Amory Lovins
Amory B. Lovins is the energy maven's energy maven, viewed variously as a visionary or a heretic in his assessments of how the U.S. and the world should be generating and using energy. More specifically, he is the chairman and chief scientist at the Rocky Mountain Institute, a man who has won many awards, written many books, and, as if that weren't enough, was a fan favorite for Energy Secretary when we asked blog readers a few months ago to give incoming President Obama some advice.
Lovins has written a guest post for us today, which I am guessing that everyone who cares about energy will find instructive in one way or another. It is especially interesting in light of forward-looking projects like this one about battery-exchange stations for electric cars -- for as eager as we may be to wean ourselves from oil, it's worth remembering that all that newly-demanded electricity doesn't grow on trees.
Photo: Lady_lbrty
Does a Big Economy Need Big Power Plants?
By Amory B. Lovins
A Guest Post
If I told you,
And if I told you "Many people need healthcare, so we better create a centralized full-service national network, so that when people get sick they can go apply to a federally funded doctor database for immediate care" you'd tell me.....
ResponderEliminarDistributed power is a great idea. Assuming we have a "smart grid" to share it, so much the better.
ResponderEliminarThe big problem is that coupling a large number of small power "stations" leads to a much higher cost per kilowatt hour.
This fact drives engineering decisions.
"Central thermal power plants stopped getting more efficient in the 1960
ResponderEliminarthe lags in nuclear development make your comparisons of recent installed capacity disingenuous.
ResponderEliminarplus let's make sure to add all the costs of intermittancy to those solar and wind facilities.
There are some very good points here. On reliability, there is a core reliability to distributed generation in the face of natural disasters that we don't always appreciate because we don't have enough of it. In a disaster that disrupts grid power for several weeks, if there is a home in walking distance with solar power, you could perhaps keep your medicine refrigerated.
ResponderEliminarThat kind of reliability is not the same thing as having the lights come on when you turn on the switch 99% of the time but it can be a very important kind of reliability nevertheless.
The most expensive kind of central generation is nuclear power. Lovins and Sheikh have looked at the issue here:
rmi.org/images/PDFs/Energy/E08-01_AmbioNuclIlusion.pdf
Because nuclear power is the least competitive of a set of uncompetitive technologies, we can be pretty darn sure that the tax payers will be left holding the bag as companies like Constellation Energy default in federally guaranteed construction loans.
One thing especially concerning new nuclear power is the long planning horizon for a plant. Fifteen years to build is added to sixty years to run which is added to 20 years to cool off enough for decommissioning followed by another 20 years to decommission. We must plan well into the next century with this kind of plant. Yet, the places we are considering for new nuclear power plants are often a sea level or very close: Clavert Cliffs of South Texas for example. We know that these places will face substantial sea level rise on a century time scale which may well force a shortening of the operating lifetime of the plants, making them even more expensive. It would seem that we need to consider climate in nuclear licensing decisions where we would not for other technologies. What, for example are the projected cooling water resources over the rest of the century? It would be foolish to build where drought might be expected to make power production impossible as happened recently in Alabama.
Co-gen is not the exclusive domain of combustion. Solar shows a great deal of promise to both generate power an usable heat together: mdsolar.blogspot.com/2008/03/lux-lucis-tepida.html
And, there may be a time when we start to produce fuels from wind power in a manner that generates heat that can be used for buildings. This is not co-gen but similar to it. A small scale is described here: mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/12/jet-fuel.html
Dear Eric;
ResponderEliminargreat idea is not enough- "an idea must be correct" for the purpose of accomplishing worthwhile matter. that;s where the buck stops. so that's why am happy to share `mine' windmill idea with friends. The path has become clear and obvious.
So as far as I can tell- no higher cost- From a scientifically sound-- engineering standpoint mutually `shared' benefit..
There is still -- as far applications-almost wide open field and almost untouched toppings (with a few exceptions including fairchild). if you are having difficulty- just listen to the sound, the physical and other sightings, the news- .
So as far as certain q's and a's- it's your score.
In the early 20th century, "micropower" (the Edison DC system) didn't lose to "macropower" (the Tesla/Westinghouse AC system) because of reliability or construction costs: it lost on the grounds of efficiency. Electrical transmission losses with Edison's DC system were so high that he had no *choice* but to use local micropower: by using high-voltage AC and transformers, Westinghouse was able to make transmission losses negligble.
ResponderEliminarOnce your transmission system isn't leaking watts, the battle is fought between different power plants on a pure "megawatts out per dollar" basis. I would argue that the basic economics of this haven't changed for most of the century: big plants can run at higher temperatures, making them thermodynamically more efficient, and lose less energy from parasitic losses. It's more than economics, it's physics.
The author argues that improvements in micropower have made it cost-competitive to macropower, but doesn't present any good statistics to confirm this. It's certainly true that private companies (especially telecommunications, government, and hospitals) have been adopting micropower in a big way in the last couple of years, and electrical utilities are also installing lots of small gas plants. But they're not doing it because it's cheaper: they're doing it because these micropower gas plants switch on in a few seconds, allowing them to be used in emergency and unexpected-demand situations. Heat energy from coal costs 1/3 as much as heat energy from natural gas, so gas plants are not a good idea for long-term everyday use.
