A Half Century of Long-Range Energy Forecasts: Journal of Fusion Energy

[NNadir]

Although going back to the 1970's, many of my personal feelings and predictions about energy have proved to be wrong, I am, as many may note, hardly dissuaded from making bleak assessments of the energy future and will continue to do so.

I do believe that we live in a time like no other and that the implications of some unprecedented physical changes that are now occurring in our environment are extremely urgent and are in need of emergency attention.

Basically, I personally remain Malthusian in my overall outlook, in the sense that I believe humanity indeed can destroy itself by ignoring - even with all its vaunted self-consciousness and god-like pretensions - that human beings remain at the base biological organisms, subject to die off by exceeding the carrying capacity of its habitat, which in the human case is planetary in scale.

In some circles it is fashionable to ridicule Malthusian thinking and to assume that resources are essentially infinite. Such ridicule derives from a consideration of the fact that since Malthus died just before the dawn of the Victorian era, the exercise of civil engineering and the use of energy resources has forestalled, more or less, Malthus's dire prediction of population catastrophe; the world has proved more or less able to support a population much larger than was conceived in Malthus's time. Even so, I suspect that the critics of Malthus place too much weight on the short term. The history of science is replete with examples where curves producing models that fit very well over a short range later proved wholly inadequate for the long range.

Recently as noted in another thread here, I have been taking a retrospective look at the period during which a solar nirvana has been predicted. Herein, I am able to extend the record of such prediction all the way back to 1952, the year of my birth, when President Truman's Paley Commission projected 10 million US solar homes by 1975.

With the caveat of my continued appreciation for Malthus's basic idea so stated, I refer to the following very interesting and telling examination of the predictive history of the most important of all human resources in modern times, energy, which I excerpt with brief comments below. The full article from Journal of Fusion Energy, Vol. 21, Nos. 3/4, December 2002 (© 2003) can be found here:

http://www.misi-net.com/publications/LR_Energy_Forecasts.pdf

Over the past several decades, long-range energy forecasting has been extremely difficult and the accuracy of the major forecasts has, in retrospect, often been found wanting. Even the most basic data have frequently been misforecast by orders of magnitude. Nevertheless, ascertaining the likely energy trends and parameters for the United States and the world over the next several decades remains an important exercise with critical economic, environmental, and political implications.

Although, in hindsight, a large portion of the forecasts, projections, predictions, and associated policy recommendations turned out to be inaccurate and mistaken, the issue at hand is whether a careful review of 50 years of energy forecasting can be helpful in avoiding some of the past pitfalls in future related efforts. What lessons can be learned from this review of past energy forecasting studies?

...but let us remind ourselves that decades on the time scale even of humanity, never mind the history of life, is evanescent.

...Energy technology forecasters frequently failed to fully appreciate that they are dealing with moving targets, for existing technologies will continue to be improved over time. Thus, while impressive advances in some new technologies are being made, substantial improvements in the competition, such as conventional electric power generation or the internal combustion engine, are also occurring. Thus, in some cases, energy technology forecasters are like “the generals who are very good at fighting the last war...”

This touches on the subject of the solar nirvana. The solar nirvana, to repeat myself, frankly frightens me, because from what I see of it is mostly an exercise in complacency deriving from the concept that the still undelivered promise that the moment that "everything will be all right," because of "the solar revolution" remanis just around the corner:

Photovoltaics, fuel cells, wind power, and a variety of other technologies have been predicted to become economically viable within 5 years for a very long time. These and other technologies appear to hold great promise for the future and, indeed, they may someday become viable. Nevertheless, the experience of the past four decades suggests that it is not without considerable risk to suggest that these technologies may be ‘5 years away from being commercially viable’.

Even the most sophisticated energy forecasts are strongly influenced by events and trends of the time of the forecasts. Most obviously, all of the major forecasts made during the 1970s and early 1980s predicted that the real price of oil would increase dramatically in the near future which, of course, did not happen.

