead to nuclear weapons proliferation than the use of uranium, produces less long-lived radioactive waste, and greatly extends uranium resources (Macfarlane and Miller, 2007). However, thorium reactors require the same significant time lag between planning and operation as conventional uranium reactors and most likely longer because few developers and scientists have experience with constructing or running thorium reactors, As such, this technology will result in greater emissions from the background electric grid compared with WWS technologies, which have a shorter time lag. In addition, lifecycle emissions of carbon from a thorium reactor are on the same order as those from a uranium reactor. Further, thorium still produces radioactive waste containing 231Pa, which has a half-life of 32,760 years. It also produces 233U, which can be used in fission weapons, such as in one nuclear bomb core during the Operation Teapot nuclear tests in 1955. Weaponization, though, is made more difficult by the presence of 232U

once again we see that Jacobson relies on his business as usual, too much time argument, to justify the rejection of what would otherwise appear to be an attractive nuclear option. And once again Jacobson relies on a problematic argument. In the case of thorium, relatively small thorium breeding molten salt reactors (LFTRs) can be rapidly built in factories, and require significantly less on site work to for their completion. The LFTRF licensing process can be streamlined, if a goal of completing hundreds or even thousands of LFTRs in a short time is viewed as desirable. A small amount of Ps-231 is produced in thorium breeding, but it can simply left in the reactor core where it can be converted by the breeding process to U-232 or U-233. While it is true that U-233 is weaponizable, the one test of a U-233 containing device proved to be a failure. It would appear that American weapons designers rejected U-233 as a weapon material. As with proliferation risks associated with fast reactors, there is no strong evidence that possessing thorium breeding reactors actually increases the danger of nuclear proliferation beyond the risks associated with not possessing civilian nuclear power plants.

The global abundance of thorium, an untapped source of potential nuclear fuel, is such that thorium could supply all human energy needs for millions of years. Thorium fueled molten Salt Reactors are very safe, and the CO2 emissions associated with them would be far less than those associated with any renewable energy source. Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactors can be operated to produce no long term transuranium waste, and to produce fission product wast that with reach background radiation levels within 300 years.

Thus once again it must be concluded that Mark Z. Jacobson excluded nuclear power as a future energy source without rational justification.

Jacobson: Beyond Cherry Picking

In a previous post I looked at Mark Z. Jacobson's decision to exclude nuclear power as an future energy source in a recent paper. In that post I reviewed Jacobson's assertions that the global spread of nuclear generated electrical power would cause nuclear proliferation and nuclear war. In the course of my investigating of actual instances of proliferation, I found that nations which lacked civilian nuclear power facilities were more likely to undertake the development of nuclear weapons than nations which possess civilian nuclear power facilities. Thus arguably the spread of nuclear power generation facilities may lead to a decline in nuclear proliferation risks.

In this post I intend to consider other arguments which Jacobson uses to justify the exclusion of nuclear power from future energy plans. A second part of Jacobson's argument for the exclusion of nuclear power claims that wind generated electricity leads to significantly lower CO2 emissions than would be the case with nuclear generated electricity. Jaacobson claims:

nuclear energy results in 9-25 times more carbon emissions than wind energy, in part due to emissions from uranium refining and transport and reactor construction (e.g., Lenzen, 2008; Sovacool, 2008), in part due to the longer time required to site, permit, and construct a nuclear plant compared with a wind farm (resulting in greater emissions from the fossil-fuel electricity sector during this period; Jacobson, 2009), and in part due to the greater loss of soil carbon due to the greater loss in vegetation resulting from covering the ground with nuclear facilities relative to wind turbine towers, which cover little ground. Although recent construction times worldwide are shorter than the 9-year median construction times in the U.S. since 1970 (Koomey and Hultman, 2007), they still averaged 6.5 years worldwide in 2007 (Ramana, 2009), and this time must be added to the site permit time (~3 years in the U.S.) and construction permit and issue time (~3 years). The overall historic and present range of nuclear planning-to-operation times for new nuclear plants has been 11-19 years, compared with an average of 2-5 years for wind and solar installations (Jacobson, 2009). Feiveson (2009) observes that “because wind turbines can be installed much faster than could nuclear, the cumulative greenhouse gas savings per capital invested appear likely to be greater for wind” (p. 67).

A careful examination of Jacobson's statement will reveal many problems. Jacobson makes claims about the relative emissions of CO2 from wind and nuclear power (9-25 times more carbon emissions). in support of this assertion Jacobson references papers by Lenzen and Sovacool. Both papers offer meta analyses of the life cycle CO2 emissions of CO2 by nuclear power. Both papers reach similar conclusions, which reflect an estimated life cycle CO2 emissions from nuclear power that is several times greater than that found by Dones. in several previous posts, most recently "Honor the Truth" (December 26, 2010), I set out the criticisms by Dones and others that studies of the lifecycle CO2 emissions associated with nuclear power reported by Jan Willem Storm van Leeuwen and Philip Smith contain numerous and serious flaws. Thus the "Stormsmith" CO2 emissions estimates cannot be considered reliable. Dones wrote that "Stormsmith's"

results are definitively outliers.