Now, renewable sources are another matter, but if the only consideration is whether smaller is cheaper, I'm not buying it unless I see a clearer cost analysis between micropower and macropower.
You are assuming away all of the government grants for renewables and even more egregiously ignoring all of the bogus negative political pressure nuclear receives. Then you conclude by saying the market supports your argument?
ResponderEliminarSorry, not convinced.
Bravo, Amory. Again.
ResponderEliminarWhat's particularly ironic about this is that the allegedly "pro-market" political party in the U.S. is absolutely and monomaniacly *obsessed* with nuclear power, which is perhaps the largest and most needy welfare recipient ever to bestride the nation's budget. Don't they value hard work and self-sufficiency? Or is that just for poor people?
Still, though it's futile to say so, this comment thread should not devolve into yet another quasi-religious argument over nukes. The Lovins point is broader:
Commodity prices are rising, almost across the board. Meanwhile, the cost of processor power -- intelligence -- is falling steeply.
The rational economic response is to *substitute intelligence for material* -- that is to say, substitute smart design and use for size and brute power. And indeed, that's what markets are doing, even against the many legal and regulatory barriers referred to in the piece.
In 10-15 years, this debate will seem quaint.
Cogeneration offers good savings. There are even hom e scaled natural gas cogenerators that that scavenge the waste heat for air conditioning and water heating. they use the prime mover mainly to turn the compressor and secondarily to generate electricity that is sold back to the grid.
ResponderEliminarBut, distributed maintenance is an issue.
And with anything but the smallst units, so is NIMBYism and zoning.
I beleive Amory is fundamentally right, but glossing over many problems yet to be resolved, not he least of which is Jevon's Paradox.
Here's the problem with Nuclear Power: It's a PERFECT example of a Taleb Distribution.
ResponderEliminaren.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taleb_Distribution
One terrorist attack or serious accident WIPES OUT ALL Previous Profit.
We've just seen what happens with you ignore Black Swan's in the Stock Market. I'm voting against researching this using nuclear power.
Global Warming is another example. Water sources dry up, land becomes barren, forest fires, acidic oceans, high frequency storm are all Heavy-Loss, Catastrophic, Events.
Quite briefly, Lovins is drawing a false analogy between the miniaturization and distribution of computing and telecom instruments and the production of energy. Computers and telephones can be miniaturized and distributed according to Moore
ResponderEliminarCan I add one word? In the third from last paragraph:
ResponderEliminarWhat Lovins never wants to acknowledge is the INCREDIBLE energy density of nuclear power.
Thanks.
WT
The cost of building a solar burner is less than the cost of building a new coal burner. That makes solar steam less expensive than coal steam even when coal is delivered at no cost -- solar is cheaper than free lumps of coal.
ResponderEliminarMike99 (#11),
ResponderEliminarRight now I think that we are looking at a possibly horrible product of your Taleb distribution and Murphy's Law: if we were to face a Price Anderson Act payout right now for a nuclear accident, I'm not sure that the federal government could keep up with its debt service obligations. One nuclear accident could make us Iceland.
Those who would like to know Lovin's (and the RMI's) current views of nuclear energy should be interested in a new report
ResponderEliminarNuclear Power: Climate Fix or Folly?
"This 15-page January 2009 update and expansion of "Forget nuclear" in RMI's Spring 2008 Solutions Newsletter adds the latest data, expands the discussion of capital-cost escalation, and includes June 2008 cost comparisons by preeminent financial advisors Lazard. It summarizes why nuclear power cannot in principle deliver the climate-protection or energy-security and reliability benefits claimed for it. (January 2009)"
rmi.org/images/PDFs/Energy/E09-01_NuclPwrClimFixFolly1i09.pdf
Bigger is not better. Governments don't understand that yet eitiher. Interesting that during Enron's rule our local paper company brought in some generators and parked them outside the plant. It was cheaper than getting electricity through the grid. The other question comes up as to pollution from multiple sources versus handling it from one main location where it is easier to monitor.
ResponderEliminarThe future will be different.
Rick
imbyrick.com/answer-analylst-review/
This makes for good reading, but links to original sources. would have been nice. They could, for example, allow me to check which of the statements about price advantages and competetiveness carry over to other countries.
ResponderEliminarWhenever solar and wind power comes up in discussions like this, and is contrasted with coal-burning, gas-burning, or nuclear power generation, I'm also amazed at the people who attempt to compare renewables with resource-depleting. I realize that solar power, for example, isn't terribly efficient just yet. But it's getting better every year, and eventually it'll be just fine in that regard... because the solar energy is already raining down on us, every day, just waiting to be used. Imagine if coal fell from the sky and had no negative effect on our atmosphere when burned? Wouldn't we be crazy not to use it? Instead, it comes out of the ground, takes millennia to form and kills us in all kinds of ways when we burn it. Sunlight? Not so much! Solar and wind power are just waiting to be used, and no matter how much we use today, there'll be just as much waiting for us tomorrow... and next year... and next century... and long after we've died off as a species.
