Faustian Bargains and the 80 Year Slow Motion Train Wreck

There are moments when abstract concepts become real, and about our survival. We can call these existential moments. I had my existential moment about global warming in 1971 when I heard Jerry Olson talk about the topic at a very informal gathering of people who worked for the ORNL-NSF Environmental Studies Project. Alvin Weinberg had his existential moment about the same subject at about the same time, and with Jerry Olsen initiating him as well. The same year Alvin Weinberg coined the phrase Faustian Bargain to describe the relationship between society and nuclear energy.

Weinberg first used the phrase "faustian bargain in a 1971 speech. In an 1972 Science article "Social Institutions and Nuclear Energy", Weinberg repeated the content of the 1971 speech. In the article Weinberg wrote,

We nuclear people have made a Faustian bargain with society. On the one hand, we offer -- in the catalytic nuclear burner (breeder reactor) -- an inexhaustable source of energy. Even in the short range, when we use ordinary reactors, we offer energy that is cheaper than energy from fossil fuel. Moreover, this source of energy, when properly handled, is almost nonpolluting. . . .

But the price that we demand of society for this magical energy source is both a vigilance and a longevity of our social institutions that we are quite unaccustomed to. In a way, all of this was anticipated during the old debates over nuclear weapons. . . . . In a sense, we have established a military priesthood which guards against inadvertent use of nuclear weapons, which maintains what a priori seems to be a precarious balance between readiness to go to war and vigilance against human errors that would precipitate war . . .

It seems to me (and in this I repeat some views expressed very well by Atomic Energy Commissioner Wilfred Johnson) that peaceful nuclear energy probably will make demands of the same sort on our society, and possibly of even longer duration.

Weinberg repeated the same message a year later. In the conclusion to his November 1972 Nuclear Safety speech, Weinberg stated,

We nuclear people have made a Faustian bargain with society. On the one hand, we offer - in the breeder reactor - an almost inexhaustible source of energy. Even in the short range, when we use ordinary reactors, we offer energy that is cheaper than energy from fossil fuel. Moreover, this source of energy, when properly handled, is almost nonpolluting. Whereas fossil fuel burners must emit oxides of carbon and nitrogen, and probably will always emit some sulfur dioxide, there is no intrinsic reason why nuclear systems must emit any pollutant - except heat and traces of radioactivity.

Yet Weinberg saw that the benefits of nuclear energy came at a cost,

the price that we demand of society for this magical energy source is both a vigilance and a longevity of our social institutions to which we are quite unaccustomed.

Yet this contention has turned out to be untrue. As I pointed out in a post on this speech, by the time Weinberg delivered it, the molten-salt reactor technology which he had led Oak Ridge scientists in developing was off the table. but that promise has not been forgotten. Yet Weinberg still knew of the unique promise of molten-salt reactor technology.

What exactly was Weinberg getting at with his Faustian Bargain? There are in fact two Faustian Bargains known to literature. The first, found in Marlow's play the Tragic History of Doctor Faistus and Gounod's Opera Faust. In both Faust signs an agreement to obtain the services of Méphistophélès' master Lucifer, during his life, in exchange for the surrender of his soul after death. At the end of the story, Méphistophélès collects on Faust's bargain, dragging him down to hell.

In Marlow's Doctor Faustus, Faustus says,

Si peccasse negamus, fallimur, et nulla est in nobis veritas;

If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and there
is no truth in us. Why, then, belike we must sin, and so
consequently die:
Ay, we must die an everlasting death.
What doctrine call you this, Che sera, sera,
What will be, shall be? Divinity, adieu!
These metaphysics of magicians,
And necromantic books are heavenly;
Lines, circles, scenes, letters, and characters;
Ay, these are those that Faustus most desires.
O, what a world of profit and delight,
Of power, of honour, and omnipotence,
Is promis'd to the studious artizan!
All things that move between the quiet poles
Shall be at my command: emperors and kings
Are but obeyed in their several provinces;
But his dominion that exceeds in this,
Stretcheth as far as doth the mind of man;
A sound magician is a demigod:
Here tire, my brains, to gain a deity.

This surely does not express the ambition which Weinberg had in mind in his 1971 speech. The end of that Faust is depicted in Gounod's Opera Faust:

There is another Faust tradition, this one linked to the great German poet, thinker and statesman Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. In a paper written shortly before his death in 2006, Weinberg made explicit his intent to refer to Goethe's Faust.

In Goethe’s play, Faust is assisted and put up to mischief in his endeavors by the devil. This assistance is arranged over the course of the discussion of a number of contract- like arrangements: In the Prologue, Mephistopheles (the devil) suggests to God an experiment with a virtuous human being named Faust. Mephistopheles claims that it will be easy for him to make Faust forget his striving in return for an easy life on Earth. God, reluctantly, agrees to the experiment, knowing that Mephistopheles will fail in his attempts.

Interestingly, Mephistopheles does not explicitly suggest to God a deal that goes beyond Faust’s death. This would be too irreverent towards his master, even for Mephistopheles. God, on his part, does not enter into a contract with anyone else, this would mean to step down to the level of the contract partner. So this preliminary discussion is not a bet or bargain, but in a sense it is part of the ‘‘Faustian Bargain’’.

In Part I of Goethe’s play, Mephistopheles offers Faust a bargain similar to the one that the bridge builders and other innovators were thought to have accepted. His offer, however, is not the experiment he has discussed with God. Mephistopheles suggests to Faust a bargain, his services here on Earth in return for Faust’s soul . . . .

Faust accepts Mephistopheles’s services, leaving open, however, his fate after his death. Instead he offers to make a bet:

Weinberg points our that Mephistopheles encourages Faust to work for greater Energy and speed. The Goal of Goethe's Faust is clearly that of the 18th century Enlightenment,

The restless striving for more power and success derived from knowledge, energy, and other resources; along with the striving for unattainable perfection in love and virtue; are the main themes of Faust II. This Faustian drive is described as an essential element of human existence. It creates wars and suffering, but it is essentially human in the Faustian sense to live for continuous progress.

In Goethe's play, Faust says,

If e’er upon my couch, stretched at my ease, I’m found, Then may my life that instant cease!
Me canst thou cheat with glozing wile
Till self-reproach away I cast, –
Me with joy’s lure canst thou beguile Let that day be for me the last!
Be this our wager!

Weinberg agrees with the economist, Hans-Christoph Binswanger, that Faust's bargain

is that Mephistopheles helps Faust to overcome time, to become immortal by being part of eternal progress, while Faust promises never to rest and never to pause striving for further progress . . . .

In the end Faust’s soul is not left to the devil. The angels, carrying Faust’s remains up into heaven, sing:
"For he whose strivings never cease, Is ours for his redeeming."

Boito depicts the death of Goethe's Faust.

If Weinberg undersood the Faustian Bargain interns of Goethe's Faust, then what was Weinberg striving for? As I have often pointed out in 1971 Weinberg was striving for three things,

* Nuclear safety

* Control over CO2 emissions, which Weinberg understood threatened the future of humanity

* The Development of Thorium Breeding Molten Salt Reactor technology, which Weinberg believed would fulfill his first two goals

In all three goals, Weinberg faced protagonists, Congressman "Chet" Holifield and AEC Reactor Research Director Milton Shaw. Not long after he made the "Faustian Bargain Speech, Weinberg was told by Congressman Hollifeld, that it was time for him to go.

I have attempted to explored the background of Weinberg's Firing on Nuclear Green. Alvin Weinberg was involved in a conflict between National Laboratory Scientists, and the leadership of the Washington DC nuclear elite, including Congressman Chet Hollifeld and AEC Reactor Research Director Milton Shaw. In addition to disagreements over the safety of conventional reactors, the conflict for Weinberg involved a radical approach to reactor safety, which would solve many conventional reactor safety concerns. That approach was embodied in the development of the Molten Salt Reactor. Undoubtedly, what Weinberg had learned from Jerry Olsen in 1971, added to his motivation in the struggle for Nuclear Safety and the development of Molten Salt Reactor Breeding technology. Weinberg's Faustian bargain had as its goal the rescue of humanity, from the consequences of a quest for energy.