Yet both Lenzen and Sovacool rely heavily on "Stormsmith" for their conclusions. At any rate neither Lenzen nor Sovacool support Jacobson's claim of nuclear lifecycle emissions 25 time greater than wind lifecycle emissions, and indeed not even "Stormsmith" supports anything close to this claim. Where does the 25 times claim then come from? In his paper Review of solutions to global warming, air pollution, and energy security, Jacobson wrote:

In this section, the CO2-equivalent (CO2e) emissions (emissions of CO2 plus those of other greenhouse gases multiplied by their global warming potentials) of each energy technology are reviewed. We also examine CO2e emissions of each technology due to planning and construction delays relative to those from the technology with the least delays (opportunity-cost emissions), leakage from geological formations of CO2 sequestered by coal-CCS, and the emissions from the burning of cities resulting from nuclear weapons explosions potentially resulting from nuclear energy expansion.

The inclusion of carbon from burning cities ignited by nuclear weapons as nuclear power emissions, explains the 25 times carbon emission claim, but it is wacky, and needless to say utterly without scientific validity.

Even if "Stormsmith" could be considered a reliable source, Jacobson derives arguments from the Lenzen and Sovacool papers that cannot be supported from those papers. First a meta analysis is not a scientific study, and its conclusions are not scientific. Secondly, meta analysis can be manipulated to produce highly biased results. The Wikipedia observes:

The most severe weakness and abuse of meta-analysis often occurs when the person or persons doing the meta-analysis have an economic, social,or political agenda such as the passage or defeat of legislation. Those persons with these types of agenda have a high likelihood to abuse meta-analysis due to personal bias. For example, researchers favorable to the author's agenda are likely to have their studies "cherry picked" while those not favorable will be ignored or labeled as "not credible". In addition, the favored authors may themselves be biased or paid to produce results that support their overall political, social, or economic goals in ways such as selecting small favorable data sets and not incorporating larger unfavorable data sets.

If a meta-analysis is conducted by an individual or organization with a bias or predetermined desired outcome, it should be treated as highly suspect or having a high likelihood of being "junk science". From an integrity perspective, researchers with a bias should avoid meta-analysis and use a less abuse-prone (or independent) form of research.

There is abundant evidence that both the Sovacool and the Lanzen studies were biased. Both studies rely heavily on "Stormsmith" despite Dones's critique of "Stormsmith's" methods and conclusions. There is added evidence that Sovacool was engaged in cherry picking, he found fault with most of the peer reviewed studies of life cycle emissions from nuclear power, and excluded them from his analysis. Thus neither Sovacool nor Lanzen offer credible evidence on the life cycle emissions of nuclear power plants, and both studies are likely to reflect the biases of their authors. Thus Jacobson lacks credible sources for his assertions about the life cycle CO2 emissions of nuclear power plants, and therefor there are no credible data to make comparisons between the lifecycle CO2 emissions of wind and nuclear.

But what of Jacobson's claims about soil loss in connection with nuclear facilities? Uranium mines use a variety of mining technologies, and in a variety of settings, but in the United States all uranium mines use a technology called in situ leaching. In situ leaching does not disturb the soil, thus uranium mining in the United States cannot be regarded as creating a soil loss problem. Underground mines in other countries do not, for the most part create soil loss problems. New Canadian uranium mines tend to be underground. Many surface open pit uranium mines are located in desert country where soil loss to uranium mining would lead to only a very limited loss of ground covering vegetation, hence an insignificant impact on the global carbon cycle. Further, a review of recent mining practices indicates that played out open pit uranium mines are used for tailings disposal, thus limiting the impact of uranium mining tailings on ground covering vegetation and the carbon cycle. Of the world's 10 largest uranium mines only three, representing 20% of the global uranium mining total were open pit mines. Of those three, two, representing over 11% of the global uranium mining total, are located in desert environments. The number of in situ mines and their percentage of the global uranium mining total is rapidly increasing, and is currently running at 32% of the uranium mining total.

Uranium mills and uranium separation facilities occupy a tiny fraction of the global industrial infrastructure. Thus arguments attributing a displacement of ground cover so large as to impact the global carbon cycles are simply absurd. Finally reactor have small footprints. Most land dedicated to reactors constitute buffers designed to protect the public from any possible release of gaseous and volatile radioisotopes in the event of a reactor accident. The soil in reactor buffers is typically undisturbed, and and ground cover assumes natural forms. The developed area of reactor facilities is relatively small and thus the impact of even thousands of power producing reactors on the global carbon cycle through vegetation displacement would be insignificant.

Thus Jacobson's claim that nuclear power plants

nuclear energy results in 9-25 times more carbon emissions than wind energy,

is partially based on arguably unscientific and bias sources and partially based on an highly exaggerated account of the impact of the nuclear power cycle on ground cover vegetation and the global carbon cycle. Even the sources

What of Jacobson's claim that

The overall historic and present range of nuclear planning-to-operation times for new nuclear plants has been 11-19 years, . . .

Jacobson exaggerates the time scale required to build a large number of reactors. The French decision to convert its electrical system too nuclear power was made in 1973. The whole project was completed by 1992 19 years after the decision was made.

The French example is appropriate here because France was able to convert 3/4ths of its electrical industry to nuclear power very quickly. One group of 34 900 MW French reactors was completed between 1977 and 1988. A second group of 20 1300 MW reactors was completed between 1985 and 1992.