ResponderEliminarEven if solar power costs more in the short term, the source of that power lasts until our sun burns out (by which time, if we're still around, we'll have much bigger issues to deal with than the loss of some solar power).
Are people really that stupid that they can't see how fundamentally different those two categories of energy sources are?
As always, Amory Lovins has very insightful and interesting ideas. I like to read his writings and listen to his speeches.
ResponderEliminarBut Lovins has a terrible track record in predicting the future. He's been wrong for decades. I think he is wrong here as well.
Micropower makes a lot of sense in a lot of cases. But it's not taking over the world. Not now, and (I think) not in the future either.
Of course, I'm only a few years younger than the Prophet of Snowmass, and I've done no better at predicting the future. I've invested a fair amount of money in wind energy over the past two decades. I've lost it all.
Since posting my comment above, I read Lovins
ResponderEliminarAC is less efficient for long distance power transmission. Look it up, the problem is with impedance. The overhead of conversion into DC is worthwhile for lines long enough to be a quarter-wavelength of a 60Hz signal. An AC signal along a wire of that length effectively causes the line to behave like an antenna, radiating energy.
ResponderEliminarJust pointing that out for a previous commenter.
As for the distributed computing analogy, well, it also depended upon sophisticated networking infrastructure which allows every node to participate as fully as possible. That isn't so easy for our power distribution hierarchy.
This is a very humbling piece to the nuclear industry.
ResponderEliminarAlmost any power source could be scaled. There are tiny hydorelectric facilities, there are tiny natural gas units, tiny wind generators, tiny solar cells, etc.
There cannot be small scale nuclear plants from an economic perspective not to mention an engineering one. They are an expensive power source as it is. Hmmmmmmmmmm.
How dare you make me rethink my pro nuclear power stance!
Thanks, I guess.
Rod "Atoms".
ResponderEliminarGreat name for someone in your field!
I've read about those small nuclear reactors, small enough to power a small town or even just a neighborhood. Even if I thought they were a good idea (and I'm not sure they are) NIMBY makes it a dead issue from the start.
ResponderEliminarI thought the single biggest line-item of consumption of electricity was the arcs used in aluminum smelting; is this still the case or no longer (it's possible that the cooling of data centers is bigger nowadays)? The Icelandic plans to build a dedicated geothermal electric system to supply the new Alcoa Fjardaal smelter is one of the most exciting recent developments I've seen in power systems. For other aluminum operations, do macro plants still make economic sense?
ResponderEliminarDear "winsome?"
ResponderEliminarThe cost per kWh is the driving factor in power generating. Imagining a wonderful world or tiny spinning power plants ignores the reality of $$/kWh's delivered. Wishing won't make it so, On the other hand, the real cost of kWh's delivered to us don't include the military budget, or the future emergency spending when the Saudis get pissed at us, so considerable accounting adjustments need to be done.
On another topic....Let's be sure to understand that the picture above shows just water vapor coming from the massive hyperboloid cooling towers and the one chimney. The two chimneys on the right are the pollution...and they look pretty clean.
I'd agree distributed generation's role needs to grow, but we also need those big central station power plants. The sun doesn't always shine and the wind doesn't always blow, so people with those systems in their homes will still have to draw power from the grid when they aren't. Combined heat and power has it's limits as well, it makes next to no sense for individual homes and small businesses because it just costs too much.
ResponderEliminarIt's not clear to me at all that Lovins is a guru. And I'd like to see the Times take the responsibility to back up the case.
ResponderEliminarHe seems to be endemically incapable of understanding the biology of money.
His writing strikes me as the John Denver of economics. All earnestness, airiness, and hope. But then, cotton candy. Clouds in the coffee.
Sure, the car of the future is fun to dream about. And yes, if there is Nimbysm and hope so that the only big projects that can, maybe, be passed are wind and solar farms...then as others have pointed out, our 'guru' can take a factoid and say mega is done.
But...but...but...dear Guru, we have distributed power everywhere. In our cars. And the motors only get 30% efficiency, if that, with the rest lost to heat. And big centralized plants can recapture that heat, getting more efficiency.
Mr. Lovins sees what he wants, and says what he wants. He says the grid is wasteful; it is. But he ignores the math around efficiencies in centralized plants.
And the Times prints him up like a guru. Maybe the Times editor would be better suited to the poetry or music section. We all like airy hope. I'm just not much for it in the supposed economics pages.
I am an energy economist at the University of Missouri, St. Louis, and I recently received two grants to study the prospects for increased micro HYDROpower in the United States. There are actually a huge amount of potential sites, all across the U.S., for distributed small hydropower development. It would cut emissions, cut reliance of foreign oil, increase stability by being decentralized, etc. And the ecosystem effects are small because these are micro hydro, run-of-river plants. Now we just have to figure out the actual COSTS of developing these sites - which is what my work is about. Stay tuned....I should have results within the year....!
ResponderEliminarWhatever way you add it up, the USA needs a much smarter power grid. Pity that the USA is apparently not going to get one.
