Baby Steps. Dumb, Dumb Baby Steps
By Mitch Berg
Maria Cantwell thinks the American people “deserve better” when it comes to energy:
“America deserves more fuel efficient cars,” said Sen. Maria Cantwell of Washington. But she added “the only way consumers are going to get more out of a tank of gas is if the president and his party help deliver votes in a narrowly divided Congress.”
It’s widely expected the Senate will approve some sort of increase in auto fuel economy as part of an energy bill it hopes to finish in the coming weeks.
Senator Cantwell; leaving aside that the market will inevitably provide that mileage vastly faster and more efficiently than any government regulation, I’m glad to see that you’re on the side of freeing this nation from oil imports.
So how about doing something that’ll matter; pushing nuclear power?
Plentiful nuclear power, delivered at a fraction of the cost of coal, gas or oil power, will free up fossil fuels, provide ample power to generate “alternative” fuels (the energy cost of refining ethanol is its biggest drawback), and lower the cost of energy across the board:
Cheap, plentiful, safe energy will ensure our economy keeps humming along, and best of all will slash our dependence on the House of Saud and the House of Chavez – altering the geopolitical landscape in a way that’ll benefit the entire western world.
We want that, right?
Have your people call my people.
June 19th, 2007 at 11:41 am
Nuclear cars. That sounds wicked cool!
June 19th, 2007 at 12:06 pm
AngryClown: Missing the Point Entirely Since at Least 2004!
June 19th, 2007 at 12:28 pm
Asking moronclown to get the point is like asking Rosie ODonnell to cut back at the buffet. Can’t be done.
June 19th, 2007 at 12:30 pm
Nice chart. Does it include the cost of safely disposing of the lethal radioactive waste?
June 19th, 2007 at 12:42 pm
I look forward to the day when we have fusion powered cars ala “back to the future” when I could stuff an Assclown into my “Mr. Fusion” and get a few hundred miles.
Be the first time a moonbat provided *anything* useful to society.
June 19th, 2007 at 12:43 pm
Not that I’m aware of, but it does include the cost of dealing with the megatons of noxious Co2, which, as everyone knows, is smothering the earth. I.E, none.
the “Cost” of dealing with radioactive waste is almost entirely the cost of dealing with dogmatic environmentalists who oppose any waste being stored under any conditions, anywhere.
Bury it deep. It’ll work just fine.
June 19th, 2007 at 1:43 pm
Don’t worry, you’ll get your nuclear.
Energy consumption as a whole has been a central concern of mine for quite some time. Peak oil and the geo-politics of oil in general have been a major facet of this concern.
Full Disclosure: I hate nuclear power. I have since Chernobyl and Three Mile Island.
Scientifically, its amazing. E=mc^2. Look at the numbers and consider the reality – its really pretty far out to wrap your head around it. Seriously, c! Wow.
I’m fully aware that a lot of people’s knee-jerk anti-nuclear sentiment is based on an erroneous confluence of nuclear power and nuclear weapons. Our fear of the one turns us against the other because its based on the same principles. That’s like being against combustion because someone can make a molotov cocktail.
Furthermore, as someone who has been trained as a scientist (my BS is in physics), I am fully aware that Chernobyl should never have happened. A properly designed reactor is not physically capable of falling into an uncontrolled reaction. I believe the Germans solved this issue in the late 80s or early 90s with some nifty ceramic pellets.
What sets me against nuclear power is the waste. The relatively small amounts of highly radioactive waste from spent rods (or their equivalents) is one thing. The large amounts of lower level and secondary radioactive wastes from refining and from energy production is another.
Even the secondary radioactive wastes are hot for a long time. I have seen nothing in human history that gives me any sort of confidence that we are able to contain that crap successfully for that long of a term. 5 years? No problem. 10-20 years? Probably. 100? 1000? No way. We as a species just aren’t that responsible for that kind of time frame. We don’t tend to take responsibility for stuff that happened before we were adults. And Americans? We’ve only existed for a bit over 200 years and we don’t seem to be able to manage to keep promises for decades let alone centuries. As a nation, we often don’t seem to feel responsible for something that happened during a previous administration.
