The Jacobson-Delucchi plan revealed

The devil is in the details, and the details are where the renewable energy schemes come apart. This is the case for the Jacobson-Delucchi plan recently published in Scientific-American to set the world on a course to an all renewable energy scheme. But support for Mark Z. Jacobson's thinking about renewable energy has hardly been universal, and Jacobson has not responded to many criticisms of his work. in particular Bill Hannahan has offered significant criticisms of Mark. Z. Jacobson research on wind reliability, in the form of a paper offered to the Editor of the "Journal of Applied Meteorology & Climatology" (JAMC). Mark Z. Jacobson refused to cooperate with the review process for Hannahan's paper, and although the editor of the JAMC could have published Bill's paper even without Jacobson's cooperation, he refused to to so.

It should be noted that Jacobson, like many other renewable energy advocates regularly sidesteps and ignores criticisms. Thus legitimate questions exist about the value of Jacobson's scientific work, and Jacobson has failed to take reasonable steps to answer those criticisms. While Jacobson's work on wind reliability is repeatedly mentioned by renewable advocate, the mention of that work, in the absence of unanswered arguments that Jacobson's work is deeply flawed, suggest that the renewable power enterprise lacks critical standards for its knowledge claims. On Tuesday, I posted numerous informal criticisms of Jacobson's latest Scientific American Paper, that were left as comments on the Scientific American Web Page, in response to its announcement of the Jacobson-Delucchi paper. As of this morning 50 comments have been posted in response to the SA announcement. Many of these comments point to serious problems with the Jacobson-Delucchi plan. For example, "EGPreston" wrote,

By profession I do transmission studies for wind and solar clients. My company name is TAC meaning Transmission Adequacy Consulting at web page http://www.egpreston.com. I currently am doing studies all across the US. "A path to sustainable energy by 2030" omits the transmission system needed by 2030. Because the wind and solar and water and geothermal projects are not in the locations of the existing power plants, new lines will be needed. Looking at the graph on page 63, and carefully measuring scales on the graph, I estimate that there is 40,000 MW of wind and 40,000 MW of centralized solar on that graph. The reason I omitted rooftop solar is because Jacobson has its contribution to be rather small. For example, multiplying out the numbers on page 61 you will get 5.1 TW of rooftop solar and 26.7 TW of large scale solar of 300 MW size in farms, much like wind farms. This seems reasonable since centralized solar is twice as cost effective as rooftop solar. Since the rooftop solar is small I will omit it from these comments. That leaves us needing 80,000 MW of new wind solar and geothermal generation just to serve California. I think an estimate of 500 miles from wind and solar resources to major load centers is reasonable. A 500 kV transmission line is rated at about 2000 MW max power. But you don't want to operate it at that power level because the losses are too high and there is no reserve capacity in the line to handle the first contingency problem. Therefore I will estimate we will load the new 500 kV lines to about 1500 MW on average. So we have 80,000 MW of renewable sources widely scattered around the Western System (WECC) with each carrying 1500 MW so that we need roughly 50 new 500 kV lines of 500 miles each, for a total length of 25,000 miles. The article assumes there is little solar power energy storage and it also assumes the wind be blowing at night. We know for sure that the solar power is not available at night so we are nearly totally dependent on wind for night time energy. You are going to ask about the geothermal energy. One geothermal project I recently worked on for determining the transmission access for looked like a good project until the geothermal energy extraction failed to work. Recently other geothermal projects have created human induced earthquakes. Geothermal energy seem less likely today than just a few years ago. So we are nearly totally dependent on wind energy for the nighttime CA energy as envisioned in the 100% renewables by 2030. If we plan for those few occurrences when there is no wind in the WECC system, we must interconnect WECC with the rest of the US so CA can draw power from other wind generators that do have wind (hopefully) outside the WECC area, such as the Texas coast and east of the rocky mountains where massive wind farms can be constructed. However we will need at least 40,000 MW of lines that I estimate will average 2000 miles in length. If we used 500 kV lines, we would need about 25 of these lines bridging from WECC to the US eastern grid and ERCOT and the total length would be about 50,000 miles. By 2030 we would need 75,000 miles of new 500 kV lines just to serve California with 100% renewables. Considering that we have the period from 2010 to 2030, that means we would have to construct about 4000 miles of new 500 kV lines every year from now until 2030 for the renewables plan as outlined in this article to work. I do not believe this is achievable at all. Therefore the concept envisioned in the SA article is not a workable plan because the transmission problems have not been addressed. The lines aren’t going to get built. The wind is not going to interconnect. The SA article plan is not even a desirable plan. The environmental impact and cost would be horrendous. Lets get realistic.