ResponderEliminarWe need a smarter grid because wind, tide and solar power are imtermittent at any one location, because big central power plants will be with us for more than a generation, both meaning that cutting transmission losses will remain important, and because a dumb grid cannot be relied on to prevent chain consequences spreading from a grid element failure.
The underlying technical factor that a kilowatt is a kilowatt and the costs of transmitting it from one place to another will never be as low (barring ambient temperature superconductivity) as the cost of transmitting information means that the long term technical trend is likely to be towards generating closer to usage. A lot of small scale generating technology exists or is at prototype stage (even nuclear). But my expected life span is about 12 years and I do not expect to see local generation become dominant.
I look forward to the day that I can be totally off the grid. Conservation can save a great deal and make the people more resilient. Green building can generate many jobs.
ResponderEliminarAn interesting treatment, but one that is incomplete in some very misleading ways.
ResponderEliminarThe key one is in lumping renewable and fossil fuel energy production together as "microgeneration". These are power sources that have very different prospects for the future.
Sure, natural gas co-generation turbines are great, as long as natural gas is assured to be an economically priced fuel with ample supply into the forseeable future, and with no long term environmental consequences. But none of these things are true. It is substantially less harmful than coal for global warming (and much less so for immediate pollution), but it isn't zero, nor is it available in such quantities that it can become a mainstay of power production into the indefinite future.
And while photovoltaic solar power is true distributed microgeneration, solar thermal plants (on of the best prospects for replacing coal base-load plants) are not: they are centralized large scale (if not gigawatt scale) facilities typically remote from the consumer. The same is true of wind farms - you can't call a single wind pylon a "microgenerator" because they aren't used that way.
Finally, when a system is finally set up that imposes carbon costs on fossil fuel burners (as it must soon, one way of another, to provide the economic incentive to address global warming) the economics of nuclear power will improve, as it may also improve with "right sized" (100 megawatt scale) nuclear power plants that have been proposed (jury is out on that, we'll have to see some built).
With fossil fuels not having to carry the cost of carbon pollution nuclear power is currently at an unjustified disadvantage, which makes the lack of recent plant starts (which Lovins seems to gloat about) an unreliable predictor of the future.
Yes, but then that would obsolete big-energy CEOs with their mega-salaries and bonuses. They would never go for that.
ResponderEliminarIf we could land a moon in less than a decade why can't we install a wind turbine and solar panels on every family farm in 10 years. That would make a great farm-subsidy to keep them in business, save the environment, wouldn't depend on a grid upgrade, and it would pay for itself by harnessing free energy. The technology is already there, it's just the political and financial will to get it going. The income generated could reduce the deficit.
And we could convert postal trucks to V2G ( udel.edu/V2G/ ) technology. You could even use solar collectors as body panels. Then you'd really have distributed power.
Every town could have a plant converting garbage to energy.
There are probably lots of airliners and military jets past their operational life with engines that would still be efficient for the turbine plants you were talking about.
There are probably still nuclear subs that were put in mothballs because of SALT treaties that could be used to add power to the grid.
Good points all.
ResponderEliminarWithout going into suggesting micro-nuclear, the crux of the matter is load management, which is a nasty thing at best of time, as noted above.
ResponderEliminarIt is true that there is a development in software and high energy electronics that can lead to the ability of better managing oscillating loads - but the point is that you need to guarantee a baseload for a class of intensive and continuous users (in short, factories, transports) vs intermittent highly variable users (in practice house, to a degree offices).
The true is that there should be (so to speak) a trunk network of heavy users around which clusters of small/intermittent users, whose - possible - shortfalls can be filled in by spare capacity of the main network.
It must be noted that given the high reliance on NG, to decouple small users from the big ones is a blessing, because if gas supply goes to put in a Winter (we are familiar to this in Europe) you get a double whack - gas must be kept at a pressure - but to keep heating going, mostly done with NG it meand that power generation get switched off and with factorties etc.
So micro/local grids would increase overall robustness of the system. And micro grids can be made reliable provided that you invest in it. The grid is bad now in the USA, because, so I understand, of underinvestment and the fragmentation.
I think it's going to take a combination of DG and new, large solar plants in the desert regions that feed new, long DC lines.
ResponderEliminarI think we are going to NEED both.
I'm interested in the railcar-deliverable, combined-cycle, gas-fired plants derived from mass-produced aircraft engines - can anyone tell me more about this? I'm in the dying aviation industry - s j r g i a n @ y a h o o
ResponderEliminarHowdy, does anyone know where I can find more articles indicating that Micropower is increasing now or why other alternative energy systems would trade off with it such as nuclear power? My purposes are academic and research based. Any help would be much appreciated.
ResponderEliminarI couldn't say anything as far as the actual per dollar costs, but an interesting subject that isn't really discussed here is placing wind turbines in sea or bay area location. They place the wind turbines roughly 25 to 50 miles off the shore. It's a new thought, something I can't say for the above.
ResponderEliminarOne apropriation was recently carried through in delaware or maryland. I don't remember which. I suggest you all take a close look at that.
ABL: In 2007, the U.S., Spain, and China each added more wind capacity than the world added nuclear capacity, and the U.S. added more wind capacity than it added coal-fired capacity during 2003 to 2007 inclusive.
