"UK ministers have ended a 20-year standstill on nuclear power by giving the go-ahead to a new generation of reactors to help cut the pollution that is disrupting the climate."

France's 4th largest export is electricity.

Italy is France's biggest customer for electricity.

Nukes are tried and true in France.

It seems like a fairly reasonable assertion to me.  About as reasonable as objecting to nuclear power on the grounds that it creates radioactive waste and has high capital costs.  

So, we have a debate now: is nuclear part of a clean energy future?

Sure we have problems with nuclear waste.  But then for years we refused to reprocess our waste.  France, the UK, and Russia reprocess waste, which more or less removes the issue (this is why you haven't heard of an equivallent to the Yucca Mountain problem in France).  France and the UK actually import spent nuclear material from Japan.

He might as well if this kind of propaganda piece on nukes is the best that the NYT can do.

Need we list the many reasons nuclear power is not any kind of solution to either GHG disaster or oil war?  Nope.  It's like debating with GHG disaster deniers.  No point in it anymore.

Nuclear power simply will not make a comeback, the money is not available anymore to do it.  It was squandered on oil war and stolen by contractors on america.

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog John Schneider, Northern Wisconsin

Sure we have problems with nuclear waste.  

Fortunately these do not include its having hurt anyone. It's not like fossil fuel waste in that respect.

But then for years we refused to reprocess our waste.  France, the UK, and Russia reprocess waste, which more or less removes the issue ...

Eek. Reprocessed waste is as radioactive as ever,
or almost -- only in later centuries is there a difference -- and still needs to be buried.

(this is why you haven't heard of an equivallent to the Yucca Mountain problem in France).

As best I recall, they haven't picked one yet.

France and the UK actually import spent nuclear material from Japan.

But they send it back vitrified.

Dealing with nuclear waste is like finding a place to dump out a hamster cage (after temporarily removing the hamsters) when all you have is a thousand-acre cow pasture.

--- G. R. L. Cowan, former hydrogen-energy fan
Oxygen expands around boron fire, car goes

Just give the nuclear challenged this link.  Watch them obfuscate.  Put up or shut up nuclear buddies.

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog John Schneider, Northern Wisconsin

amazngdrx --

The New York Times is usually not a liberal newspaper, it is a centrist newspaper, and it gives considerable room to right-wing views.  It can't even make up it's mind about global warming, and it seems to poo-poo peak oil.

Scotland is just going to have to depend on renewables.  Fortunately we have some of the best wind, wave and tidal in the world, so it might be doable - and we can import electricity from England if we need to bridge a gap.

And I hear that they won't be building new nukes in England either because the UK government says it isn't going to subsidise.

It seems that the market has decided for us - oh well, just have develop those renewables after all.

Wasserman:
"the heat they dump into the air and water directly heats the planet"
He's playing off global warming fears here, but the issue is thermal pollution - warming waters that can contribute to issues like algae blooms.  This is a real issue, but one with a simple solution of rejecting heat to the air (which is quite common for nuclear plants).  There is no global warming impact of simply rejecting heat (I can go into detail if you'd like), making this statement just plain bad science.

Brothers:
"new nuclear power plants presently cost more to build than do fossil fuel plants. This includes fossil fuel plants such as those fired by natural gas, a fuel that carries lower environmental costs"
Lower environmental costs than coal?  Certainly.  But natural gas still dumps a huge amount of carbon dioxide into the air.  Why exactly is Brothers excited that it's cheaper to build coal or natural gas plants than nuclear?

Brothers:
"Accepting nuclear energy as green will increase the number of targets terrorists might strike..."  
I'm picturing the US president and the green community holding hands and singing anti-terror songs.  

Of course, there were good arguments in both articles - especially the bits about fossil fuels used in mining and construction.  But I'm not convinced that's enough to stop nuclear.  The alternative is not renewable power - we just won't pay for it on a large scale (yet).  The alternative is oil, natural gas, and coal.  And the carbon impact of construction and mining for nuclear is tiny compared to those.

The number of dubious anti-nuclear claims, and the willingness to accept them, make me wonder at times whether people ask questions and then form an opinion, or just skip the asking questions part.

I'm pro-solar. Here in CA, we are adding billions to federal subsidies, and at the end of 10 years (2017) hope to have as much electricity from solar as would be provided by less than half a nuclear power plant. Wind? It makes sense, especially when the backup is hydro rather than inefficient natural gas. By 2022, it might supply as much as 7% of our electricity. Or not.

You're worried about nuclear waste and are not fighting coal power? Coal produces 4 x as much nuclear waste as nuclear does over its lifecycle. Of course, that's disingenuous -- intense nuclear waste has to be dealt with. Sort of the difference between dealing with mercury scattered here and there (ignore it!) compared to dealing with a pool -- but which one does more damage?

The NY Times is not perfect, but attacking it because it doesn't publish on peak oil? Climatologists say pretty frequently that we will run out of atmosphere long before we run out of fuels (there are so many, like coal to liquids).

Nuclear power will not make a comeback? Go to a nuclear industry site to read how many proposed nuclear power plants are making it through the system here in the US, how many are proposed, or will be soon, for West and East Europe.

Greenhouse gas emissions from nuclear?