French nuclear power reactors

Class	Reactor	MWe net, each	Commercial operation
900 MWe	Blayais 1-4	910	12/81, 2/83, 11/83, 10/83
	Bugey 2-3	910	3/79, 3/79
	Bugey 4-5	880	7/79-1/80
	Chinon B 1-4	905	2/84, 8/84, 3/87, 4/88
	Cruas 1-4	915	4/84, 4/85, 9/84, 2/85
	Dampierre 1-4	890	9/80, 2/81, 5/81, 11/81
	Fessenheim 1-2	880	12/77, 3/78
	Gravelines B 1-4	910	11/80, 12/80, 6/81, 10/81
	Gravelines C 5-6	910	1/85, 10/85
	Saint-Laurent B 1-2	915	8/83, 8/83
	Tricastin 1-4	915	12/80, 12/80, 5/81, 11/81
1300 MWe	Belleville 1 & 2	1310	6/88, 1/89
	Cattenom 1-4	1300	4/87, 2/88, 2/91, 1/92
	Flamanville 1-2	1330	12/86, 3/87
	Golfech 1-2	1310	2/91, 3/94
	Nogent s/Seine 1-2	1310	2/88, 5/89
	Paluel 1-4	1330	12/85, 12/85, 2/86, 6/86
	Penly 1-2	1330	12/90, 11/92
	Saint-Alban 1-2	1335	5/86, 3/87
N4 - 1450 MWe	Chooz B 1-2	1500	12/96, 1999
	Civaux 1-2	1495	1999, 2000
	Total (58)	63,130

(Source World Nuclear Association)

it would appear then that France offers a model to any nation which wished to rapidly convert its electrical generating system to post carbon energy sources. It should be noted that French reactors are as safe as reactors anywhere in the world, so the rapid development of nuclear power in France was not accomplished at the cost of nuclear safety.

It should also be added that newer reactor construction technologies have emerged since the French Reactor building program was completed. These include factory construction of reactor modules, with field assembly of modules, and the introduction of time and labor saving construction/assembly equipment. In addition, refinements of reactor construction planning have emerged from asian countries such as South Korea and Japan. This improvement in reactor construction planning has significantly lowered reactor construction costs. China has adopted the best construction practices with a consequent decrease in construction costs of 40% compared to the construction practices of French reactor constructors. Any attempt to convert the American energy economy to post carbon nuclear power should take advantage of all possible cost and time saving technologies and techniques.

Thus Jacobson lacks objective, scientifically valid grounds for his a priori exclusion of nuclear power from consideration as a future post carbon energy source. He objects to nuclear power on the basis of

* Nuclear proliferation

* Nuclear CO2 emissions

* Nuclear effects f the Global Carbon Cycle

* The time scale of nuclear construction

My conclusions are that none of these objections have merit.

* The evidence from the study of actual instances of nuclear proliferation suggests the spread of nuclear power appears to inhibit rather than encourage nuclear proliferation.

* Jacobson uses biased and inaccurate sources in making his claims about nuclear CO2 emissions.

* Jacobson goes beyond his sources and concocts highly unscientific arguments that extend well beyond any scientific evidence, in order to justify his exaggerated carbon emissions estimate.

* Jacobson greatly exaggerates the impact of nuclear facilities on ground cover vegetation and the Global carbon cycle.

* France was able to convert 75% of its electrical industry to nuclear powered generation in the same time scale that Jacobson claims is required to build a single nuclear plant.

One must conclude that Jacobson's anti-nuclear arguments suffer from confirmation bias. Jacobson simply ignores sources that contradict his viewpoint. When supportive sources are available, Jacobson cherry picks, but his claim that

nuclear energy results in 9-25 times more carbon emissions than wind energy,

is not truly supported even by cherry picking. Thus Jacobson's exclusion from consideration of nuclear power as a post carbon energy source is not supported by judgements that can in any way be characterized as scientific and is the products of a personal bias.

Bill Hannahan's on his difficulties getting his Archer-Jacobson review published

As I indicated in the introduction of Bill Hannahan's critical review of the Jacobson & Archer claims about Wind baseload power, Bill went through quite a struggle to get his paper published, both by the The Journal of Applied Meteorology & Climatology (JAMC) and by the Internet site the Oil Drum. Bill's efforts were frustrated by both. This is especially disturbing in the case of the JAMC, because it was obliged by the standards of science and its own publication rules to publish Bill's second round paper. The failure of the JAMC publish Bill's second round paper should be itself reviewed as a potential ethical lapse. The Oil Drum simply passed up a good opportunity, and I suspect that was at least as much a matter of style as of substance. Bill's current account is long, but it concludes with an important point about the effect of the internet on the speed of human knowledge growth.

Can interconnected windfarms replace baseload power plants, Part II

By Bill Hannahan

The Journal of Applied Meteorology & Climatology (JAMC) published a peer reviewed paper by Stanford professor Mark Jacobson and Cristina Archer called

“Supplying Baseload Power and Reducing Transmission Requirements by Interconnecting Wind Farms”

A first round review comment on the electrical engineering portion of the analysis was submitted in accordance with the published procedure which calls for two rounds of comment/author response, with publication of the second round. The authors submitted a response to the first round comment. The final comment was submitted.

SUMMARY

The response to the review comment revealed the following facts.

1… Author Mark Jacobson did not identify any errors in the final review comment.

2… Interconnected windfarms cannot meet the reliability standards required to replace any fraction of baseload power plant capacity.

3… Stanford President John Hennessey has a B.E. in Electrical Engineering and a PhD in computer science. He did not identify any errors in the final comment, yet he refused to take any action to diminish the damage being done by the flawed Stanford paper which is still on the Stanford web site.