During the struggle Washington DC elite were telling the scientists, further striving toward nuclear safety is unnecessary. Weinberg was responding, we have made a deal with society and our side of the deal is not yet complete, and indeed it may take a long time and a lot of hard work to complete. The benefit of the deal to society is a low cost abundant supply of energy. The benefit to scientist are twofold, first they get to explore and to know the secrets of nature. Secondly they get the respect of their fellows for benefiting society by striving to fulfill the bargain.

In 2006 Alvin Weinberg explained,

The image has been used and the phrase quoted over and over again, both because the term was well chosen and because, very often, it has been misunderstood.

The two elements of the Faustian Bargain were both present in the early nuclear enterprise: the temptation of the easy, carefree life it offered (electricity too cheap to be metered), and the bargain it struck (continuous striving was promised). The service electricity provides could be used to pursue progress in all kinds of ways, as long as the obligation was kept to look after the nuclear waste (and, for that matter, other fissionable material as well). If the obligation were shirked, it could, in an extreme scenario, mean the end of humankind.

Weinberg added,

The phrase Faustian Bargain was also misunderstood. The same year that Weinberg’s paper appeared in Science (1972), John W. Gofman wrote an article in which he painted a sketch of what was needed, institutionally, to keep nuclear waste safe (Gofman, 1972). Not only was there a need, in Gofman’s view of the Faustian Bargain, for a perpetual institution (like a priesthood) to look after these wastes, but also everyone had to bow to the whims and wishes of this institution. In other popular publications, the Faustian Bargain was presented not as a human condition, but as a devilish complot by one group of humans to enslave the rest.
The term Faustian Bargain has been used during the subsequent years to characterize many ‘technological fixes’ of immediate problems with potential negative long-term consequences.

Fulfilling the Weinberg's Faustian bargain meant solving all of the problems associated with nuclear power, so that nuclear energy could be made available to the masses without any reason for fear. It also meant solving the CO2 emissions problem.

Weinberg's critics, including Ralph Nader and Amory Lovins were afflicted with a paranoid fear of nuclear power. Even though Weinberg held out the possibility of safe, clean, cheap and peaceful nuclear power as the goal of the Faustian bargain, Nader and Lovins weren't ready to buy the vision. Even if Weinberg's vision could be fulfilled, they weren't buying.

Instead Lovins and Nader held out Fustian bargains of their own. Nether seemed to have experienced the deep existential encounter with Global Climate change that Weinberg had, and both had confused visions of its remedy. Lovins envisioned coal as a non-nuclear bridge to soft energy and thus preferable substitute for nuclear power, that would gradually be replaced by soft energy around 2020. Lovins thus was no opponent of coal to generate electrical power in practice. Thus if anyone ever made a Faustian bargain, Amory Lovins did. Armory Lovins, who was warned about what he was doing by Alvin Weinberg, sold his soul for lumps of coal, and now has lost his soul completely and forever. Lovins soft path failed to offer a path to a carbon free existence, and seemingly never will.

Ralph Nader was always more concerned about the fate of coal miners than about what coal was doing to the environment. Nader's Faustian bargain involved the sale of his soul for government regulation of business and industry. Nader triumphed when General Motors and Chrysler nearly went bankrupt, but his Faustian bargain brought him presidential campaigns that lead to failure in his life's ambition. And for his country, Ralph Nader's crusades have not brought a low carbon non-nuclear coal substitute, and I wonder if he really cares.

Many so called environmentalists, including Ralph Nader, Amory Lovins, David Roberts, Mark Z. Jacobson, and Joe Romm simply ignore problems with "Green energy" solutions. In 2007 I had something of a one sided dialogue with David Roberts, via the comment section of the Grist blog. Roberts relentlessly championed the green technological fixs, and was convinced that renewables and efficiency offered all of the solutions, even when other people raised seemingly raeasonable objections. When those renewable fixes did not make sense, Roberts took big leaps of faith, telling us about miraculous solutions to all the renewable technology problems. I learned quite a lot from the discussion with Roberts, but unfortunately Roberts was not willing to learn anything from me.

Roberts pulled out all of the stops on Green objections to nuclear power. I responded to his objections by pointing out both flaws in Roberts statements of facts, and in his reasoning, as well as the advantages offered by molten salt reactors. Roberts responded by raising the question of scalability and I responded by pointing to the potential for mass production of small MSRs which could be built very rapidly and in large numbers in factors. Roberts appearantly had never heard of factories, and did not understand my point.

I knew about Molten Salt Reactors because my father had worked on the development of the technology over a 20 year period of time at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. Because he was working under contract, neither he nor I stood to gain any money from MSR development. My father had also made a significant contribution to the development of conventional Light Water Reactors.

I did know enough from my father to know that he considered the MSR to be a remarkable reactor that offered many potential advantages over conventional nuclear power plants. He had found working with Molten Salt Reactors difficult and challenging, and he had made significant contributions to the development of MSR technology.

MSR were safe, could, at least in theory, completely eliminate the problem of nuclear waste, would not increase proliferation, and in factories could be built in very large numbers over a short period of time.

There were significant problems with with the Faustian bargain Roberts offered. The United States Government has had efficiency improvement programs for over 30 years, and while these programs have produced small but steady improvements in efficiency, they have not produced the sort of improvements Roberts envisioned. Roberts did not offer good reasons for expecting future rapid improvements in efficiency. Secondly, economist note that big increases in efficiency sometimes produce increased use of energy. In some instances the increase may be greater than the energy saved, while in other instances the increase only partially offsets the energy savings. Thus efficiency gains, although desirable, may not constitute the sort of energy panacea which the Green Faustian bargain claims efficiency to be.

By 2011 the goals of the Green Faustian Bargain are receiving more and more. It has been repeatedly pointed out to Amory Lovins, that the predictions which he made with respect to the soft energy path, have failed to come to pass. In 2011m human energy needs are still wedded to coal, and to other fossil fuels, contrary to Lovins' predictions. Amory Lovins 1976 claim for coal use in the soft path.
Coal use 2001 to 2010, the reality that Amory Lovins refuses to acknowledge.

The 80 year slow motion train wreck

I use the phrase Slow Motion Train Wreck, to describe the inexorable advance of time from the 1971 Spring day when I first heard Jerry Olsen talk about Carbon Dioxide Emissions and Anthropogenic Climate Change. 50% of the time we had to set things aright then has been lost. We seem unwilling to make the commitment to the "Faustian Bargain" our energy
desires requires of us, if we want to survive. We must strive for a post-carbon energy order. If we are unwilling to strive, we will not survive as a civilization.

In a recent Forbes interview with Michael Tobias (MT), University of California-Berkeley Environmental Scientist Dr. John Harte laid out the dangers:

the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), summarizes the results of these calculations and concludes that under “business as usual” trends in fossil fuel consumption, by 2050 the planet will on average have warmed between 3 and 8 degrees Fahrenheit. . . . hat warming is the result of both the direct heat-trapping effect of greenhouse gases and certain feedback processes. The latter will increasingly occur in response to the direct warming, causing further warming. As polar and glacial ice melts and snow cover decreases, temperatures will rise as less sunlight is reflected by our planet and more is absorbed by the remaining, darker surfaces. . . . There are many of us in the scientific community who believe that any number of important feedback processes are not being accounted for in the current IPCC projections. For example, from ice core data informing us about temperatures and atmospheric greenhouse gas levels over the past million years, we know that when the planet warms a little from any cause, it responds by releasing from the land and sea to the atmosphere huge amounts of carbon dioxide and methane. These greenhouse gases contribute to further warming. Because this process is not reflected in current climate projections, we can expect that there will be further emissions from our soils and our oceans. These will create additional warming beyond what IPCC currently projects. . . . The evidence for these additional feedback effects is starting to pour in. Rising methane emissions from warming tundra soils and waters are being observed, and field research shows that warmed temperate ecosystems release additional carbon dioxide to the atmosphere.

Forest damage from wildfires and bark beetle infestation, both of which are triggered by warming, will also result in the carbon stored in trees flowing to the atmosphere as carbon dioxide. By some estimates the additional warming could raise mid-century temperatures by as much as 11 degrees Fahrenheit.

For most people on Earth, the threat is not get real, and climate change skeptics deny the very possibility that there is any danger to our well being. The Climate change skeptics are offering a Faustian Bargain along Christopher Marlow's lines, "Sell your soul to the temptation to take it easy. Don't pay attention to the voices of scientists that warn of the dangers of climate change". They are willing to sell their souls for any energy headless of what the bargain will cost them. They are assured by Talk radio that Anthropogenic Global Warming is not real, it is a Liberal hoax. Or they are assured by Amory Lovins and Greenpeace that nuclear energy is a deadly illusion that will not rescue us, we will be saved by efficiency and renewable energy.

