Pro-Nuclear Bloggers Stands for Open Science

The Independent Climate Change E-mails Review July 2010 is one of the growing library of reports on the so-called Climate gate scandal. Like every other report on climate gate it exonerates the climate scientists involved from the charge of fraudulently manipulating data. The scientists were however advised of a need to change their information handling practices toward greater openness and transparency. Muir Russell the report's lead author included among the reports important findings:

First, how is science to be conducted in a new world of openness, accountability and indeed what I might term citizen involvement in public interest science? There need to be new ways of making results and data available, and we mention some aspects of current thought. There need to be ways of handling criticism and challenge, of responding to a range of different sorts of criticism and getting into a more productive relationship with critics than we have sometimes seen in this case.

The science community – and I include university managers in this – need to have in the forefront of their minds the importance of the credibility of the knowledge base they are generating and of not losing public trust in it. Their risk management in the widest sense needs to recognize this.

At the same time, science needs to find ways of expressing the uncertainties that inevitably attend its findings, and mean that so much of what it does is in a sense “work in progress”. More needs to be done to allow policy makers and the public to understand and work within this uncertainty.

We identify the need for some sort of “public space” where these issues can be aired, in an atmosphere that is at the same time unthreatening and properly challenging. If the Review has contributed to advancing discussion of these issues it will be a useful contribution in addition to addressing the questions in our remit.

I endorse these findings, especially as they apply to energy issues. Pro-nuclear bloggers are in the forefront of the movement towards openness and transparency in science. Two blogs, Kirk Sorensen's Energy from Thorium, and Barry Brook's Brave New Climate provide outstanding examples of the new culture of scientific openness and transparency.

Kirk blog is divided into three parts:

* A document archive in which documents which contain research "data" are collected via links.

* A traditional blog with posts, many of which offer histories of, reviews of, and interpretations of the background and contents of the documents.

* A discussion section, that is in large measure depended on the documents.

The Energy from Thorium discussion covers hundreds of topics, and includes nearly 30,000 comments.

In Brave New Climate, Barry Brook, and other participants, post professional quality papers on energy and climate related issues. The papers are then open for discussion by anyone. In some cases discussions on Brave New Climate have extended to 700 comments. Some times papers are rewritten in response to criticisms offered during the discussion.

I view my works on Nuclear Green as being closely aligned to both material and discussions found on Brave New Climate and Energy from Thorium. I have posted numerous comments on both blogs, and in the past Nuclear Green posts were cross posted to Energy From Thorium.

Both EfT, and BNC view Generation IV nuclear technology as an important component of post-carbon energy. BNC has also offered frequent critiques of renewable energy schemes. Because nuclear power is subject to repeated and vociferous criticisms, the open and transparent approach is highly appropriate in obtaining public trust for new nuclear technology. Indeed, EfT

In addition Barry Brook is associated with a second open science site, Oz-Energy-Analysis.org. Oz-Energy-Analysis.org focuses on an attempt to model a wind energy scheme for Southeaster Australia. It is roughly based on Kirk Sorensen's Energy from Thorium design, The data, analyzed is posted and both analysis and interpretive narratives are open for discussion.

The "Independent Review" states:

Handling the blogosphere and non traditional scientific dialogue. One of the most obvious features of the climate change debate is the influence of the blogosphere. This provides an opportunity for unmoderated comment to stand alongside peer reviewed publications; for presentations or lectures at learned conferences to be challenged without inhibition; and for highly personalized critiques of individuals and their work to be promulgated without hindrance. This is a fact of life, and it would be foolish to challenge its existence. The Review team would simply urge all scientists to learn to communicate their work in ways that the public can access and understand. That said, a key issue is how scientists should be supported to explain their position, and how a public space can be created where these debates can be conducted on appropriate terms, where what is and is not uncertain can be recognised.

The models provided by Energy from Thoirium, and Brave New Climate fully meet these requirements. Numerous other energy related Internet sites fail to do so, however. Indeed, There appear to be numerous openness gaps in the renewable energy research standards offered by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, and in various plans and reports offered by supporters of Renewable Energy. Nuclear Green has to a limited extent attempted to address some of these renewable energy openness gaps, and Brave New Climate, and masterresources.org have attempted to do so in a far more detailed and professional fashion.