Criticisms such as Prestons' cannot be ignored, if Jacobson and Delucchi wish for their plan to be taken seriously. So far Jacobson and Delucchi have offered no response to their critics. Unfortunately, as I have noted, this conforms to Jacobson's past pattern.

A Scientific American article is not a real scientific paper. It does not amass reliably produced evidence, to demonstrate beyond a reasonable doubt that the weigh of evidence supports a proposition. Traditionally Scientific American stuck to mainstream science, science that was not controversial. Thus it should be noted that of 5 papers referenced by Jacobson and Delucchi in their Scientific American article, two contain Jacobson's name in the authorship line. Both are the subject of unresolved controversy. A third paper is coauthored by Ben Sovacool, who is a political scientist. I have addressed the uneven quality of Sovacool's work in the past. Following as assessment of Sovacool's account of some of his research, I concluded,

Sovacool has produced another typical example of his work. His research is weak, his research methods are suspects, and his conclusions will not withstand critical examination.

To his credit Sovacool vigorously defended his research, but it should be noted that his database was neither based on random sampling, nor was it comprehensive, thus no valid generalizations would have followed from it. At any rate the Sovacool paper Jacobson and Delucchi referenced cannot be accessed on the Internet, nor are critical reviews of it found on the Internet. A further paper referenced paper, The Technical, Geographical, and Economic Feasibility for Solar Energy to Supply the Energy Needs of the U.S. by V. Fthenakis, J. E. Mason, and K. Zweibel has just been made available on line. The Fthenakis, Mason, and. Zweibel paper has not been the subject of open reviews on the internet. Thus it hardly can be maintained that Jacobson and Delucchi have expressed views that represent the consensus of a scholarly and scientific community, or that their own views are represent good science. Statements such as the claim that

Nuclear power results in up to 25 times more carbon emissions than wind energy, when reactor construction and uranium refining and transport are considered.

simply are not based on sound research. Sovacool, upon whose research Jacobson partially depends concludes, found that 81% of the studies of carbon emission from the nuclear power cycle,

had methodological shortcomings that justified excluding them from the assessment conducted here. . . . Of the remaining 19% of studies, , , they varied greatly in their comprehensiveness, . . . studies differed in whether they assessed future emissions for a few individual reactors or past emissions for the global nuclear fleet; assumed existing technologies or those under development; and presumed whether the electricity needed for mining and enrichment came from fossil fuels, other nuclear plants, renewable energy technologies, or a combination thereof,

Clearly then we are looking at an area of research that requires from which no valid conclusions can be drawn. in light of Sovacool's note on the limitations of he research evidence, Jacobson's sweeping dismissal of nuclear power was an unwarranted expression of personal prejudice. We the Scientific American still an intellectually respectable journal, the 25 times statement would undoubtedly have been removed before publication.

In addition Jacobson and Delucchi stated that

we consider only technologies that do not present significant waste disposal or terrorism risks.

Yet they considered Hydroelectric which poses significant risks from terrorist attacks, and photovoltaic which posses significant waste disposal issues. Again we have the author's uninformed personal judgment being substituted for matters of fact. And as the "scots engineer" comments,

the authors have been disingenuous . . .

"demyer"referring to the comments which Jacobson and Delucchi have drawn, states,

The comments by others have pretty much shot a lot of holes in the plan, particularly wind power

I will thus leave to the author's Scientific American critics to spell out many of the numerous shortcomings of the Jacobson and Delucchi plan. I do wish to offer my comments on the claim that a renewables mix, and electrical costs under the plan.