We have warnings that post-carbon renewable energy plans are doomed to failure, There are enormous problems with solar and wind as a major human energy source. Even if these problems can eventually be overcome by science, it is unlikely that that will occur before 2050 when scientists like Dr. Harte say that we face big and in many respects very unpleasant environmental changes.

But what of the idea that we can save ourselves through efficiency. In 2008 Robert Bryce laid out the case against the efficiency rhetoric. In another article, Bryce was extremely critical of Energy Guru Amory Lovins for his prophecies about the contributions that efficiency can make to solving the carbon problem. Lovins promised a detailed response to Bryce's criticisms, but has never provided that response. Renewable advocates are notorious for not answering their critics.

In a response to a pro-reneables comment, I received on Nuclear Green, I noted,

Anonymous, I do not put great stock in NREL (National Renewable Energy Laboratory0 studies, because they tend to pass on Renewable Industry propaganda claims as if they were facts, and consistently downplay the bad news in their data. For example, the latest Eastern Interconnect study clearly demonstrated that rising wind penetration would lead to increased electrical costs, but this was not one of the conclusions that was featured in the press release, or in the executive summary. A preliminary finding of the Western interconnect study of wind and solar has been that renewables will primarily displace CCGTs, while leaving coal largely untouched. Thus the carbon mitigation of high penetration wind and solar was much less than would be assumed if we did not have that information, but the NREL study failed to draw the obvious conclusions about the relative carbon mitigation costs of of renewables verses nuclear. I am not impressed by the 30 GWs of German PV. The capacity factor of German PV is likely to be under 10%. That means that the 30 GWs of PV capacity will probably produce under 3 GW years of electricity every year. Displaced generators are likely to be CCGTs, and German cloud conditions will likely requite a large number of OCGTs to be kept spinning. With the looming shutdown of German nuclear plants, the carbon emissions from the operations of of the German electrical system are likely to rise rather than fall. Thus we must consider the opportunity costs of the German FIT. What Germany will have is a hugely expensive electrical system that will almost certainly produce more CO2 than it does now. If PV farms are as cheap to operate as you claim why do they need such huge subsidies?

Thus the Faustian bargain offered by anti-nuclear environmentalists, like Amory Lovins, does not really lead to heaven. Instead it seems to lead straight to an energy hell, with little energy to cope with increasingly challenging environmental conditions.

The situation we face, a disastrous change in climate caused by human-carbon based energy sources, best be described as a slow motion train wreck. From 1971 when I first learned of AGW till 2050, the date which climate scientists say is the cut off point for avoiding, serious, long term consequences, consequences which I call the train wreck, is 80 years. Hence the 80 year slow motion train wreck.

In a review of "NON-NUCLEAR FUTURES: The case for an ethical energy strategy" by Amory B. Lovins and John H. Price, published in Energy policy in December, 1976, Alvin Weinberg pointed to a Faustian bargain Lovins was offering his readers and society,

Despite its title, the book is not concerned with non-nuclear futures. The reader of a book so named is entitled to get from the authors a reasoned description of a feasible non-nuclear future. The authors excuse this omission with the assertion (p159), 'To show that a policy is mistaken does not oblige the analyst to have an alternative policy.' But this is inadequate. This is not dealing with a hypothetical issue, but a real one. It is not enough to point out the deficiencies of nuclear energy; one must deal with the situation that would arise if Lovins and price were successful in their onslaught: should the society indeed turn away from nuclear energy, what then?

Here Alvin Weinberg exposes Amory Lovins' Faustian bargain with our society. Weinberg Ferrets out Lovins' fundamental assumption about energy and society,

(p xxi), 'Low-energy futures can (but need not) be normative and pluralistic, whereas high-energy futures are bound to be coercive and to offer less scope for social diversity and individual freedom.

Weinberg raised a problem with Lovins' low-energy, high freedom claim, by pointing to an inevitable tradeoff between energy and time. The more energy we have, Weinberg argued, the more freedom we have to control our time. Weinberg pointed to a truth problem in Lovins' argument

So much of the argument is at the border of Science, or even trans-scientific, that one cannot prove the authors to be wrong, any more than one can prove the nuclear advocates to be wrong.

Weinberg put his finger on the greatest single environmental flaw of Lovins' argument, his failure to identify CO2 emissions from energy as a major environmental issue, and his willingness to accept carbon emitting coal as a substitute for nuclear energy. Weinberg wrote,

the authors regard net energy analysis as a convenient device for casting nuclear power in an unfavorable light, a feat they attempt to accomplish by ignoring significant comparisons, - nuclear and non=nuclear of the same doubling time and relative effects of heat release and CO2 release.

In response to Lovins recommending a coal burning bridge between the period when nuclear power was considered acceptable and the time when all energy would come from renewable resources, Weinberg asked,

Can we really ignore CO2 during the coal burning fission free bridge?

Lovins countered that he

worried about the climate effect of the release of CO2

but that nuclear power would not prevent CO2 emissions from high coal use. Clearly then Lovins offered a Faustian bargain with his anti-nuclear energy scheme. In 2010, long after a process which Lovins forecasted would have begun to shift human society from fossil fuels to renewables, coal use for energy continues to rise. If Lovins worried in 1976 about the climate effects of CO2 emissions, he did not worry sufficiently. Lovins Faustian bargain put society clearly on track for a climate disaster, and in 2010 Lovins still has not figured out how to avoid the disaster without nuclear energy. The Lovins Faustian bargain is still in force, and until we are willing to listen to Alvin Weinberg, we will continue to follow Lovins to perdition.

I offer two serenades for those who do not wish to strive to avoid the train wreck:

Greenpeace's [r]evolutionary energy Failure: Part III, Where will the energy come from?

This post was to be the third part of a Critique of Energy [R]evolution, a Greenpeace comprehensive simi-post-carbon energy plan. Simi because the Greenpeace plan included the use of natural gas, a carbon based fossil fuel, but one which produces less carbon dioxide when burned. But beyond that Part I of my review of the Greenpeace Energy [R]evolution plan noted that the Energy [R]evolution plan opened the door to continued coal use after 2040 in order to maintain grid stability. In Part II of my review I considered the very unscientific concept of clean and dirty energy and noted that at least two renewable energy sources touted by Energy [R]evolution had the production of toxic pollutants associated with them.

There is an illustration called Figure 0.1 in the German Soace Agency written report Energy [r]evolution. That report claims that the U.S. can, "with off-the-shelf technology, cut CO2 emissions from current levels by 23 percent by 2020 and 85 percent by 2050". Now I regard the goal of decreasing CO2 emissions by 85% in 2050 as whole laudable. Laudable, but not easy to achieve, and very very difficult to achieve without some breakthroughs in nuclear technology. I must also add that none of the breakthroughs seem to represent insurmountable challenges. And the reward for a commitment to seek the breakthroughs is a sustainable future of abundant low cost electrical power.

What is interesting about figure 0.1 is that it shows that by 2050 almost all energy will come from two sources "Efficiency and Renewables". It would appear from Figure 4.11 that by 2050 energy [r]evolution anticipates that energy demand will be at least cut in half by "efficiency." I will defer discussing efficiency until another post and concentrate on renewables. I have already explored two more reliable renewable energy sources - biomass and geothermal - and pointed to significant problems with both.

Biomass and geothermal might be considered minor renewables, while solar and wind are the main show. One practice of energy [r]evolution that creates confusion is the choice to describe energy sources in terms of installed capacity. This causes few problems when coal or nuclear because installed capacity signals an availability almost all of the time. Natural gas capacity is not available all of the time, simply because there is not enough gas to keep the gas generators running all of the time. Even if there were producing base load electricity with natural gas is very expensive. Still natural gas has the potential to produce electricity on demand. Unfortunately several renewable sources lack the ability to produce energy on demand. These include wind. photovoltaics, and solar thermal electrical generation sources. This limitation of common renewables is a significant handicap. The inability of major renewables options to produce energy on demand requires serious attention. To believe that the handicaps of intermittent electrical generating sources can be easily overcome and therefore they can be counted on as stable base energy sources for the future is simply unrealistic.