4… The Journal of Applied Meteorology & Climatology (JAMC) violated its published policy by refusing to publish the final review comment and by repeatedly trying to publish the first round comment without the author’s permission.

5… Peer review does not guarantee high quality or accuracy. Quality and accuracy depend entirely on the quality of the people involved.

6… Peer reviewed journals are an inefficient out of date mechanism for reviewing scientific papers. The internet makes possible faster more detailed and more accurate reviews that are transparent.

7… Nate Hagens, Kyle Saunders, Gail Tverberg and five more editors at The Oil Drum found no errors in the review comment yet they refused to publish the facts.

SEQUENCE OF EVENTS

The editor informed me that the authors refused to respond to my final comment and insisted on publishing the first round comment/response, in violation of published AMS policy.

I sent the following letter to members of the AMS in a position of leadership.

[WARNING, it is a long and disjointed letter, reflecting the process.]

I received the following note from the JAMC editor.

Dear Mr. Hannahan,

I have been informed by the authors of the original manuscript that, after receiving your revised version of the Comments, they have no time, nor are they interested in, revising their reply to match the new version. Although your revision has followed the instructions that the comments need to be standing alone, the number of comments have now doubled compared from the original version and, as a result, the comments and replies are now out of sequence, making it impossible to publish the pair. This leaves me no choice but to go with the initial pair of Comments/Reply. I have carefully compared the new and old version of your comments and I feel that publishing the original version won't lose all the major points that you are trying to make in your revised version…

I recognize and appreciate the work that you have put into the revision, but in the interest of moving the process forward and getting the comments published, I have to accept the original Comments/Reply pair (April 2008).

I responded to the editor with the following note:

“This is the second time you have tried to publish my first round comment without my permission. Why are you trying so hard to publish my weakest comment?

My first round review comment was written and submitted in compliance with the AMS procedure, which calls for two rounds, of which only the second round will be published. Only my final comment is approved for publication.

You wrote;

“I have been informed by the authors of the original manuscript that, after receiving your revised version of the Comments, they have no time, nor are they interested in, revising their reply …. This leaves me no choice but to go with the initial pair of Comments/Reply.”

It is interesting that the authors would rather go with the first round comment that they found objectionable than to address my final comment that lacks the offensive material.

The AMS procedure does not require an author response, it is optional. In fact the AMS procedure specifies the author’s right to respond at a later time. There is no reason to revert to my first round comment. Why do you want to publish the inferior comment when the final comment is so much better?

The AMS procedure gives the authors the last word which is normally a huge advantage. If the authors forgo that privilege in an effort to suppress the superior comment, why should they be rewarded for that strategy? Why should the readers be denied the best argument? Are the authors practicing science or playing chess.

You wrote;

“I have carefully compared the new and old version of your comments and I feel that publishing the original version won't lose all the major points that you are trying to make in your revised version.”

So it is OK to delete half or more of my points, especially the most important ones, because the authors do not want to address them? I don’t think so.

The final comment is much improved over the first round comment. It clearly documents the defects and omissions in the reports analysis and it lacks the controversial content of the first round comment that the authors and you found objectionable.

Clearly the authors do not want my final comment published because it contains devastating points that they cannot answer. The authors must not be allowed to hide the facts by simply refusing to respond to them.

You wrote;

“I recognize and appreciate the work that you have put into the revision, but in the interest of moving the process forward and getting the comments published, I have to accept the original Comments/Reply pair (April 2008).”

To recognize my work, and to allow others to appreciate it, and to complete your obligation in this matter, simply forward my final comment for publication.

Stanford received thousands of dollars to create this deeply flawed report. The authors received thousands of dollars to write this deeply flawed report. JMAC and the reviewers were well paid to publish this deeply flawed report.

I spent many precious hours of my time researching and composing my final comment. While that time was unpaid, my final comment more accurately reflects the unreliability of wind power than does the deeply flawed Stanford report, and it deserves to be published.

The nineteen points in my final comment should have been raised by the peer reviewers. Had they done so, the deeply flawed conclusions of this report would not be spread across the internet and other publications, and the many hours I dedicated to this effort could have been put to other use. Publishing my final comment will not un-ring the bell, it will not undo all the damage caused by this report, but it will be a start.

Since the authors have given up their right to respond in a timely manner, I request that you publish my final comment now with a note that the authors choose not to respond. Or publish all three comments with a note that the authors choose not to respond to the final comment. They have the right to respond at a later time. Your readers are intelligent well educated adults. They will understand.

The length of my final comment will be similar to that of both first round comments combined. Given the length of the deeply flawed Stanford report, the length of my comment should not be an issue. Energy and climate change are the two biggest problems faced by mankind.

The Stanford paper plays a role in delaying the implementation of the best possible energy policy. As a result billions of people around the world will experience more pain and suffering needlessly, and many lives will be shortened over the next several decades. It is the people on the lowest rung of the economic ladder who will suffer the most for this.

This comment process is now in its 14th month. The ball has been in my court a small fraction of that time. The U.S. is about to spend hundreds of billions of dollars on energy policy. The truth needs to come out soon.

The JAMC editor ignored the points made in this response and violated the published AMS policy for correspondence, page 14 of the authors guide pdf, at least 7 times.

1… The editor withheld the author’s first round comment from me for six weeks, (June 12, 2008- July 20, 2008).