Jacobson and Delucchi claim

Intermittency problems can be mitigated by a smart balance of sources, . . . relying on wind at night when it is often plentiful, using solar by day and turning to a reliable source such as hydroelectric that can be turned on and off quickly to smooth out supply or meet peak demand. For example, interconnecting wind farms that are only 100 to 200 miles apart can compensate for hours of zero power at any one farm should the wind not be blowing there.

Thus without telling us exactly what they are doing, Jacobson and Delucchi introduce a costly solution to the problem of intermittency - redundancy. If the wind does not blow all of the time, we are going to use a little sunshine to get us through wind free days, they tell us. First we should note that redundancy does not always work. Sometimes the wind stops blowing at night. But redundancy has a cost. If we are going to rely on redundant wind and solar generating facilities, the cost of round-the-clock electricity will include the cost of both wind and solar electricity. Thus if a wind facility costs $3 million and a solar facility costs $6 million, and we need both to provide round-the-clock electricity, the cost of our generating system will be $9 million. In addition the facilities may need to be interconnected, and that will cost extra.

Now it turns out that paying for a solar and a wind facility is not going to be enough to insure reliability for a renewable system. Mark Z Jacobson has studied what sort of redundancy is required to make a wind system as reliable as a coal-fired power plant. What Jacobson found is that if you build one windmill in West Texas, it might generate electricity at 40% of its rated generating capacity. Most of the time, the windmill will produce far less than its rated capacity, but on very windy days, it might produce almost all of its capacity, but on may other days, the windmill would produce very little of its rated capacity. A windmill located a few hundred miles away might produce electricity better on some days and worse on other days. a windmill in Kansas would perform differently, and a windmill in Oklahoma still differently. So if you hook up two windmills in Texas, with one in New Mexico, one in Oklahoma, and one in Kansas, you might be able to produce a decent amount of power, say 20% of the windmill's rated power output, most (80%) of the time.

Another way of saying this is that 50% of the time, if you hook up 5 windmills at selected sites in 4 states, you will generate the electrical equivalent of one windmill's full power output 4 out of every 5 days. What you will do for electricity on the 5th day is not clear. What is clear is that reliable electricity from wind will cost you a lot. You will have to pay for 5 windmills in order to be assured of at least 1 windmill's worth of electrical output 4 out of every 5 days, and you will have to pay for something to be assure of electricity on the other day. So Jacobson's wind scheme is quite expensive, in fact more expensive than a nuclear power plant's.

Would a solar-wind mix be cheaper? We have noted that solar generating facilities of a given power output would be more expensive than wind facilities of a similar power output rating. By careful wind site locations, you can increase wind output to 40% and even 45% of rated capacity in some instances. By moving your solar facility into a cloudless desert, you might improve your power output to a little better than 20% of your rated capacity. Solar output starts out the day weak in the morning, builds up till noon, and then starts dropping off. It is hard to think about solar without including storage, and that will add to the cost of an already expensive solar generating system. The actual cost of solar generating systems being built this year (2009), make nuclear generating systems look really cheap. So you cannot count on a solar-wind mix to be cheaper than generating electricity with nuclear power.

Finally we ought to consider the Jacobson and Delucchi claim that electricity can be produced by their renewable system, can be produced

as cheap as coal.

But we need to look closely at their reasoning. They claim

Power from wind turbines, for example, already costs about the same or less than it does from a new coal or natural gas plant, and in the future wind power is expected to be the least costly of all options.

Well here we encounter a paradox. If wind power is so cheap, why is it that wind operators say they need a heavy subsidy in order to operate. Why is wind not able to compete on the open market? The answer is simple. Wind does not produce electricity when consumers want it. We have already seen that Jacobson's own in order to get wind generated electricity to consumers, wind producers have to buy windmill after windmill, and spread them all over the map, at increased transmission costs. So wind generated electricity may be cheap, but wind generated electricity when you want it is not cheap at all.

What of solar then? Jacobson and Delucchi claim

Solar power is relatively expensive now but should be competitive as early as 2020. A careful analysis by Vasilis Fthenakis of Brookhaven National Laboratory indicates that within 10 years, photovoltaic system costs could drop to about 10¢/kWh, including long-distance transmission and the cost of compressed-air storage of power for use at night. The same analysis estimates that concentrated solar power system with enough thermal storage to generate electricity 24 hours a day in spring, summer and fall could deliver electricity at 10¢/kWh or less.