We have almost no time left to keep atmospheric GHG concentrations below 450 ppm. At 450 ppm, there is a 50% chance of a temperature increase of 2 C over pre-industrial times. The policy community thinks that we will have to work very hard to keep GHG levels below 550 ppm (this before the new discouraging report on rapid increase in GHG emissions recently). At that point, there is a 15%? chance of the temperature increase staying below 2 C. It's easy to say it can all be done with solar and wind, and higher efficiency, as long as you ignore the grim facts people in policy are seeing. But the issue is too serious to have that kind of discussion.

A Musing Environment

Karen Street

--- G. R. L. Cowan, former hydrogen-energy fan
Oxygen expands around boron fire, car goes

If we run out of uranium, what's the problem, were you saving it for something else? That said, uranium plus thorium supplies are larger than coal supplies, and we definitely have enough uranium for some time to come. There's an amusing web site somewhere that predicted in 2000 that we would run out of high quality uranium in 2002; in 2005 they rewrote it to say we would run out this year.

It's easy to say no coal or nuclear, but in practice, "no nuclear" is said only in countries with boucoup coal power (and Norway which is all hydro).

Maybe because I live in CA, the huge funding pressure is to build solar. We could build solar and wind even faster, and do way more R&D (also for geothermal, carbon capture and storage), but it will be a long time, if ever, for solar to compete with nuclear during the daytime, and there are problems with wind power as well.

Not counting hydro and geothermal, it's either nuclear or fossil fuels for the rest. It will take incredible amounts of material, incredible infusions of money (up to 65 - 70 cent/kWh for solar in Germany, talk about subsidies), too-rapid buildup of infrastructure with uncertain technologies, and a massive buildup of the grid (for wind power) and utility infrastructure (for the intermittents). There's a reason why people in policy don't see everyone immediately making the switch.

Just imagine how easy it would be to get everyone to stop flying and driving, instead taking the train and bus. There would be a period of time for us to get the tracks and buses built, and you just have to convince pretty much everyone to spend less money and more time. Wind and solar are expensive, but Greyhound is pretty cheap. If we're going to make a wholesale change immediately, that's the one I favor. It would make life easier for those of us who have already made that change.

A better example is let's all move to condos or apartments. They are smaller so there's fewer demands on land, electricity and natural gas, water, and so on. It's a great idea, but it takes a while to change the infrastructure.

When people in policy look at rapid shift to solar and wind, they imagine that by 2050 we might be able to get half? of our electricity from solar and wind by 2050. Some believe this might occur earlier, some later. But no one in policy sees us getting so much of our electricity from these sources that we can forget ever building a nuclear or fossil fuel plant again.

A Musing Environment

Karen Street

Nukes are tried and true in France.

Nukes are run by a socialist monopoly in France.

-David Ahlport

It reduces the ammount of low level waste.

However places like Yucca mountain don't fill up by volume, they fill up by temperature.

And low level waste is virtually meaningless when it comes to temperature.

-David Ahlport

Address my compromise with a counter offer at least?  Other pro-nuclear posters have.  Pretend you're a Bechtel lobbyist negotiating with an environmentally proactive administration (Not that that could ever happen).

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog John Schneider, Northern Wisconsin

Just like here (industry self "regulation")any problems are covered up.  France used to dump their nuclear waste at sea.


http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog John Schneider, Northern Wisconsin

Let me just say that, my original intent on this post was to alert people that people from the right would use global warming as an excuse to push it for their own reasons, I was not worried about people who are sincerely worried about global warming and interested in nuclear power.  Also, if you will look at my first post for gristmill, I was very interested in the idea of, as I put it, "no transportation", that is, focusing on (re)creating town and city centers, so that people can walk everywhere -- and I didn't even get to the idea of buildings that would not require so much electricity (including solar heaters, not so much of a problem with materials, me thinks).  So I do think there is plenty of other elements of a better society that we can agree on, and then we can wrestle with generating electricity, no?

I look at the predictions for climate change and I would like us to tackle everything immediately -- transportation, electricity, consumption, better buildings, industry.

Any nuclear plant we don't build today means one more coal plant (possibly a natural gas plant) that will last decades.

Where I live, the red fire warning signs are up or will be up soon; until a couple of years ago this was a fall event. Again, we're now in a permanent drought. Best case we lose 80%+ of the snowpack this century here in CA, worse case a too-rapid sea level rise means that it no longer makes sense to maintain the levees in the Delta. And people around the world who don't fly and drive will on average suffer even more. Not to mention a substantial portion of other species.

So I'm not all eager over that future tense you're using for tackling electricity sources!

A Musing Environment

Karen Street

Rising fuel prices and AGW are both very powerful arguments for sustainability through solar and wind on a distributed basis.  It also has the benefit of being available NOW, not in 10 years, which is the likely lead time for nukes.  It has the added benefit of reducing CO2 output NOW, with a percent that would rise more rapidly than nukes could offer.    

So many of the other hazards, costs, concerns, arguments, would disappear with distributed solar and wind.  

Of course, not a single goddam piece of this can be done on a national basis with the current administration and corporate oligarchy in place.  Probably the earliest would be mid 2009, after the Nov 2008 U.S. elections.  Until then, the only avenue available is state, local, and individual action.  

While many of us are against one thing or another, I find a lot of involved people who don't know what they are for.  

David
Sustainability For Life

Messages done with sustainable energy, with Wind and Sun!

Let's be clear, though, that this is a description of a political problem, not a technical one. There's no practical reason that a non-built nuclear plant can't be replaced with efficiency, energy storage, and distributed renewables.