ResponderEliminarWind capacity is fine, but it is by no means 24/24 & 7/7, even on the seaside.
Where established, it has to be far from residences due to the simple fact that they spoil the countryside panorama and can be noisy. These two factors will limit their use in countries where land exploitation must be preserved for residential habitation. Spain has large expanses of empty territory, which it may exploit for Wind or mirrored Sun Farms. Perhaps the US is similar, but Europe does not have the expanse of land that the US does.
Even the largest implementer of Wind Farms, Denmark, is employing them offshore ... far offshore.
Ideally, I might suggest, would be small nuclear facilities -- but this will never pass muster with those responsible for Internal Security, as they are far too vulnerable -- a shame really because their kilowatt-hour costs are very interesting once amortized.
France generates two-thirds of its residential electricity from now amortized nuclear generators and for a kilowatt price that is the envy of Europe. It's next generation nuclear generator has just obtained government financing -- and an international project to develop fissile generation is underway.
Both of these non-renewable nuclear energy sources intend to employ large, but protected, generator plants.
I suggest that the final word on what works best for whom is yet to be said. There are far to many complex variables to decide a universally unique solution to alternative energy. Only one objective has current unanimity: We must move away from fossil-fuel generation for environmental purposes.
That places countries like America in a bind because it has large vested interests in fossil-fuel electricity generator plants.
Being in the industry, and on a smart metering project, it is intriguing idea, and likely where we're headed. You'll have to decouple most utilities first, and reduce the rate of return on large scale projects. The political hurtles can't be overlooked.
ResponderEliminarYou're ignoring one big point though - Not In My Back Yard. One very big reason power plants are concentrated is because people don't like them. Once the patina wears off of green energy solar systems and wind energy will experience much the same issue. Look at the issues going on the solar project in California's Mojave desert.
Distributed generation is definitely where we are heading, but it will take some time.
Before another power plant of any kind is built, it would behoove us to make maximum use of the negawatts built into our current systems. Once we have wrung out all feasible waste, then we can talk about new plants and new systems. Amory Lovins used to say that we used only about 1/2 the electricity we were generating, the rest lost to inefficiencies at various points along the way.
ResponderEliminarNuclear is so much more expensive (and biosphere damaging) than what we are billed for ( or propagandized about ). Huge amounts of power are required for the mining, processing (especially), transportation of fuel and waste (oh, wait, all the waste is still sitting on site!) and storage and securing of same. To say nothing of the question of where the uranium is being mined and at what costs. Really folks, most of the true costs (both environmental and economic) of nuclear power have been hidden from us. Add in all the government giveaways to the nuke industry, and splitting atoms is hardly a cost effective way of boiling water.
Perhaps this will be useful when natural gas is inexpensive - as it is nuclear & coal provide a substantial amount of the baseload energy.
ResponderEliminarWhen wind turbines & other renewables are as cheap and reliable as nuclear energy is today, they will be worth building.
Um, isn't the trend in computing to move everything to an interconnected web (or, "cloud") where the actual processing is done at some large facility elsewhere?
ResponderEliminarI agree wholeheartedly, in principle.
ResponderEliminarHowever in practice, if the US government, NOT private companies and big contractor Cheney friends, but the GOVERNMENT, immediately started on a program of building 100s of nuclear power stations, then in a year when they come on line we could reduced our use of coal to NIX. This is not an ideal solution and the one you desribe is way better. However it wont work soon enough and if our future is nuclear I would rather it be immediate, next year, to stop climate change before it obliterates plants and animals, burns people alive (as in Australia) sweeps them up in Tsunamis, or freezes them in a gulfstream free Europe. NOW. we have to do it NOW, and with all else the same Nuclear, with whatever enormous government injection of capital, and stringent government controls, and recycling of fuels - would do it!
All you pro-nuke folks and your talk of not producing any CO2 or all you coal power plant advocates and your talk of the smaller footprint of coal power plants compared to wind turbines - have you ever been to a mine and seen the footprint of it? Have you ever considered the amount of energy necessary to bring that uranium/coal out of the ground, process it, transport it and then dispose of the waste products?
ResponderEliminarSome of these points are legitimate but I am concerned about Lovins' conflation of cleanliness and smallness. He cites impressive figures for newly installed wind capacity, but that capacity is not in micro-scale turbines, it's in massive wind farms that are as centralized as any nuclear or fossil fuel plant.
ResponderEliminarAlso, showing that renewables are outpacing nuclear is completely different from showing that small is outpacing large. The most blatant omission is statistics for new fossil fuel capacity!
Final point: cogeneration certainly offers significant gains in energy-to-emissions efficiency. However, a widespread shift to distributed cogeneration would require huge capital investments, only to end up with a system that, even with improved emissions efficiencies, would still be based on fossil fuels. If we really want to drop our carbon emissions dramatically, the best way forward is utilization of large-scale, centralized clean power (wind, nuclear, solar, etc.) plus a revamping of the national grid infrastructure.