Since I have just found a link to the referenced Fthenakis paper, and have not had a chance to review it, I will simply note that Fthenakis' conclusions are dramatically at odds with those of Australian Engineer Peter Lang, (See a review by Barry Brook with comments by others here.) A revised version of Lang's paper can be found here, and Brook's discussion of those revisions are found here. Lang argues that the capital costs of a reliable Solar power system would be 25 times as high as that of an all-nuclear power generation system. Since the contentions of Lang and Fthenakis are clearly at odds, and the referenced Fthenakis paper has not yet been reviewed, I will withhold final judgment on the issue, but will note that Fthenakis views, if accurately represented by the Scientific American article, probably do not represent mainstream thinking about future solar costs.

Mark Z. Jacobson and Mark Delucchi have thus written a new Scientific American article which claims much that has not been accepted by other researchers on renewable energy. Their article has already drawn significant criticisms, and no doubt will continue to do so. They also reference sources that appear to go well beyond mainstream of views on the future cost and utility of renewables. The Jacobson-Delucchi article also refers to Jacobson's past work which has also received significant criticism. Jacobson has proven in the past to be reticent to respond to criticisms of his work. And Jacobson and Delucchi have, as of yet, failed to respond to the criticisms posted on the Scientific American Web site. Therefore the current Jacobson-Delucchi Scientific American article can not be said the represent a plausible account of our energy future. The article contains an unsubstantiated and borderline irrational attack on nuclear power. Unfortunately this cult-like attack on nuclear power has been a frequent feature of Scientific American during the last couple of years.

Scientific American in the Era of Confusion

Once again Scientific American has disgraced itself by hyping a shoddy, unprofessional hit peice against nuclear power, this time by a Ralph Nader's lacky. The SA internet post begins:

Nuclear power plants may not emit greenhouse gases, but they sure could suck in the tax dollars.

An analysis by economist Mark Cooper at the Vermont Law School claims that adding 100 new reactors to the U.S. power grid would cost taxpayers and customers between $1.9 and $4.1 trillion over the reactors’ lifetimes compared with renewable power sources and conservation measures.

I will quickly demonstrate that there are many red flags on the Mark Cooper study. Beyond that there is no evidence that Mark Cooper is an economist, his exact relationship to Vermont Law School is murky, and it is questionable if any part of the study was produced in Vermont. The study was not published by the Vermont Law School, and aside from from the cover claim that Mark Cooper is a Senior Fellow for Economic Analysis at the Institute for Energy and the Environment of the Vermont Law School, nothing links the study to the School. Nothing except the fact that the study can be downloaded from the Institute's web site. Most similar studies will acknowledge the relationship between the study and the institute from which itwas said to have originated. For example, the MIT Study "The Future of Nuclear Power" carries the following inscription

Copyright © 2003 Massachusetts Institute ofTechnology. All rights reserved.
ISBN 0-615-12420-8

Curiously the Cooper study carries no Copyright.
The Forward and Acknowledgements of the MIT study notes:

This study also reflects our conviction that the MIT community is well equipped to carry out interdisciplinary studies intended to shed light on complex socio-technical issues that will have a major impact on our economy and society. Nuclear power is but one example; we hope to encourage and participate in future studies with a similar purpose.

We acknowledge generous financial support from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and from MIT’s Office of the Provost and Laboratory for Energy and the Environment.

The Mark Cooper study had no Forward and carried no acknowledgement of financial support.

The Press release announcing the MIT study clearly stated

MIT RELEASES INTERDISCIPLINARY STUDY ON "THE FUTURE OF NUCLEAR ENERGY"

The press release for the Cooper study failed to include mention of Vermont Law Scholl asside from noting Cooper's alleged title.

On the cover page of the Cooper study, Cooper is described as a

Senior Fellow for Economic Analysis

But on a Vermont Law School page that mentions the Cooper study, Cooper is described as a

Senior Research Fellow for Consumer Energy

Despite this claim Cooper is not listed among the faculty of the Institute for Energy and the Environment of the Vermont Law School. Indeed I can not find any evidence that Cooper has ever been on the Vermont Law School campus.