2… The editor tried to publish my first round comment without my permission, (June 25, 2008).

3… The editor allowed the authors to introduce diversionary issues not contained in my review comment or in the original paper (July 20, 2008).

4… The editor tried to publish my first round comment without my permission a second time, (March 5, 2009).

5… The editor claims that the final comment is too long, (March 12, 2009). The editor did not identify any points that were wrong, irrelevant, insignificant or otherwise appropriate for deletion. AMS procedure does not limit the length of comments.

6… The editor refused to have any of my comments reviewed by an electrical engineer with experience in the generation and distribution of electric power.

7… The editor refused to publish the final comment while agreeing that it is of high quality, (March 12, 2009).

MY REQUEST

There is a lot of material here. There are two key points to keep in mind while evaluating this material.

1… The first sentence of the introduction to the AMS author guide.

“The constitution of the American Meteorological Society lists as its objectives

“the development and dissemination of knowledge of the atmospheric and related oceanic and hydrologic sciences and the advancement of their professional applications.””

2… The fact that my final comment is the best comment. None of the authors, editors or reviewers have identified any fault with it.

Do you believe that it is in the best interests of science to have an unobstructed debate of the best ideas? Do you believe that theories and analyses should be subject to thorough independent examination? Do you believe that science should not be “Pay to Play”? Do you believe that scientists should not be able to hide the flaws of their work behind institutional and procedural barriers? Do you believe that the points in the final review comment have merit and deserve a full airing?

If these are your beliefs I ask that you explain them to JAMC chief editor Rob Rauber,

rauber@atmos.uiuc.edu and ask him to publish the final comment without the author’s response, as provided for by the AMS procedure, or publish all of the comments.

I also ask that you copy your remarks to AMS president Thomas R. Karl,

Thomas.R.Karl@noaa.gov

and to me at mc2essay@yahoo.com .

[THIS LETTER TO AMS LEADERSHIP CONTINUES WITH AN EXAMPLE]

Postscript: A Contrasting Example and a Recommendation

In his first round response and in his other energy papers, author, Dr. Jacobson references the work of Dr. Benjamin Sovacool. Sovacool claims that the lifecycle CO2 emissions from nuclear power are 66 gms/kWh.

http://www.nirs.org/climate/background/sovacool_nuclear_ghg.pdf

Unlike Dr. Jacobson, Dr. Sovacool engages in public discussion of his work. Consider the following exchange:

Hannahan… Is you goal to produce a paper on; (A) The world’s historical emissions of CO2 from nuclear power plants, or (B) CO2 emissions from future Gen III reactors built in the U.S.?

Your calculation of capacity factor is consistent with A. To make the cost estimate consistent with A, average the actual construction cost of all plants built so far. I would expect a number around $1.00/watt.

Your use of U.S. Gen III construction cost estimates, the highest in the world, makes me believe that your objective is a paper that will be useful to policy makers deciding the future of nuclear power in the U.S., therefore your goal should be B.

To be consistent you should estimate the capacity factor of future Gen III reactors in the U.S.. Gen II reactors in the U.S. have ramped up from 50% in the 70’s to about 90% in recent years

http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/aer/pdf/pages/sec9_5.pdf

in spite of the fact that Gen II plants are handicapped by an old decaying grid that experiences occasional outages requiring nuclear plants to throttle back or shutdown. Experts agree that we need to overhaul the grid to increase capacity and reliability, regardless of the energy source mix.

Gen III plants are Gen II plants that incorporate the lessons learned over the last 40 years. They have reduced complexity, inherently safe design features and vastly improved instrumentation and control systems, making them more reliable. With these improvements the most probable capacity factor for U.S. Gen III reactors is well over 90%, not 81 %.

Sovacool… Point well taken. Really the paper was not meant to be either A or B—I just wanted to see what the literature said about GHG emissions from nuclear plants—but in the end I suppose it ended mixing A and B up. This is because many of the studies analyzed mixed them up, with some looking at historical emissions in places like the US, and others looking at future emissions in places like Japan or Sweden. I think a more careful paper that does either A or B would be very useful, and if it did B, it would need to account for the high capacity factor of US nuclear plants that you point out.

Hannahan… U.S. Gen II plants were designed for 40 year lifetimes. Almost half have received license extensions to 60 years.

http://neinuclearnotes.blogspot.com/2008/12/shearon-harris-plant-receives-license.html

Gen III plants are designed for 60 years with possible extension to 80 or more years. The assumption of 30-40 year lifespan for future Gen III reactors is not appropriate.

You would not evaluate the future performance of wind and solar based on 1950-1980 windmill and solar cell designs. Nuclear power plant design has been frozen at an immature level for several decades, roughly equivalent to the DC-3 in aviation, but the DC-3 had the advantage of being factory mass produced. There is enormous room for evolution in nuclear power plant design and construction.

Sovacool… The 40-60 year lifetime for newer plants is also a good point, and this is the first I’ve heard of it (much of the literature I’ve read says 20-40 years). Naturally, the longer nuclear plants operate, the lower their emissions per kWh from construction and decommissioning will be. Scarcer supplies of uranium could offset this improvement if more GHG are emitted to mine and enrich the uranium, but your point is valid.