And if it's a political problem, why not try to change it?

grist.org

To extend what David Roberts has said, why must the choice be between nukes or coal?  Is that not extremely short-sighted and artificial?  Have we not seen the sun and felt the wind?  Do we not have roofs?  Does everyone have so much stock in GE, Bechtel, Halliburton, Big Coal, Big Oil, and Big Auto that it hampers and constrains our choices?  

I must apologize for my bluntness, but this is not like herding cats, it is like herding autistic cats!  (I could go much further with the metaphor, but I won't.)  I simply do not understand the stubborn, apparently willful lack of acceptance of solar and wind.  Both can be used for electricity, and solar can be used for water heat and space heat and for cooling.   Both can be used for battery charging or hydrogen production for transportation.

The only problem is how to finance the re-opening of millions of square feet of unused floorspace in factories across the country, plus the transportation, and installation of distributed PV and wind systems--OH, wait, nukes, Big Coal and Big Oil get Billions upon Billions upon Billions of dollars in Federal subsidies--another POLITICAL problem!  

Of course, behind all pronouncements like the one referred to from Ford, is the corporate oligarchy who run the show.  But, just like Toto pulling back the curtain, they can and have to be revealed.  The only difference is the level of evil and duplicity and extremes they will go to to stay in power.  

The future is now.

David
Sustainability For Life

Messages done with sustainable energy, with Wind and Sun!

Any nuclear plant we don't build today means one more coal plant (possibly a natural gas plant) that will last decades.

Let's be clear, though, that this is a description of a political problem, not a technical one. There's no practical reason that a non-built nuclear plant can't be replaced with efficiency, energy storage, and distributed renewables.

There's the argument that things take time: we can't tear down all our houses and put up condos and tear down our roads and build railroad tracks. Not immediately. The switch is to be encouraged, but it can't happen immediately.

If wind is ever going to be more than 15 - 20% of our electric supply, which won't happen before there is a large GHG tax (direct or through cap and trade), there will have to be a massive infrastructure upgrade so that wind can be schlepped very long distances. Even today, wind generally blows in regions that have low capacity power lines, and after a few windmills are built, the grid must be upgraded. NIMBY.

Germany is building 1,700 miles of power lines, and it still has limited wind power. It's useful to read about Germany's experience. One reason Germany can have such a large amount of wind power is because it is part of a larger grid, but even so, there are deleterious effects to other countries. German wind operators receive more/kWh than we in the US pay for electricity (this doesn't count transmission and distribution costs). The wind doesn't blow on particularly hot or cold days, so not only does wind require inefficient natural gas backup, this is especially required when electricity is most needed.

Steve Chu (Lawrence Berkeley Labs is doing a series in downtown Berkeley) points out that photovoltaics (solar panels) would need to come down in price by a factor of 3 to be sold without subsidy, and by a factor of 10 to be sold in large quantities. Meanwhile, there is not sufficient infrastructure to build PV's in any great quantity. As I said earlier, we in CA will add billions to federal subsidies and only end up with 0.4 nuclear power plant worth of solar by 2017.

Both wind and solar technology must improve (fund more R&D, legislators!) and utilities must figure better ways to work with intermittent sources of energy. I correspond with someone involved in Iowa wind power -- not only does the wind blow at night, when it's least needed, the utility must adjust its natural gas plants every minute as wind speeds change during the day.

Much more could and should be done in terms of subsidizing various technologies, R&D, and so on. Here in CA, most incandescent bulbs may be prohibited in a few years, thank goodness. This kind of efficiency saves money, but sometimes greater efficiency costs money: the Prius is a good example. Nevertheless, I along with many others would not mind seeing many more car drivers voluntarily or with subsidies paying more for efficiency. Around the country and the world, programs are being instituted to help businesses and residences know what changes to make, and to give low or zero-cost loans. We could do much more of this.

Nuclear is nowhere near the only answer. But once a sensible efficiency program is put in place (buildings, bulbs, appliances, power lines, industry, and vehicles), once we begin paying even more for electricity by subsidizing renewables (solar and wind cost more than nuclear, especially if you count the intermittancy, but we need them, so we subsidize them), once we begin saving even more energy at home because electricity prices have gone up, we still will need lots of electricity.

Part of the problem is that most people in the developed world will only slowly accept living with less as a way to live more richly -- most houses have more than one TV, often large. We have big refrigerators, we air condition when we're hot instead of sleeping outside. People in the developing world have been listening to arguments that they should not live like rich people (the Chinese, for example, aspire to live like the Portuguese or Spanish), but the arguments appear not to be working.

Recently, energy use has been increasing 3%/year. The most rapid increase in renewables will not be that large for years.

People in policy say we need to use every solution. What if we run into problems taking technologies which together supply less than 1% of the world's electricity to half or more of the world's electricity even while we are doubling electricity production? First, we still have as much electricity produced by other methods as we had before, and second, there may be a glitch on the way. We ran out of margin years ago. The world will continue warming even if we add no more GHG. The time when we could have moved leisurely to new energy sources is long past.

See this in a little more detail in How Many Wedges Do We Need?

People in policy are working hard to reduce our GHG emissions as rapidly as possible -- find and improve techology, make good policy, etc. Many say that 550 ppm atmospheric GHG would be hard to achieve, even with nuclear power. How can you take nuclear power out of the possible technologies and keep GHG levels below 450 ppm?

Every ppm we can lower atmospheric GHG probably means lives saved.

A Musing Environment

Karen Street

In May 2007, 266 reactors that are being built (30), planned (74) or proposed (162).
In Feb 2007, up from February, 2007 when 219 were in the construction pipeline, Since February, 2007 of 3 more are being built, 12 more planned and 32 more proposed.