We will have nasty nasty things happen due to our nuclear waste. Increasing the amount of nuclear power we use will increase the number of incidents. I know this with as much certainty as I know anything.
All that said, it is pretty much inevitable. We will have nuclear power.
Oil and gas will become too scarce to meet our power needs. As it is, its a shame we’re burning it all up because its so much more useful for so many applications other than burning, but before we’re done, we will have burned pretty much all the easy to reach stuff.
Biofuels? A nice concept and they work great in the small scale. To power our nation? To even just power our cars? As someone said “So, the plan is, to shovel the last 6 inches of midwestern topsoil into our tanks and burn it?”
Even if we wanted to do that, none of the conventional biofuels yield enough energy/acre to come close to meeting our needs. Start considering how much fuel we put into fertilizer, pesticide and farming procedures and it gets ridiculous. I’ve seen some algae pool bio fuels that yield much higher net output per acre but even so, it requires far too much land to be considered a primary power source.
Wind? Its great supplemental and small-mid scale power but again, even if you put massive wind farms in every suitable location in the country, we wouldn’t meet our current needs, let alone match the increases. Same basic issue with hydro.
Solar? Based on my calculations, we actually could get enough solar power to meet our needs. It would require covering approximately 3% of our national surface (preferably in the sunny southwest) with parabolic solar collectors with high efficiency Stirling engine generators at their focal points. If we were to build huge solar arrays in the south west and combine those with localized wind farms and algae pool bio fuel I think we could actually meet our current usage.
Even contemplating the size and cost of that project would take a national will that just doesn’t exist. Too expensive, too big, too grand. Today’s America just isn’t up for it. If we started doing it NOW while we can still use the relatively plentiful relatively cheap power we have available, we might have it ready in time for peak oil, but without an undeniable need, we simply won’t make it happen.
So, by the time that need does become undeniable, we’ll need something that is able to be built faster, more piecemeal.
As far as I’m aware, the only power source currently available that fits that need is Nuclear.
Because we won’t plan far enough ahead, because we can’t conceive of using considerably less energy, because we have as many people as we do, it will be the only option. It’ll be a choice between having nuclear power or letting a lot of people die because there isn’t enough power to keep food on tables, houses heated and cooled during lethal temperatures, etc. Between letting a lot of people die and taking the only available option for power, we’ll end up taking the power. Changing our lifestyles to the point where we use a tenth of our current energy won’t even be seriously considered.
And then the accidents will come. People will die. People will be sick. Land will be destroyed leaving us with even scarcer resources. Some land will just be made “dangerous” and the unfortunate who live there will have interesting medical histories. These incidents will be regretted but we’ll see it as an unfortunate necessity. To keep our population and our lifestyles, we will need the power and the only way of getting enough is nuclear. So we live with the problems. Then, of course, there will be occasional non-accident made possible by these wonderful targets of opportunity. Do you really think we’ll keep them all that secure for all that long? Sooner or later, someone with the wrong wires crossed in their brain will do something horrible. We’ll live with that too.
And of course, we’ll have a new “middle east”. It’ll be a bit south of the current one where the easy to get at fissionable material exists. Like oil, its all over but it is concentrated in some places and those places will become our new Saudi Arabia, Iraq, and Sudan.
And then, eventually, down the road, we’ll hit peak fissionable material. It takes relatively high grade stuff to sustain a fission reaction and there’s only so much of that that can be acquired for a reasonable energy cost. Just like oil, eventually it takes more energy to get it into a usable form than can be derived from the material.
But hey, by then, we’ll all be long dead and what choice did we have anyway? And, who knows, maybe future generations of scientists will have figured out another power source. Hopefully it’ll be cleaner and maybe it’ll even be based on a renewable resource.
Yay us.
In one way, I’m jealous of all you people who believe in the rapture. At least you can hope that Jesus will come along and get us out of this mess we’re making. Hopefully your concept of God won’t be too upset at how we managed the planet he let us use. Sometimes I wonder if the belief that this will all end leads people to treat the planet more like a hotel room than a home. So what if we trash it? We’re just staying here for a little bit longer, right? I know that if I were the landlord, we wouldn’t be getting our deposit back.