Hannahan… By far the biggest problem is the assumption that the energy mix does not change over the life of the plant. Most wind and solar emissions come before the first watt hour is produced, whereas half of the nuclear emissions are released after 20-40 years of operation. What are the odds that coal will be generating 50% of our electricity 20, 40, 60, 80 years from now? There is rapidly growing resistance to more coal in the U.S. and many existing plants are nearing end of life. Dr Hansen (NASA) believes we must get off coal soon. Of course in 80 years global cooling might be the big issue, but for now the up front CO2 loading of wind and solar is a disadvantage nobody is talking about.

The transportation mix is going to shift away from oil into natural gas, electric and biofuel, reducing fossil carbon/ton mile substantially. Do you distinguish between fossil carbon and recycled atmospheric carbon?

Accounting for these changes over the life of the plant will dramatically reduce average fossil CO2/kWh for nuclear plants, less so for other options with shorter life spans and higher up front emissions.

An easier method, yet still reasonable for comparison purposes, would be to assume that all electrical inputs are from the technology being evaluated.

Underground uranium mines are largely electric, open pit mines will shift toward natural gas, electric and biofuel, sea water uranium can eliminate mining.

http://www.theoildrum.com/node/4558#comment-413193

Milling and enrichment are electric, cold war diffusion enrichment plants are going away. The U.S. is building two centrifuge enrichment plants and two more are in planning.

Sovacool… I hope you’re right about coal, and as I’ve told many others on this website nuclear plants are far superior from coal plants for a variety of reasons. The amazing thing is that electric utilities in the US are still talking about adding huge amounts of coal and natural gas capacity in the coming years. Both the EIA and IEA, for example, project that by 2030 and 2040 fossil fuels will provide the SAME mix of energy services that they do today, if not more. So while I agree many of the shifts you talk about would indeed be welcome (and more efficient), I’m sceptical that they will occur.

Hannahan… Gen 4 reactors will reduce uranium requirements / kWh by a factor of 60-100. Gen 4 plants using sea water cooling could extract all their fuel directly from the condenser cooling water.

Sovacool… [no comment]

Hannahan… An alternative viewpoint is to see each study as the correct answer to a different question, depending on the boundary conditions and assumptions it is based on.

From this perspective, the first step is to decide which question we want to answer. The most important question is the one your paper is most often claimed to have answered.

“If we build new Generation III nuclear power plants in large numbers, how much CO2 / kWh will that release?”

Each of the calculations in your study should be evaluated to see if it answers this question. For example, do they account for;

A… The fact that the fossil carbon content of electricity will go down dramatically over the next 60-80 years. Over 70% of our electricity comes from fossil fuel now. If we replace the fossil plants with a large number of Gen III nuclear plants, the CO2 per kWh will drop by a huge factor, and that will feedback into a further reduction of nuclear CO2 per kWh. If we do not build large numbers of nuclear plants the CO2 content of nuclear kWh's is irrelevant because it will have a minor impact on our problems.

B… Capacity factors above 0.9

C… 60+ year lifetimes.

D… Continuing modest improvements in fuel design with gradually increasing energy yield per ton.

E… Continuing modest improvement in decommissioning techniques including the use of advanced robotic technology likely to be available in 60-80 years when Gen III plants begin reaching end of life.

F… The fact that cold war diffusion enrichment is going away soon and centrifuge technology will continue to improve at a modest rate over the next 60 years. Laser enrichment may reduce enrichment cost further but need not be considered at this stage.

G… A rational approach to spent fuel. Recycling into Generation IV reactors or a simple, safe, easy, low energy consumption solution like deep seabed disposal.

http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/96oct/seabed/seabed.htm

After weeding out all the studies that do not meet these criteria you will be left with a small number of studies with results that are clustered within a narrow range of the correct number. Average those numbers and you will have a valuable result. I would expect it to be near the low end of the results you reviewed.

Sovacool… I don’t think the correct question to answer is “If we build Generation III nuclear plants …” Those plants may never be built, given the recent increases in the capital cost for nuclear power plant construction, public resistance towards siting and the transportation of nuclear waste, and the risk of proliferation and accident (and no matter how many times we go back and forth about these issues in Scitizen, people will still believe what they want to believe). The better question, for me, is “what are the greenhouse gas emissions associated with the current lifecycle,” the plants that will be operating for the next few years, the ones that are competing against existing generators. And here, I see a number of advantages in favor of wind, solar, etc.

Hannahan… True or False. If we stopped burning fossil fuel completely, the fossil CO2 per kWh of nuclear power would be near zero.

Sovacool… If we stopped burning fossil fuels completely, and even used nuclear power plants or renewable power plants to create the electricity needed to enrich uranium etc., I do agree the c02 per kWh for nuclear would decline. But I suspect it would still be much higher than the c02 per kWh from other sources such as energy efficiency or renewables.

Hannahan… Vattenfall generates electricity in Sweden. It gets 37.5 % of its electricity from hydro and 61.7 % from nuclear. Only about 1/4 % comes from fossil fuel. The very low fossil carbon content of Vattenfall’s electricity makes the fossil content of its nuclear kWh's very low.

The lifecycle CO2 emissions of Vattenfall nuclear power is only 3.5 gms CO2 per kWh, 5% of your reports number. The lifecycle CO2 emissions of Vattenfall wind power is 10.5 gms CO2 per kWh, three times higher than nuclear.

http://www.vattenfall.com/www/vf_com/vf_com/Gemeinsame_Inhalte/DOCUMENT/360168vatt/386246envi/2005-LifeCycleAssessment.pdf

If the U.S., or any country, replaces its fossil power plants with Gen III nuclear plants, the fossil carbon content of its kWh's will also be very low. Combine that with the effects of longer life, higher capacity factor, improved construction techniques and more efficient enrichment capacity, and the CO2 per kWh of nuclear power will be lower than it is in Sweden now.

