Energy Collective Foxes

The rule of the Energy Collective is that it is ok to pose as an expert while being ignorant, and it is ok to lie about your data, but it is not ok to be rude as a response to ignorance or lies. British self designated "energy expert" Vicky Portwain, regularly posts on the Energy Collective, and offer one sided, pro-renewable, anti-nuclear comments on energy issues. In her latest Energy Collective posts, Portwain tells her readers:

A large sector of the UK population remain sceptical about nuclear energy, how to deal with the waste and who is to pay being as yet unanswered questions. On the other hand the UK population as a whole does not appear prepared to make sacrifices by way of serious energy demand reduction and alternative energy committment. Overall we seem happy to sacrifice other peoples’ standard of living i.e. those living in the areas near where waste will be disposed of or the standard of living of the next generation. The result is a highly likely continuation of our energy addiction fed by expensive nuclear energy.

Of course Portwain assumes that there is such a thing as nuclear waste. The term waste suggest that something is not wanted, but for some users, post reactor nuclear fuel is highly desirable. My suspicion is that were the United Kingdom to offer to sell, what Portwain calls "nuclear waste", it would find a ready buyer. India has recently had a shortage of fuel for its Heavy Water reactors. heavy water reactors can turn the U-235 and plutonium in nuclear waste into nuclear fuel. Since Indian reactors have recently been operating at 50% of capacity, due to a shortage of nuclear fuel, and for the Indians, the UK's nuclear waste is a source of electrical generation energy. So Portwain's use of the term "nuclear waste", is falls far short of telling the whole story.

Secondly, Portwain tells us that how to deal with the waste is an unanswered question. This would seem to suggest that there is no known solution to the problem of nuclear waste. But as I have pointed out there is no problem of nuclear waste, simply because post-reactor nuclear fuel is desired by India, and therefore is nor waste. The whole problem comes about because of a political decision to not recycle post-reactor nuclear fuel in reactors, and tonot sell it to anyone who does. Thus post-reactor nuclear fuel becomes waste for political rather than technical reasons. The solution to the problem would be a political decision to change the way post reactor fuel is treated in laws and regulations.. Thus the solution to the politically created problem of nuclear waste is to change the laws and regulations concerning post-reactor fuel.

Portwain's third alligation is the claim that resorting too nuclear power will

sacrifice other peoples’ standard of living i.e. those living in the areas near where waste will be disposed of or the standard of living of the next generation.

Note that for Portwain it this is so obvious that she does not need to explain how the living close to "nuclear waste" would impinge on anyone's standard of living. If Portwain is a typical "Green", she believes that living close to nuclear waste will lead to cancer. But repeated research on cancer rates in areas surrounding nuclear plants that has not produced any evidence that living close to nuclear plants where "nuclear waste" is stored produces any health consequences. Portwain should tell us the whole story.

There are areas in the United States where nuclear waste associated with the military use of nuclear materials was mishandled during the Cold War. Communities like Hanford, Washington, Oar Ridge, Tennessee and those communities near the Sevannah River Project were polluted by the uncontrolled cold war dumping of radioactive nuclear materials.

I grew up in Oak Ridge, and since my parents lived in Oak Ridge from 1948 until my father's death in January 2009 I have been kept aware of area health issues by the comments of my parents. Yet despite numerous studies of public exposures to radioactive materials during the 1940's and 50's, and of area cancer rates, no conclusive evidence has emerged suggesting that Oak Ridge area radiation related cancer rates exceeded the national averages. Research in areas surrounding American reactors show the same thing. There is no evidence that radiation related cancer rates increase in the proximity of reactors, despite the presence of stored post-reactor fuel on site. Thus it appears that Vicky Portwain expressions of concern about nuclear waste are offered without an attempt to establish an objective foundation for them.

The Silver Bullet, Energy Collective Foxes, and the Nuclear Fix

A true nuclear hedgehog believes, contrary to conventional thinking, that there is an energy silver bullet. That bullet is one or more forms of nuclear technology. Rod Adams and I both believe that small reactors are essential to the nuclear fix. As Tyler Hamilton notede about a mini-reactor design:

Efficient. Flexible. Safer. Transportable. Scalable. Swappable. In the world of nuclear energy, small could end up becoming the new big.