From my point of view, it looks like we’re a bunch of monkeys that are clever enough to figure out how to shoot ourselves in the ass but not quite smart enough to realize that we probably don’t want to do that. Academically speaking, its a rather fascinating case study. In a way, I wish I were going to be around long enough to see if these theories and hypotheses turn out to be true. On the other hand, if I am right, it’ll be pretty depressing to watch.
I should note that there are those watching the energy situation and peak oil who disagree with me. They think peak oil will come too soon and too fast and that we’ll just hit a pretty nasty social collapse making the development of the nuclear infrastructure both impossible and moot. Some days, I’m unsure whether they’re the optimist or the pessimist.
Its interesting, they say a conservative is a liberal who’s been mugged. I tend to think that a lot of common conservative thought is based on a lot more faith in the intelligence and good will of the species than I have. Individually and on the small scale, I think we can be quite clever as well as amazingly altruistic. On the large scale, collectively, we’re a bunch of small minded, short sighted, greedy idiots.
So, barring the possibility of total societal collapse, don’t worry, you’ll get your nuclear.
June 19th, 2007 at 1:47 pm
You don’t have people, but I concur nuclear power is a viable and reasonable energy source, more than reasonable honestly. Just solve the Yucca Mountain NIMBY problem of numerous Red States (and Blue) and you’ve got it solved.
Let’s talk honestly about Oil refining. It is true no new refinery has been built since the late 70’s YET refining capacity increased 25% in the past 30 years.. meaning, faster than population growth, substantially faster for that matter. The Oil industry rep (The head of the US Oil Manufacturers Association) said in 2004 that the primary driver for refining was long term demand. She also commented, in directly refuting a Shell Executive, that environmental restrictions were NOT really the limit, that in fact profitability was enhanced by tighter supply (which the Shell Executive basically said if they could sell more gas of course they’d have built more refineries). Her comment was that this wasn’t necessarily true at all, and that in fact profits were enhanced by the tightening supply… Gosh!
In 2006, the Oil industry has announced that, despite the draconian utterly impossible, ridiculously beaurocratic restrictions that make it impossible to build refineries, completely and totally impossible no matter the profits to be had, that (last year) they were going to actually BUILD new refining capacity to increase it by 10-15%… I’m not sure given the fact that doing so is the equivilant of building a perpetual motion machine how they could manage it, but go figure, they did. A couple of days ago, again in an astonishing, market driven decision, they announced that long-term needs meant it was likely such capacity was NOT NEEDED, and because the need wasn’t there they were only likely to increase from 5-8% .. that sounds oh, I don’t know, earily reminiscent of the comments of Oil executives in 2001 – 2004, meaning, if the long-term sustainable demand could justify spending billions on a new refinery, they’d do it, but since they could get adequate increases in capacity by more efficient refining practices from 1984-2004 and the US population , at least the indiginous population was and is projected to retire/reduce consumption in the long term, gosh, evidence and comments might just maybe suggest that the REAL reason they didn’t build refineries had virtually nothing to do with environmental laws (considering they’ll build them now and those laws didn’t go away) and everything to do with … economic factors.. wow! Who’da thunk it!
So while you Snark away at Democrats, look at the fingers pointing back in your hand. The reality is that refining capacity is being used as a market lever and frankly, as an excuse, to allow market manipulation. Higher per unit profit was the watchword of Iococca at Chrysler, and became the mantra of many execs. If you can reap $5 billion in profits spending $20 Billion, what value is there in reaping $6 Billion if you have to spend $21? Further, if scarcity drives that $5 Billion to $10, then on a per unit, and efficiency ratio, and P2E ratio, you are FAR better off. So while you snark about nuclear power let’s just consider, shall we, that part of our issue is that we didn’t react until the ‘market’ created a real income disaster for the average American who now pays FAR more in energy costs, than the 2001 BushCo tax deferrment ever gave them.
Market forces often due correct things, but as many folks, from Jack Welch to Warren Buffet have commmented, governmental policy often creates enormous opportunity. Waiting until perceived or real disaster looms, in short until the average American is pinched enough to feel pain, is crappy planning at best. I support nuclear power, but I also support using our brains about reducing pollution before our world and our air, become unlivable for asthmatics, the elderly, and our children’s children.