Those do not include the 10 new ones proposed in the UK or 10 more proposed in India. Increasing plans from South Africa and Russia.

China is also working on adding 155 GW of hydro power between 2006 and 2020. 1.2 times the amount of power from the Three Gorges project every two years.

With the Three Gorges partially coming online the 2007 hydro generation in China is at least 124.8GW. Yet this is just over 20% of the 600GW total national power generating capacity, which the China Electricity Council (CEC) says was reached in December 2006. Of the 80GW of new power brought on stream during 2006, 52.8GW was provided by coal fired plants, in comparison with just 6.9GW by the hydro sector.

China is targeting 10% power from renewables in 2020.

On wind and solar. A small windmill or a one house solar electric system can be installed in a few days or weeks. However, building 1000 forty tall (what it takes for 3MW wind generators to equal one 1GW nuclear plant taking into account load factor) wind generation systems, ocean anchoring, power lines, property rights etc... also are multi-year projects.
Total peak power of installed PV was around 1,700 MW as of the end of 2005. By the end of 2006, nearly 6,000 MW of power have been installed worldwide. However the load factor means that this is equal to the power generation of a single 2.2 GW nuclear plant. There have been silicon supply problems since 2004.

Does everyone have so much stock in GE, Bechtel, Halliburton, Big Coal, Big Oil, and Big Auto that it hampers and constrains our choices?

A great many people have an interest in Big Oil that determines what they can think.

... how to finance the re-opening of millions of square feet of unused floorspace in factories across the country, plus the transportation, and installation of distributed PV and wind systems--OH, wait, nukes, Big Coal and Big Oil get Billions upon Billions upon Billions of dollars in Federal subsidies--another POLITICAL problem!

Nukes get no subsidy. Big Oil and Gas collects tens of billions in fuel consumption tax. A little of that is given to the producers as subsidies. Much of the rest goes to large-mouthed advocates of PV and wind.

Any effective replacement of fossil fuels' energy without their carbon emissions is likely also to cancel the associated revenue, both private revenue and tax revenue. If that revenue loss isn't a sore point with you, you should be willing to estimate how much oil it would have taken to make the electricity nukes made, worldwide, last year and the year before.

--- G. R. L. Cowan, former hydrogen-energy fan
Oxygen expands around boron fire, car goes

Nukes get no subsidy.

Thats not true.
Thats true at all.
I dare say, thats a lie.

http://www.citizen.org/cmep/energy_enviro_nuclear/electri ...

-David Ahlport

US Department of Energy, FY 2008 budget

The Office of Nuclear Energy ($875 million)
The Office of Fossil Energy ($863 million)
The Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy ($848 billion)  (When you remove BioFuels and Hydrogen)

-David Ahlport

Matthew Simmons, one of the countries leading energy consultants, has already proposed such a Manhattan Project in the context of peaking global oil and natural gas supplies. (Peaking Coal is now also predicted by 2020.)

However, I fear it will take a number of blackouts and oil shocks to focus national attention away from American Idol fever which I'm sorry to see also infects certain grist bloggers!

But supposing I were just lying, and all those supposed subsidies were really helpful to nuclear power, and if government didn't spring for them, the private plant operators would have to do it themselves; suppose they'd really and truly be out-of-pocket in amounts like $580 million over three years. How does that compare with the power they make and the oil it would have taken?

--- G. R. L. Cowan, former hydrogen-energy fan
Oxygen expands around boron fire, car goes

The more appropriate question would be Coal.

And the answer there would be less than half the cost.

_

The cost of decommisioning a Nuclear facility is not even taxed, and they are offered garunteed 60 year loans well below the market rate.

Even the cost they are paying for Government to have to deal with the waste barely covers the cost of them suing the government for "Are we there yet" with Yucca Mountain.

And of course there's also the Price Anderson Act.

And hell, it'd be hard to imagine how big the Government funding would be if you include Department of Defense expenditures.

Face it, Nuclear lives and breaths subsidy.

If the Rightwing were looking for an energy source to demonize as "Socialist", Nuclear would be it.
(Not suprisingly it does very well in Japan, France, and Russia.)

-David Ahlport

Hey, G.R.L.:

And second, your insult is weak, misdirected, and incorrect.  And what is your agenda, revenue or reducing GHG?  Or future tech boron?  And your own subsidies?    I suppose if someone wants to slavishly adhere to the mentality of 'electricity as commodity' you would be a perfect candidate.

I find it amusing and also highly disingenuous that anyone would maintain that nukes get no subsidies, in view of government policy since the Manhattan Project, up to and beyond Yucca Mountain.  And I see others have offered a quick and effective redirect.  

Hey, Karen:

Forgive me, but given your argument on efficiency of solar, the same reluctance could have been applied to the development of the automobile, and  no one would have ever bought a car until fuel mileage had topped 100 mi/gal!  "Well, I am just not going to get one until they get the efficiency up.  Until then I'll just use this ox cart."

I will offer some of my own numbers, and reiterate I am not talking about large scale utility wind farms and PV facilities.  I am talking about rooftops and distributed generation.  

I live in an area that is not the best for either wind or PV, so I have both to provide an overlap in sources.  I spent $15-20,000 between 8 and 10 years ago, and it paid for itself monetarily in about 6 years.  The embodied energy in the system was recovered in 2-4 years.  I have replaced my batteries once and will have to again in 6-10 years at a cost of $3-3,500 each time.  That cost is recovered each time in less than two years.  The batteries have very little embodied energy in them since they are highly recycled--plastic, lead, acid--virtually all of it gets recycled.  