HHHHHMMMMMM!

SA readers were not reticent to tell that once august journal that it had uncorked a stinker with its Cooper study story.
Duncan M noted

enewables at 6 cents per kilowatt hour. That's pretty funny, since they require direct production subsidies of 15 cents per kilowatt hour for wind to 35 cents per kilowatt hour for solar, with no reasonable hope those costs will fall significantly

Meanwhile, nuclear is cost-competitive with hydro in Europe.

This magazine doesn't deserve to keep the word Scientific in its name if it's publishing political jeremiads like this.

Rogeregon responded

LOL! Duncan M, I've noticed, more and more, how Scientific American has been taken over by a bunch of ultra-left wingers who seem to be mostly pushing political agendas, rather than actual science!

uvdiv was blunt

This article is criminally dishonest. It brings up a "12c-20c/kWh" cost range for nuclear, and then also cites an MIT study as calling nuclear power "uncompetitive". Which is interesting because I've READ that MIT study, and it concludes the levelized cost for new nuclear power is 8.4 c/kWh - well outside the other range the author quotes. Does the author point out this discrepancy? No; he ignores the inconvenient parts of his own sources, selectively cherry-picking the quotes and datapoints that support his position.

The report is available for free here:

http://web.mit.edu/nuclearpower/

And further when the MIT report calls nuclear power "uncompetitive", it is referring ONLY in comparison with coal and natural gas power, and ONLY when completely ignoring the costs of carbon emissions. In fact, by the studies' numbers, just a very small carbon price would make nuclear as cheap as coal. (2009 update, Table 1)

The cited MIT report also directly conflicts with the "$1.9-4.1 trillion" figure for 100 new reactors. It estimates a capital cost figure of $4/W for new reactors (based on real-world figures from recent reactors in Japan and South Korea, which fell in the range of $2-3/W*, and extrapolating from that with commodity price increases). At the this cost, 100x new 1 GWe reactors would carry a pricetag of $400 billion, which is majorly conflicts with his other (presumably fradulent) numbers. Since when did commercial power reactors reach $41/W???

*These are discussed in a supplementary paper to that report, which is here under "Update on the Cost of Nuclear Power":

http://web.mit.edu/ceepr/www/publications/workingpapers.html

Again, it is despicable that a self-proclaimed "journalist" would so blatantly misrepresent his sources, twist them to support his political ideals.

To append one thing to my comment - I want to preempt any argument that lifetime operation or decommissioning costs explain away the huge discrepancy with that $1.9-$4.1 trillion figure. Construction costs are by far the largest component of nuclear power costs, and other lifetime costs are comparatively trivial. Again citing the same MIT study (the supplement paper): Table 6C compares these. A full 72% of total costs are the initial construction costs (which would be $400 billion for one hundred 1 GWe reactors under this MIT study). A tiny 11% are operation and maintenance costs, 10% are fuel costs, and 7% decommissioning.

Again that paper is available here for free:

http://web.mit.edu/ceepr/www/publications/workingpapers.html

Patrice2 commented

Contrary to the study’s finding that “nuclear power cannot stand on its own two feet in the marketplace” nuclear energy is expected to be among the most economic sources of electricity. To cite one example, an independent comparative study published in January 2008 by the Brattle Group for the state of Connecticut estimated that nuclear energy (at $4,038/kW) may have the highest capital cost, but still produces the least expensive electricity, except for combined cycle natural gas with no carbon controls.

New nuclear reactors have been affirmed as the least cost option for new generation by the Public Service Commission (PSC) in South Carolina, Florida, and Georgia. The analyses supporting the PSC reviews found nuclear to be cost competitive with other forms of baseload generation in addition to helping to address climate change.

Various recently-released academic studies have also found the cost of nuclear energy to be competitive.

It’s useful to think of it like this:

• The cost of building advanced reactors is about the same as advanced coal plants with carbon storage, but nuclear energy has the lowest fuel cost over decades of electricity production.