Certainly though, predictions of the nuclear nirvana which I often imply are not really all that new either. Note the subtle dig related to the logical fallacy of "appeal to authority."

Over the past three decades, many researchers in academia, the DOE, the DOE laboratories, advocacy organizations, and research institutes have invested their entire professional careers in specific energy technologies and energy systems. Their analysis and forecasts
reflect this—if even inadvertently. This potential bias must be kept in mind in assessing related forecasts. Over the past 40 years, some of the most egregious forecasting errors have often been made by the smartest people, working for the most prestigious organizations, with the most money; for example, the 1974 Ford Foundation study, the 1977 Stanford study, the 1979 Harvard study, etc.5 Thus it is important to keep in mind that the accuracy and validity of an energy forecast is not necessarily correlated with status of the persons making it or the money invested in
the project.

The only new energy source the world has developed over the past century is nuclear power, and, after 60 years experience with the technology, we still do not know what we want to do with it. This should be a cause for serious reflection...

Some more on the solar nirvana. (Note that the "Quad," an English unit, is 1.055 exajoules. World energy consumption is roughly 430 exajoules.)

... Finally, as noted earlier, forecasts of energy technology innovation and commercialization have often been highly inaccurate and overly optimistic. For example, consider Fig. 5, which compares the actual 2000 U.S. energy supply provided by solar energy (including wind) with the forecasts made by the MITRE Corporation (1979), the National Research Council of the National Academy of Sciences (1980), the Harvard Business School Energy Project (1979), the Department of Energy’s Energy Information Administration (1981), and Brookhaven National Laboratory (1979).8 The actual solar/wind contribution to U.S. energy requirements in 2000 was 0.1 quad, whereas:

● The MITRE Corporation, in 1979, forecast that solar/wind would provide 8 quads.
● The Harvard Business School Energy Project, in 1979, forecast that solar/wind would provide 5 quads.
● The National Research Council, in 1980, forecast that solar/wind would provide 4.1 quads.
● The Department of Energy’s Energy Information Administration, in 1981, forecast that solar/wind would provide 1.8 quads.
● Brookhaven National Laboratory, in 1979, forecast that solar/wind would provide 1.4 quads.

I hope that this interesting article will provoke some comments, all of which, I am sure will be, as usual, generous and well reasoned.

[phantom power]

1. Regarding the "viable in 5 years" prediction problem...

It seems to me that one reason alternative energy sources resolutely fail to compete with fossil fuels is, that fossil fuels are so damned easy to extract, economically speaking. It's just impossible to compete with that.

I'm trying to think of the perfect metaphor. Fossil fuels are like... A gigantic 50-billion dollar fortune, and we (humans) are the rich playboy, who inherited it. For this playboy, getting money is as easy as presenting his no-limit AmEx card, wherever he goes. For the last hundred years, getting energy has been about as easy for us. Just poke a hole in the right patch of ground, and it literally gushed out!

Deploying alternatives to fossil fuels are like the playboy's father, recommending that he go to school, learn a profession, and earn his keep. Gee. Sounds like a lot of work, compared to presenting my AmEx card. What's the point?

And so, now the fortune is running out, and the playboy is left with a canceled AmEx, no college degree and no job skills.

I just compared Western Civilization to George Bush.

[Dead_Parrot]

5. Ouch

That would be funny if I wasn't in it. And the chances of a concerted effort to get us off fossil fuels are about as likley as the chances of Bush waking up tomorrow as a hard-working, responsible parent...

[One_Life_To_Give]

6. Bottled Water Vs. Tap

Actually Cheap Oil is like Tap Water. How do you get people to spend $2/pint for bottled water when they can have tap water for almost nothing?

We need a Marketing GURU. So that all the really cool people have Hummers Windmills.

[Dead_Parrot]

7. Ask coca cola...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/3523303.stm

:evilgrin:

[phantom power]

2. Oh, what does the Journal of Fusion Energy have to say about..

it's own predictions for fusion energy?