The standard warranty for PV panels is no less than 20 years and most state 25 years.  They are warranted not to lose more than 20% of their rated power in that time.  However, most PV panels will last well in excess of 30 years with the same power.  My own PV panels have withstood golf ball size hail with no damage at all.  

My wind turbine will operate sometimes 24 hours a day in my less than optimal location.  It may last 50 years, although there are other units from other manufacturers that have already been around for 75-80 years and only require new off-the-shelf bearings and springs to be put in use for another 75-80 years.  

By the way, Karen, your message on wind characteristics is full of erroneous generalities.  No useful wind when hot or cold?  No useful wind except at night?  Many, many areas oriented near coastlines benefit from the unequal diurnal heating of land and water, which results in what is called a "sea breeze" which starts during the daylight and typically peaks late in the afternoon, matching the peak electricity demand period.  And speaking of cold, have you ever seen anyone knocked over by a high wind in a blizzard?  Such generalizations.  

I also have a solar domestic water heater that takes care of 95-97% of my water heating needs on an annually basis.  If I had a larger tank I would be pushing 100%.  

The Sun and Wind are free, infinite and sustainable, egalitarian, and universal.   The equipment needed is really only for collection, conversion and storage--nothing terribly high-tech anymore.  Which is one main reason why many people oppose it.  Wind and solar cannot be treated as a commodity, a revenue generator for some pencil pusher.  

If some of the huge, multi-BEEEEELLION dollar subsidies and tax breaks doled out to Big Nuke, Big Oil, Big Auto, and Big Coal were instead offered to homeowners all the negative pencil pushers would in deed look like chumps.  

And GHG would start dropping much sooner than any nuke plant could accomplish, since the PV and wind would be up and running immediately, years before the first cement truck would start rolling to construct a nuke plant.  

If I suffer a blackout it won't be due to the blind greedy incompetent stranglehold of the corporate oligarchy.  That will be the reason for most of the rest of you.  Such is the cross of 'electricity as commodity'.

The future is now.  "Be the change you wish to see in the world."

David
Sustainability For Life

Messages done with sustainable energy, with Wind and Sun!

Is Geothermal.

Specifically "Hot Dry Rock" Geothermal, which captures it's hot water and sends it back down, so that it can operate sustainably and operate virtually anywhere.

Raser Technologies, has developed electric drilling motors which offer orders of magnitude more torque, lower energy use, and lower heat build up. All using inexpensive iron cores, rather than rare/expensive physical magnets.
Not suprisingly Raser has gone in big into the Geothermal business.
Real big.

Whats more, Geothermal have higher reliability than Nuclear Power and Coal plants.
Offering 86-95% uptime capacity.

Geothermal offers all the benefits of Nukes.
Without the downsides.

And Geothermal, Bush says it should literally get zero subsidies because it's a "mature" technology.

Imagine what it could do with the same lavish subsidies as Nuclear.

-David Ahlport

Southern California Edison

However the huge bulk of their renewable electricity comes from Geothermal.

Outweighing all of their other renewables combined 2 to 1.

California has more Geothermal electricity than Iceland.  And Iceland is a Volcano.

-David Ahlport

http://mgea.com/index.html

It looks like you can get a geothermal system for your home...
http://mgea.com/index.html

Yeap.
Geothermal Heatpumps.
Except thats to save 80% on heating and cooling.
Not neccisarily electricity.

It operates off of the principle that a few meters under the ground stays a constant 50°F throughout the year.

So by leveraging that super insulated heatsink with a heatpump, you're able to heat and cool your house with a bare minimum of effort.

-David Ahlport

You could generate electricity and it would run day and night and you would sell back the electricity you don't use to the power company.

This is yet another example of a little bit of knowledge combined with an impertinent denialist troll (and I am using the valid noun form of 'troll').   So-called "geothermal" home systems are sadly and erroneously named, by Gawd knows whom.  Pretty weak, from someone who supposedly professes to know language and its evolution.

These systems are not at all the same as geothermal energy systems used for generation of electricity or even heat.  These are more properly called "earth-coupled" or "ground-coupled" and are in fact a variation of a heat pump.  A heat pump is designed to, uh, pump heat from one place to another.  An air-coupled heat pump simply uses the air as heatsink or source, is very conventional and have been around a long time.  Earth-coupled technology is newer but simply uses glycol-filled lines in the soil at a depth of several feet.  The temperature at 7-10 ft depth approximately matches the mean annual temperature of the site.  They cost more initially but use much less power and last much longer, and make little noise.

True utility geothermal systems have their own problems, such as thermal gain, water pollution, and water use.  Again, this is another manifestation of 'electricity as commodity'.  Great for investors, lousy for end users. Let's all be slaves to the electric utility.

I must be living in a time warp, since I have had PV and wind for 9 years and yet everyone says it has no future.  Hidden, tortured, contrived agendas, anyone?  As the monsters and masters of fossil fuels and nukes duke it out, my system blissfully purrs along.  It's nice not to be part of the problem.  

David
Sustainability For Life

Messages done with sustainable energy, with Wind and Sun!  

But in principle, shouldn't they be able to run the hot water through a turbine and generate electricity?

Nope, the temperature difference isn't wide enough.  Except for convient hotsprings, you usually need a minimum of about a mile deep.