• By comparison, natural gas plants are relatively cheap to build, but the supply and price volatility is a major drawback. The fuel cost for natural gas plants makes up 90 percent of the power cost. The cost of power from coal and gas-fueled power plants would rise in a carbon-constrained world, further increasing their electricity costs.

A new licensing process, coupled with construction and project management experience from nuclear energy projects globally, will provide useful experience with new reactor designs in the United States.

Put simply, credible estimates of the total cost of new nuclear energy facilities show that electricity from nuclear energy will be competitive with other forms of baseload generation.

Finally JimHolf made a point familiar to Nuclear Green readers

It must be noted that while nuclear opponents often claim that renewables are cheaper than nuclear, they are NEVER willing to put that assertion to any kind of market test. Just the opposite. They say they're cheaper, but then insist on policies that prevent any fair market competition between renewables and other means of reducing emissions, including nuclear. Under current/recent policies, renewables are massively more subsidised than nuclear, and there are also outright mandates for their use (regardless of cost or practicality), just in case even those subsidies are not enough. If the relative cost of renewables was anything like this article's study, none of these policies would be even remotely necessary.

I see no point for a further review of Mark Cooper glorified trash talking of Nuclear Power. The Scientific American readers once again have proven that, even if journalists no longer have sound judgement, some of their readers do. While Scientific American's coverage of nuclear issues reflects the current dream era of confusion, it is clear from the Scientific American comments, that some people are very much awake already. Oh for those of you who are curious, Dr. Mark N. Cooper is a Washington lobbyist for the Consumer Federation of America, a Ralph Nader front organization. Cooper's official title is Director of Research. Cooper spends his days talking to politicians not consumers.

Update: Two more Reader comments from Scientific American.
1. dbakerpe

The assertion that nuclear will have high long term costs is based on cost overruns on the first generation plants. It false on its face, because those same first generation plants are now the lowest cost power sources on the grid except hydro. Large power projects are built with borrowed money, so the power is always expensive to begin with to pay back the loans. A new nuclear plant will likely last 60-100 years. After the loans are paid back the power will be cheap. If we are going to have a real economy that produces real products, they are the only environmentally acceptable solution.

2. sethdayal

The MIT 4000 a kw is just a (WAG) wild guess based on suspect figures.
1) It is based on a few Asian reactors with some rather dubious conversions to US Dollars.
2) In the middle of the worst depression in a century it assumes without proof that nuclear plant cost inflation is 15%.
3) It assumes 11% cost of money at a time when public power ie governments can borrow at 3%.
4) Ignored are Westinghouse's sale of four ap-1000 reactors for 5.5 billion to China a little over 1300 a kw and Hyperions sale of six of its 25 mw units for $25 million each again $1000 a kw with 45 mw of free heat leftover to warm the town.
5) Ignored also is Westinghouse's contention that with mass production techniques it can produce these reactors for around $1000 a kilowatt. With a World War Two hell bent for leather lets save the planet from global warning type effort ramping up quickly to hundreds of plants opening worldwide every year, costs for mass produced reactors would drop drastically.
5) It assumes every country is like the US where a large portion of costs are a result of an army of attorneys, bureaucrats and insurance companies lined up for and against any proposed private power company nuclear plants.

Renewables cheaper. What a joke.

Truth, Solar Costs, and David Biello

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Scientific American Hack David Biello Distorts Nuclear Technology

When I was a teenage boy I would walk to the library every month to read the latest issue of Scientific American. I would have never dreamed then that the then-august Scientific American would one day be reduced to the status of an anti-nuclear propaganda organ. Anti-nuclear hack and Scientific American Technical editor David Biello, an ex-Hollywood entertainment writer, is a big fan of the fanatic anti-nuclear blog Grist. He is a faithful redactor of the Grist line on Nuclear technology. Biello has turned Scientific American's electronic edition into a propaganda mouthpiece for the David Roberts/Joe Romm/Amory Lovins anti-nuclear party line. Biello, a journalism school graduate, clearly has little comprehension of nuclear technology. For example, in a January 27 article on spent nuclear fuel Biello talks about two options, sequestration, and "so-called fast-breeder reactors". So-called? Apparently Biello's comprehension of nuclear technology does not extend to understanding the management of neutrons in reactors. No doubt the concept of thermal breeding would mystify Biello.