Chris,
ResponderEliminarRe reactors being inundated by rising sea levels:
1. Calvert Cliffs is on the Chesapeake Bay, not in Texas.
2. As the name implies, there is substantial elevation above sea level. The coastal plants on the west coast are also above sea level.
3. Is it really true that new reactors will be at sea level?
We should look to solutions where each building can create its own power - solar, wind, hydro. If large companies are not willing to invest in these projects then groups of leaders will emerge to connect independent power systems.
ResponderEliminarRoger (#54),
ResponderEliminarI had a typo there. It should have been Calvert Cliffs _or_ South Texas.
The British have been considering this issue and find that sea walls might do the job in protecting power plants. The cooling scheme for Calvert Cliffs is actually in the Bay so it would need its own adjustment. South Texas has a cooling pond which might become susceptible to breach by storm surge with a higher sea level. It would be an extensive sea wall in the case of the cooling pond. One big unknown is the amount of sea level rise before the core of a plant can be removed to higher ground. Hansen suggests 5 meters could occur by then or it could be just a meter and a half. The British have only looked at the lower level.
I would say that the best approach would be to avoid sites close to sea level until the science on sea level rise is clearer. The science on the effects of drought may be clear now so that inland sites might be evaluated sooner. At least some studies seem to suggest that summer drought may affect the US Southeast so that TVA may want to avoid new nuclear power.
1space: "For example, my local power company will only reimburse what I *actually use* - yet they keep the $$ if I produce more power than I need."
ResponderEliminarIn France the policy is to pay the source for any electricity that is submitted to the grid at the amortized cost price (of the source, whether solar or wind or hydro).
But, that is easy to implement since there is only one electricity operator (Electricit
Any long term fan of science fiction knows that the future belongs to species that develop safe, very high energy density power sources.
ResponderEliminarLovins would take the path that ties homosapiens to this rock forever in a semi vegetative state.
I am confident that an earth like planet could support maybe one billion individuals using concentrated solar and wind energy at reasonably technological level.
Unfortunatly, we happen to have 6 billion people (and growing) many of whom like 300 horseposer automobiles, huge houses and extensive travel.
What Lovins energy scenario really requires is a complete spiritual shift from a materialistic, growth oriented culture to a spiritual culture dedicated to sustainability.
Bubba ain't gonna like this!
I'm betting this isn't the path that Western civilization takes.
Nuclear power small and beautiful? Right, all there needs to be is one small accident for some really big problems. Nuclear power is too risky. Would you want one in your basement? I wouldn't.
ResponderEliminarWilla
Small nuclear is not as dangerous as you might think. Certainly care needs to be taken. But there are some new designs that require no refueling for many years, and thus are quite safe and require little maintenance.
ResponderEliminarWe have had great success so far with our nuclear navy. You don't need a big nuclear plant to take advantage of nuclear's benefits.
We will never (I think) see nuclear reactors in people's basements instead of furnaces. But a reactor that powers 10,000 homes may become a realistic option in a decade or two.
@Willa - I have direct and personal experience with a small, beautiful reactor. It was not in my basement, but, along with 150 other people, I shared a sealed space with that reactor for months at a time. It was a good and loyal friend that provided all of the heat, electricity, clean water, and clean air that we needed to live in relative comfort for months at a time while operating in one of the harshest environments on the planet - deep underwater.
ResponderEliminarThat reactor also provided us the power that we needed to move freely about the ocean for about 15 years while producing a quantity of waste that would fit under my office desk.
It appears to me that your expressed fear is based on what you have read rather than what you have experienced. I hope that you get over your phobia, but I know those are difficult to overcome even if there is a desire to do so.
However, nothing anyone says can remove the knowledge from my brain that humans have a ready, available, dependable power source that is far better than coal, oil, gas, wind, solar, geothermal and biofuels put together. I keep writing about what I know so that some people can realize that people like Lovins, Caldicott, Marriotte, Gunter, Riccio, Nader and other professional anti-nuclear activists do not know what they are talking about.
As we used to say on my sub - rather crudely - "Don't piss on my head and tell me it is raining."
Rod Adams
Publisher, Atomic Insights
Host and producer, The Atomic Show Podcast
Founder, Adams Atomic Engines, Inc.
Rod Adams:
ResponderEliminarAre you seriously suggesting that the guy who wrote a book called "Winning the Oil Endgame" espousing ways for our country to fully get off oil while increasing jobs, wealth and security, is in the pockets of the oil industry?
I don't know why nuclear power advocates always point to France as a leader in nuclear electricity generation. The USA has many more nuclear power plants than France and generates more electricity from nuclear power than any other nation on Earth. Sure, France generates a high proportion of its electricity from nuclear -- about 80 percent. But to match that, the USA would have to build and operate several hundred more large nuclear power plants, an expansion that far exceeds even the wildest dreams of the nuclear power industry for a taxpayer-funded "renaissance".
ResponderEliminarUnderstandably, Amory, as a scientist and physicist, makes his initial arguments describing the physical enhancements that microgrid planning and technologies would bring to bear: namely a more reliable and efficient electricity grid.