June 19th, 2007 at 2:32 pm
The best comment I’ve heard about the Nuclear-phobia was that people would feel the same way about electricity in general if the first electrical invention was the Electrical chair.
June 19th, 2007 at 3:16 pm
I was beginning to think the comment box was gone. Phaedrus and pb, here’s a hint “Brevity is the soul of wit”.
Rick, two words: Yucca Mountain.
June 19th, 2007 at 3:48 pm
I’ve always been confused by one thing about nuclear waste. Maybe phaedrus can answer this.
We pull the radio active material from the ground, refine it and use it to generate energy. Thus some energy is spent. Therefore, isn’t the sum total of the radiation energy in the waste material less than the sum total of the radiation material we removed from the ground? (Albeit in a much more dense/concentrated form).
If the total energy is less, then isn’t it just a matter of scattering or diffusing the material so that it is less concentrated than what we took out and putting it just as deep or deeper?
I’m guessing the answer is that would be much easier said than done. But maybe there’s something else I’m missiing. I’m no nuculur phizicist.
June 19th, 2007 at 3:53 pm
“Brevity is the soul of wit”
Which is why all the chants used during anti-war marches are so very clever?
I wonder if those who use this quote remember that it was made by one of Shakespeare’s fools in Hamlet, Lord Polonius.
I will grant this, however, brevity does seem to be the soul of Television era soundbite propaganda.
If you make it short, simple, stupid and repeat it endlessly, then soon enough, it will be perceived as true. If it requires time, thought, and understanding, most people won’t bother to perceive it at all.
How’s this then:
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Nuclear waste is a problem that will come back and bite us on the ass.
However, since we won’t prepare for shortages until they’re on top of us, we are going to end up with nuclear power anyway.
No politician or pundit will be able to stand against it once the only other options are lots of people dying, radical reduction of our nations energy consumption, or both.
So while we environmentalists who do not trust humanity to effectively deal with the nuclear waste issue may not like it, barring total societal collapse, you’ll get your nuclear energy anyway.
=====
Its like writing a paper and then throwing away everything but the conclusion.
June 19th, 2007 at 4:21 pm
Missed the point, Professor. This is a comment thread. As such it’s a multi-party dialog. Posting 25+ paragraph comments, while no doubt satisfying is, how can I put this politely? Self indulgent?
June 19th, 2007 at 4:39 pm
“We pull the radio active material from the ground, refine it and use it to generate energy. Thus some energy is spent. Therefore, isn’t the sum total of the radiation energy in the waste material less than the sum total of the radiation material we removed from the ground? (Albeit in a much more dense/concentrated form).”
No. Fission byproducts typically include a cascade of neutrons, which when bound in stable nuclei typically make them unstable (aka radioactive). Unlike the more typical refining of metals, you can get more radioactivity out than you put in. Note that a similar problem exists for fusion, which is something that many people forget, since any reactor will have a surplus of neutrons which will create radioactivity in the containment system and any material not too far away.
Yeah, been there, done this. And watched the computers fry from it.
June 19th, 2007 at 10:04 pm
There’s a simple solution– renewable energy sources, as our Legislature has just mandated. So, let me be the first to apply for a BREEDER reactor permit. The nice thing about it is that it creates seven times the amount of fuel that it uses while producing energy, so that all the “waste” gets “burned.” If we could recycle the nuclear waste into new fuel rods (currently prohibited by federal law thanks to Jimmy Carter), we could store all the real nuclear waste in a desk drawer (or a space the size thereof), with room left over for your lunch box. By last count, the country has several hundred years’ worth of uranium, even without the breeder reactor, so that sounds like a pretty good solution.
The problem isn’t the technology, obviously, it’s getting all the nervous, no-nothing nincompoops (aka governments) out of the way to let us do it.
June 20th, 2007 at 4:08 am
Nuclear energy: why don’t we simply emulate France? I’ve always found it interesting that the left wants us to be like France in every way…except nuclear energy.
June 20th, 2007 at 5:56 am
I’ve always found it interesting that the right wants us to be like Nazi Germany in every way, except the little mustaches.
June 20th, 2007 at 7:13 am
I’ve always found it interesting that angryclown is an ass every way, no exceptions.