"You see a lot, don't you doctor? Why don't you turn that high-powered perception at yourself and tell us what you see?"

[NNadir]

9. I think that the commentary was directed at fusion scientists.

The article does note that fusion has been predicted "in thirty years" for 30 years.

My personal feeling is that fusion energy can only exist as an adjunct and fuel extender for the fission industry - because of the need for tritium to fuel fusion reactors. I've met with a few fusion scientists, and they acknowledge the problems of their technology both in the sense of physics and in the sense of energy transfer and, as well, in terms of access to tritium - which can only come from fission reactors. I don't think fusion will be available on such a scale as to represent more than a few percent of the world's energy and mostly that it will serve mostly in esoteric capacities.

I also think that the 14 MeV neutrons available from fusion are exciting. Neutrons with this energy may be able to do many things that are not normally accessible with fission neutrons (1-2 MeV). One possible application is to perform (n,2n) type reactions in problematic fission products like Cs-135 and Cs-137, while collecting additional decay energy on the end. The cross sections for such high energy neutrons has not been measured, I'm sure, for many nuclei - so I don't know that this would work, but, were it to do so, the reaction would work like this: n(Cs-137)2n, Cs-136. Cs-137 has a half-life of 30.23 years. In equilibrium with its decay daughter, the also radioactive nucleus Ba-137m, it produces about 0.95 watts per gram, but this energy is diffuse. However when Cs-137 absorbs a neutron and then ejects two neutrons, a Cs-136 nuclei with a half-life of 13.16 days is created. This isotope gives off over 1,100 watts per gram, which is considerable. Moreover the recoil neutrons produce heat by transmuting at least some other nuclei as well as affording other nuclei with translational energy.

High energy neutrons can also split higher minor actinides that are generally not thought of as fissionable, such as curium-246 or americium-233.

This makes these neutrons valuable for the transmutation of fission products, the fissioning of long lived non-fissionable minor actinides and the collection of concentrated energy from them.

[phantom power]

10. I get the impression that fusion without tritium is considered unlikely.

That is a disappointment. Especially since it seems like an "engineering" problem. It's theoretically possible.

[NNadir]

11. Well the devil is in the details.

I expect that the engineering difficulties associated with D + D fusion will not be solved in this century. I would be perfectly happy to be wrong about that, of course. ;-)

[phantom power]

12. Is this one of those "cross section" problems?

One of your posts on cross-sections (for fission) showed some astonishing differences, just by adding or removing a neutron. Weird stuff.

[NNadir]

13. Yes. The nuclear properties of various isotopes vary greatly.

It is only the chemical properties that are are identical for two isotopes. In general the chemistry of an element is mostly determined by its electronic structure, but the only important relationship between electronic structure and nuclear structure is the charge balance of the neutral atom.

The laws governing the two systems, essentially quantum mechanics, are generally the same, but there are some important distinctions. Nuclei can be bosons and have integral spin or fermions having half integral spin. Electrons are fermions and all have half integral spin. Fermions are subject to the Pauli Exclusion Principle meaning that that orbitals - which can be thought of as permissible energy levels - can be unoccupied, singly occupied or doubly occupied. It is this law that accounts for all chemistry. Bosons on the other hand have no fundamental restriction on the number of particles that can occupy a particular energy level. Thus the distribution of energy levels in nuclei are subject to Bose-Einstein statistics, wheras fermions involve Fermi-Dirac statistics. As it happens combinations of protons and neutrons - nuclei - can be either bosons or fermions. Among hydrogen isotopes, protons and tritons are fermions, whereas deuterons are bosons.

I am not at all expert in fusion, and only have thought about it in a general way, but my understanding is that as two deuterons approach closely these effects become important and dominate the interaction. This, along with the normal electronic repulsion that applies until the range at which the strong nuclear force dominates, has an important effect on the activation energy of the reaction between two deuterons.