ResponderEliminarBut what makes his argument particularly powerful is his understanding of the 'other' non-physical, non-engineering pieces of the future grid development puzzle - namely the social institutional (laws and system planning) and economic realities (business-finance decisions) of the day that ultimately drive decisions to invest in, and enhance, the services delivered by our electric grid. Amory quite accurately captures this institutional-economic reality where he states, "Collapsed capital markets now make giant projects even more unfinanceable, favoring lower-financial-risk granular projects even more."
In addition, in the context of nuclear power 'gigantism' as defined by Amory, I would encourage my fellow energy enthusiasts to read about the Shoreham Nuclear Power Plant (good description on Wikipedia) disaster. Financial disaster, that is. Perhaps it's not a coincidence that just an hour's drive from Wall Street sits an unused nuclear power facility (it is decommissioned) that will continue to burden Long Island energy bill payers for decades to come.
Finally- common sense. Small Wind or solar, I also believe that making splitting water with electricity into Hydrogen Fuel in situ will be one of the tipping points and and revolutionize our world. In the 1880's Tesla and Edison fought over DC vs. AC. Edison built the first grid near Wall Street in NYC and it was DC. AC won about for several reasons, but one was the ability to efficiently transmit over 1 mile. The rest of the world is going small and local. We will too, in the US. It is just that the designs aren't there yet. Hopefully new, more efficient and reliable designs will be coming soon to every household.
ResponderEliminarSue Timberlake
Cummington Wind
After reading the article and the responses by William Tucker, Rod Adams, and Kerry Bradshaw, I tend to think Amory Lovins makes an excellent case study in why scientists typically make crappy engineers.
ResponderEliminarGood points about nuclear power. It has not had an unblemished history, with big financial and safety problems around the globe.
ResponderEliminarBut nuclear power has also proven that it can work. The reason for pointing to France's example is that nuclear power works very well there. It shows that nuclear power can scale up to provide power at a cheap price with almost no carbon emissions.
Contrast that with solar and wind. Where are the examples that show that can work? Denmark is often cited for wind, and Germany for both wind and solar. Look closely at those two countries, though. You will see that wind and solar power is hugely expensive, yet has not displaced fossil fuel or nuclear power in either country. Wind and solar may work, but so far they are unproven.
My first investment as a brand-new high-school graduate in 1975 was $500 in a wind power company. I lost that money. Unfazed by that, I have invested much more over the years. None of my investments have been successful. While some solar and wind power companies have made money for their investors, it has always been on the back of big subsidies. Never as a viable business.
So we should continue to look at all energy sources. But until wind and solar power prove themselves, betting on them is a risky bet. I'll put my money on nuclear power.
I'm fascinated by all the different directions people have taken the discussion on this post.
ResponderEliminarHere's what I get out of it:
A modestly-sized solar array on my house, coupled with a small windmill in my back yard, will generate enough power for me and several of my neighbors here in Texas. This is a fact.
If I better insulate and maintain my home, making it more thermally efficient, I will require less power to heat and cool it, etc. If my neighbors do the same thing, they get the same result.
There are two problems with this scenario, as I see it:
1. Despite opinions to the contrary, the hot winds don't blow constantly in Texas anywhere but in the Sate Capitol building.
2. For a too-large percentage of the day, the solar panels will be ineffective due to the lack of an electron source.
Solving the problem of efficient, safe, clean energy storage and re-transmission ON THE SMALL SCALE will be what pushes this solution into the forefront.
Well, that, and a legal framework that allows me to charge my neighbors a fair market price for the excess energy I produce and they consume.
Forget nuclear and all the rest. That's old-school thinking about energy production. The future is in generating what you need cleanly and storing the excess.
@Col - who wrote "Are you seriously suggesting that the guy who wrote a book called
ResponderEliminarI guess some people doubting Lovins' arguments "smaller is better" are ignoring his main argument.
ResponderEliminarHe does not argue that a big power plant would be inefficient. He argues that the big powerplant produces much energy at a place no one actually needs it (except for immediate neighbours of the plant). So it has to get to the consumer via the power grid, and this, he claims, is the Achilles' heel of the big power plant: The maintenance cost, reliability and efficiency of the power grid is lacking. 98% of all power outages are caused by the power grid, not by the power plants. And that's the point at which micropower really shines: A local damage to the power grid does not effect whole counties or states anymore, it remains local, thus reducing the costs of those outages.
Micropower solves the problem of power distribution by better distributing the generation of power.
I have followed the energy discussion here in Europe and there other side of the sea and in fact had possibility for short chat with Hunter Lovins from RMI several moths ago. I think that the most dangerous thing is optimism. People are living in delusion that energy problem is only a technical problem, and indeed probably RMI is feeding this delusion. I think that we can not build 15000 new nuclear plats or get equal amount of energy from renewables by 2050 - or can we? The real problem is that the economical growth is fully coupled to the ever increasing consumption of matter. Today
ResponderEliminarWhat the sweet spot is for the size of a power generation system must be flushed out. I personally do not think households necessarily should have 2 KW solar system in their homes. At that micro-micro scale, the $/KW cost is the highest.