Sovacool… No Comment.

Hannahan… Consider these two questions.

A… What are the CO2 emissions associated with the current lifecycle of existing Gen II nuclear plants?

B… If we replace our fossil power plants with Gen III nuclear plants, what are the CO2 emissions / kWh associated with the lifecycle of those new plants.

Which of these questions is most important to the future of the human race? Our Gen II reactors were designed in the 60’s and built in the 70’s – 80’s. We are not going to build more of these reactors, or more Titanics or more Model T Fords. Do you compare the performance of 60’s reactor technology with the performance of 60’s model windmills, solar energy systems, geothermal and biomass technology? Almost none of them are still working, and the comparison would be meaningless for the future.

Sovacool… No Comment.

Hannahan… … Benjamin, you have candidly acknowledged that A is the, “better question, for me”. For those of us looking for the answer to B, will you acknowledge that your report does not answer question B?

Sovacool… No Comment.

Hannahan… Why is Vattenfall wind power CO2 per kWh three times higher than nuclear? Windmills use much more steel and concrete per kWh than nuclear, and those emissions are almost all up front, before the first kWh is generated.

Sovacool… No Comment.

Hannahan… Vattenfall has already gone a long way towards this goal. If we leave the fossil carbon atoms in the ground in the form of coal, oil and natural gas deposits, the fossil CO2 emissions of nuclear power, and any other surviving energy source, would be approximately zero. If necessary we can even make nuclear power carbon negative by using some of the energy to extract CO2 from the atmosphere.

http://www.lanl.gov/news/newsbulletin/pdf/Green_Freedom_Overview.pdf

Sovacool… No Comment.

Hannahan… Extracting uranium from seawater using ships anchored in the Gulf Stream and Black Current, powered by water turbines in the current, can provide fossil carbon free uranium for hundreds of years using Gen III reactors, and billions of years with Gen IV reactors.

http://europe.theoildrum.com/node/4558#comment-413193

Sovacool… No Comment.

These and many more interesting exchanges are available here;

http://www.scitizen.com/screens/blogPage/viewBlog/sw_viewBlog.php?idTheme=14&idContribution=2136

CONCLUSION

In the span of a few weeks this discussion has teased out important points regarding CO2 emissions from future nuclear power plants that I have not seen in any papers on this subject. The debate was cordial, respectful and even humorous at times.

Contrast that with the 16 month ordeal at JAMC resulting in zero comments published and procedurally limited to two rounds with only the last round published, had the editor followed the AMS procedure. Think how much would have been lost if the Scitizen site limited debate to one or two rounds, or less if an author was intimidated by a comment.

Although I disagree with Dr. Sovacool on some points, my respect for him is infinitely higher than for Dr. Jacobson, because Sovacool VOLUNTARILY discusses his work in a public forum.

If Dr. Jacobson posted his wind reliability paper on Scitizen it would be ripped apart like a piece of meat in a tank of hungry piranhas. He would be forced to improve the quality of his work dramatically, and to stick to the subjects for which he has expertise. More importantly, his conclusions would not be posted all over the internet and other publications misleading people and political leaders, distorting energy policy, resulting in needless suffering in the decades to come.

Limiting comments to one round may have made sense before the electronic age when comments were hand written and type was handset but we can do much better now. I urge AMS to take the lead by setting up a site like Scitizen on AMS’s computer system where issues can be fully aired out.

For the record;

My degrees are in electrical and nuclear engineering. I support nuclear power, but my energy recommendation is neutral. Conduct R&D on every technology, build prototypes of everything, publish the results, level the playing field, pick the best technology.

http://www.theoildrum.com/node/4961#comment-459021

If this recommendation is implemented the best solution will emerge, whatever it is. I believe wind power will be stopped dead in its tracks.

My energy paper is here;

http://coal2nuclear.com/energy_facts.htm

The supporting calculations, assumptions and references are here.

http://coal2nuclear.com/ENERGY%20CALCS%20REV%207.xls

I thank you in advance for your help in getting my final review comment published.

Regards,

Bill Hannahan

[THIS IS THE END OF MY LETTER TO AMS LEADERSHIP]

They did not respond to any of the points raised and continue to refuse to publish the final comment.

A slightly revised version was sent to Stanford president John Hennessey. Here are the revised sections.

“President Hennessy, do you believe that it is in the best interests of science to have an unobstructed debate of the best ideas. Do you believe that theories and analyses should be subject to thorough independent examination? Do you believe that science should not be “Pay to Play”? Do you believe that scientists should not be able to hide their work behind institutional and procedural barriers? Do you believe that the points in the final review comment have merit and deserve a full and accurate response?

If these are your beliefs please explain them to author Dr. Mark Jacobson. He takes the opposite point of view. If he responds to the final review comment, the Journal will publish both documents.

If he still refuses to provide a response, I ask that you contact AMS president Thomas R. Karl, and ask him to publish the final comment without the author’s response, as provided for by the AMS procedure. I also ask that you remove the paper from your website or post my review comment with it.