However the reaction is definitely not impossible. It is an important reaction in stars. Even in stars, however, the general approach to minimizing activation energy involves the carbon cycle which catalyzes the fusion of two protons. Deuteron fusion only become important later in a star's life cycle. This was the discovery for which Hans Bethe won the Nobel Prize in Physics.

Nuclear structure is thus much more difficult to apprehend or observe than electronic structure, although a great deal is obviously known on the subject.

One of the more interesting little facts about nuclear physics concerns odd/even patterns. In nuclear physics, even numbers are much more preferred to odd numbers. In the entire table of nuclei there are only two stable nuclei that have both an odd number of protons and an odd number of neutrons. One is the deuteron and the other is nitrogen-14. Many elements that have even atomic numbers (even numbers of protons) have many stable isotopes - I cannot off the top of my head think of one example of an even atomic numbered element less than 82 where there is only one stable isotope. However, elements having odd atomic numbers have either 1 or 2 stable isotopes, and no more. There are two odd number elements among the first 82 elements, element 43 (technetium) and element 61 (promethium) that have zero stable isotopes. These elements are only available in macroscopic quantities as fission products. In the case of technetium, ton quantities are readily available for this potentially very useful element, but as a practical matter the most promethium that could be obtained, if desired, would be multi-kilogram quantities.

I note that in the case of actinide elements, the most stable nuclei are thorium-232 and uranium-238, both of which have even atomic numbers, 90 and 92 respectively, and both of which have even mass numbers. Uranium-235 has a much shorter half-life than either of these nucleons, although U-235 is fortunately long lived enough to have survived in significant quantities since the supernova(e) that formed most terrestrial matter. Had no U-235 survived, it is unlikely that nuclear fission technology would have ever been discovered, and had it been, it would have proved far more challenging to have industrialized, probably as difficult as fusion. It would have been possible but it would have consumed great deals of the relatively rare element beryllium and the operation of a great many breeder reactors.

Therefore we would have much further along in our environmental apolcalypse than we now are, and we would have much less hope of ever resolving it.

[NNadir]

19. A self correction:

I wrote the following in the above post:

I cannot off the top of my head think of one example of an even atomic numbered element less than 82 where there is only one stable isotope.

This statement troubled me, because somehow I felt that there was an exception. In connection with a pleasant conversation with another member I was inclined to review some of the nuclear properties of beryllium and referred to The Table of Nuclides: http://atom.kaeri.re.kr/ where stable isotopes are conveniently color coded blue. (No, Tom Ridge never worked in nuclear physics.)

There I noted that there is element among the first 82 that has one and only one stable isotope, which is, in fact beryllium. Beryllium has an even atomic number, 4, and only one stable isotope with mass number 9.

I have scanned the rest of the table of nuclides, which is easy to do, and have satisfied myself that among the rest of the elements with even atomic numbers less than or equal to 82, more than one stable isotope exists.

This is a cautionary tale about making statements "off the top of your head."

[megatherium]

14. My impression is that tritium will be made in fusion reactors

by lining their containment building with a suitable isotope (some chemical containing the isotope that will breed tritium as it is irradiated by the fusion reactor). So fission might not be necessary. (This is based on the ITER/DEMO development path for fusion.) This of course says nothing about the value of fission in our energy mix, especially in the first half of this century before fusion can become available (if it ever does).

[NNadir]

15. You are mistaken.

Breeding in fusion reactors is impossible since the D + T is mononeutronic, it emits one neutron for every fusion. Inevitably many of these neutrons will be lost. Neutrons leak out of all reactors. In addition, many are captured by materials other than the desired target nuclei, for instance by structural materials. Some neutrons decay to give protons before they can be absorbed.

Also lithium, the most likely target, has two isotopes, only one of which yields tritium when bombarded with neutrons. Neutrons absorbed in the other isotope will be wasted. Only lithium-6 yields tritium. Lithium-7 yields helium-4 which is useless as a potential fusion fuel.