If there is a lesson from the so called Climate Gate scandal, it is that 21st science needs to be open and to the extent humanly possible transparent. Scientific communications, discussions and debate should be viewed as public, rather than private. People who are involved in knowledge production and assessment need to be fully aware of the implication of the new world of knowledge we live in and not transgress its structures.

No Silver Bullets for the RAE

The last two posts on Brave New Climate concern the future 0f energy in the United Kingdom. The most recent post by Barry Brook and Martin Nicholson discussed a thoroughly unimaginative report by the Royal Academy of Engineers, on the energy future of the UK.

The report suggested a range of energy options, without the slightest consideration of cost. The report further compounded its errors by writing off the very possibility of an all nuclear solution, by use of the catch phrase.

There is no single ‘silver bullet’ that will achieve the required cuts in emissions,

How do we know this? The report des not provide us with the slightest clue. The report also calls for stringent demand reduction measures, a scheme that is likely to fail.

I write in response to Brooks and Nicholson:

Why is it that the Royal Academy Engineers was not able to figure out what I was able to figure out in one afternoon in 2007? i never took one college hour in engineering, yet I figured out a way to make turning nuclear power into the very sort of silver bullet that the RAE denies exists. In one afternoon I was able to figure out how to answer all of the objections to nuclear power, including the cost objection, and to produce all of the nuclear power plants we need by 2050 with out breaking the bank, while assuring inherent reactor safety, solving the nuclear waste problem, assuring sustainable nuclear power, and decreasing the likelihood of nuclear war. What is more, once I came to these conclusions I looked around the Internet and discovered that other people had come to the same or similar conclusions.

The solution was quite simple. If you want to build a lot of industrial objects, you build them in factories. If you want to build a lot of reactors, you build them in factories. But how do transport a huge 1000 MW reactor out of the factory? The answer is that you don’t, you make the reactor small enough to transport by rail, barge or truck, say 100 MW. You can do things t make the reactor lighter too and if you make it less complex, it will cost less to build. I knew of such a reactor, an advanced reactor design that my father had spent 20 years working in developing at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. That was the Molten Salt Reactor.

i quickly realized that the MSR had the potential to answer all of the classic objections to nuclear power, and that it could be built in factories is sufficient numbers by 2050, to provide all of the worlds energy needs. Furthermore, the MSR could run on a thorium fuel cycle, in fact would run better on a thorium fuel cycle than on a uranium fuel cycle, and could be made to breed thorium until we ran out of thorium several billion years from now, thus rendering the “uranium is not sustainable” objection absurd.

Furthermore, the thorium breeding molten salt reactor, the Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor (LF’tR), could be operated at temperatures as high as 1200 C, hot enough to for many industrial process uses, hot enough to produce hydrogen.
I became convinced that mall LFTRs could be built in factories at low price, set up rapidly and could revolutionized the energy economy with a time frame of as little as ten years after the completion of LFTR development and the completion of a LFTR factory. I grew up in the shadow of the Manhattan Project. I knew and know what people are capable of accomplishing within a short time, if they set aside the business as usual model, and commit to an all out effort to develop new technology, Far more was accomplished in Oak Ridge between 1942 and 1945 than would be required to see hundreds of LFTRs rolling off assembly lines. But the will has to be there to accomplish it.

What the RAE lacks is a vision, and a willingness to commit to it.

Wind on Brave New Climate

Barry Brook's blog "Brave New Climate" is one of the best climate/energy blogs. Barry is an Australian climate scientist who is generally clear thinking about climate/energy issues. Barry is a fan of the Integral Fast Reactor. I believe that the LFTR represents a safer, more flexible, lower cost technology that possesses enormous potential. Other than our sometimes raucous disagreement on most favored nuclear technology we seem to agree on most issues.

During the last few days Barry has conducted a debate on wind issues under the title "Does Wind Power Reduce Carbon Emissions?" Barry's position is derived from a study titled, "Cost and Quantity of Greenhouse Gas Emissions Avoided by Wind Generation," by Peter Lang. Lang is a retired engineer who has over 40 years experience on a wide range energy projects and issues, including managing energy R&D and providing policy
advice for government and opposition. The money quote from Lang states:

“These calculations suggest that wind generation saves little greenhouse gas emissions when the emissions from the back-up are taken into account.