We will start with wind. The [r]evolutionaries expect that between now and 2020 there will be a great boom in wind with installed wind capacity increasing from 31 gWs in 2010 too 258 gWs in 2020, after that the pace of wind expansion is expected to level off with another 100 gWs added by 2030 and then a little more than 40 gWs more by 2050. We have remarkably little information about this. For example, we do not know how much of the wind capacity will be off shore and how much will be land based. Again we do not know where the land based windmills will be located. Lacking such information it would be impossible to come up with even approximate answers to important questions such as how much power could installed wind capacity be expected to produce at any given time. Jason at Pronuclear Democrat has pointed out that the term "capacity factor" is never used in the Energy [r]evolution discussion, so we don't have a measure of how useful the wind generated power would be. And indeed in order to be very useful wind generated electricity would have to be available when consumers want it.

Consumers generally want electricity during their 16 waking hours hours, while electrical demand drops during their sleeping hours for some mysterious reason. Curiously more wind generated electricity is produced during the night than during the day, and over much of the United States less windmills produce less power during the summer than during the winter. Wind power output can drop dramatically on very hot summer days, and ironically during very cold periods during the winter. Even wind advocates acknowledge that wind power is not dispatchable. It cannot be delivered on demand. Rather than focus on the weakness of wind, they insist on focusing on the cost of wind generated electricity when it is produced. This is unfortunate because the wind may be blowing between steadily between 11:00 PM and 5:00 AM delivering unwanted power at 5 cents a kWh, but not delivering power between 11:00 AM and 5:00 PM when gas powered generators produce power at 11 cents a kWh.

Given the lack of dispatchablity with wind, some wind advocates suggest ann adjustment in human behavior as accodomadations to the limitations of wind. For example staying up past midnight to do laundry, running air conditioners at night to chill houses far below a comfortable temperature and then shutting off the air conditioner during the daytime, trusting that the very cold house will not heat up too fast.

In an earlier part of this study I noted that the energy [r]evolution plan projected a growth in natural gas generation capacity at the same time it projected a growth in wind capacity. This was not an accident. Wind requires dispatachable back up - load leveling, and reserve generation capacity. Who are you going to call on for that. Natural gas of course. Hence the tail wags the dog. Natural gas becomes clean energy, because no renewable energy form is going to supply sufficient backup for wind in 2020, and so fictions are introduced about the potential for efficiency and the "cleaness" of natural gas.

Nuclear power must be quickly eliminated from the energy [r]evolution schemes because nuclear power competes directly with wind overnight. And the old reactors, competing with wind, pump out electricity at a lower cost than wind does.

In order for wind to truly replace nuclear power surplus electricity from wind generators would have to be stored and dispatched A couple of thousand wind generators would have to be hooked up to batteries, even more if energy was to be stored in pumped storage or compressed air facilities. The whole windmills storage system would end up costing more than new nuclear power plants would.

Energy [r]evolution ignores the question of how much its wind component will cost. Indeed the entire issues of renewables cost is remarkably hedged not just by the Energy [r]evolution report, but in the entire realm of discourse about renewables, although we are repeatedly assures how low cost it renewables are, and how the cost of renewables have dropped during the time it has taken you to read this post. Indeed if I don't stop writing soon the price of wind generators may drop to zero before I finish.

In the real world the price of wind generators has risen steadily since 2002, and it is hard to get at the price of wind generators. My most recent investigation suggested a price of about $2500 per kW installed during mid 2008, but my sampling technique was not scientific. Recently Jorge Barrera of MIT stated:

Many will argue that they are recuperating the cost of R&D, others that material cost have gone up, or that it's a sellers market, simply put to much demand. The fact is that current prices are about 3million a megawatts install that means that a 2MW turbine cost about 6M to put up. Now knowing about manufacturing and talking to the suppliers of equipments one can estimate that the real cost is about 1M/MW install.

. . . the 3M/MW does not include a warranty, that is extra and maintenance cost are a problem with this project so far, it is hard to find anyone in the business not worried about the raising maintenance cost of such systems.

The practicality of any scheme to deploy massive wind wind resources depends on the price of wind installations. Thus T. Boone Pickens announced last year that he planned to install 667 1.65 MW wind generators at an anticipated cost of around two billion dollars in two thousand eleven. How seriously should we take Pickens price quote? I would not think it has no value, but i would not make a bet on the price based on the Pickens quote either.

If we note that the price of wind installations has risen from $1000 per kW to $3000 per kW between 2002 and 2008, we have to acknowledge that there is an ongoing inflationary tend in the wind industry. A similar tend in the nuclear power industry has been noted, and is often mentioned by renewables advocates, while the inflation of renewables costs is seldom noted.

So how much would building 225 GWs or so of wind generating capacity by 2020 cost? If the price of wind generators does not rise between 2020, we are looking at $690 billion. I don't even want to think what it cost if the present inflationary trend were to continue. If the cost averaged twice the 2008 cost we are looking at 1.4 trillion dollars. That for a part time, non-dispatchable power source. Making wind more reliable could easily triple our cost.

Photovoltaics

Photovoltaics advocates frequently tell us how in a few short years the cost of PVs will be so cheap that it would be too cheap to meter. I am sorry the devil made me say that. There has been a steady drum beat for lower solar costs for some time, in fact for some time before I was born since 1942, Well I need to get myself under control. So lets look at this abstract dated the Journal of Materials Science, April 1983.

A study has been made of the possibility of producing ceramic substrates for low-cost solar cells by means of the simple technology of moulding by dry-pressing. . . . Even if this methodology has been applied on a laboratory scale, it is quite easy to automate it for industrial scale production.

Solar advocates keep telling us that the prices of solar voltaic modules are dropping like rocks. Joel Conkling and Michael Rogol claim

The decoupling of solar power prices from their underlying costs hides the low and rapidly falling cost structure of solar power. Today, the »true cost« of solar power is under 25¢ per kWh in most locations and is likely to reach 10¢ to 15¢ per kWh by 2010. This includes all costs of manufacturing and installing solar power systems from pre-silicon (i.e. TCS) to connected-installations without incentives or tax benefits.

Already, solar is at a cost level that makes it competitive with residential grid prices in the OECD's highest-priced markets. It is estimated that the cost of solar power is below the price of residential grid electricity for 5 to 10 percent of OECD consumption (200 to 400 TWh). This equates to 150 to 300 GW of solar power, compared to only 2.7 GW of solar cell/module production in 2006.

Over the next three years, it is expected that the typical fully-loaded cost of solar power will decrease at least 30 percent from $3.60 per W in 2006 to $2.50 per W. In consequence, by 2010, the cost of solar will be below the price of grid electricity for at least 50 percent of OECD residential demand, equivalent to around 1,500 GW of solar power. This is much larger than the 15 GW of cell/module production PHOTON Consulting anticipates for 2010

Solarbuzz, which is a source of information for people who are in the PV business, is perhaps more realistic.

Solar Electricity Prices are today, around 30 cents/kWh, which is 2-5 times average Residential electricity tariffs.

There is no doubt that the cost of installed solar PVs have dropped some over the last decade, but the Christian Science Monitor recently told us that is not all there is to the story:

Unsubsidized, solar energy still can't compete in most energy markets. The pay-back period is too long. Reports of more efficient solar panels are helping reduce costs but about half of the expense for solar is still borne by taxpayers.

Some advocates want Congress to commit to $420 billion in solar subsidies – nearly the same cost to build the Interstate Highway System. This might allow solar to reach price parity with other major energy sources within a decade.