Nuclear fission reactors can be breeders because in general they produce more than two neutrons for each nuclear fission reaction that takes place. Even so, it matters whether the reaction yields significantly more than two neutrons. As a practical matter, more than 2.2 neutrons are required in fission reactors to achieve breeding. The average number of neutrons produced in fission reactors is, for U-233, U-235, and Pu-239 in thermal reactors is 2.29, 2.07, and 2.15. The situation with respect to fast nuclear reactors is different. In these reactors the yield of neutrons is different, 2.35, 2.40 and 2.90 neutrons per fission reaction. Thus only U-233 is a potential breeding fuel in thermal reactors.

More importantly, tritium is radioactive. This means that many of the tritium atoms that might be produced in putative fusion reactors will decay before they can be used. In general, any material that is made which also spontaneously decays will be subject to an equilibrium condition which places effective limits on how much can accumulate - the exact amount being a function of half-life. This is true of all radioactive materials including so called "nuclear waste."

[megatherium]

16. If breeding in fusion reactors is impossible, why is ITER preparing

to test lithium breeding blankets for fusion reactors? See http://www.iter.org/FAQ/TR3.htm.

[NNadir]

17. One speaks of a "breeding ratio."

All systems have breeding ratios, but these ratios are often less than one. This means that a system cannot sustain itself but will require an additional source of fuel.

I think that the link is being misleading, probably to assure funding. One may in fact "breed" tritium, but the if the breeding ratio is less than 1, the initial fuel will ultimately be depleted.

They are not being entirely misleading. The link contains this statement:

As long as CANDU type reactors are operating (and they are one of the most cost-effective), one can expect such a supply of tritium...

...This is achieved by reacting as many fusion neutrons in lithium as possible, and where shortfalls occur due to the presence of structural materials, access ports, and divertor, as well as normal radioactive decay of tritium, compensating by using the most economic combination of neutron multipliers (e.g. beryllium or lead) or lithium enriched in 6Li.

CANDU type reactors are, of course, fission reactors.

The use of beryllium as a "neutron multiplier" actually depends on an active alpha radiation source. They have explicitly avoided saying this, it seems to me. Historically these sources were radium, a few grams of which were isolated from ton quantities of uranium ores at tremendous expense. Modern alpha sources are more typically derived from synthetic actinide elements (such as Americium) alloyed with beryllium. Another particularly useful neutron source is the californium-252 which emits neutrons in great quantities spontaneously. However it takes 1600 atoms of uranium (in a fission sequence) to make just one atom of Californium-252. Few visible amounts of californium have ever been produced. Another arrangement is a so called "sub-critical" arrangement of actinide elements, generally americium and curium, but the suitable elements, again, are all obtained from fission reactors as by products. The alleged advantage of subcritical arrangements (as opposed to critical arrangements found in all modern nuclear reactors) is claimed to be enhanced safety, but since existing nuclear reactors are extraordinarily safe, this advantage can only be trivial.

Thus any fusion technology is dependent on fission technology.

The supply of tritium has been extensively with respect to fusion was recently analyzed and provided on the internet.

http://fire.pppl.gov/fesac_dp_ts_willms.pdf

The world supply of tritium is about 18.5 kg. The link shows the likely consumption of tritium, notes that tritium "breeding" has never been accomplished in a fusion reactor. (Nor can it be without access to fission side product materials.)

I note that the world supply of tritium is only sufficient to operate a 1000 MW (th) reactor for a few months.

I have personally toured the Princeton Plasma Physics lab, and discussed tritium breeding (and heat exchange) with a scientist there who was conducting the tour. We discussed all of the things I have discussed here, and I assure you these problems are very far from being solved.

[megatherium]

18. Very interesting!

If the tritium were supplied by a CANDU reactor, how much would this increase the amount of energy produced by the fission reactor? That is to say, how much more energy is produced by the fusion reaction than is required to produce the tritium?