June 20th, 2007 at 9:42 am
J. – There are no ratios approaching 7 in any of the technologies yet proposed. The best ratio I’ve heard of is the helium moderated reactor with a (very theoretical) ratio of 1.8. Have you heard of a better one?
The breeder reactors are very good for “burning” the nuclear waste we have now and should be a part of the mix. Chemical separation of actinides and producing energy from them using high-energy nuetrons from a breeder would actually go a long way to reducing our problems with the spent nuclear fuel we have now. Not that we can legally do it, given the policies and legacies of Peanut Boy.
June 20th, 2007 at 1:03 pm
Being afraid of nuclear power because of Chernobyl is like being afraid of driving because you drive an Edsel.
June 20th, 2007 at 1:42 pm
“We pull the radio active material from the ground, refine it and use it to generate energy. Thus some energy is spent. Therefore, isn’t the sum total of the radiation energy in the waste material less than the sum total of the radiation material we removed from the ground? (Albeit in a much more dense/concentrated form).”
Kinda. You’ll have less highly and easily fissionable gamma emitting material and a lot more moderately radioactive material that’s all over the spectrum. So, less of your perfect Uranium Isotope but a lot of lesser grade uranium and a whole lot or random other stuff – both the resulting stuff left over from the initial reactions and the secondary stuff that becomes radioactive due to exposure to radiation.
The problem is, a little bit of moderate to highly radioactive material is not too hard to deal with. A whole lot of mildly to moderately radioactive material is much harder to deal with.
Over long term exposure to high radiation, pretty much anything and everything around becomes low level radioactive.
Most of the low level secondary stuff is probably going to be mainly alpha and beta emitting rather than gamma emitting so that’s good but you’ve still got to be careful with it.
June 20th, 2007 at 1:48 pm
“Missed the point, Professor. This is a comment thread. As such it’s a multi-party dialog. Posting 25+ paragraph comments, while no doubt satisfying is, how can I put this politely? Self indulgent? ”
Easy enough, don’t want to read the comment? Don’t read it.
As far as I’m concerned, spouting a bunch of conclusions that are contrarian to the forum without any reasoning is pointless. The choir already gets it, those who are willing to consider other points of view will require the reasons behind the conclusions, and those who aren’t willing to be consider other points of view aren’t worth my consideration.
For those who want to know why I say what I say, the information is there to read.
For those who aren’t in the mood for doing the reading, skip on to the next comment.
There’s a whole lot of name calling and snark that creates what I consider to be pointless noise in these forums. I often skip past it. Feel free to do the same with my contributions.
June 20th, 2007 at 1:54 pm
“Being afraid of nuclear power because of Chernobyl is like being afraid of driving because you drive an Edsel.”
As I mentioned, I am fully aware that Chernobyl could never happen with a properly designed reactor. When I was studying in the early 90s, the French and the Germans had both already designed reactors that could not physically fail catastrophically.
Chernobyl and Three Mile Island represented my awakening to consider the dangers of nuclear power. Chernobyl serves as an excellent dual reminder that we do not always use the best possible solutions and that when we screw up with Nuclear, the effects can be significant.
June 20th, 2007 at 2:20 pm
phaedrus, the problem is that this isnt your bandwidth. You want to explain something in detail, do it on your own site and link to it.
The pebble bed design seems pretty cool, and safe for a nuclear reactor, but I never hear any politicians talk about them. Wouldn’t that be a start anyway, on cutting back on oil, and gas consumption? Make electric cars more green, also?
June 20th, 2007 at 2:23 pm
Chernobyl serves as an excellent dual reminder that we do not always use the best possible solutions
While I admit that I know next to nothing about nuclear power, I do know enough about our world that comparing Chernobyl in 1986 (at the time, a communist country with a horrible economy, and all the governmental failings attendant with those 2 problems) to the USA today, is completely ridiculous.
You even offer the solution to your own fear: As I mentioned, I am fully aware that Chernobyl could never happen with a properly designed reactor.
June 20th, 2007 at 2:39 pm
almost forgot. How many lives are we willing to sacrifice for the cafe standards? Did Maria happen to mention that? Force higher mileage and you get lighter cars. Why not let the market decide that sort of thing?