Biello follows up his mention of the "so-called fast breeders" with an obligatory account of the 1995 shut down of the Japanese Monju LMFBR. Reader "bhoglund' caught an error in Biello's text that has since been corrected in the online article. The original text stated, according to bhoglund's comment, "... including a fire caused by a leak of its molten salt coolant, ..." That is right folks, Biello did not know the difference between Molten Salt and Liquid Sodium.

Now as my readers know I am not a big fan of sodium-cooled reactors, but Biello seems to think that they represent the only option in reactor disposal of nuclear waste, and of course they do not. CANDU reactor technology offers a second reactor option. And of course, Molten Salt Reactor/LFTR technology produces excellent synergies in for the disposal of reactor-grade plutonium and other nuclear waste actinides. Now why doesn't Biello know this? You would think that Scientific American could find a technology editor who actually knew something about nuclear technology, not some ignorant journalism school graduate.

Biello ritually recites every one of the obligatory anti-nuclear motifs. Guess who he consults on the Uranium availability question?

"The energy payback time of a nuclear power plant is at present about 11 years compared with natural gas at half a year, by 2070, Storm van Leeuwen found, the amount of energy it takes to mine, mill, enrich and fabricate one metric ton of uranium fuel may be larger than 160 terajoules—the amount of energy one can generate from it.

That is right, Biello uncritically quotes Jan Willem Storm van Leeuwen, who he describes as "energy and technology analyst at Ceedata consultancy in the Netherlands". Biello, of course did not Google "Ceedata consultancy" which appears to be nothing more than a front designed to add weight to Storm van Leeuwen exceedingly meager credentials. Nor did Biello google "Storm van Leeuwen" and "discredited" Bello goes along with the Ceedata consultancy gag, telling us that the us that "the Ceedata consultancy . . . advises European governments on nuclear issues . . ." well not quite, Storm van Leeuwen gets paid through an EU slush fund assigned to European Greens, for writing anti-nuclear propaganda. It is exceedingly damming to Biello's credibility that he relies on Storm van Leeuwen defective analysis of the EROEI of Uranium nuclear technology.

"The energy payback time of a nuclear power plant is at present about 11 years compared with natural gas at half a year," Storm van Leeuwen argues, when the full cost of decommissioning a nuclear power plant at the end of its useful life is included. "The cost in the U.K. for dismantling a reactor is now estimated at about 7 billion euros ($9.9 billion) per reactor of one gigawatt-electrical. That's before the first bolt has even been loosened."

And by 2070, Storm van Leeuwen found, the amount of energy it takes to mine, mill, enrich and fabricate one metric ton of uranium fuel may be larger than 160 terajoules—the amount of energy one can generate from it.

Biello offers a form of pseudo-balance to his account by noting that

one metric ton of natural uranium yields nearly 20,000 times as much energy as the equivalent amount of coal—the cheapest form of electric generation at present. In other words, one metric ton of uranium can produce the same amount of electricity generated by burning more than 19,000 metric tons of coal.

But as Robert Niles tells us

balance . . . ought to mean that truth gets treated like truth and lies get treated like lies.

Balance is only possible when you are sorting out lies from truth, not when you perpetuate them.

Biello does the usual anti-nuclear song and dance about nuclear safety. Thus fundamental nuclear safety concepts, like passive safety, inherent safety, defense-in-depth are simply ignored, while much of the article is devoted to the safety problems of the Davis–Besse reactor. Chernobyl and Three Mile Island are also discussed with emphasis on operator error. Biello claims that the Chernobyl reactor

exploded through its containment

as if the Chernobyl reactor had a containment structure. Needless to say, Biello does not discuss the history of nuclear safety, does not discuss the the lessons learn from the Three Mile Island and Chernobyl accidents. He does not discuss strategies designed to prevent human error from causing nuclear accidents. But we cannot expect an anti-nuclear hack to understand the difference between nuclear safety and talking about accidents including accidents that did not happen.