And of course the problem of the solar PV story is that PVs only provide on average about 20% of their name tag power in always sunny Southern California, on their best days. If you are looking at solar performance in other parts of the country, on bad days, it gets much worse. While you do get some power from PVs on cloudy days, You still need more PVs or other power systems to make things work. Now how much electricity do you need? Well the average American household uses 6000 kWh of electricity a year, but in addition it uses enough natural gas to equal another 12,000 kWh of electrical energy. If the use of natural gas is to be replaced in the American Home, it will almost certainly be replaced by electricity, although non-electrical solar technologies could play a role. In particular solar technology could play a significant role in water and space heating. And in addition there are more efficient electrical options - air source and ground source heat pumps. Let us assume that we are going to make our home more energy efficient, and use solar heat for water and space heating. Well not entirely because we may need to heat water and our house at night. Lets say that our post carbon energy efficient house cuts its needs 12,000 kWh of electricity a year. This represents an efficiency gain of one third of the former total energy use. We are going to average nearly 33 kWh per day. This means that on average if we assume Southern California sunlight standards, we would need solar PV modules with the name plate capacity of 7.3 kWs to provide all of our electricity. In addition we will need to provide space somewhere for our solar hot water heater and possibly our solar space heating unit. Clouds decrease PV efficiency. Were we to move from Southern California to my former home town of Oak Ridge in East Tennessee, however, we would find that ourselves confronted with 158 cloudy days a year, and another 97 partially cloudy days. PV can be expected to provide less power in the winter than in the summer. However, heat on summer sunlight heats raises the temperature of solar cells, decreasing their efficiency. Dust on the surface of solar cells decrease their efficiency. Tracking the sun would increase solar efficiency, but adding a solar tracking system increases costs. Electrical inverters used to transform DC solar electricity to AC, decrease PV efficiency. Thus when PV advocates tell us that a certain PV price will make PVs competitive we have to ask if the calculation includes all of those factors that decreases PV efficiency.

Heat is an especially difficult problem for PV, and one approach to making PV's more efficient is to use water to cool them. It has been suggested that PVs and solar hot water heating can be combined. This is no doubt can be done, but is it cost effective? In localities like Oak Ridge clouds would not only decrease power production, but hot water production as well. According to Solarbuzz a 1kWp System will produce approximately:

· 1800 kWh/year in Southern California
· 850 kWh/year in Northern Germany

We need to know a great deal more about PV inefficiencies before we can judge when PVs are likely to reach the point of economic viability. We do know however that the PV cheerleaders know far to little to offer us any insight.

Finally it should be noted that PVs like windmills must be connected to storage systems, in order to dispatch electricity when it is demanded by customers. It would appear that the same consideration we encounter with wind storage apply to PV storage as well, and as a consequence PVs will

There is little doubt that PV with storage today and at least for the near term future will be far more expensive than nuclear power by kW of 24 hour a day generating capacity.

Solar Thermal
One of the technical problems with PV power is that sunlight heats. PV cells loose their effency as their internal temperature rises. Thus an alternative approach would be to capture solar energy via heat rather than producing electricity directly from sunlight. This can be done by heating water with sunlight. Solar hot water heaters provide useful electrical savings in sunny areas, and would be extremely worthwhile investments in places like southern California. A second use of heat from sunshine would be for space heating. Again this would be most useful in sunny areas like California, and would be far less worthwhile in places like Oak Ridge, Tennessee.

Yet another use of solar heat would be to heat some liquid, water, oil, or liquid salt, until the boiling point of water is reached. Water would be heated above the boiling point, either by direct heating, or by passing through a heat exchange with another solar heated fluid. The steam is then used to drive turbines. An alternative system would be to heat a gas that would be intern provide working power for a Sterling Engine.

At this point I stopped working on the essay. Barry Brooks had just posted Solar Fraud on Brave New Climate. Solar Fraud is a review of the book ‘The Solar Fraud: Why Solar Energy Won’t Run the World“ by Howard Hayden, This was the first of several posts in which Brwve New Climate covered solar issues, and which made further analysis from me redundant. These pos includedPeter Lang's Solar Power Realities, and Solar Realities Addendum, Ted Trainer's Solar thermal questions, and a recent case study by Peter Morcombe, Solar Power in Florida. A separate post by Tom Blees, titled Germany - Crunched by the Numbers that focused on Solar power performance in Germany. Taken together these posts bring a powerful case against the Greenpeace position on Solar Thermal energy. So rather than complete my original plan review plan I will simply refer my readers to the Brave New Climate posts and their discussions which run to hundreds of comments.

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21st Century Nuclear Challenges: 1 Mass Deployment, C. Renewables

The 21st century nuclear challenges series looks at the challenges facing any plan to impliment any massive deployment of nuclear energy in 21st century America. In the first section of the series, Part A looked at the challenges posed by coal. A strong case can be made that any rational plan for energy in the 21st century United States will call for the elimination of coal as a major energy source. Part B of this first section looks at natural gas, and finds doubts that ambitious plans for expanding the natural gas supply can be realized. In addition the usefulness of natural gas as a carbon mitigation tool must be questioned. Thus the future value of natural gas as an energy/carbon mitigation tool cannot be determined at the present time. We now must turn to the potential of renewable energy sources, to replace carbon emitting fossil fuels.

In 2008, Google had a plan to solve our energy problems by 2030. The Google plan, to be charitable, was not very good. In fact had Google come up with a business plan of equivalent quality we would have been doing all of our searches on Yahoo and Bing. It would appear from googling "Google plan 2030" that the 2030 energy plan is not exactly a hot activity for google, and in terms of current Google 2030 activity, the plan is as dead as a doornail.

The Google plan relied on renewables and efficiency to replace fossil fuel energy sources, and indeed more efficiency than renewables. Now, like every true, red blooded American, I am a great believer in efficiency, but I do not believe that efficiency can replace coal fired electricity generating plants. It is just not going to happen. No doubt there were some very intelligent people at Google - Google reportedly has a lot of those - who realized that the 2030 plan would never work.

The 2030 plan claimed it could reduce

* Fossil fuel-based electricity generation by 88%
* Vehicle oil consumption by 44%
* Dependence on imported oil (currently 10 million barrels per day) by 37%
* Electricity-sector CO2 emissions by 95%
* Personal vehicle sector CO2 emissions by 44%
* US CO2 emissions overall by 49% (41% from today's CO2 emission level)

Fossil fuel generated electricity would be replaced by renewables including,

* 380 gigawatts (GW) wind: 300 GW onshore + 80 GW offshore
* 250 GW solar: 170 GW photovoltaic (PV) + 80 GW concentrating solar power (CSP)
* 80 GW geothermal: 15 GW conventional + 65 GW enhanced geothermal systems (EGS)

There are, to say the least, serious problems with this plan. First Solar and wind are not dispatchable, and thus you may not give you the electricity you want at the time you want it. The 380 GWs of wind seems to be quite a lot, but the Electricity Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) says, we cannot rely on more than 10% of our wind resources being available when we need them, and Texas has what is considered to be excellent wind resources. 380 GWs of wind resources seems quite a lot, but the National Renewable Energy Laboratory estimates that it would take 300 GWs of wind resources to supply 20% of American electricity. The 38 GWs of wind generated electricity that ERCOT says it can count on, would not provide Texas with enough electricity to keep all of its air conditioners running on some hot summer nights. 380 GWs of wind resources thus is not a lot. It would only in theory, however, experts that ERCOT
will tell you that the electrical output of all the wind generators in Texas can drop close to zero on some days. Solar PV and concentrated solar power just don't work at night.

Well what about Geothermal. There are two types of geothermal power. The first type relies on volcanic type underground heat resources. Pockets of molten magna, heat underground water in some areas. If you drill down far enough, say a mile, you can potentially tap into a source of super heated water. Pipe it to the surface, and it may flash to super heated steam, which can be used to drive turbines which can power electrical generators. Unfortunately most of the United States is volcano free, so the hot magna type geothermal source is not available in placed like East Tennessee where i live. There is a second type of geothermal power, called hot rocks geothermal. Hot rocks works by drilling down to where the rocks are really ho, say 20,000 feet under neath the surface. Pipe some water down and let the hot rocks heat it, then pipe it back up to the the surface, let it flash to steam, and run the steam though a turbo-generator. Unfortunately this type of geothermal power can cause earthquakes, and their development has largely stopped.

if you look at other renewable energy plans you see the same problems that we find in the Google plan. Al Gore proposed an energy plan in 2008. The Gore plan was similar to the Google plan only even more expensive ($5 trillion verses $4.4 trillion). The Greenpeace [r]evolution energy plan calls for 2030 goals of

* 355 GWs of wind generation capacity

* 200 GWs of PV capacity

* 55 GWs of Solar capacity

* 52 gWs of Geothermal capacity

* 79 GWs of biomass generating capacity.

But two other figures stand out in the Greenpease plans. First the Greenpeace plan calls for an increase in the dangerous, carbon emitting natural gas generating facilities of 95 gWs between 2010 and 2030. At the same time the Greenpeace plan calls for the shutting down of 88 GWs of carbon free generating capacity. Why would Greenpeace call for doing such a totally insane thing? Because the carbon free power plants are nuclear powered and Greenpeace hoes crazy when the word nuclear is uttered. Sp Greenpeace is prepared to replace a carbon free energy source with a carbon emitting source.