Small can be built in factories. Factory production of reactors is a key to lowering nuclear cost. It is not however the only key. The view of the nuclear hedgehogs is that by fixing the reactor, by solving the problems that raise objections to nuclear power in the first place, the energy problem can be solved. The Energy Collective foxes, dismiss this as nonsense, and stop paying attention, because they are convinced that the nuclear fix is impossible.

The energy collective foxes have some tricks, but the tricks add up to expensive and limited electricity, a greatly diminished standard of living for ordinary people,and an American national economy that is not competitive with the emerging Asian economic powers. The foxes expect the American people to make due by thrift.

The Foxes seldom talk about energy costs, except to claim that nuclear power is too expensive. Too expensive compared to what is never explained. When future levelized costs are compared, nuclear costs turn out to be equal too or lower than renewables. Energy researcher Mary Hutzler notes the an obvious but often overlooked effect of wingmill construction on future wind cost.

In the case of the revised AEO 2009, more wind capacity is built earlier in the forecast than in the AEO 2009 without the stimulus (10 gigawatts more by 2010 and 33 gigawatts more by 2020). As more wind units are constructed, the better wind sites are used up earlier, and wind becomes more expensive due to access and resource availability issues.

in comparision, building reactors makes future nuclear has a negative impact on future nuclear costs because ofd the learning curve. Mary Hutzler's observation is beyond the sophistication of Energy Collective foxes who seem completely oblivious to reneewable cost issues.

The Energy Collective foxes are also completely ignorant of the basic facts of nuclear technology. We have Tyler Hamilton , so utterly and completely ignorant of nuclear technology, that he does not know that the problem of nuclear waste, as he understands it, could be eliminated by switching from a uranium fuel cycle to a thorium fuel cycle. Should competent energy writers know this? Yes, absolutely! Do most energy writers know this? Absolutely not! Lets face it, most energy experts are nuclear illiterates. Most of the so called energy experts whose writings appear on the Energy Collective, know so little about nuclear energy, that they are lack basic competence on many energy issues. What is worse, they seem to lack the will to learn.

By switching nuclear technology, by altering things like reactor size, fuel cycle, and reactor design and operation details, radically different nuclear technologies are possible. It is possible, by changing the rules of the nuclear game. It is possible to build reactors that are cheaper, lower priced, safer, and more far efficient. By adopting new nuclear technologies, reactors can produce from 60% to 80% of the energy required by society. Nuclear power is the silver bullet that the Energy Collective Foxes do not understand.

Energy hedgehogs, Energy foxes

πόλλ' οἶδ' ἀλώπηξ, ἐχῖνος δ'ἓν μέγα ("The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing"). - Archilochus (c. 680 BC – c. 645 BC)

The philosopher Isaiah Berlin divided thinkers into two categories, Foxes who know many little tricks, and hedgehogs who know one big trick. This division is somewhat artificial, but still useful. My quarrel with the Energy Collective is really a quarrel with the foxes of the energy collective, who may know a lot of tricks but none of them are very good. The supporters of nuclear power like Rod Adams and Dan Yurman are the hedgehogs of the collective. They believe that their one trick, nuclear power works better than all of the tricks of The Collective's foxes.

The Collective's foxes deny the very possibility of the Collective's hedgehog's trick. "There is no such thing as a silver bullet," they say knowingly. They tell the rest of us that nuclear power is too expensive, without ever noting that other low carbon energy sources, for example solar and wind, are even more expensive, and are far less reliable. The Hedgehogs notice that much of what the Foxes talk about does not make sense or is unproven. The Foxes seem to hold the Hedgehogs trick in contempt.

If only it wasn't nuclear.

Collective fox Tyler Hamilton says, when nuclear hedgehogs demonstrate how neatly their trick works with small reactors. Hamilton adds

The fact is the units would still produce nuclear-fuel waste – a football-sized amount for each reactor

Mind you, each reactor produces a huge amount of waste, A football size amount! And Tyler lets us know he is on the side of righteousness:

a large part of the population believes it immoral to create and leave behind highly toxic waste for future generations.

perhaps we should call him Saint. Tyler demands to know:

Can a company like Hyperion be trusted .. . ?

in the end Tyler acknowledges the message of small nuclear

Efficient. Flexible. Safer. Transportable. Scalable. Swappable. In the world of nuclear energy, small could end up becoming the new big.

But then he drops the bomb,

If only it wasn't nuclear.