However there are some tricks you can play to achieve that difference, given a temperature that doesn't boil water.

For instance, you can use fluids that turn into steam more readily than water.

Or in the case of Alaska/Canada you can use super cold glacier melt water to pull down the temperature difference from the other side.

http://www.renewableenergyaccess.com/rea/news/story?id=45 ...

Now when you start doing 6 miles deep, you can do that virtually anywhere.  USA have about 10x the existing electricity grid capacity in deep geothermal.

_

It's not quite plug and play like thinfilm solar panels.  But then again, you'd need to do a hell of a lot of drilling for Nuclear or Coal Sequestration.

I figure the ideal mix would be predominantly Geothermal for "Runs all the time" power.

And solar direct, and solar stored for peak demand.

Wind/Wave can contribute, but they are largely secondary to solar pv and hdr geothermal, mainly because they aren't reliable/availible enough.

Not to mention, Solar and Geothermal have spectactularly low operations and maintanence costs.

-David Ahlport

1. Relatively Cheap
   
2. Long Lasting
   
3. High Storage
   
4. Quick Charge/Discharge

If any of those hit it off big in utility sized scale, then we can forget we even heard of geothermal/coal/nuclear/largehydro

But I wouldn't really bank on that.

_

Thats why I see Geothermal footing the baseload.
Solar footing the daytime.
And relatively expensive storage footing the inbetween.

-David Ahlport

Geothermal power generation using water is problematic.  Why?  Because water is in very short supply.  Sending it down drill holes into hot rock fractures to make steam uses too much.

Closed systems where the water is recovered need large heat exchangers at the top after the steam has gone through turbines.  Using glacier melt to cool it, or using a refrigerant gas instead of water in the turbine?  This gets really expensive.  And very difficult to locate.  Iceland has the underground heat and ice to do it.

For the rest of the world wind power is a lot cheaper, and it doesn't use water or melt glaciers.  Wave power is coming along too.  So is solar.

But to save a large percentage of the huge amount of energy used to heat/cool buildings, geothermal IS the answer.  That 50 degreee heat sink underground can cool buildings with fluid circulation.  And defer heating buildings in cold climates with a 50 degree heat envelope created with circulated fluid.  It is like placing a building underground in terms of heating load.

When it is 50 degrees outside hardly any heat is needed to keep a building at 65 degrees inside.  The waste heat from appliances will do it, even if the appliances are very efficient.  Or even if solar hot water supplements a regular hot water system.

In some rare cases of extremely efficient, low power use homes, in areas with little solar insolation, a heat pump maybe necessary for home heating.  It would extract heat from the geothermal heat sink and operate at very high efficiency and very little power would be needed to run it.

This kind of heating/cooling using the earth itself as a geothermal heat sink would reduce energy use enough so that renewables could power transportation and the rest of energy demands.

I'm surprised to see that old talking point about huge amounts of storage needed to backup wind and other renewables.  I thought Gar had put that to rest.

Maybe you should reprise that one Gar, along with the latest data on wind farms on a widely distributed grid.  

I like biogas/fuel cell for backup instead of storage.  It saves huge amounts of GHG that otherwise are released from and by the wasate stream.  The organic fertilizer produced saves a whole 'nother huge amount of GHG.

Don't fall for plans to replace the huge waste of energy that coal power now feeds.  Reduce energy consumption with conservation using geothermal heating/cooling and plugin transportation, then get that reduced amount of energy from renewables.  Backup the distributed renewable grid with biogas/fuel cell.

It will work without nuclear power or geothermal steam turbines.  Water is very scarce and precious, do not pollute it with nuclear leaks and waste seeping into groundwater or metal acid bearing rock from geothermal.  

Besides which these two sources are way, way too expensive and will be run by the same old corrupt government/non regulated contractor cabal that has brought US oil wars and GHG disaster to benwefit their bottomline.

Distributed renewable energy and conservation are built up with a lot of local jobs and build our manufacturing and tax base with them.  And just maybe we can get asuto companies to build plugin vehicles here in the good old USA?  I bet we could.

And don't forget biogas, it can convert present chemical agriculture to organic, providing another whole host of economic recovery with the restoration of smaller family farms and farm communities where they become small distributed renewable energy suppliers as well.

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog John Schneider, Northern Wisconsin

The larger subsidy for Fossil Fuel energy is the fact that the do not have to pay for the health and environmental damage that they cause.

The $50 billion in revenue coal industry in the US does not have to pay for the 30000-60000 premature deaths caused each year in the US.
Perhaps you read the death numbers to quickly. Those numbers are like a Hiroshima every 1-2 years in the US alone.

Worldwide 3 million die prematurely from outdoor air pollution. Over 40% of that is from coal.(world health organization stat). This is why the statement that coal is more dangerous than nuclear is a correct statement. Fossil fuel pollution kills 50 Hiroshima's every year.

US air pollution costs at $145 to 530 billion. Extract the $18 to $140 billion estimate for greenhouse gases. Still $127 billion to $390 billion.

Coal is 40% of those air pollution costs.

Coal also costs billions because of the wear and tear on the transportion system. 40% of rail freight is to move 1.2 billion tons of coal in the US.

MIT has several reports on "The Future of", go to their site for more information on geothermal, coal, etc.

National Academy of Sciences published Environmental Impacts of Wind-Energy Projects.

I've linked to other wind and solar sources on this page.