So how much will the Greenpeace plan cost? Greenpeace tells us,

The total investment required to achieve the Energy [R]evolution Scenario from 2005-2030 is just under $2.8 trillion,

This is almost half the Gore estimate, and about 2/3rds the Google cost estimate. One of the most outstanding qualities of Greenpeace is the capacity of its leadership to tell far fetched stories with straight faces.

it is clear that renewable energy solutions will be expensive, but how much can we rely on the estimates we get from renewable energy plans? The answer is very little.

A report from Israel, in the Jerusalem Post, gives us some insight. The story states,

Citing the fine print in a 2007 cabinet decision mandating 10 percent of electricity from renewable sources by 2020, the Treasury has launched a campaign to reevaluate the costs of alternative energy. . . .

According to calculations it presented at the ministerial meeting, a cost-effective feed-in tariff for renewable energy should be no higher than 40 agorot per kilowatt hour. The figure is based on a price of 28 agorot per kilowatt hour from coal, plus 12 agorot allocated for the cost of pollution from coal. . . .

No form of renewable energy – whether solar, wind, biomass or any other – is currently economically viable at 40 agorot per kilowatt hour.

No company could afford to produce renewable energy at that price. The new tariff for large solar fields which was announced last month, for instance, stands at NIS 1 per kilowatt hour. Wind tariffs are lower, but are still higher than 40 agorot. A feed-in tariff is the amount the state will pay to buy the electricity with a contract for at least 20 years.

One New Israeli shackle is the equivalent of $0.27. 40 agorot equals $0.11, or about the equivalent of typical electrical costs in the United States, It should be noted that the cost of energy storage or new transmission lines was not included in the Israeli renewable electricity cost estimates. So the real costs would be higher if Israel wanted to go to 24 hour a day electricity from renewable sources.

About a year ago, Tom Wynn a climate change and energy policy analyst at Cascade Policy Institute reported that Oregon ratepayers are getting socked by renewable drven electrical cost increases,

PGE is charging all of its customers a higher rate for the added renewable energy on the grid by charging 0.22 cents per kWh, or approximately $2.13 extra per month, for an average household. But this is not all; PGE has requested to raise rates an additional 7.4%, or approximately $6.70 more per month, for an average household. Part of this rate increase is due to the expansion of the Bigelow Canyon wind farm that will help meet legislative mandates.

A Center for Data Analysis report from the heritage Foundation found that a Renewable energy standard that

starts at 3 percent for 2012 and rises by 1.5 percent per year. This profile mandates a minimum of 15 percent renewable electricity by 2020, a minimum of 22.5 percent by 2025, and a minimum of 37.5 percent by 2035,

would quickly become very expensive. This EWS would,

* Raise electricity prices by 36 percent for households and 60 percent for industry;
* Cut national income (GDP) by $5.2 trillion between 2012 and 2035;
* Cut national income by $2,400 per year for a family of four;
* Reduce employment by more than 1,000,000 jobs; and
* Add more than $10,000 to a family of four’s share of the national debt by 2035.

CDA calculated that a RES would have a devistating economic impact on a typical middle class family of 4.

Clearly then renewable energy is going to carry a very high costs, and no plan yet advanced seems to offer a path to relief from the economic costs.

Texas Power Blackouts and Green Energy

My brother David was in his Greenville Texas home, talking with me on the telephone when a rolling blackout cut off our conversation. When we resumed the conversation, David mentioned that not only were there rolling power outages all over texas, but that natural gas shortages were popping up around the state. The two problems, I realized, were connected. It should first be noted that Texas power usage on Febuary 2, 2011 was high but far below Texas peak summer electrical use standards. True it was a winter use record. The previous high of 55,878 megawatts was set Jan. 8, 2010. On even of February 2, 2011 a winter peak use record of 56,334 MW was set. The ERCOT had access to sufficient generation capacity and had a deep history of responding to peak winter electrical demand.

ERCOT admitted that

more than 50 power units, capable of generating about 7,000 MW, were out of service.

ERCOT reports focused on larger coal fired power plants

* Luminant's 568-MW Unit 4 at the Sandow coal-fired power plant in Texas shut on February 2 after a feed water flow low suction alarm. The alarm was triggered by a faulty feed water flow transmitter line that froze. Luminant expected the unit to return later on February 2.

* Texas Municipal Power Authority's 470-MW Gibbons Creek coal plant in Texas shut on February 1 after the cold weather stressed many systems, including electronic level indicators and their transmitters. Specifically, the company said the drum liquid level indicators had frozen. TMPA said it was using heaters to unfreeze the affected systems but did not say when the unit would return.

But the average size of the units that had stopped producing electricity, 140 MWs, suggested that they were natural gas burners. And a story in The Fort Worth Star-Telegram pointed to natural gas,

Atmos had curtailed its supply of natural gas to industrial customers, including natural-gas-fired power plants, he said. Atmos did exactly as its protocol called for, he said, to make sure that residential and commercial users had enough gas pressure.

Troy Fraser, The Chairman of the Texas Senate Natural Resources Committee, Stated that

We didn't have enough gas pressure available to bring up the power plants, . . . In a high-volume usage, the first ones they cut off are the power plants.

Well that tells the story then. Some coal powered units shut down for reasons that were related to the effect of cold on equipment. Normally their backup would come from natural gas fired generators, but natural gas units were experiencing forced shutdowns too. But what about theTexas supplyb of renewable energy? According to the Lubock Avalanche Journal,

Wind generators apparently do not work as well when it is cold. There were enough areas in Texas on Tuesday where the night was clear and cold and the wind dropped, shutting down generating capacity apparently quite rapidly.

While wind generation of electricity was high during the hours of 5 AM to 7 AM on February 2, wind generator output had dropped by the time the blackout reached my brothers house. In addition the windmills are a long way away from the Texas cities where there were rolling blackouts, and 30% to 35% 0f the wind generated electricity generated was lost during its transmission to those cities. So if wind did not rescue Texas on Tuesday Morning, where did the state find help? According to the Dallas Morning News,

Mexico agreed to transmit 280 megawatts of electricity from the border cities of Nuevo Laredo, Reynosa and Piedras Negras, . . .

So renewables were of little help during the blackout, and natural gas, touted by renewable advocates as the the clean energy solution to the problem of renewable intermittent gaps in the electrical supply, turned out to be another weak link in the generation chain. Hence we had more proof, if we needed it, that renewable energy can't cut the mustard.

Update: Rod Adams has a complimentary post that deals with the role of nuclear power in providing electricity to the ERCOT grid this week. Need less to say the reactors did not let Texas Electrical consumers down.

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The Renewable Plan A and the Nuclear Plan B

My anonymous pro-renewables commentator advocated nuclear power as the Plan B for renewables advocates. His argument is in effect that renewable advocates, are betting the farm on low cost renewable generated electricity, unless they have a back up plan. While he and I do not agree about the extent of the risk involved in the renewable gamble, we agree that there is a risk, and the belief that renewables can be both low priced and reliable, and that they can be deployed fast enough to control global carbon emissions by 2050. There are plenty of reasons for skepticism about this belief. So much so that we must ask our energy advocating friends, if they are really interested in a rational approach to energy, or if they wish to resolve energy issues through faith. My view is that faith might get you to heaven, but on Earth it will not provide you with warmth and light on a cold but windless winter night in East Tennessee.

Renewables advocates, like David Roberts of Grist, when challenged with the uncertainties of renewables, have respond with the following dodges:
1. We will get electricity from non-renewable backups on the Grid.
This means of course that we are still going to be burning quite a lot of fossil fuels to keep electricity flowing through what is suppose to be a post carbon grid.

2. We will build pump storage facilities to back up wind generation. Pump storage facilities are expensive, locations are difficult to find in high wind areas, and pump storage may fail with catastrophic consequences.

3. We can use compressed air energy storage with both wind and solar generators. CAES is very inefficient, and current CAES systems require the burning of natural gas. Thus CAES is both expensive and not exactly carbon neutral.