[NNadir]

20. We can simply do a quick, albeit very rough estimate:

We know from the link I provided that 20 CANDU reactors have produced 18.5 kg of tritium in Canada, which we round to 1 kg/reactor. Each reactor has operated roughly 20 years. The actual accumulation of tritium in a reactor varies in a function of the type

C(1-e^-kt),

where C is a constant that depends on power, the deuterium neutron cross section and fission yield and k is the radioactive decay constant for tritium, the natural logarithm of 2 divided by the half-life of tritium. We can ignore this and say that over a twenty year period if 20 years the average accumulation in a CANDU is 1 kg/20 = 0.05 kg = 50 grams, larger amounts at first, smaller amounts later. The isotopic mass of tritium is 3.0160493 meaning that there are about 17 moles of tritium produced each year.

Here is a nice answer sheet to a problem set for university course in nuclear technology:

http://www.science.uwaterloo.ca/~cchieh/cact/nuctek/assgnaa.html

According to the course's professor the energy yield per fusion in the D + T reaction is 17.6 MeV, which, as shown in problem 3 in the problem set, is 2.819 X 10^-12 J per atom of tritium for which the reaction takes place. Multiplying this number by the number of moles and the Avogadro's number we see the extra energy available on average from fusion of the tritium produced in a CANDU reactor: The answer is 2.9 trillion joules or 2.9 terajoules. Note that not all of this energy is recoverable: Much of it is gamma radiation which is very difficult to convert into heat to drive a turbine.

If the CANDU reactor producing 50 grams of tritium per year is typical of CANDUS and operates at 750MWe at 90% capacity loading and 30% thermal efficiency, can be shown that it's output of primary energy is about 70 petajoules (7 X 10¹⁶ J). Thus the fusion technology will extend the energy available to the CANDU by 2 x 10¹²/7 X 10¹⁶ a factor of of 0.00003 or 0.003%. Note that I have ignored the energy cost of concentrating the tritium in the deuterium, which is substantial.

I find this unimpressive.

Another industrial approach to producing tritium, an approach that has been mostly used, unfortunately, to manufacture hydrogen bombs, is simply to place lithium in a neutron flux provided by a fission reactor. While this is theoretically easy to do, it is not quite so easy in practice and only a few reactors have been designed to do this, and all of them have been weapons reactors primarily.

Thanks for asking the question. I learned something by answering it.

[hatrack]

3. "The biotic potential of any species exceeds its carrying capacity."

William Catton, Overshoot

[jpak]

4. Snicker

How 'bout some claims about nuclear power from the Dark Ages????

Too cheap to meter????

LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL

[NNadir]

8. "Too cheap to meter" was said in 1954, before a single nuclear plant

existed. It was made by Lewis Strauss, Chariman of the Atomic Energy Commision. The exact context of the often recited remark is this:

""Our children will enjoy in their homes electrical energy too cheap to meter," he declared. ... "It is not too much to expect that our children will know of great periodic regional famines in the world only as matters of history, will travel effortlessly over the seas and under them and through the air with a minimum of danger and at great speeds, and will experience a lifespan far longer than ours, as disease yields and man comes to understand what causes him to age."

http://www.cns-snc.ca/media/toocheap/toocheap.html

I note that no one holds him to his remark about medicine, and medicine has not been abandoned because his promise was NOT fulfilled.

The remark was easy to make, since no delivery was involved. He could have said that spacecraft could travel to Pluto someday powered by nuclear energy, or that Jesus will return to earth glowing with curium. No expected him to prove anything he said that day and undoubtedly he knew that. Of course, in 1954, the planetary situation with respect to energy was not what it is today. Few, with the possible exception of the long expired Arrhenius - and this particular claim of his was forgotten, anticipated global climate change. Few realized that the commerce in oil would lead to unending war and oppression, large scale environmental degradation and the systematic poisoning of the entire atmosphere. The issue was not serious.