Important: capacity is the maximum amount of electricity that could be produced, when the wind is blowing fast enough but not too fast, when the sun is at the right angle, when the nuclear plant is not down for maintenance and refueling. The National Academy of Sciences paper says that wind may supply 2 - 7% of new installed capacity over the net 15 years. In the US, wind power (with older turbines and current locations) has a capacity factor of 27%; in Germany it is 20%. These sources produce electricity at the rate of 27% and 20% of the installed capacity. Photovoltaics (solar panels) operate at 19% capacity in CA, 12% or so in Germany. Nuclear power plants operate at 90%. So 2- 7% of new capacity means a much lower contribution to actual electricity production:

3.5% to 19% of the increase in total electricity-generation capacity. If the average turbine size is assumed to be 2 MW (larger than most current turbines), 9500 to 36,000 wind turbines would be needed to achieve that projected capacity.

Because the wind blows intermittently, wind turbines often produce less electricity than their rated maximum output. On average in the mid-Atlantic region, the capacity factor of turbines--the fraction of their rated maximum output that they produce on average--is about 30% for current technology, and is forecast to improve to nearly 37% by 2020....Other factors, such as how wind energy is integrated into the electrical grid and how quickly other energy sources can be turned on and off, also affect the degree to which wind displaces other energy sources and their emissions. Those other factors probably further reduce the 30% (or projected 37%) figure, but the reduction probably is small, at least for the projected amount of onshore wind development...

David Keith is recognized by people in policy as one of the top people in wind power and its effect on the environment; see his work as well.

We can agree that the US government in particular should invest much greater sums in R&D for efficiency and renewables (and more rationally), and provide even greater subsidies and some mandates. Just because we should do more doesn't mean that renewables and efficiency can do it all. Reading policy advocates has helped give me a sense of why we can't get there immediately.

So read away. Many of the papers point out obstacles, eg, regulatory, that could benefit from public input.

A Musing Environment

Karen Street

Hey, Karen:

I'll reiterate what I said previously, that if the same dismissal of PV and wind that you and the so-called 'leadership' exercises were applied to cars, there would never have been an auto industry, since we would have all insisted on cars that operated at 100 mi/gal.  

I think I can safely presume that all the so-called experts in energy have never spent any time at all in a dwelling or other structure powered by sustainable energy.  Nor have they any experience with small-scale sustainability.  This is much like the story of Nelson Rockefeller who had no idea what "take home pay" was, or the current Republicans who have no idea what a "green-collar job" is--complete disconnect from the practical aspects of the field

I wish there was a less crass commercial way to say it, but "Just Do It".  

But maybe there is:  "Be the change you wish to see in the world."

David
Sustainability For Life

Messages done with sustainable energy, with Wind and sun!

Do you know what the electricity dissipation is on current electrical grids, and what it would be for state-of-the-art grids?  I thought I saw something at the EIA site that surprised me because they indicated that the energy dissipation of the grid was below 20%, and the energy loss at the actual (mostly coal) plant was close to 50%.  Anyway, the question is, if the electrical grid was very good, then we could ship the huge amounts of wind at certain points in the country around, as well as solar.  A friend of mine think yttrium would make the electrical grid almost a superconductor, but that might be another discussion.

SustainableGreen --

 that still leaves power centralized to a large extent, which I agree sucks, to use a technical term, but this also gets to the problem of private ownership of utilities, which seems to me is ridiculous.  But also, I think we need to combine both approaches, local and using the grid for some centralized sources, on top of making the society less energy-intensive, mostly through smart building/city centers, away from dumb buildng/surburbia.  It would probably help to have some analysis of local energy solar/wind resources, but I realize that takes alot of resources as well.

And the impact of that water getting less cold as Global Warming happens.

http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/05/20/africa/nuke.php

-David Ahlport

Hey, Jon:

I am a little confused that you say a centralized power grid "sucks" (sticking with the technical term), but also private ownership of utilities is ridiculous.  Why is such private ownership ridiculous?  What if hot water was a commodity provided as a utility, with line losses, monthly payments, remote generation, constantly rising prices, and no public say in sources?  Sound suspiciously parallel to the real 'electricity as commodity' scenario we have all been hypnotized and indoctrinated into?  

I swear when Edison's bosses got wind of his incandescent bulb, their first response was 'So what? How can we make money in perpetuity on it?'   Well, they nearly achieved such a feat, save for the development of wind and PV for private and commercial use.  

In fact, I essentially own my utility.  I make all my own electricity and actually have to waste excess from time to time.  I make 95-97% of my water heat, and if I just had a larger storage tank I could easily push 100%, with the larger storage volume and better volume to surface ratio.   I get my water from the roof or from a well.  My wastes are composted and the water is returned to the ground.  

I do agree the solution will be a combination of centralized energy generation and widely decentralized, but downplaying the PV and wind contribution becomes self-fulfilling, and makes me question people's agendas and sincerity.  If anyone wants an idea of the potential just look down on the empty rooftops across the countryside.  Conservation or energy efficiency is actually the very first step, one all of us should have already done to the greatest extent possible, as sentient responsible people.  We also need to push very hard on implementation of well-proven sustainable building techniques.  Urban redevelopment is an area where mistakes of the past can be corrected if there is sufficient vision, but I have seen very little that inspires or is inspired.  

I would point out that local energy sustainable solar and wind resources have already been heavily surveyed.  With my slow connection I can't put my electronic fingers on them easily for reference sake, but wind and solar maps are widely available.  

I have made the same point over and over, that the technology exists now, and all that is needed is political will, but that only comes through a resolved leadership.  Sadly, I don't see that happening, as I witness all the pointless squabbling among the armchair activists.