It would help if Tyler would have interviewed NASA engineer and nuclear blogger Kirk Sorensen about how radioactive post-reactor LFTR fission products are after a few years, and what their uses are. But typical of Collective foxes, Tyler in not really interested in whether the problem of nuclear waste is real, or if it whether the alleged problems of nuclear power can be solved. Like most Collective foxes, Tyler clearly loathes nuclear power and and wants to have nothing to do with it. Tyler is in the eyes of the nuclear hedgehogs not a fox at all, rather he is an ignorant ass, who is satisfied to remain ignorant about the possibility of making nuclear power our big trick. Should we suffer fools like Tyler gladly when his ignorance puts the future of humanity at risk?

Unfortunately many of the so called energy experts who writings are featured on The Energy Collective are every bit as ignorant as Tyler, and every bit as willfully so. We are not going to win the fight against global warming if we listen to the voices of idiots.
The world of the Energy Collective Foxes: Recent German wind electrical output.

There are 19,460 wind turbines in Germany with a total capacity of 22,247 MW installed. Note that wind generation output dropped to zero on August 22, and still had not recovered at the end of August 25.

Update 8/27/09: The Capacity Factor has posted another critique of Tyler Hamilton, futher calling into question his professionalism.

Plato's Myth of the Cave, and the Energy Collective

Plato's Myth of the Cave

Imagine a dark, subterranean prison in which humans are bound by their necks to a single place from infancy. Elaborate steps are taken by unseen forces to supply and manipulate the content of the prisoner’s visual experience. This is so effective that the prisoners do not recognize their imprisonment and are satisfied to live their lives in this way. Moreover, the cumulative effects of this imprisonment are so thorough that if freed, the prisoners would be virtually helpless. They could not stand up on their own, their eyes would be overloaded initially with sensory information, and even their minds would refuse to accept what the senses eventually presented them. It is not unreasonable to expect that some prisoners would wish to remain imprisoned even after their minds grasped the horror of their condition. But if a prisoner was dragged out and compelled to understand the relationship between the prison and outside, matters would be different. In time the prisoner would come to have genuine knowledge superior to the succession of representations that made up the whole of experience before. This freed prisoner would understand those representations as imperfect—like pale copies of the full reality now grasped in the mind. Yet if returned to the prison, the freed prisoner would be the object of ridicule, disbelief, and hostility. - Plato paraphrased by John Partridge

Nuclear Ignorance and Illiteracy in the Energy Collective

In 2007 when I began to look at the question of mitigating Anthropogenic Global Warming, I began to ask questions that were dictated by common sense. It was proposed by David Roberts of Grist for example that the energy from fossil fuels could be replaced by renewable energy. So I ask Roberts, what do you do for energy when the Sun goes down and the wind stops blowing? The wind is always blowing somewhere Roberts suggested. The Sun is always shining somewhere, he added. This might be sure, but setting up renewable generating facilities everywhere gets to be expensive. This has not stopped David Roberts, Mark Z. Jabonson, Amory Lovins, Joe Romm, and a hoard of confused, incompetent and ignorant "energy experts" whose writings appear on "The Energy Collective" from erroneously suggesting that renewables are an acceptable, lower cost alternative to nuclear power.

Some of my posts on LFTR potential have begun to appear on The Energy Collective blog. A few writers like Rod Adams and Dan Yurman are very nuclear literate, but most Energy Collective writers are simply nuclear illiterate. A few are aware of their shortcoming and do not commit the sin of presuming to write on topics about which they know nothing. It is a wise person who can recognize his or her limitation and not presume to transcend it. More than a few Energy Collective writers are prisoners of the cave, who believe that their limited and distorted knowledge of nuclear technology is everything there is worth knowing. No effort at rational persuasion can shake these ignoramuses out of their stupor.

The Energy Collective has begun carrying some of my posts on the LFTR. I wonder what the nuclear illiterates make of what I write. I suspect that they see me as incredibly simple minded and misguided. As far as I can tell, they are not the least interested in following up on what I have to say. Why learn about the incomprehensible? It is better to settle for ignorance and intellectual incompetence. Of course those who are comfortable with life in the cave, are not going to seek a way out, nor can they offer advice to others about what is real and what is not.

What the Energy Collective does not want you to see: Wind generation in Germany for the last week

"dv82xl" wrote

The truth is starting to bite, and some people in power are not being fooled anymore.

Reality always bats last.

The installed wind generating capacity of Germany is rated at 23 GW, The power output on a good day during the last week might amount to 1/10th of that.