Wind power, with emissions and cost of back-up generation properly attributed, avoids 0.058 to 0.09 t CO2-e/MWh compared with about 0.88 t CO2-e/MWh avoided by nuclear. The cost to avoid 1 tonne of CO2-e per MWh is $830 to $1149 with wind power compared with $22 with nuclear power. If the emissions and cost of back up generation are ignored then wind power avoids about 0.5 t CO2-e/MWh at a cost of about $134/t CO2-e avoided. Even if the costs of and emissions from back up generation are ignored, wind is still over six times more costly that nuclear as a way to avoid emissions.

A single 1000 MW nuclear plant (normally we would have four to eight reactors together in a single power station) would avoid 6.9 million tonnes of CO2 equivalent per year. Five hundred 2 MW wind turbines (total 1000 MW) would avoid 0.15 to 1.3 million tonnes per year – just 2 to 20% as much as the same amount of nuclear capacity. When we take into account that we could have up to 80% of our electricity supplied by nuclear (as France has), but only a few percent can be supplied by wind, we can see that nuclear can make a major contribution to cutting greenhouse emissions, but wind a negligible contribution and at much higher cost.“

Lang's conclusions are truly devistating to the argument that wind electrical generation represents a major solution to the problem of global warming.

In the course of the debate on Barry's blog, Mark Jacobson's work on base wind was touted. Barry responded:

Jacobson’s work on distributed wind and vehicle-to-grid backup have been savaged by Charles Barton at Nuclear Green. . . .

I’d be interested (sincerely!) in knowing where Barton is wrong.

Barry thus challenges wind defenders to answer my criticisms of the Archer-Jacobson wind system. There were a few feble attempts to answer my challenge, which mainly offered alteration to the Archer-Jsaconson rules. For example Fran Barlow suggested

Whatever Jacobson proposes it seems to me that the overbuild for wind need be no higher than the CF would imply for 100% of nameplate.

So assuming a CF of, say 35% (the starting point for feasibility IMO) the overbuild should be no more than 2.84 so that taken together the farm’s reticulated components produce the output almost all the time. Only on those occasions wherea) there was a: decline in output below the anticipated output

AND

b) demand implied the anticipated output

would redundant capacity be brought online. Ideally the sites in question would be highly predictable on 2 hours notice.

Order of call would be

a)demand management measures

and/or

b)pumped hydro/V2G

and/or

c)NG

Note that NG need not be a fossil fuel — waste biomass from ADs or syngas from CSP usaage are options

Barlow's analysis simply assumes that average wind speed over the entire 17 site array would be constant, and simply by multiplying the generating capacity by the inverse of the capacity factor would give you a reliable supply of electricity. The rub is of course that the average wind speed over the entire array is not constant. Thus more wind capacity replication than Barlow calculates is required to create the base load level of reliability.

My reading of Archer-Jacobson is of course influenced by the fact that their analysis was conducted for Southern Great Planes wind resources. The most likely time for there to be a wind problem would be during Summer days, during periods of peek power demand by Texas electrical consumers. Supplying these demands is very much a quality of life issue, and on very hot summer days, when wind generation can drop to an absolute minimum, a significant public health issue. Demand management would be an extreme measure in these situations. My critique of Jacobson on the rationality of a V2G system was part Brook's challenge, and Barlow cited the use of V2G technology without defending that technology against my critique. She also advocates pumped hydro, but fails to offer a convincing analysis of how pumped hydro would provide a low cost solution to the problem of summer winds on the Southern Great Planes. Finally Barlow falls back on hydro-carbon solution including natural gas. The Natural gas solution of course does what we are trying to avoid, that is adds to the atmospheric CO2 levels. The other Barlow solutions, "waste biomass from ADs or syngas from CSP usage," involve further replications and added expenses. Needless to say Barlow does not stop to ponder the questions that her solutions raise.

Barry Brook has generated a necessary conversation on the limitation of wind, a conversation that will need to be repeated over and over again during the next few years.