I'll leave it as I have before: "Be the change...."

David
Sustainability For Life

Messages done with sustainable energy, with Wind and Sun!

If I may plug my previous post, "Global warming and the vision thing", I advocated an aggressive policy of putting solar/wind energy systems on every conceivable surface/building.  "All" it would take is a mass movement to wrest resources from the military and superrich.  

By the way, maybe I'm biased from some information from George Monbiot who seems to think that wind systems on buildings are not practical, but do you think small-scale wind installations within a city are practical?  I understand that you can put PV/solar heaters on buildings, but can you stick windmills wherever you want?  Thanks!

You asked about a superconducting grid, and I just happened to open my weekly www.NewScientist.com update and read about the new superconducting line between substations being built in the finacial district of NYC at a cost of $40 million.(Of course, you can bet $40 million transmission lines at -230 degrees Centigrade won't be built just across the river in Brooklyn.)

And that is my point here. We are heading towards a two-tier system whereby rich communities and libertarian off-the-grid types will be "power-rich". While the rest of us will be subject to the sorts of power outages that plague Baghdad and Indian cities.

(Incidently, the same New Scientist issue reports that if we all switched to platinum fuel cells (see Joseph Romm's recent post on solar-hydrogen homes) the world's platinum stocks would be exhausted in 15 years.) I don't know how much Yttrium the planet has, but I suspect we'll be recycling copper for many centuries to come.

But I agree with you that we need to find a way to keep the lights on for everyone, rich and poor alike, through a municipalized or nationalized grid. (Enron, anyone? No thanks.)

Hey , Jon:

I understand your use of private vs. public, corporate large utility holdings vs. individual producers.  As money makers, electrical utilities are like cash cows to the corporate oligarchy.  Plus, they deal in fear, and have made themselves absolutely essential, so we have a big task to rid ourselves of self-destructive instincts, and make it public and transparent.  

I had not seen the topic on GW and vision, but I also advocate wide use of PV and wind, and now rather than later, ignoring all the poo-poo-ing about efficiency, since it is a FREE resource.  So what if PV efficiency is 10-20%?  It is 10-20% of a FREE resource!   The same principle applies to Wind.  And I agree about the funding task--I only half-joked on the thread on the Federal farm bill, by saying the first item on the bill should be to switch total budgets between USDA and DOD.  I thought it was an elegant solution.  

I do advocate that where practical, PV and wind can be used in many many more locations than presently considered.  Like I have said before here, my own system is in a location which is not best for either PV or wind--but together I get to waste electricity.  Clearly not all dwellings and buildings are great candidates for PV and wind, for example shaded or poorly oriented.  And turbines are more problematic, but on a very large flat factory or warehouse roof several smaller units could be placed if the roof was not already a good PV candidate.  Even so, and consistent with safety needs, wind turbines could be placed along the northern portion of a roof so they don't shade PV panels.  Solar collectors for heat are not so picky about partial shading, so can be placed more flexibly.

Residential areas using turbines is more problematic due to height requirements to reach clean reliable strong winds, and many people would resist them.  Turbines directly on homes can be a bad idea since they often create resonance with the building structure.  Some vertical axis turbines turn at much slower speeds, and avoid this problem.  And PV can be a challenge where significant shading exists.   Solar domestic water can go in many places.

Flexibility, together with an intensive and extensive program of production and deployment actually are keys to success.  Like I have said, Sun and Wind are sustainable, egalitarian, and universal, and would help improve the status of lower income classes, and reduce atmospheric heath problems.   They are most at risk from these threats.  

David
Sustainability For Life

Messages done with sustainable energy, with Wind and Sun!  

Not like you go buy a cow every time you want to get some milk.

-David Ahlport

Over parking lots is a great place for solar too.

Concentrating solar has reached 39% efficiency at only 10 suns, according to the NREL.

One of the main arguments against solar is that it takes too much space.  If that space is on roofs, so what?  This gives solar a zero footprint.

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog John Schneider, Northern Wisconsin

How might a solar concentrator be installed on a roof?

Amazingdrx,
How might a solar concentrator be installed on a roof?

Easy, by making it flat.
http://www.technologyreview.com/Energy/18718/

Or they could also see if they could perfect quantum dots for a similar and potentially greater effect.
http://www.sciencenews.org/articles/20060603/bob8.asp


-David Ahlport

http://thefraserdomain.typepad.com/energy/2007/05/method_ ...

-David Ahlport

This type of collector is the only kind that can even work with diffuse cloud light.  The design is right out of nature.

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog John Schneider, Northern Wisconsin

We got any trough collectors on roofs?

-David Ahlport

The whole apparatus would fit in modules that install like metal roofing.

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog John Schneider, Northern Wisconsin

Imagine the standard parabolic trough, but instead of the PV cell/heat collector at the focus, the target sits at the bottom of the trough.

The parabolic sides form a V-shape and the light is bounced around until it concentrates at the bottom of the V.  

The design comes from sea shells like conch shells.  The compound parabolic design concentrates the light or sound as the size diminishes.  Or spredas it out as in an air horn for instance.

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog John Schneider, Northern Wisconsin

Your statement seems to be absurd. Do you know what a solar concentrator is? Do you understand the principal under which they operate? If you do, please explain it here -- and then explain how making a solar-concentrator flat would make it easier to mount on a roof.

http://www.stirlingenergy.com/video/time_lapse_footage.w