Over 50 years have passed since the remark has been made, and although nuclear energy is now generally in many places (depending on geography) the cheapeast busbar form of baseload power, it is decidedly not too cheap to meter. When external costs are included it is almost always the cheapest form of energy, however, and given the scale of our global crisis, that should be enough.

Speaking optimistic words about energy, unfortunately, is NOT the same as delivering energy, which is of course the point of the entire article cited. Therefore Mr. Strauss is indeed a cautionary tale for all off the cuff remarks about energy. Frequently, for instance, I hear claims about forms of energy that have yet to deliver a single exajoule that are no less enthusiastic than those uttered by Mr. Strauss before he and his charges had delivered a single exajoule.

No matter.

For some reason only nuclear energy is required to be "too cheap to meter," and then only by its antagonists - a set of people who are decidedly incapable of producing anything to cheap to meter themselves. No other form of energy is required to be too cheap to meter. Natural gas, which is destroying our atmosphere is not required to be too cheap to meter. Coal, which is destroying our atmosphere and our water is not required to be too cheap to meter. Oil, which is destroying our atmosphere, our water and our social and moral fabric is not required to be too cheap to meter. The renewable energy industry, which excepting hydroelectric is industrially trivial, is not required to be too cheap to meter - indeed people promote it with indifference to cost, even as the most energy deprived people on the planet are precisely those who are poorest.

Last year nuclear power, in spite of much propaganda in opposition, produced about 30 exajoules of primary energy. The loss of life associated with this thirty exajoules was zero. The amount of carbon dioxide that was prevented by producing 30 exajoules of primary energy, if one assumes 30 GJ/ton for coal (http://bioenergy.ornl.gov/papers/misc/energy_conv.html) is easily calculated. It is equivalent to about 1 billion tons of coal or 3.7 billion tons of carbon dioxide, about half of the mass of carbon dioxide released by the United States each year.

So yes, Mr. Strauss was full of shit. Many, maybe all, Exxon executives are also full of shit but no one demands - even if the should do so - that the oil industry be shut down. Mr. Paley of President Truman's commission, who reported on the grand solar future that was to come by 1975, was full of shit two years before Mr. Strauss spoke, and no one is calling for the end of the solar industry. On the contrary all of us applaud whatever the struggling and mostly failed solar industry has managed - albeit it with too much noise - to produce. We hope that it will find a way to deliver yet on at least some of its promises. In matters of global climate change, every little bit helps.

The article simply points, with what I regard as objective clarity, at how promises are not the same as delivery. This is useful. The world is full of people who like Mr. Strauss, make glib promises without being called on them.

Personally, I am of the opinion that global climate change is a serious matter that requires careful and sober analysis. The crisis will not be ameliorated by talk; it requires action. As such, it is useful to look at the advertising over the decades and compare it with the final product. I note that Mr. Strauss represents the only incidence of the claim of "too cheap to meter." Many other fallaciously over optimistic claims for other fossil fuel alternatives have continued unabated like the ticking of a clock that is always wrong. The are detailed in the referenced article.

As the clock ticks, time is running out.

Nuclear power is NOT a perfect solution to our severe and possibly universally fatal environmental crisis. It is not risk free. However it has been operating industrially for 50 years and thus has proved itself on an exajoule scale. It still has the lowest environmental and health risk of any form of continuously available form of scalable energy now available. In fact it's risk is lower and its costs are lower than many forms of energy which are not continuously available, solar PV for instance.

Again: http://www.itas.fzk.de/deu/tadn/tadn013/frbi01a.htm

We can evaluate nuclear energy on its merits, not merely about what has been promised for it, but also on its delivery. We know what is involved. We have experience. We have made mistakes and have learned how to avoid their repetition. When we review the history of industrial energy, we can therefore immediately sense the truth:

There is no such thing as risk free energy. There is only risk minimized energy. That energy is nuclear energy.