4. We can back up with batteries. But battery backup is expensive,and it would take a huge amount of battery - or for that matter CAES or pump storage back up to tide us over during a worst case renewables scenario. A worst case reneweables scenario for wind be a series of several windless days over much of the United States. The worst case scenario for solar might involve huge multiday dust storms in the Southwest, or the sort of winter storms such as those currently (December 26, 2009) sweeping the American mid-section.

5. We can build lots of windmills over a large area, enough to to compensate for localized wind patterns. But a huge number of redundant windmills will be very expensive and we would end up with a huge and hugely expensive grid expansion to move electricity from the innumerable wind farms required to make wind reliable to the electricity hungry consumers.

6. We could build redundant solar capacity over a wide area. But a huge number of redundant solar facilities will also be very expensive and we would end up with a huge and hugely expensive grid expansion to move electricity from the innumerable solar required to make solar reliable to the electricity hungry consumers. Plus the sun still does not shine at night.

7. Solar thermal advocates will counter that solar energy can be used to heat liquid salt, and that the heat can then be drawn on at night to provide generate electricity. But to provide enough heat to provide round the clock electricity on long winter nights, solar thermal gathering fields need to be tripled or quadrupled. This redundancy will make round round the clock solar thermal power extremely expensive.

8. Renewable advocates point to geothermal power. But natural geothermal resources are limited to a relatively few areas, and the "hot rocks" approach poses an earth quake risk. Furthermore, the "hot rocks" do not qualify under many definitions of sustainable energy, as a sustainable resource.

There is ample reason then to question the possibility of deriving low cost, reliable electricity from renewable sources on the massive scale required by 21st century society. Many renewable advocates argue that energy efficiency, by itself, will so lower energy and electrical demand, that efficiency can will lower electrical consumption demands. But efficiency does not replace carbon based generation capacity, with electricity generated by post-carbon sources. Nor does efficiency compensated for the unreliability of renewable generated electricity. In addition nothing would prevent reaping the advantages of efficiency along side a non-renewable nuclear approach to electricity generation.

Many renewable advocates claim that a smart grid will compensate for the instability of a renewables based grid. But a smart grid cannot solve the problems based on long term wide scale generation outages that are possible with renewable sourced electricity. Smart grids, by themselves are not electrical generators. In addition smart grid management systems are vulnerable to sabotage by hackers. Sabotaging an enemies smart grid, may replace the guided rocket delivered nuclear bomb, as the new ultimate weapon.

Thus renewable generation plans carry with them a high degree of uncertainty. But nuclear power offers the possibility of generating large amounts of low cost, electricity, and given a modest investment would be sustainable for billions of years. Many but by no means all renewable advocates will object to to the Nuclear Plan B on a number of ground.
1. Nuclear energy is too dangerous. Reactors can blow up like bombs and kill millions of people. Reactors cannot blow up like bombs, old reactors have been modified to improve their safety, and current reactor designs are much safer than the modified older designs. Even safer reactors are possible, if we are not satisfied with the safety of current reactor designs.

2. Nuclear reactors create a huge amount of deadly, highly radioactive waste, that will pose radiations hazards to anyone who gets within a hundred miles of it for the next billion years. Nuclear reactors can be designed that will use what is now considered nuclear waste as fuel. The more efficient use of nuclear fuel will solve most of the nuclear waste problem. What is now considered nuclear waste is in fact a potential source of many valuable raw materials, used by modern society. Thus far from being waste, nuclear power holds the potential to become an important source of many increasing scarce materials needed to sustain society.

3. Nuclear power will inevitably lead to a nuclear arms race, and inevitably lead to nuclear exchanges between nuclear powered countries. Terrorist groups will gain control of power reactors and will inevitably use them to build nuclear weapons. But most reactors will be going to nations which already posses the human and technological resources to build nuclear weapons, and the current design of power reactors makes electrical generation incompatible with the production of weapons grade plutonium. The redactor grade plutonium, produced by power reactors, is very radioactive and will not produce large explosion. Although all nuclear armed nations have easy access to large amounts of reactor grade plutonium, they have chosen to not build nuclear weapons with it.

Reactor grade plutonium typically explodes with far less force than weapons grade plutonium, and terrorist groups can accomplish the same effect with conventional explosive with can be obtained with far less effort, at far lower prices, and which would be far easier to manage. Small nations wishing to obtain nuclear weapons can obtain the plans for a low cost, easy to construct weapons grade plutonium production reactor from North Korea, which already attempted to sell one to Syria.

A low or inadequate energy future might well lead to conditions that might well spark a war. In a still nuclear armed world, energy resource wars might well lead to nuclear exchanges. Thus, ironically, one of the risks of a failed renewables future would be the greater likelihood of a nuclear exchange of between energy starved countries fighting over energy resources.

4, Nuclear critics claim that reactors are too expensive, and take too long to deploy. But the projected costs of reliable renewable electrical systems are far higher than the cost of a nuclear dominated system. Nuclear advocates point to numerous steps that can be taken to lower nuclear costs. Building small reactors in factories, and shipping them to be assembled like legos, at reactor sites is one. Recycling old coal fired power plants as reactor sites is a second. Housing reactors underground would remove the necessity of building massive and expensive concrete and steal containment buildings. Small reactors can also be air cooled. Small reactors can be just as safe as large reactors, but would be seen by lenders to be far less risky this would lower construction finance cost. Smaller factory manufactured reactor will take much time to build, and the time between inception of a project and its completion can be greatly decreased.
5. Nuclear critics claim that we are running out of uranium, and thus scarcity of resources will be make long term use of nuclear power impractical. But Generation IV nuclear technology can assure a high energy future for all the people on earth, for as period stretching out for millions of years. If thorium is included in the nuclear fuel mix, the human population of Earth will be assured adequate energy until solar evolution makes the Earth uninhabitable.
6. Nuclear critics claim that it would be too expensive to develop Generation IV, nuclear technology, and that it would take to long to develop it. In fact it would cost far less to develop Generation IV technologies, than the $73 Billion that the German government has already spent on a failed attempt to produce a viable solar alternative to coal, The Manhattan project demonstrated that by abandoning a business as usual approach, and giving priority to energy developments, what would take more than a generation to achieve could be done in as little as three and a half years. Compared to the effort required by the Manhattan Project, and the resources it required, the effort and resources required to produce viable and mass producible Generation IV power reactors would be small. But the potential would be enormous. Reactors like the LFTR would be simple to manufacture in factories. Large numbers of LFTRs could be produced and set up on appropriate sites quickly. In addition LFTRs could be used as an industrial heat source and can produce heat for co generation. Rejected heat from LFTRs could be used for desalinization, or for district heat or even air conditioning. LFTRs, like all Molten Salt Reactors can be designed to achieve high levels of safety at low costs. LFTRs can be used to dispose of the nuclear waste from conventional reactors, thus offering a no cost solution to the so called problem of nuclear waste. Thus for a relatively small research project and development cost, a technological that could solve all of the major problems of nuclear power could be made available, and potentially most of the energy needs of human society can be served by a long term sustainable, low cost, low waste, or no waste, nuclear technology.

The biggest problem with Plan B is that it looks a lot better than Plan A. The Plan B risks are lower. Plan B is likely to cost much less, and Plan B is very scalable. The real question is "why isn't Plan B, our Plan A?"

Post Note: This post summarizes arguments developed over the last two and a half years after an argument on the relative merits of renewable and nuclear power generation systems with David Roberts on Grist. Roberts, a follower of Amory Lovins, exaggerated the liabilities of nuclear power, which he claimed could never be solved. On the other hand, Roberts insisted with 100% certainty that all of the problems of renewables could and would be solved, and that renewables could be melded into a low cost reliable generation system, with sufficient flexibility to provide all of societies post carbon energy needs. At the same time Roberts argued that any any defficiency of renewables could be made up by resorting to the burning of carbon based fuels, appearantly without climate consequences. People like Roberts are beyond rational persuasion, but the issues that emerge in debate with them can be resolved to the satisfaction of more rational people. I have not supplied links to the numerous arguments that lie behind this post, but those arguments are available on Nuclear Green and Energy from Thorium to those who have a seriou interest.

Energy and a Broke Country

When countries go broke they run the printing presses to print more money. In the United States money is not literally being printed, it is created by the Federal Reserve System. The money being used for the economy bail out is being created. Not a dollar of it was lying in the all too empty coffers of the US treasury when the crisis broke. I will not point the finger of blame at anyone, least of all one of my Dallas neighbors. Lets just say that some very bad decisions have been made during the last few years.