Since this paper was published Dr. Jacobson has produced at least one more deeply flawed paper.

http://www.rsc.org/delivery/_ArticleLinking/DisplayHTMLArticleforfree.cfm?JournalCode=EE&Year=2009&ManuscriptID=b809990c&Iss=Advance_Article%20l/#tab1

It assigns the effects of nuclear war to commercial nuclear power plants. It assigns the emissions from fossil fueled power plants to imaginary nuclear plants that have not been built. The author claims that windmills can replace baseload power plants, citing his wind reliability paper, which he knows is deeply flawed, having read my comments…

The journals are becoming an anachronism due to their failure to use the best technology to accelerate the progress of science. I urge you to take the lead by setting up a site like Scitizen on Stanford’s computer system and requiring Stanford personal to defend their work in an open environment. That is not to say they would have to respond to every crackpot with a dumb remark, but they would ignore thoughtful substantive comments at their peril.”

I receive the following response 2 weeks later.

“Of course, I have no right to interfere with the processes of the JAMC. Furthermore, Professor Jacobson's decision on how he wants to respond is well within his prerogative as a faculty member.

I am sorry I cannot be of further help in resolving your issue.

Best wishes,

John L. Hennessy
President”

FINAL COMMENTS

1… When I wrote the first round comment I had not reviewed IEEE Std. 762-2006 or the data from the North American Electric Reliability Council. The first round comment did not contain items 2, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 16. These are fact based points that cannot be refuted.

2… I am not allowed to publish the author’s response to the first round comment. It is short, shallow, error filled and illogical on some points. It did not address all points in the first round comment. It also includes new issues not found in the paper or my comment including an attack on nuclear power claiming high CO2 emissions for nuclear power.

That attack triggered the idea of using the Sovacool discussion as an example of how a back and forth discussion can develop important points.

3… I am sure that Charles Barton will welcome and post a full uncensored response from the authors, president Hennessey or the editors. I hope they take advantage of that opportunity.

CONCLUSIONS

1… Stanford President Hennessey has a B.E. in Electrical Engineering and a PhD in computer science. He did not identify any errors in the final comment, yet he would not lift a finger to diminish the damage being done by the flawed Stanford paper.

There is a growing religious belief that renewable energy can replace fossil fuel with little or no reduction in quality of life or increase in human suffering. Science is not a religion.

Consider the history of the Big Bang Theory.

1916 … Einstein’s theory of relativity published.

1927 … Georges Lemaître proposes theory of an expanding universe. Einstein claims the universe is fixed.

1929 … Hubble studies red shift, finding that galaxies are moving away from our galaxy at a speed proportional to our distance from those galaxies.

1945 … George Gamow proposes neutron reactions that could explain the formation of light atoms in a big bang environment, and he proposes the existence of background radiation from that event.

1965 … Penzias and Wilson, Bell Lab engineers, detect the background radiation.

1970 … The Big Bang theory attains scientific consensus and enters school textbooks.

1970-present … Cracks appear in the theory. The distribution of matter in the universe is not uniform. Galaxies rotate too fast for the known mass in them. Expansion seems to be accelerating.

In the future the big bang theory will be modified or removed from the textbooks altogether if something else attains greater scientific consensus.

Contrast that with supporters of creation theory who want to put it in the school science books first and create a generation of supporting scientists later.

The worrisome thing about renewable energy true believers is that they include people with parchment claiming expertise in science and engineering, like president Hennessey, the authors and the leaders at AMS. They are willing and determined to use their standing in the world of science and engineering to promote renewables at all cost and to suppress opposing information.

Somehow they obtained degrees in science and technology without learning the fundamental principles by which scientific knowledge expands and improves in quality. The free exchange of ideas subject to continuous testing against the reality of nature is essential for the progress of science and technology.

2. In academia the rule is publish or perish. Some Journals have become engines that convert money into paper without respect to quality. In the worst case they suppress documents of high quality if they do not bring in revenue or if they conflict with high dollar customers.

3. My attempt to publish a single comment at JAMC lasted 16 months. The ball was in their court most of that time. The discussion with Dr. Sovacool lasted a few weeks and provided important insight on the issue in a friendly and respectful environment. In the words of a famous song, I have never received “so much resistance from behind.”

If the journals continue to operate as they did in the nineteenth century they will become irrelevant. Internet sites like Scitizen and Nuclear Green are accelerating the pace at which knowledge is critically reviewed and distributed.

3. Peer review does not guarantee accuracy. None of the authors or reviewers of this paper are electrical engineers in the power industry. Authors are asked to suggest reviewers for their work. Are the students at Stanford allowed to suggest fellow students to grade their term papers? This is a sign of laziness.

The editors should do the leg work to find independent reviewers. Any senior grid manager, of which there are hundreds, could have done an excellent job.

Two civil engineers published a deeply flawed electrical engineering paper in a journal for meteorology and climatology. The paper is being used to mislead the public and political leaders. It has been referenced repeatedly on numerous blogs and publications.

4. A comment does not have to be perfect to have value. Even flawed comments can improve the quality of science by revealing new insights. In the discussion with Sovocool there may be errors on both sides of the discussion, but the overall conclusions are still valuable.

5. The authors, editors and Stanford president did not identify any errors in the final comment. Even if they did find errors, that does not justify suppressing the comment unless all points were flawed. The leaders of the AMS have yet to explain why they violated their published policy and suppressed this comment.