ResponderEliminarHowever, when you get to the 100 KW to 500 KW systems, you have sufficient size to justify systems like solar and wind that can cost effectively be installed at a commercial building to offset electricity consumption and even have a little spill over to feed the grid.
Based on my experience running the energy programs for a local government, we can justify these mini (not micro) systems based on cost alone.
The breakthrough has been achieved already on renewables even at the larger system sizes. Many people are basing the argument against distributed generation based on outdated data from even 5 years ago. Southern California Edison just awarded a solar thermal project to a company in California for 1300 MW at prices below the Market Price Referant for natural gas from combined cycles turbine power plants. Now tha this is achieved, who will be buying a new huge coal plant again?
large ultra-supercritical coal-fired plants and large nuclear plants will supply the worlds energy needs for the next 50 years
ResponderEliminarWhat Mr Lovins forgets is that if a region was powered by distributed solar during the day, all is well when the sun is out. What happens when clouds cover the region for a few days? We are back to conventional power, at least until storage technology is perfected.
ResponderEliminarAlso the capacity of a wind/solar system is very different from the capacity of a coal or nuclear plant. The former utilize their capacity for 5-6 hours per day at most (in the case of a well sited solar installation) thermal plants run 24/7.
Yes sir!
ResponderEliminarWe inherited the different ways of producing and distributing electricity, from early generations. The challenge for our generation is to harvest electricity from nature.
Lightning needs to be captured and converted into usable energy that is channeled into the grid. This will reduce the quantity of fuel burnt to produce man-made electricity.
In other words, do not dismantle the national grid, because it could later be used to harvest electricity from the skies (over land). Since we also lay cables and build platforms in the ocean, the sky is the limit.
(
I agree with Mr. Tucker that we need nuclear power, after reading "The Jane Fonda Effect" (Freakonomics Sept. 15 2007) and doing some research, I found out that in fact that by 1986 fission technology had been developed in the US that is inherently safe, meltdown-proof, non-waste generating, and of course carbon-free. Sounds like a fantasy to most people, but see my letter on the Freakonomics blog (comment #53 on the JFE article) for solid references if you don't believe me.
ResponderEliminarHowever, Mr. Tucker misses the main point: when you're burning something to generate electricity, a simple common-sense thermodynamic analysis shows you can do much better than big centralized plants: they throw away a huge portion of the fossil fuel energy as "waste heat", then incur more losses as resistive heating of the distribution wiring. Transmission losses apply to any centralized generation of course, so while nuclear plants can feasibly be big or small, most people would probably rather situate them out in the middle of nowhere no matter how safe they really are, so let's make those big - makes security easier too.
We can do a lot with distributed cogeneration at very little cost tomorrow, since we already have the infrastructure in place to distribute natural gas cheaply; renewable and lower carbon sources (biofuels, coal to gas) can easily be added into this system as they come on line.
There is plenty of good analysis of this issue already done, we just need to implement it.
Lovins/RMI Small is Profitable was named Book of the Year by The Economist, hardly a lefty outfit.
more info for those interested:
smallisprofitable.org
nrel.gov/docs/fy04osti/34783.pdf
localpower.org/index.html
Is this support for Davidson and Ress-Moog's book " the Sovereign Individual"...as economies of scale shrink what are the implications for the state, politics in general, and wealth and equity.
ResponderEliminarRod Adams said, back on Feb 10, about 5AM, that
ResponderEliminar"For my money, those smaller nuclear plants have a HUGE advantage over the types of systems that Lovins advocates - they produce reliable power without producing ANY polluting emissions at all."
And yet I wonder how all the fission products are contained (particularly the noble gases) and whether, at the end of its life, what happens to its radioactive parts.
The issue of emissions must, in all fairness, be looked at across the life cycle of the plant. A life cycle analysis of your small nuclear plant muight reveal considerable greenhouse gas emission, for example, if each component is considered, from cradle to grave, from ore or or ther raw material to eventual safe disposal.
The focus of the nuclear advocates on this blog is their verison of "pollution free" megawatts. Amor Lovins also mentions pollution free negawatts, or energy capacity made available by increased efficiency of use of available resources, as well as more efficient technologies.
Nuclear electricity however hard you sell it, is limited in its application. Nuclear equates to radioactive waste; electricity equates to inefficient usage,compared to passive solar, particularly at small scales.
Why build nuclear electricity capacity when it is so much easier and safer to design, build remodel and demolish energy-efficient houses?
What most of opinions forget is to consider seeing the earth what it really is; a living being. It is possible that the earth is not different from the human body as to the expression of life, feelings, memory, joy and pain etc
ResponderEliminarThey will discuss critical steps every investigator must know. ,
ResponderEliminarHow about another alternative? Distributed energy such as windmills or solar energy would be difficult and expensive to pipe in to the populated centers where it is needed. Nuclear energy, while not ideal, is the best current solution to our energy needs. But how about an option that combines the two? If we were to invest in development of ideas such as Hyperion's small reactors designed to power a small town, we could distribute power more efficiently without the large power plant problems we are currently facing. Granted, the small reactors have their own problems, but its an idea worth persuing. Dawn R.
ResponderEliminar