Hat tip to Klaus Allmendinger

The Energy Collective in the Era of Confusion

One of the principle problems of the Energy Collective, is the failure of most collective writers to understand the issues they write about it terms of cost. Not only are Energy Collective writers confused about cost, they spread their confusion to the public. Some of the most popular writers on the Energy Collective are what I charitably call aggressive, anti-nuclear nut cases. The anti-nuclear nut cases relentlessly harp on the supposedly enormous cost of nuclear power plants, often using high end cost estimates to make nuclear power look bad. These writers inevitably advocate the use of renewable generating capacity as an alternative, with the implied assertion that electricity generated from renewables will cost far less than nuclear generated power.

Needless to say the aggressive anti-nuclear nut cases never compare the cost of nuclear power with the cost of reliable renewable electricity. But even renewable advocates who do not take an aggressive anti-nuclear position, pitch puffballs at renewables costs. Renewables manufacturers, and installation builders frequently try to hide the very high costs of part time, unreliable renewables facilities. Unfortunately renewables friendly writers are party to the conspiracy to hind renewables cost, This pattern shows up over and over in the writing of Energy Collective renewables friendly writers.

In order to demonstrate the problem I made a case study of a recent Energy Collective post by Tyler Hamilton, a senior energy reporter and columnist for the Toronto Star. I would not classify Tyler an anti-nuclear nut case and I have posted a link to "Clean Brake" on Nuclear Green. But Tyler is a far to uncritical renewables advocate in my book. My case study is based on a post of June 18 titled, Duke Energy solar storage pilot worthy of replication. Tyler is nothing, if not a shameless cheerleader for renewable energy, opens his story:

It’s with great delight that I read about the handful of U.S. utilities that are seriously testing out various conservation, smart grid, storage and renewable technologies in an effort to extend greener offerings to customers. The latest is Duke Energy’s McAlpine Creek project, part of which involves the deployment of a 50 kilowatt solar PV array, consisting of 213 solar panels, at a substation that feeds the grid or, alternatively, can charge up a 500-kilowatt zinc-bromide battery system.

But no where in Tyler's story is there a hint about how much such a system would cost. This is a very practical question that energy writers should be answering. I decided to to do the leg work that Tyler failed to provide his readers. So how much does the installation cost? According to solarbuzz, PV installations cost from $8 to $10 per W. That would give us an installation cost of $400,000 to $500,000. The facility will have an optimal output on uncloudy days of 333,000 kWh. Hamilton claims that battery backup costs as little as two cents per kW, but I was unable to find any confirmation that zinc-bromide batteries were available at that price. I managed to track down the cost of ZBB zinc-bromide batteries which run to $400 per kWh. Thus the 500 kW battery most likely costs another $200,000. We clearly have a facility which is capable of producing electricity on demand, and will produce something close to 14 kWs per hour in a 24 hour day. The facility costs $600,000 to $700,000. Thus we have a cost of from $43 to $50 per watt of reliable output, or 5 to 6 times the cost of a hugely expensive nuclear plant.

Were Tyler to compare the cost of reliable electricity from the Duke PV facility with the cost of nuclear power, he would simply be forced to admit that reliable PV power was not competitive with nuclear power. No doubt Tyler would experience something less than "great delight" as he made this admission.

During the last two years, I have done repeated case studies that address the cost of reliable renewable electricity. I have looked at several schemes to make solar and wind generated electricity reliable, and assessed the cost of each scheme. The results were always the same. The estimated cost of reliable renewable electrical generating facilities have always proven to be more expensive than the estimated costs of new nuclear generating facilities, For far to many Energy Collective writers, this all too obvious conclusion is so distasteful, that they are simply participating in what amounts to a massive coverup of the real price of reliable renewable generating facilities. The failure of Energy Collective writers to address the issue of adverse renewables cost is an ethics issue, and it has serious consequences.

I have dubbed this current period in thinking about energy, the era of confusion.

We live in an era of confusion. We know that our energy future will be different, but we are like people who are somewhere between dreaming and being fully awake. Our dreams intrude into our thoughts, confusing us. In order to wake up we must stop confusing dreams with reality.

Unfortunately this confusion between dream and reality infects writers whose real responsibility is to help deliver the public from its confusion. To continue to yield to ones own confusion while ignoring evident reality is only human, but to lead in an era of confusion one must do a great deal more than yield to one's own confusion. For energy writers there is an ethical imperative to not yield, even if by not yielding we are forced to admit things which we find distasteful.