It is not just the government that is broke. The whole country is broke. Businesses are going under. Not just mom and pop on main street, but businesses that are national institutions. The Chicago Tribune has just gone down in enormous debt. General Motors has run out of money, and will not last till the end of the year without rescue. The banking system would have completely collapsed by now, were it not for a massive intervention by the government. The crisis could have been very easily worse that the collapse that triggered the great depression, and it may yet be.

Individuals are broke too. The crisis began because a lot of people in the United States were too broke to pay their mortgages. Who would have believed that the international financial order could be brought down by some bad Main Street loans in the US. It was! When workers begin to loose their jobs, the loose their ability to pay their debts, and as the job loss increases, more and more bad debt piles up, until the system begins to crash.

Historians say that the Great Depression did not end until the start of World War II, when war time spending made the factories hum again. But the Government started World War II with very little debt. Today the Government is deep in debt.

In this catastrophic financial situation we face an energy crisis of enormous proportions. First we are going to soon begin to run out of oil. That has been predictable for a long time. Secondly burning fossil fuels produces huge amounts of CO2, which will force climate change on us. Even if it didn't there are pressing reasons for eliminating coal fired generation of electricity. There are significant health and environmental consequences of burning coal. People who live near coal fired power plants have significantly more health problems than people in other areas do. Coal related health care costs effects local residents, employeers and insurance companies. In addition the price of coal is rising. Coal exacts indirect tolls on the economy Therefore there are compelling arguments for the replacement of coal in electrical generation quite asside from the possibility of climate change.

It is also the case that many coal fired power plants are old and reaching the end of their useful life, and will have to be replaced. Thus the expense of replacing coal fired power plants cannot be avoided. The only question then is what technology to use. As I have noted the country is broke, and power plants have to be built as cheaply as possible.

Current estimates of the future costs of nuclear power plants indicate very high capitol costs, but the same cost inflation factors that will effect the cost of nuclear plants will also inflate the cost of renewables including solar and wind generating systems, probably to a greater extent. The cost of base equivalent power with solar and wind is very expensive, and future costs are likely to rise with inflation rather than drop as renewable advocates assume. It seems unlikely that a virtually bankrupt country like the United States will be able to afford the expensive fixes offered to thenational generating system, by either reneables or conventional nuclear power any time soon.

I have argued in the past that LFTR technology has a very significant potential to lower the capital costs of nuclear power plants. Mass production of transportable reactors will lower nuclear manufacturing costs. Innovative siting approachs such as under water or underground siting, and recycling old coal fired power facilities can also lower costs. Small transportable reactors can be wildly dispursed. Small LFTRs can be clustered, creating the equivalent of a large coal or nuclear power plant, but with greater thermal efficiency. Not only would LFTRs provide a low cost alternative to expensive renewables base load power, but they would provide a very superior and less expensive alternative to current old fashion and expensive Light Water Reactors.

LFTRs produce little to almost no nuclear waste. They have many attractive safety features, and pose no danger to the public. LFTRs are also recognized by the International Atomic Energy Agency as proliferation resistant. And the fuel for LFTRs cost almost nothing. Thorium is the basis for the LFTR fuel cycle. At present enough wasted thorium sits above ground in mine tailings, to power the American economy for hundreds of year. There is enough easily recoverable thorium in the crust of the earth, to provide the human economy with all its energy needs for millions of years. Thus LFTRs constitute a sustainable energy source.

Thus not do LFTRs answer all of the traditonal objections to nuclear power, but they will do it at a far lower cost than traditional Light Water Reactors, and renewable power systems.

Thus because the United States is broke, it has no option other than to choose the lowest cost post-carbon power system. But it turns out that the lowest cost choice, the LFTR is also the best choice, the choice that will involve the fewest compromises.

Comments from the Economist's Debate

My comment ofthe morning in the Economist Energy Debate

The real issue we should be debating are not between existing technology and technological innovation. The important issues have to do with which existing technologies to implement. We ought, of course continue to invest in technological innovation research, but we cannot count on it. At the same time we need to invest far more in promising technologies in which the breakthrough innovation has already occurred, but which have not yet been developed to maturity. High on that list would be energy storage technologies. Even in a predominately nuclear energy economy, a low cost mass energy storage system would be highly desirable. Daytime electrical demand will almost always outstrip night demand. Light Water Reactors function best when they are run at 100% of capacity. Thus at night, as electrical demand drops, nuclear plants could switch from generating for demand to generating for next day storage. Of course, without low cost storage renewables have no hope to serve as an a base load power source.

Paradoxically, the technology which offers the best hope for low cost over night storage of renewable energy is molten salt technology. Molten Salts make an excellent medium for the storage of heat, and can be used with concentrated solar power. The irony is that the solar power industry would borrow molten salt technology from the nuclear industry, since it was developed originally as part of an innovative reactor program at Oak Ridge National Laboratory between 1950 and 1976.

Batteries are probably too expensive to use in mass energy storage, but are light enough to use in transportation. Lithium Ion batteries have the potential of storing up to 10 times as much electricity as currently used technologies would allow. 500 mile range Lithium Ion powered cars are a possibility. Half of the fundamental breakthrough has already taken place. Further development of Lithium Ion technology will be required to bring up the energy density to the maximum allowed, to deal with the problem of heat generation during battery use, and to lower the price of Lithium Ion batteries.

Lithium Ion batteries will probably never be used in mass electrical storage systems because of their price, but capacitors very well might be. At present capacitors represent have only limited use in the transportation system, but capacitors have several advantages over chemical batteries. A breakthrough involving ultra high electricity density capasitors is unlikely, but capacitors with a somewhat lower but still significant energy density are being developed, and they might be useful in the electrification of transportation. For example, the capitol cost of rail electrification would be significantly lowered if the entire rail line would not have to be electrified. Experiments are already underway in China, involving the use of capacitors with buses. The bus automatically plugs in to a high voltage electrical outlet at each bus stop, recharging its capacitor. This eliminates the need for rail lines and overhead electrical lines in electrified mass transit.

Finally the most significant issue is the debate between advocates of renewables and the advocates of nuclear power. Renewables advocates often argue against nuclear power by pointing to its alleged and real liabilities. The same renewables advocates fail to apply the same sort of liability analysis to renewables that they apply to nuclear. There are fundamental problems with both solar and wind generation of electricity that may require breakthrough innovations to fix. When we have an honest account of both the liabilities and advantages of nuclear and renewables, nuclear power wins hands down.

There is another debate which at present exist largely beneath the surface of the energy debate. That is the debate between the advocates of deploying standard nuclear plants, and deploying alternative nuclear technologies. One one side of the debate are the advocates of standard technology would involve deploying ever larger Light Water Reactors. They propose enormous and extremely expensive construction projects, with traditional reactor manufacturing technologies.

On the other side of the debate among nuclear advocates are the advocates of alternative nuclear technologies. They offer a number of tested technologies that can both increase reactor safety, and efficiency, while lowering reactor costs. Many alternative nuclear advocates also support the plan to build a very large numbers of small reactors in factories. Factory production can accomplish a number of things. It can speed up reactor construction time from the several years required by standard reactors to a few months at most in factories. By speeding up production and deployment, the interest carrying cost of utilities would be lowered significantly. Factory production wouldn allow more efficient use of labor and the use of robots on reactor assembly lines. Two Generation IV reactors, the Pebble Bed Reactor and the Liquid Fluoride Thorium/Molten Salt Reactor are especially promising because they can be boult in small sizes, and do not carry many of the liabilities of Light Water Reactors. Both the LFTR and the PBR reactor are extremely safe. They are not vulnerable to terrorist attacks, the both can produce electrical power with greater thermal efficiency than standard nuclear plants. The LFTR produces almost no nuclear waste, because it uses its nuclear fuel with far greater efficiency than standard nuclear technology.

Both the PBR and the LFTR are tested technologies, that require no breakthrough innovations. Development programs for the PBR are underway in China and South Africa, while LFTR development programs are underway in Japan and France. Given a more appropriate level of funding, development and deployment programs can move forward more rapidly. As it is, both the Chinese and the South Africans expect to be building PBRs in factories by 2020. Thus alternative nuclear technology will coming soon to many parts of the world.